Pruning the hard drive

Muggsy

Like probably most of you, I have lots of music on my computer. Uploaded all my CDs a few years back, plus purchased/acquired downloads from eMusic, Amie Street, Guvera, Lala, Bandcamp, etc. Way more stuff than I'm ever going to have the time to hear. The download frenzies of a decade ago made it impossible to listen to albums as soon as I got them, when I was grabbing eMusic boosters and checking Amie Street 5x a day for new releases. Yet somehow I'm reluctant to hit that delete button when I hear something that doesn't grab me.

Part of it is the idea that storage is cheap. It's not like I need to build more shelves for physical media, and I have a 4TB hard drive that's not running out of space any time soon. But it slows down my computer in a big way, and it just seems pointless to keep tracks that don't excite me or even register when they come up on shuffle. Another factor is that some artists and albums take multiple listens to sink in, so I'm afraid I might miss one of those if I delete based on one play, when I might just not be in the right mood for whatever it is. But I'm forcing myself to go through the collection right now, in a completely random way, and delete stuff that makes me go "meh." I just don't have enough hours in the day to listen to everything, and I still have downloaded albums I acquired years ago that I've never heard.

How do you all deal with this?

Germanprof

I have the same impulses and fears - how do I actually know that I don't like something? How many times have I eventually pulled up an album and gone "that is way better than I remembered" or "I get it now" or "I had the wrong expectations when I first listened to this"? Quite a few. I also have a completist streak - if I have every release on a small label, deleting the bad ones would spoil the collection. Yet every now and then I decide to houseclean and get rid of a layer of stuff; I've said on here before I am motivated to have a collection, not just a pile, and a collection is something that is in some measure curated. But when I do delete, occasionally I regret it later and go looking for something I am sure I once had.

I don't have a clean solution, but am starting to lean toward (a) more rigorously/assiduously using low star ratings to actually exclude things from my rotation and then my collection and (b) culling those from the active drive every now and then and keeping a copy on separate backup in case I ever want to rethink (the digital equivalent of the box in the basement).

confused

Well, for the last 3 years I've been on a similar quest. I screwed up trying to transfer the old iTunes library to a new computer and so had to start again at 0 plays and no ratings. I've been working my way through the alphabet and just stating at A again. I've also found it hard to delete some of the albums that I've heard, it would be like getting rid of vinyl. Can't do it....mostly. I only have 1TB on this Mac mini and as I really do find these computers to be most confusing, I've taken the easy way out for me. I have 6TB on an external hard drive so I moved all the compilation albums over there and left just the addresses on the mini. Now iTunes just tells me it can't find the track and if I really want to hear it I know where to find it. I'll soon have to do that with all the Various Artists. I sure at some point this will all come crashing down.
At any rate, I deal with it rather poorly and by the time I get through the alphabet this computer will probably be obsolete and I can start at 0 again. In the meantime I have deleted all the old free Emusic label samplers and daily downloads. I keep coming across Amie St. albums (I never did get around to much there as I was on dialup) and I've kept most of those. It really is hard to cull out my library because I like so many different kinds of music, or sometimes artwork. 

peterfrederics

I have taken the easy way out with my more than 50,000 songs taking up over 530GB. Instal a larger hard drive!

I couldn't bear to lose any of my music! If I liked it when I bought it but don't like it so much now, I am sure that there will be a time in the future when I will like it again. And why delete it unless you really have to!?

rostasi

@Muggsy: I’m a bit surprised to hear that your 4TB is such a drag on your system.
Have you considered getting an external docking station for your drive(s)? For about $30,
you can buy a dual one that holds 2.5 or 3.5 inch drives of any capacity with the ability
to switch them out anytime you’d like to change up your listening. For example,
you could have a series of 1TB drives - each with a different kind of music or any other
combination of carefully curated collections. I think the docking systems that have 4 slots
are about $100, if you’re looking for more space and easy access.

Also, I forgot to mention that they take SSDs as well - more expensive, but really fast!

omnifoo

I say the solution is always more storage, never deletion for the reasons you all mention.  Especially for ambient, lighter jazz and downtempo electronica, knocking my socks off is probably not the point.  It's harder to describe what I think of as "meh" in those cases; a strong sense of not liking something might yet be an advantage of physical media (though costlier to buy and then realize I don't like something) in that something has to make the quality cut to be ripped in the first place.  I'd hoped my 1TB drive on the used Macbook I bought two years ago would last longer, but I'll soon face a day of reckoning.

Muggsy

rostasi said:

@Muggsy: I’m a bit surprised to hear that your 4TB is such a drag on your system.
Have you considered getting an external docking station for your drive(s)? For about $30,
you can buy a dual one that holds 2.5 or 3.5 inch drives of any capacity with the ability
to switch them out anytime you’d like to change up your listening. For example,
you could have a series of 1TB drives - each with a different kind of music or any other
combination of carefully curated collections. I think the docking systems that have 4 slots
are about $100, if you’re looking for more space and easy access.

Also, I forgot to mention that they take SSDs as well - more expensive, but really fast!

@rostasi, I think there are a couple of factors at play here. My desktop computer is a five year old iMac, running iTunes, which has always had problems with large libraries. But I'm too invested (and honestly too lazy) to switch to another music management software program at this point. I will look into the external docking station, that seems like a good option. I also misspoke a bit, the internal storage on the iMac is 2TB, plus I have an external backup HD that is 4 TB. My music library is roughly 70,000 tracks taking up 1.37 TB. I ripped all my CDs in ALAC and download lossless files when they're available, though I know it's probably overkill because my hearing isn't what it used to be.

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one that has a hard time deleting music, but I'm forcing myself to do it. My family moved to a new house in the summer of 2019, after 15 years in the last one, and getting rid of stuff we no longer needed has been an ongoing project over the past 18 months. It's been hugely liberating for me, though it's not strictly analogous to the music situation because the things I've been selling and donating freed up space in my garage that I needed to make room for my car. Hard drive storage doesn't take up much physical space, but if I have a finite amount of time to listen to music before I'm done, as we all do, I'd rather do some periodic weeding than give a second or third listen to an album I picked up on Amie Street because it was free and looked mildly interesting.

rostasi

@Muggsy: Back in April, with over 1 million tunes in my iTunes library on a 10 year old Mac, I added an additional 5 TB drive, so your choice of music management software isn't necessarily the problem and there really is no reason to change it now. Usually, sluggish responses from your Mac means that there's a lot of built-up digital detritus on your drive or you don't have enough RAM (memory). Between using Clean My Mac regularly and occasionally using Song Sergeant  to keep my iTunes cleaned up (and having 64 GB of RAM), I've been able to avoid any problems with the archive.

My suggestion is that after you have fine-tuned your machine (cleaning it up) and given it some oil (do you have sufficient memory?) that could really help with the speed of your Mac, consider starting the new year all fresh by getting one of those dual (or more) docking stations, put in an empty drive, and then pick a good time each day to sift (alphabetically? or another method) thru one of your drives and drag 'n' drop the albums that you enjoy onto the new drive. Over the next few months, you'll find yourself building up a fine collection that, yes, will always be at the whims of your emotions and personality, but will have made some kind of positive impression at a moment in your life. There won't be a sudden judgement of your taste after you die that will be any different than while you are living.

Funny you mention getting the car in the garage, because we are usually pretty good about having things in there pretty much in good snug places, but after we spent most of 2019 remodelling the house, we have a very tight squeeze getting the car in there now because of a wall of boxes (about three dozen) of albums that are part of over a hundred boxes total of recordings. Discogs and ebay were the focus at the beginning of the year, but the pandemic put a temporary stop to that.

In short: clean it up, give it a boost, and rediscover your archive!

greg

I'm getting to the point where I might have a similar problem with my hard drive now 2/3 full, mainly music, as photos now go onto an external drive and all the programme stuff is on a separate SSD on my computer. I almost certainly won't delete music, even though some has not been played in a long time if at all. I'm deleting duplicates - I have a number of albums in lossless and a lower sound quality, but that doesn't actually save a lot. I like the idea of moving some that I play less often to an external drive, thanks confused

Muggsy

@rostasi thanks for the software suggestions. I admittedly have not been good about hard drive maintenance, and my iTunes library isn't as organized as I'd like it to be, so those programs should help. More memory would help too, I'll look into that as well. Spent some time this afternoon reorganizing the library, which was long overdue. It's a process, but this was a good start. I do like the docking station idea, and since I usually draw a blank when my wife asks what I want for Christmas, now I've got an answer.

I'm still inclined to do a bit of pruning though. Not because I'm worried about being judged (my teenagers do that every day, and I enjoy cranking the volume in the car to torture them) but because I have downloaded so much music in the last 10-15 years that I don't have time to listen to most of it. When I was younger, I'd get a new album and live with it for a while, because I didn't have the money to buy more than one at a time. I haven't heard some of those records in decades, but they come right back when I play them. I rarely listen that way any more, unless it's something that grabs me on the first listen and doesn't let go (Fiona Apple's Fetch the Bolt Cutters is a recent example). But part of me feels guilty for spending too much time with one record when there are thousands of others in my library, waiting for some attention. And while I sometimes listen on Spotify, I still prefer to own rather than rent, so I still buy downloads and the occasional CD. Too much music, too little time.

Doofy

Too much music, too little time.

I am currently weighing a decision to retire a few years early, and having more time for music (and perhaps more pressingly books) is absolutely part of the equation.

I rarely delete anything, even from the good old Amie Street days. I have a couple of playlists that dredge up things from the depths of the hard drive...Admittedly infrequently, I still discover good things that I never spent much time with. Most recently: https://wroom.bandcamp.com/album/what-we-mean-by-hot-and-cold <- Electronic/ambient-ish, a genre I had little interest in back then but do now.

While my collection is nothing of the rostasi magnitude, storage is cheap and I consider there's no real opportunity cost of choosing one pleasure over another. Just to add, while I still use iTunes (for Windows), it's certain to go away permanently one of these years (or days).

rostasi

I'm under no illusion that I can listen to all that I've acquired either "fully" (whatever that may really mean) or even partially, but it may just come down to prices paid in the end.

In the late 60s/early 70s, you could pay a discounted price on an album (sale: $3.98!), but that was usually reserved for newly released popular albums. If you wanted something rather unusual - and especially if it was a multi-LP set - you would pay what was considered a good chunk of cash in those times ($7.99). So, like today, the specialty item you spent extra on invariably got played almost immediately and often. In my case, I'd receive free records in the mail to be played on my radio show, but I could rely on most of them to be good because of the label sending them (e.g. Virgin Records).

Today, free items are available in waves that engulf you in extraordinary ways, but that means that one's approach becomes a little different. You can treat Spotify, for instance, as your sole source of entertainment - kind of like, in the old days, going to the record or book store (or even the library) and perusing the huge number of volumes of stuff there, but not buying ... or, you can choose to have your own personal Spotify-like collection that can be dipped into. The big-ticket items are still in your possession and you can still visit them individually to get your money's worth, but the other big wave of stuff (I get sent a LOT of it) is there to give you potentially unexpected joys in the same way that radio may have provided that joy of discovery by way of a disembodied voice that came out of your radio speaker presenting you with tunes that you had no control over receiving. The people that we follow on various platforms are those DJs now (some who are actual DJs) with the bonus that it is much easier to find like-minded music lovers. Bandcamp friends are an example of that today.

Germanprof

rostasi said:

...Today, free items are available in waves that engulf you in extraordinary ways, but that means that one's approach becomes a little different.

Right. I think listening for coverage makes decreasing sense to me and I need to let go of the feeling I ought to listen that way - a few years ago I had playlists that made sure I listened to everything in my collection in rotation (have to justify those purchases and not miss those hidden gems!), but that is making less and less sense and can easily become a chore.

I am starting to find more ways of focusing. A work friend/colleague and I have overlapping prog rock interests, and for a good while now we have been choosing an artist and doing a shared specific deep dive as a basis for conversation. Basically we take their releases in chronological order and listen to each album every day for a week before moving on to the next, with the goal of getting to know it better and seeing if we hear new things or make new connections across releases as we know individual releases better. (I occasionally fantasize about folk on this board agreeing to listen to the same album a few times and sharing what they hear - but we are a pretty disparate bunch and it would probably be less fun than I imagine).

We spent half a year doing every Steve Hackett solo release and are maybe half way through a year and a half of every (official) Neal Morse-related release (which includes Spock's beard, Transatlantic, Flying Colors, a lot of live stuff). Alongside that, I am seriously considering trying @confused 's alphabetical strategy for a while. Regardless of the details of the particular dive, the overall collection then becomes something more like a reef that you can dive into different parts of and notice different things rather than a shoal where you have to greet every single fish.

(That image might have been influenced by watching My Octopus Teacher last weekend, a film on Netflix that I would recommend - a key premise is that the narrator decided to dive into the same patch of ocean every day for a year, which is a bit different from what we usually mean by exploring.)

rostasi

...the overall collection then becomes something more like a reef that you can dive into different parts of and notice different things rather than a shoal where you have to greet every single fish...

Yes, I like this. This is an ideal that works in many other areas too - like reading Finnegans Wake.

On another "music" forum that I used to be a part of, we tried having a highlighted album while having people listen and write reviews (short ones were fine) or rate them (1-10). But, like pretty much everything having to do with music, it just fell apart through disinterest. I'm still happy with our approach here when someone points to, for example, a label ("Ored") that might be special ...and within that everyone finds their favorites (or not).

peterfrederics

@Germanprof seeing as Prog Rock is top of my list, I would be really interested to hear which Prog Rock artists you and your friend have been deep diving on

P.S. Melbourne has been in lockdown for over four months until fairly recently (probably explains why we have now gone over 3 weeks without a new case of Covid or a Covid related death!). Hence, I have been using the opportunity to follow @confused's example of going through my music alphabetically - now up to "M". It is interesting how many times I have come across bands/artists/albums that I had totally forgotten about but which I have really enjoyed on re-hearing them. Another reason why I would always go for expanding my hard drive + increasing Cloud back-up rather than hitting the delete button on any of my music.

Germanprof

@peterfrederics well, my friend and I have a kind of venn diagram of prog tastes. His tastes were formed a bit earlier than mine - he is a big Beatles fan and into Yes and early Genesis, and likes folkier more recent stuff like Big Big Train; my tastes were formed in the late 70s/80s, and I tend on average to get more out of “neoprog” and more recent “symphonic” prog, though we’ve both been happy to learn. We have found common cause around all the Morse projects - Neal Morse, Neal Morse Band, Spock’s Beard, Transatlantic, Flying Colors - and that has sent us exploring out along the branches from there (so for example Transatlantic includes Pete Trevawas, which then connects of course to Marillion, but also to Kino and Edison’s Children; and to Portnoy, which leads into Dream Theater, Liquid Tension Experiment, and Sons of Apollo, among others; etc, etc.). We also did a deep dive on Steve Hackett solo releases, including his recent live revisiting of chunks of the Genesis back catalog (I managed to have a ticket to his recent tour and not be able to go because of a work commitment). We’ve been listening to quite a bit of Moon Safari recently (there is a good deal on their complete discography at bandcamp), and catching up with the Flower Kings. Lots of other things too (we do a fair bit of digging through the top 100 prog subgenre lists at progarchives), but the specific deep dives so far have been mostly Hackett and Morseworld. Both were large undertakings - Hackett took seven or eight months and Morse will be well over a year, especially as we are allowing a week per disc for multi-disc sets, of which he has many.

rostasi

I miss the radio on the homepage that they used to have at Progarchives.
Apparently, they had too many copyright complaints. People ruin stuff.

peterfrederics

@Germanprof I am more buried in the late 60s and early 70s so King Crimson, Pink Floyd, early Genesis, Gryphon, Canterbury Scene (Caravan, Egg, Camel, Soft Machine, Hatfield et al) and Krautrock (Agitation Free, Can, Neu!) plus the plethora of obscure gems from that period which drew me to eMusic in the great days of the 2000s.

I am also into  the modern stuff particularly Porcupine Tree + Steven Wilson's other ventures, Opeth, Swervedriver, Anathema, Antimatter, Amplifier, Grails, North Atlantic Oscillation, Minus the Bear et al. In common with you, I really like Big Big Train, the various Portnoy ventures, Marillion. I even veer over into Math Rock such as Mogwai, Godspeed YBE, God is an Astronaut, Explosions in the Sky and Russian Circles. I can only imagine that Hackett and Morseworld would be really challenging. My deep dives into Porcupine Tree and King Crimson would pale in comparison!

And, of course, Progarchives is the source of all wisdom!

omnifoo

I've clearly got a lot to learn about prog rock and have had my head in the sand of obscurity.  Glad to see so many of you being systematic about listening to everything in your collections...no better opportunity than under Covid.  I find making mix CDs for friends and family to be another good excuse to scour everything from A-Z without it feeling like a chore.

Lowlife

I have an external drive which is updated every week, therefore keeping music safe. About to get a Nass drive so I can play more music through my Songs without having to spark up my old PC where the music for the Sonos lives. Its so old it get really hot and makes a lot of noise.

rostasi

omnifoo said:

... I find making mix CDs for friends and family to be another good excuse to scour everything from A-Z without it feeling like a chore.

If you want to spread some of that love here, you could upload them to Mixcloud. I’d listen.

About Sonos: We’ve grown fond of ours here at home. It’s a real delight to be able to shuffle your way thru Bandcamp purchases, Mixcloud mixes (others and your own), Spotify playlists and a whole lot more (the French station that broadcasts nothing but recordings on Ocora!).
Oh, and it’s great for nightly sleeping to Sleepbot radio.

Germanprof

rostasi said:

I miss the radio on the homepage that they used to have at Progarchives.
Apparently, they had too many copyright complaints. People ruin stuff.

Agreed. Didn't they used to have sample download tracks there too? It was more of a discovery-through-listening place once upon a time. I still appreciate it as a discovery-through-lists place.

rostasi

I don't remember the sample tracks (just my memory),
but I liked the wide variety of worldwide prog on their station.
The closest thing to that online that I know of is Aural Moon Radio
(they're playing Le Orme right now, for instance). Too many others
seem to play stuff like Tull, Kansas, and other predictable stuff.

Germanprof

peterfrederics said:

@Germanprof I am more buried in the late 60s and early 70s so King Crimson, Pink Floyd, early Genesis, Gryphon, Canterbury Scene (Caravan, Egg, Camel, Soft Machine, Hatfield et al) and Krautrock (Agitation Free, Can, Neu!) plus the plethora of obscure gems from that period which drew me to eMusic in the great days of the 2000s.

I am also into  the modern stuff particularly Porcupine Tree + Steven Wilson's other ventures, Opeth, Swervedriver, Anathema, Antimatter, Amplifier, Grails, North Atlantic Oscillation, Minus the Bear et al. In common with you, I really like Big Big Train, the various Portnoy ventures, Marillion. I even veer over into Math Rock such as Mogwai, Godspeed YBE, God is an Astronaut, Explosions in the Sky and Russian Circles.

@peterfrederics I think Porcupine Tree (In Absentia) and Transatlantic (Bridge Across Forever) were my real points of active entry into prog rock (I listened to Marillion in the 80s, my cassette tape of Fugazi got a fair bit of wear, but thought of them as pop because they were in the charts). So I've gradually stretched my tastes from there. Certainly I agree that everything Steve Wilson tends to be worth listening to (just the other week I took the plunge of buying the deluxe version of Marillion's Brave, not having owned any version before but having read about it, so that I could get Wilson's mix - I have not regretted it. I did find some of the later Blackfield albums weak, though. And oddly I still have a hard time getting into The Raven that Refused to Sing, even though everyone else seems to think it one of his best).

I/we have listened to much less Canterbury than some other strands - I still have some learning to do there I think; with the exception of one Soft Machine album, I think all the albums I have from this list are by Robert Wyatt. Where should I start?

My Krautrock collection is also focused rather than extensive (pretty much the obvious contenders - a little Neu, Can, Cluster...).

Exploring my friend's library has led me into spending attentive time with earlier Genesis, King Crimson, Renaissance, Anthony Phillips, ELP, Jethro Tull, Kansas, Steve Hackett, Rick Wakeman, and Yes, as well as Big Big Train and Glass Hammer (I have yet to fully warm to the latter). I've found a lot to like. In turn, I have introduced him to a lot of the more recent and somewhat heavier stuff (Porcupine Tree, Haken, Dream Theater and related (Petrucci, LTE, Office of Strategic Influence, Chroma Key, Platypus, Sons of Apollo, etc. etc.), King's X, Platypus, etc), but also, curiously, Gentle Giant, Camel, Ozric Tentacles. And of course we both already knew Pink Floyd.

Things that we have discovered, explored, and liked enough to keep around and listen to more over the last few years include: Barock Project (their Detachment album in particular is exceptional - it's one of my favorite things right now), IQ, Karfagen, Kingcrow, Kino, Moon Safari, Mute Gods, Mystery, Perfect Beings, Riverside (we're completists there!), Sanguine Hum, Shaman Elephant (more psych than prog), Southern Empire, Tohpati Ethnomission, United Progressive Fraternity, Unitopia, and We Came from Space. A lot of other stuff has passed through the tube; those are some of the names that left an impression. And I've been more one-sidedly exploring Lizard, Kotebel, Marillion, Pineapple Thief (+ Bruce Soord), Cosmograf, Galahad, D.F.A., Edison's Children, Gordian Knot, Telegraph...

The stuff you list as Math Rock I have in a stylistically diverse catch-all folder headed post-rock - that's another big chunk of my collection, since it's one of the things I majorly binged on in the glory days of emusic's song-per-credit phase. (Actually that phase was also one of the things that got me going on prog; very long tracks were a great bargain, and one of the factors that led me to take a plunge on Bridge Across Forever was that it cost 4 credits, or at the time I think a little over a dollar. Same thing with GYBE - Lift your Skinny Fists. I guess emusic was never really paying the artists.). Besides all the names you mention, from that neck of the woods I still like: 3epkano, Esmerine, Farewell Poetry, Kwoon, Caspian, Mono, Daturah, Followed by Ghosts, Jakob, Joy Wants Eternity, earlier Kinski, Laura, Shels, The Evpatoria Report, The Seven Mile Journey, This Will Destroy You, KBB, The Drift, Tortoise (the only one on this list I've seen at a live show, which was an endurance test as they had three lengthy support bands whom I did not enjoy at all, with Tortoise finally coming on after midnight!), 1 Mile North, Brokeback, Labradford, Rothko, Lost in Kiev, Maserati, Double Handsome Dragons, Hungry Ghosts, Tarentel (I only really liked From Bone to Satellite, which you also mentioned a while back, but that album is excellent) and We Lost the Sea (there's a pile more that I remember as more meh on a quick scan down the folders list). I have no idea how much of this is "prog" or even "post-rock" (I was surprised to see Russian Circles, for instance, refer to themselves as progressive rock in a recent interview) but at this point the "genres" are mainly a way of finding things in the folders.

I have also been adding things based on your recommendations - I bought the Alquin albums when you mentioned them, for instance, and continue to enjoy them, and I followed up your tip on sleepmakeswaves and enjoyed listening. So thanks for bringing more prog recommendations to the site - I think it was less of a regular strand before you joined. Looking through progarchives always reminds me that I am a still a rank amateur in the genre.

No wonder we all need more hard drives.

djh

rostasi said:

 Spotify playlists and a whole lot more (the French station that broadcasts nothing but recordings on Ocora!).

Can you tell me if this is different to the Babalove17 playlist on Spotify?

---Ah no I can see I'm wrong there--- I still recall the heady days of the SkaFunkRastaPunk blog which had vast swathes of the Ocora and King World Music series available albeit in 320 at best.

rostasi

The website is here and you can listen live thru your browser or any other means from which you use to get your sound. On that page they show recent plays as well.

djh

rostasi said:

The website is here and you can listen live thru your browser or any other means from which you use to get your sound. On that page they show recent plays as well.

Many thanks! Book marked straight away!

rostasi

Also, consider the other musical areas at the French radio site as well.
Here, they are playing La Monte Young's Well-Tuned Piano right now.

djh

rostasi said:

Also, consider the other musical areas at the French radio site as well.
Here, they are playing La Monte Young's Well-Tuned Piano right now.

Yep I'll be digging in as and when time affords, took me a minute or two to understand the site so I visited several streams before I got anything other than the live concert to play (techno-idiot related).

In fact just started playing some music from a Tibetan monastery over the top of the Radio Massacre International that I was already streaming from B Camp. Went rather well!

greg

 When I was younger, I'd get a new album and live with it for a while, because I didn't have the money to buy more than one at a time. I haven't heard some of those records in decades, but they come right back when I play them.

I totally agree Muggsy! Now I've reached seventy I'm not buying so much new music these days (partly through the loss of labels from eMusic) but revisting older things I've haven't fully explored in decades, generally by artist. So in the last week or so I've been playing a lot of Stevie Wonder. Next may well be David Bowie

I went rhoufgh a Prog Rock phase first time round but I've not gone back to it to any extent, maybe I should try some.

@Doofy - you may think retirement will give you time to listen and read more - it does but not to the extent that you imagined, as there are so man other things to do too!!

Doofy

@greg I will take that as a challenge to overcome !