Because I'm an Audiolog Fanatic

Since moving into a new place where we actually get a cell signal, I've been shopping around for a new phone as well as a new carrier. I was looking in the AT&T store and found myself trying out an iPhone. It's not the first time I tried one, but I only felt compelled to give it another go because I was waiting for a sales rep to finish with another customer. Without this turning into an anti-mac rant, I'll sum up my sentiments toward Apple in a single sentence: I've always maintained that Apple is a fitting name for the company because if there's one thing it excels at above all, it's polish.
Anyway...
I tried out the voice recorder application, the default one that comes with the device, as opposed to a third-party one like Night Recorder (which is actually kind of cute), so I wasn't expecting anything beyond what my current phone has. The interface consisted of an image of an old studio microphone, complete with a VU meter. On other side of the meter were two buttons, one for recording and pausing, the other to stop. When I first tried to make a recording, I wondered if the needle on the VU meter would move along with my voice. It didn't, but here's the part I don't get: when I tap the screen, the needle jumps.

The programmer made the VU meter touch-sensitive, but not sound-sensitive.

Why?

I mean, sure, the "Oscilloscope" image that appears on my phone when I press record is just a looped animation, but at least it only plays when I press record; it's not linked to another function or other part of the interface. However, making the VU meter only respond to tapping really just made me think at first that I wasn't being loud enough to get a rise out of the needle, which was preposterous given the noise level of the store in general.

It just strikes me as bad programming (not lazy programming, wherein the needle wouldn't have done anything at all) to go to the length of programming a VU meter's needle to respond to tapping a microphone (an image of a microphone, but one nonetheless) but be unaffected by the sound said "microphone" would hear.

Just glasses and utensils now

This has not been a good day, and it's only been morning for about four hours.

I'll leave out the goings-on with my roommate's irritability due to a mishap at her doctor's office resulting in a lapse in receiving her medication. That's been going on a few days and it's mostly tolerable.

This morning I received some equipment I ordered to help with recording my videos, including a Behringer USB mic. I've officially had it installed for about 40 minutes and I'm already thinking about sending it back.

Here's the problem: when I use my webcam to record one of my v-logs or newer reviews, I use Windows Media Encoder as capture software. The main reason for this is that it lets me configure audio and video separately; I can use one device for video, and one for audio (That way, I'm not at the mercy of the webcam's awful built-in mic). Everything seems fine, I set the audio settings to the USB mic, and the video settings to the Ipevo, and set the recording format. Once I hit start, however, I get an error message:

no specified device driver is present 0xC00D0072

This is just impossible as I've installed all necessary drivers and, prior to starting the recording session, the program acknowledged the device's presence and allowed it to be configured. I went to Behringer's site to verify that I did indeed have the most recent driver. I found little to no support articles about the C-1U and ended up having to send an e-mail detailing the issue with WME. I've gotten the obligatory auto-response that it's been received, but a full reply is going to take about one business day. So, that's up in the air.

Then there's the mic itself. It may not work with WME, but it does work with Sound Recorder and Photo Story 3 (though the latter gives me error messages to the contrary despite recordings). I figured that while I'm waiting on a response from Behringer, I'll see how the mic sounds and get a feel for its sensitivity. Ideally, I'd like to have it sitting on my desk next to my webcam so it's not visible in the frame. As a sort of control for the experiment, I just put held it like a Karaoke mic and recorded that way. It sounded brilliant; one of the best microphones I've had. However, when I tried recording again with it on the desk and next to the webcam, it's a whole new story. I should have guessed this might be the case given that putting it on the desk makes a distance of about 2 or 3 feet between me and the mic. That said, it's still really disheartening that I basically have to lean into the mic in order to get the best sound. I'd have to hold it almost directly in front of my mouth while I'm recording, which also means I won't have a free hand if I have to do a review. Me holding a microphone while recording with a webcam would just look horrendous, and it's just not what I got this mic for at all.

So, after days of waiting, and on top of everything else, I finally get my equipment to find that, even if I can get it to interface with my software and recording system, it's completely useless and impractical.

At least I got some of the dishes done before the UPS guy showed up, so the day hasn't started off to a fully-rotten start.