Work is… hard. -_-

Well, my second week of work at Radio Shack is officially over. We had to do inventory on Saturday and Sunday, which is why there was no update. Anyway, I had to sleep a ridiculously short amount on Saturday night, but now that tomorrow is my day off, I can sort of relax. Hahaha. I’ll probably get up early as usual and go downtown to visit my colleagues and run errands. You know I’m hooked on my new job WHEN… ^_^

So, this Copy-Control CD thing has gotten out of hand. Companies other than Avex are beginning to implement this new annoyance – but, alas, by a stroke of luck and a bit of experimentation, even in between my busy work schedule, I found a way to beat the CCD!!!

I use Xing AudioCatalyst 2.1 to rip my CD’s, but due to CCD technology, that option has gone out the window (except for older CD’s). While ripping my Leon Lai CD’s on Friday, I found that I couldn’t rip the last track of LEON Peking Station because of the data track right after it. Naturally, I got rather angry that such a simple thing was preventing me from ripping that last track. So, I decided to try CloneCD, but I got nowhere fast with that program. Then, the thinking gears started moving – if burning programs can copy my CDs in raw format, why can’t I do the same to just a track, or a selection of tracks? So, I opened up Nero Burning ROM on a whim and tried ripping that last track. Success! ^_^

After that, I pulled out hitomi’s flow/BLADE RUNNER, a disc with CCD slapped all over the front label. I tried ripping it. I ran into some preliminary problems, but finally worked my way around them. So, the ripping of the CD was a success! Granted, it’ll take a few rips just to get the perfect copy you want, but it’s all worth it in the end.

For the l33t out there, Nero only rips your CD’s with Buffered Burst Copy, as opposed to the Dynamic Synch Width supported by AudioCatalyst. Even though Buffered Burst Copy is the fastest method around, it’s also more susceptible to reading anomalies, like little annoying pops and clicks in the song. The trick is to be patient, and listen to the song many times to determine the best copy. But, I defeated CCD!! Isn’t that cool???

Oh, I also bought a Logitech rumble gamepad this weekend to play all my 16-bit games. Anyway, I’m getting majorly tired now, so I’m gonna hit the sack so I can get an early head start tomorrow.