Grateful Dead

I had a case where a dvd that came to me appeared to be blank - or unreadable, and I took an old (really old) DVD ROM drive & hooked it up with an IDE to USB cable - and it was able to read the DVD - and I copied the data off. Sometimes these little esoteric technical glitches can be a real pain. Also, I was having trouble with a movie package (Pinacle Studio 12) and the tech support said I needed RW dvd's - so I bought them - and then realised my burner won't deal with them. However, I have a work laptop that loves them. & I have a whole spool of them - but I'm leery of putting out a vine dvd on a RW disc. For now, I'm thinking of using them as data back-ups to free up some disk space. I'd appreciate any thoughts on if it would be bad to send a vine out on RW discs - what with all the people not able to read stuff already & losing things.

Thanks CB for your philosophical perspective and many more thanks for your efforts updating the vinedex and creating musical compilations to share. Is there a folder for identifying AWOL vines? Tell us more about touring & working in such out of the way places as Krygyzstan. Is it similar to being in north central Nevada, where one encounters a sparsely-populated mix of dry mountains and desert? Another great place to build solar energy farms!

Maybe we should think of vines as living things. They are born they live a life and they die. Some live to a ripe old age. Some are cut down in their prime. Some die of neglect or mistreatment, some fade away as a result of natural causes. No matter how much folk try to care for them, some we lose to the actions of bad people. When we create a vine we send it out with our best hopes, but we cannot control what happens to it. So long as good people keep creating vines and the majority care for them the vineyard will thrive, despite the losses. :-)

That we have identified the guilty parties in the missing vines mystery and the fact that people have been better about contacting folks prior to sending that the issue is/will be much better. However there are definitely some vines that are gone for good unless someone can do some re-seeding. "I've stayed in every blue-light cheap hotel. Can't win for tryin. Dust off those rusty strings just one more time. Gonna make em shine."

Im not sure if any of the vines I have started are missing. If any of you need a reseed on anything I have PM me. I dont always have everything in my old collection. But I usually have an upgrade or something similar.

Marty et al, I really appreciate all the vines and music from all of you. I started out with basically nothing a year ago. I had about 6 shows on cassette tape I got in 1990 and 1991 in college. Now I have over 160+ shows on CDR. Being able to read flac is the jackpot. I have more shows on DVD I have not had time to convert to wav CDR. That's another 20+ shows right there. Anyway, I maintain a list of vines I sign up for. I cross out the ones I get in the mail and then send back out. I have this list taped to my office wall. There are 15 vines I have not received yet for various reasons (lost, not my turn yet). I don't have the time (and I am lazy) to go search out the status. MITD sent me an excel spreadsheet of his active vines. I have it if anyone wants to see it. I got it about a month before he went AWOL. I think what we need is some spring cleaning. For us to pronounce dead some inactive vines and have Marye remove them from the pages--wipe the slate clean. EDAD

and I have xp. A lot of cd's and dvd's burned on vista will not read on a computer running xp. Sometimes they will show the disc is blank. She is a photographer and gives her clients dvds. It took us a while to figure out what was going on.(it was a big mess) Some of the dvds worked and some didnt. We found out the people that had the working copies also ran vista. We now burn everything on my computer. I hope windows 7 is better, I know xp will not be supported much longer.

I have stopped seeding vines for now... Why... because 100% of them are either gone the way of the jstraw and MITD vine destruction or discs are misplaced or lost when sent from one viner to the other. I am sick and tired of trying to reseed or replace. I probably won't contribute much in the future which is a shame but it takes time out of either work or family to do these and for them to just evaporate is ridiculous. So this is a call to all viners to TAKE CARE of each vine and send it on its way the same way your received it. Don't sign up for too many vines at the same time. Have some respect for the good people that have been seeding these. Marty

Any of the vines I put out there? I use vista but only stuman has reported problems to me. I'm just assuming everything is fine unless I hear otherwise. "I've stayed in every blue-light cheap hotel. Can't win for tryin. Dust off those rusty strings just one more time. Gonna make em shine."

do you get the same results if you use other software to burn - e.g. Nero or one of the open source packages vs. using the buil-in burning feature? It might make a difference, but I'm not sure.