The Lost “Rydberg Construction” Cap

This was my favorite cap when I was a kid. “Rydberg Construction” was the company of my Dad’s cousin, but I thought it was cool because it was a construction company owned by someone in the family, and to a kid, that is a big deal.

I was walking home after a piano lesson, and this older kid on a BMX bike came up behind me and just took it off of my head. I’ll never forget the way he slapped it onto his head with one hand, like it was not a big deal, and lazily rode off as I ran after him, unable to keep up.

So, I get home, and as luck would have it, my big brother and his big friend were there and I was crying. They took off in my brother’s cool Camaro to find this BMX jerk. That’s what good big brothers and their friends do.

Unfortunately, they never found the guy. I suspect that years later I rode the same bus with him as this happened in the same area as the Drake Jr. High bus stop, and there were a lot of jerks on that bus, too. Or, perhaps the world is simply full of jerks.

Anyway. I got the bright idea to recreate the logo, which only took a few minutes, and when I find employment (I’m between jobs right now, http://randyrydberg.com) I’ll be ready-to-go to have a new cap made. Maybe more than one in case someone else gets the bright idea to steal it again.

I did get a new “Jedi” cap for Christmas later that year though, which I still have. There’s a famous photo of George Lucas wearing the same hat, which makes me quite fashionable.

As it turns out, the original logo had two different fonts, but I just went with the secondary font for the entire thing.

Cassette Surgery

I’ve actually done this kind of thing before. I saved a really old family audio recording that had only one more play in it before it disintegrated, and I’ve done a few other surgeries for other reasons, too. It’s fun for a short time, but in the end it is more about listening than tinkering because there is only so much one can do.

I understand people liking cassettes, I still do, but not enough to collect, listen to, or tinker with anymore. The same goes for VHS.

I do miss picking up a pack of cassettes, especially a good brand, quality, or tape length. Especially if they were on sale, I’d get the new newspaper first thing on Sunday morning and see what cassettes were on sale in the ads. That was a big deal!

I liked cheaper tapes, too, which suited my purposes and allowed me to record more things. Walgreens had these really cheap tapes that worked really well. Scotch was a nice in-between brand, I’d get those at Target. The feel of the plastic cases was so nice.

The Other Brandenburg

I have a lot of different Brandenburg Concerto recordings, because it is:
1 – Great.
2 – Everywhere.
3 – Cheap.
4 – Bach.
The complete recordings cover two discs, so often I’ll find 1-2-3 and need 4-5-6, that kind of thing. I ran across the 1-2-3 that I needed in this case, and had to create a cover so that it would be one complete recording in iTunes/Music, and not two separate cds. I don’t see any need for that in iTunes/Music.

So, of course I have two new versions of the cover, a version similar to the originals, and one that I feel is a bit better.

I updated my iTunes a month ago, coincidentally, so that almost all of my Brandenburgs are in my iTunes/Music. (not everything I have is in there; every cd that I own is ripped and digitized, but not necessarily imported into iTunes/Music.) I am slowly going over the big compositions or artists, and making sure that they are complete. Quite a bit of work, like digitizing and improving family photos, I’m easily never going to be done!

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Twenty-Five CDs to Rip

Quite rare to find box sets like this at a busy thrift store like the ARC; even more rare is all twenty-five (ten+fifteen) of the discs were perfect and present; Even more curious is that I wasn’t sure what I was getting, I don’t know much about Sacred Works, and the Haydn Quartets were old, but remastered recordings. I’m not one for bad sound, even if the actual performance is highly regarded.

Turns out that the Sacred Works are basically small choir compositions, something that I’ve recently very much gotten into; the Haydn Quartets sound fine, there is better sound, but they are quite listenable for being recorded in the early-mid 1950s. So, my three-dollar (for both boxes!) gamble really paid off!

Erato Set: Half Complete

I found another “Residence” cd, I don’t see many of these in the thrifts. My original two, of which I listened to quite a bit, I bought new back in the 1990s, and they weren’t cheap back then. Now, they are just a buck or two, if they can be found.

The booklet lists twenty total, so I’m halfway to a full set!

This little “Residence” collection is nothing; I have a friend who put together a complete set of one hundred recordings (Sony: Leonard Bernstein: The Royal Edition) just from shopping thrifts for years. That is the feat to beat in classical music thrifting!