Monthly Archives: January 2014

Rocksmith’s Real Tone Cable and USB 3 Ports

This is one of those “Posting of my strange technical troubles so that anyone in the same situation might find it and save some time” posts.

While attending CES, I decided to use the downtime to bring along my bass and electric guitars and try to get some much-needed practice time in. After failing to get  the PS3 I’d lugged along working with the hotel’s TV system, I decided to bite the bullet and re-buy Rocksmith 2014 for my laptop. I felt a little foolish in the process, but Vegas is the perfect place for such money-wasting foolishness, and I reasoned that if I weren’t using my time to practice my bass, I’d likely lose a lot more money downstairs in the casino practicing my blackjack.

So, program downloaded, bass at the ready, I launched the game, only to find out that it couldn’t “hear” my guitar over the known-working Real Tone cable I’d brought with me. I quickly traced the issue to the cable not working with my laptop’s USB 3.0 ports (it appeared as a non-working “hocksmit” device under Windows’ device manager).

After much fiddling around, I took a run down the street to the casino-themed Fry’s Electronics and bought the cheapest portable USB 2.0 hub I could find ($6.99). Plugged the tone cable into that, the device was suddenly now recognized, and voila–I’m off to master Bush’s “Machinehead”.

Note: there’s a rumor afoot that the newest incarnation of the tone cable works better with USB 3 ports. Can’t confirm this myself, as my cable came with the original Rocksmith game.

Stop staring at your !@#&% phone!

Must-see video from Google of all people. Not sure if the problem is as bad as it is in Silicon Valley, but this one hits way too close to home for me. We’re missing way too much of life while attempting to record it…

 

Another Data Point in the Ongoing Obamacare Debacle

We just got our insurance rate notices in for 2014. The policies which cover our small staff of young, male staffers now include statutorily mandatory (and quite useless) pregnancy coverage as well as pediatric dental care. Their premiums also just doubled. .

When I say “doubled”, I mean precisely that–almost to the cent. Technically, they went up 100.4%. In one year.

Thanks to the “affordable” care act, our overall insurance rates have gone up astronomically, our deductibles have massively increased, and for the first time ever, we’re giving very serious thought to dropping our employee health care altogether and hoping our employees do better than my own quote on the California “exchange”, where my new lowest-priced available plan for my family of four is an essentially worthless plan that charts in at over $1,000/month, with a $5,000 deductible and terrible choice of doctors. Like most other things in this damnable sham of a law, the promise that we would both save money on our premiums and be able to keep our doctors were transparent lies. Now it’s looking increasingly likely our employees may lose their insurance altogether.