Out with the new, in with the old.

I’ve been a Sirius Satellite Radio subscriber for about four years now.  I initially jumped on the sat. radio bandwagon because 1) I’m a geek, and geeks love new tech toys, and 2) I despised terrestrial radio.  Actually it was something like 20% of the former and 80% of the latter.

Terrestrial radio, especially in my neck of the woods, offers almost nothing for someone like me.  It’s sort of like the line in The Blues Brothers:  “Oh, we have both kinds — country and western!”

Well, there are the textbook rock and pop stations in town too, but pop music hasn’t produced anything listenable since Thriller, and the rock stations do little but regurgitate stale classics from the likes of Lynryd Skynyrd and Pink Floyd. 

And then there’s the commercials.  A good fifteen to twenty minutes’ worth per hour. 

But after four years of satellite radio I’m ready to say goodbye.  I let my Sirius subscription run out last week, with no plans of renewing.

I enjoyed Sirius, but it got to the point where I was changing channels looking for a good song as often as I did with terrestrial radio.  And commercial-free music is certainly good, but I get that with my iPod, where much of the music I listened to on Sirius resides anyway. 

And just as importantly, having an extra $12 or so in my pocket each month from now on will be good for my budget.

So last week I took a big step backwards technology-wise.  Before my Sirius receiver was even cold I purchased a brand new radio — a good old fashioned  AM/FM/Shortwave radio. 

The Eton S350DL (above, tuned to my favorite radio station of all time). 

I picked the radio not for its shortwave capabilities (which are reportedly modest at best), although that’s a nifty geeky bonus.  I chose it mainly because of it’s beefy internal AM antenna that can pull in the most distant stations.

I’ve always been an AM guy at heart, and there’s something very satisfying about slowly scanning through the dial on a summer night, pulling in an AM station hundreds of miles away.  Sure you can probably listen to most of them online these days, but it’s just not the same.

Last night I grabbed a pen and paper and sat down with the S350DL for some AM DXing (listening for distant stations).  I only spent about a half hour on it, but I found several stations in just a small section of the dial.

 

As I found good signals I jotted down the frequency and waited long enough to hear the station’s call letters.

As you may or may not be able to read from my scribbles, the Eton did an admirable job pulling in far away stations.  Among my finds were 1030 WBZ in Boston, MA; 1080 WTIC in Hartford, CT; 1110 WBT in Charlotte, NC; 850 WKNR in Cleveland, OH; and 1140 WRVA in Richmond, VA.

In this age of satellite radio and streaming audio on the internet, few have the desire or patience to sit down and dial through the static and buzzing in search of distant radio signals.  Besides, radio monopolies such as Clear Channel have done their best to put a damper on DXing, airing the same syndicated programming on stations throughout the country. 

It had been a long time since I had spent any time scanning the AM dial listening for what’s out there.  Doing so reminded me of a time when the world wasn’t quite so small.

Election Day miscellany.

The votes have been counted and the WV primary turned out as most predicted — a landslide victory for Hillary.  Everyone know Clinton would win WV, but even I admit to being disappointed by her margin of victory - 67% to 23%.

More puzzling to me is why the MSM is making such a big deal out of it.  Sure, it’s in their best interest to keep the battle going and try to generate some suspense regarding the ultimate outcome of the race, but for weeks now experts (and people who have a basic grasp of math) have declared the race unwinnable by Hillary. 

The best analogy I’ve seen so far comes from a post at Fark.com:   “After losing the first four games of a seven-game series, Hillary crushes Obama in West Virginia, is really turning this into a race.”

Think about it.

The discussion thread that followed that post included a political cartoon that sums it up pretty well too.

—

In the three days leading up to the election I was visited by three — count them, three — separate Obama boosters.  They all gave me a copy of the same flyer. 

Don’t they have maps to mark off which areas have already been visited?

—

In honor of Election Day I donned my Declaration of Independence shirt, a gift from my wife.

 

Of course the original Declaration wasn’t warped by a beer belly.

A kind old man working the polls at my precinct yesterday looked at my shirt and said, “Ah!  The Constitution!”  I didn’t have the heart to correct him, so I just said “Yeah.”

“You know, Senator Byrd carries a copy of that around with him everywhere he goes,” he said. 

—

On the subject of polls, something has to be done to speed up the voting process.  Granted the polls are traditionally staffed by septuagenarians, for whom time does not exist, so we can’t expect lightning fast service, but somehow the process itself needs to be more efficient.  Currently the process involves getting my name, looking up my voting card, getting my blank ballots, tearing off a stub from my card, writing down the ballot numbers on the stub, placing the blank ballots in a “Privacy” sleeve, and then getting my signature. 

I’ve seen meals prepared in less time.

I used to scoff at those who said they didn’t have time to vote, but considering how long I had to wait with only three people in front of me in line, I can imagine how long the wait would be at a busy precinct. 

—

I find it amusing that the kids in WV (at least in my county) get the day off from school for Election Day.  I’ve never understood the rationale behind that.  It’s not like they need the day off so they can vote.  Do they think the parents are better able to find time to vote when their kids are out of school?  I’d think it would be just the opposite. 

I realize that many schools are used as polling places, but in the Ohio town where I grew up the elections were held in the gymnasiums.  And school was in session.

Then again, schools weren’t closed for deer season either.

Memo to political candidates.

Ah, spring.  The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, and my radio and television are filled with campaign advertisements that are base enough to insult the intelligence of a Larry The Cable Guy fan. 

Running for office?  Guess what.

I don’t care if you once played football for the Mountaineers.

I don’t care if you were once the Mountaineer mascot.

I don’t care if you were in the armed forces.

I don’t care that you had sex with your spouse and produced children.

I don’t care if you were a coal miner.

I don’t care if your dad was a coal miner.

Those items might look good on your application to work at Sam’s Club, but they are not proof that you are especially wise and/or have the ability to make smart decisions involving my future.

I want to know that you have a vision — or at least that you’ve had a vision (the more colorful the better, please) — on how to improve life in this city, state, or country.

I know you only have thirty seconds to make us love you, but please use that time to tell us something more informative than how many merit badges you earned as an Eagle Scout or which college you attended.

Thanks a bunch.

The poetry of spam.

I use Gmail as my primary email account because Google seems to have figured out how to filter spam.  A spam message rarely makes it to my inbox, and I’ve probably only had one case where a legitimate message ended up in my Spam folder. 

Still, it’s fun to peak into the Spam folder now and then just to look at the message subjects.  Someone should be collecting these as a new art form — true 21st century poetry. 

Here’s a sample of some of the more moving pieces:

Hugest Ass!  Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from that link!

Upsize your sex pen1s today easily!  Ha!  Imagine their embarrassment when they find out I’m married.  My penis isn’t for sex anymore.  The joke’s on them!

Prodigious preparation is to your service.  …in bed.  Now who’s picking up the check this time?

Huge love luger is attainable.  Sorry.  I’m a Ruger kind of guy.

Enlarge your cucumber length.  Just in time for spring planting!  I hadn’t planned on having a garden this year, but I’ll save that one just in case.

Is it The Gazz or The Onion?

Once a week Charleston Newspapers publishes a local entertainment guide  called The Gazz and includes it as an insert with the daily paper.

I almost spit out my tea when I saw one of the headlines in today’s edition (April 24-30, 2008, 14D):

“Guitarist says he didn’t quit the band.”

Shouldn’t that be “Area guitarist”?

I can’t wait to see next week’s follow-up story. 

“Band says ‘No way, dude!’ Guitarist ‘totally bailed!’”

Amazon could learn a lesson from Sony and Microsoft.

Amazon’s Kindle(tm) was in the news again recently, as Amazon announced they had restocked their pricey e-book reader, making them ready for instant delivery and thereby spoiling the party for many enterprising eBayers hoping to sell them to impatient buyers at a hefty profit.

[There's a special place in Hell for people who buy up hard-to-find items for the sole purpose of reselling them at a high markup, but that's another post.]

All along I’ve had mixed feelings about the Kindle.  I’m a geek and I love to read, so you think the Kindle would be perfect for me.  But despite its obvious appeal to folks like me, the Kindle has two major strikes against it:

1)  The paperback book is still the perfect delivery method.  They’re cheap, portable, don’t require batteries, and won’t break if you drop them.

2) Price.

The first strike can be offset by the advantages that an e-book reader offers, such as the ability to hold many volumes of text at once (which is certainly more convenient than lugging around several paperback books), and the ability to purchase and download books instantly from the internet.

The second strike can’t be overlooked.  $399 is a lot to pay for the privilege of reading books on the go, especially when you can buy a low-end laptop for the same price. 

That price might be easer to swallow if purchasing books for the Kindle were significantly cheaper than their hardcopy versions, but that’s not yet the case.  Amazon charges $10 for most bestsellers, which still seems high given that a) the publishers have zero printing and shipping costs for those items, and b) the hardback version will set you back only $7 or $8 more in most cases (Not to mention the benefits of owning a “real” book over a digital one.  Try lending a Kindle book to a friend or donating it to a library when you’ve finished it.).  And Amazon’s pricing for older books for the Kindle amazingly seems to be only slightly cheaper or even the same price as their paperbacks.

When it comes to pricing their nifty toy, Amazon needs to study what Sony and Microsoft have done with their video-game consoles.  Those companies learned long ago that the real money to be made is through their software, not their hardware.  They decided early on to sell their game consoles at a loss, knowing that the more consoles they sell the more money they’d subsequently make on game sales. 

When an e-book reader costs as much as a Playstation 3 or an X-box 360, something tells me there’s room to lower the price.

Amazon needs to learn from Sony and Microsoft and drastically reduce the cost of the Kindle, getting into as many hands as possible so as to maximize their e-book sales opportunities.  If not, they need to reduce the price of the e-books themselves, taking the sting out of the large initial investment required to join the e-book bandwagon.

My PC adjustment period.

It has been about a week since I retired my Mac mini(TM) and switched back to a Windows PC for home use.  I’ve spent most of that time finding the Windows equivalents of the Mac programs I had become comfortable with, and adjusting to all new workflows for everything from photo management to CD/DVD-authoring.

What I miss about the Mac so far:

1) The Apple Address Book.  It seems like such a simple concept to have an address book application fully integrated with (yet also independent of) the other applications on your computer, but Windows hasn’t mastered it yet.  Sure, Windows includes an address book (in Vista it’s called Windows Contacts) that works very well with Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail, but the beauty of Apple’s address book is that it stands up well on it’s own outside of Apple’s Mail application (which I never used).

2) Quicksilver.  This third party app does so much that even its developers have a hard time defining it.  It’s an instant-search program, a program-launcher and much more.  For example, you hit CTRL-Space to invoke it, type in part of a name from your Apple address book, then get the option to view it that person’s details or compose an email to that person.   It’s much more than just an indexing-based search program such as Google Desktop.

3) Silent running.  The mini(tm) was so quiet that if it weren’t for the indicator light on the front of the unit I couldn’t tell if it was on or off.  My new PC is many times quieter than my old PC, but you can still hear it running as soon as you walk in the room. 

4) Garage Band.  Part of Apple’s iLife suite, Garage Band is a fantastic music recording/creation application.  Just before pulling the plug on my mini I had played around with recording my guitar into Garage Band.  It has built-in effects that were fun to play with and the sound quality was great.   Unfortunately my mini didn’t have what it takes to run it well so I couldn’t do much with it, but I can imagine how much fun Garage Band would be on a decent Mac.

What I don’t miss about the Mac:

1) iPhoto.  Yes, it’s a fantastic photo-handling program, but after playing with Google’s Picasa for awhile I like it just as much, if not more.  Picasa’s layout looks very similar to iPhoto’s, so iPhoto users will feel right at home using it.  And some of the features such as uploading pictures to the web are actually easier with Picasa.  And unlike iPhoto it’s free.

2) In Windows closing a program actually closes the program.  This simply boils down to user preference and what you’re accustomed to, but one feature I hated about OS X was that hitting X to close a program doesn’t actually close the program — it simply minimizes it to your task bar where it continues to take up valuable system memory.  To really close a program in OS X you have to either hit APPLE-Q or select FILE/QUIT from the menu.  Some may prefer that but I found it annoying.  If I want to minimize a program I’ll minimize it.

3) Uninstalling programs.  One of the things that amazes me about Apple’s OS X is that there is no built-in uninstaller.  Windows users take for granted that you can just go to Add/Remove Programs in your Control Panel to remove an unwanted program.  OS X has no such feature.  Mac users will tell you that you just drag an application to the trash if you want to remove it, but that doesn’t take care of any data files or folders associated with it.  The Windows uninstaller isn’t perfect, but it usually does a decent job of removing all bits of a program, not just the application file.

One of the good guys.

Yesterday at Target I ran into local news anchor Jack Kane from WOWK-TV.  Many moons ago I had the pleasure of working with Jack for a couple of years, and it was good seeing him again.

Rather than just the obligatory (and mostly disingenuous) “Hi.  How have you been?  Let’s do lunch.” exchange that usually occurs during these encounters, Jack stopped to talk for several minutes.  We had an interesting conversation about the state of television news and the battle between terrestrial radio and alternatives such as satellite radio and MP3 players.

I was reminded of what a genuinely nice guy Jack is — a rarity in the media business. 

Yeah, I’ll get right on that.

Our family has a past-due medical bill.  It happens now and then because either our insurance company has taken their time getting the statement of benefits to us, or we’re waiting for the insurance company to explain the “explanation of benefits.”

In this case it’s a bit of both, but more of the latter.  We’ve contacted our medical provider to inform them as much so they would know why we haven’t paid yet, but they still decided to turn our case over to a collection agency. 

It’s no big deal, but the way the collection agency is handling it is amazing.

Our phone rings and the caller ID says “Unknown number,” which is an automatic no-answer in our household.  If you’re hiding your number you’re not talking to us.  Period.

When the answering machine picks up there is a recording saying “This is an important phone call” blah blah blah, and instructing us to call a certain phone number “immediately” regarding our overdue bill.

Do they honestly believe that someone who owes money is going to be in a hurry to pick up the phone and call a number left on a recording to discuss their debt?  Seriously.

I once worked with a guy whose job was to take orders from our company’s salespeople on behalf of their clients.  He had a sign in his office that read “I CARE AS MUCH ABOUT YOUR CLIENTS AS YOU DO.” 

If you want to talk to me about money I owe you, fine.  Call me.  If you don’t like my answers and want to bring a collector into the picture, more power to you.  But if your collector doesn’t care enough to have a real human being contact me it’s not going to help you.

Maybe I’ll call the number back and play a recording of my own…

It’s geocaching time again.

Now that decent weather is returning it’s time to start prepping for another season of geocaching.  Time to dust off my eXplorist 210 and Palm Pilot, charge some extra batteries, and double-check my pack for the necessities (bug spray, sunscreen, pens, hallucinogens, etc.).

Another part of my prep this season is setting up my new PC for geocaching.  I had it down to a science on my old Mac, but now I need new software and a new workflow for the PC.

Back when I first got into geocaching I read about a program for Windows called GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) that is supposed to be very good at managing geocache data and transferring it to various devices. 

I’ve downloaded the trial version of GSAK and it looks spiffy, but I’ve yet to try it with my GPS unit or my Palm.  The good news is that GSAK will talk to both devices, whereas I was using two separate programs to do that on my Mac.  So once I learn the software it should be much easier for me overall.

I can’t wait to get back out on the hunt.