Radio is dead/dying

First piece of background: My new-ish car came equipped with an XM radio. When I was looking at the car, I'm pretty sure I said, "Hmmm, whatever." About a week ago I received a letter from Sirius/XM letting me know that my XM radio (serial number blah blah blah) was eligible for a week-long free trial, and a special 3 month free trial membership if I wanted. I decided to go ahead and try it out. I turned my car radio to XM for the first time ever since I got the car. So far, so good.

I began scrolling through the available channels.
I heard stuff I've never heard before.
I heard stuff I never care to hear again. Ever.
I saw some categories, rolled my eyes and said, "next!"

I have come to the realization that, #1: I won't be subscribing to XM and #2: Sirius/XM Radio to me is a step backwards and will likely die soon. Here are my observations. In addition to the ones I have made so far.

The channels are not very granular. There are single channels devoted to, say, 70s music; 80s music; 90s and so on. There were 4 channels dedicated to specific artists, though I heard things played that were by other artists. There were approximately a million channels (OK, I'm exaggerating just a bit here) of talk. There were college sports, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB stations ad-nauseum. Gotta say that the 70s station seemed devoted to disco-era music ONLY. The 80s station played a few songs I recognized, but there were more that I'd never heard before, and some genres that I don't like much. I really wish that they specialized their stations even more. I'd love to see a 70s rock channel, a 70s disco station so I could avoid it, a 70s folk station and so on. Each station would avoid the crossover stuff that made it such a tedious chore to wade through the stations. I'm not a fan of rap, yet there were half a dozen stations that played it, including the 90s station. There doesn't seem to be any way to choose the few stations I'd be interested in actually listening to. Surprisingly, one of my favorites was one called 'Hair Nation', which is pretty much what it sounds like. 80s hair bands. Sort of tells you a lot about what was available if it was a favorite.

I looked into the cost somewhat. Granted, I didn't dig very deep. The basic figure I saw was around $12.95 per month. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but still... This price would be worth it to me if I had the ability to pick and choose the stations that came to my radio. All of the talk and sports channels would be gone. Even better would be the Eric Manning channel. I could go online and set up a list of artists whose music I want to listen to. Maybe even set a list of songs I consider favorites that I could play any time I'm in the car. Maybe once in a while they could throw in an artist similar to my list and let me sample some of their songs. Oh, wait! That's Pandora, which is FREE.

They actually have DJ-type people. The 80s channel has Martha Quinn of MTV VJ fame. They interrupt the beginning and end of most of the songs and irritate the CRAP out of me. Especially for a pay service. I'm paying for the music, for Pete's sake, not to hear someone talk. Isn't that what the talk stations are for? Guh! Since the radio displays the genre, artist and title, DJs are completely unnecessary.

My stereo system in my car has an 1/8 stereo plug input that I can use to connect my MP3 player with 250+ CDs worth of music on it. Why on earth would I pay anything per month when I can plug in my player and get my favorite artists and songs with no interruptions? Short answer is, I won't. I can plug my phone in the same way and get Pandora over the stereo system if I don't want to listen to any of the hundred or so MP3s on my phone.

Long story short, if this is the future direction of radio, I predict its imminent death. At least in this current form. If my XM radio could do a Pandora-like thing, I'd probably sign up tonight. I use the FM radio to listen to traffic reports on KSL. I use the AM radio to hear KSL when I'm out of FM range, which is very, very close to never. I'm not sure I will mourn its passing, to tell you the truth.

It starts.

Or more correctly, and to paraphrase one of my favorite movie lines, It ends. After a couple of years of association with Floydshow and many successful and fun performances, my participation with the group has most likely come to an end. After a lot of mud-slinging and whining, secret meetings and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, Amy was asked to leave the band tonight. Since Amy is probably the main reason that I am associated with the group, I will probably leave as well. I have grown to like all the members (and in all reality, have grown to love some of them dearly) and this is a difficult decision. Just so you know, if they continue with the gigs they have scheduled for the rest of this year, I will participate with them, but I don't think they will be able to fulfill their obligations unless they get someone who has been playing Pink Floyd music for a LONG time, and has the keyboards. When Amy took a hiatus from the band a while back, there was a very unsuccessful effort to find a new keyboard player for the band. What Amy brings to Floydshow is not going to be easy to replace. My role since we re-started has been sax, vocals and additional keys. I cannot and shouldn't take over for Amy, since I have neither the ability nor the equipment for the role.

Thus it is with greatest regret that I step away from one of the greatest associations of my life. I hope that Amy has a new group in mind where we can continue to play together.

Floydshow returned to Tulalip!

On July 15th and 16th, the members of Floydshow left the Greater Salt Lake area to play once again for the Tulalip Casino north of Seattle, Washington. After our gig there in March, we were pretty excited to go again, because it was a GREAT crowd there last time. Some of us left on Friday morning with the intent to drive to Yakima, WA to spend the night. We ended up eating lunch in Brigham City while we waited for someone's laptop to arrive. We won't tell you who it was that has the laptop addiction. Suffice to say that some people have wubbies or pillows, but our comfort was the laptop. We love this person anyway, and we all got a good laugh out of it.

We got to the Seattle area on Saturday and went to the waterfront, the Pike Street Market and the Space Needle. We didn't actually go in the needle, but instead visited the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum. They were featuring Hendrix and Nirvana, but there were a lot of other interesting exhibits, including a live version of Animusic. Sort of. Not so detailed nor quite so fantastic, but there were mechanical fingers playing guitars and basses, so it was pretty cool.

Set up on Sunday for the gig, did our sound check at 5, then went to clean up for the gig. We started at 8, and played for a little more than 90 minutes. Again, it was a good show and the sound mix was by far the best we have ever had at a gig. There was a great crowd again, and they seemed very happy with the show. So much so that the venue paid us $500 more than the contract. We hope to go back again, of course. It's a good venue. Traveled home on Monday and got back around 3 AM.

I already miss it.

Chase is the very devil

OK, I know it's not such good form to bash some poor, helpless puppy, person or even a defenseless financial institution, but Chase bank is NONE of the above. If you have some account at Chase, I recommend you close it as soon as possible and never go back to the Great Satan. It's not the Anti-Christ, but it is one of his minions.

I had a credit card with them for a long time, and we were relatively happy. One day they decided to raise my rate for no reason that they could adequately explain, so I called like it said to in the disclosure and told them that I wouldn't accept their new rate, so they closed the card, which was also fine with me. They then raised the rate twice anyway. Bastards! OK. Whatever. It went from a revolving line to a term loan, except they don't have an option to make a recurring payment on the debt that's not the minimum payment or the total amount. That means that I can't use their system to pay off the loan faster in a way that might be at all convenient to me. I was going to set up automatic payments from my credit union account (America First, who I highly recommend lest you think I am bashing ALL financial institutions) but I noticed that the payment date kept moving, so there was no way to set it up that way. I had to log in to the web site EVERY time to make a single payment for the amount I wanted to pay. Just imagine what would were I to miss a payment by a day. Yeah.

I was able to come up with the money to pay off this debt I owed to the minion of Satan, so I logged on and found out what my last statement balance had been, and paid that amount. It came out of my account and the balance went to zero. End of story? Of COURSE not! three days after I paid the loan to zero, I got an interest charge on the (closed, by the way) account that would be due in 1 month, give or take a few days. Of course, if I paid THAT balance on or before the due date, I would then be assessed interest on THAT amount for that billing cycle and on and on ad-infinitem until the account could no longer accrue any interest, which would likely be a couple of months.

Just as a comparison, I paid off another card at the same time. I paid the statement balance, and the balance went to zero on their web site. They cut another statement a few days later, and wonder of wonders, the balance was still zero. They didn't pull any of this crap that Chase, the evil minion of Satan, was pulling. I called their 'Customer Service' line to complain and spent 5 minutes arguing with a heavy Indian (yes, from the other side of the world) accent who was obviously reading from some script he had in front of him. Finally, I asked to speak to a supervisor. I spent about the same amount of time arguing with HER until finally, she said, "OK, we'll credit that interest amount back, but (paraphrasing) remember that we're doing you a HUGE favor by doing this. At least the balance is now zero, which I expected in the first place.

Ohhhhh, that felt good to get off my chest. If I can warn just one person in the world not to do business with the evil minion of Satan, then I will consider this entry to be a success. Thank you and goon night!

Requiem

Today, it is with a heavy heart that I post this entry. A great friend of mine has died. I have known him for about 4 years, and in that short time, he has enriched the lives of me and those of my family almost more than I can know, and certainly more than I could ever convey through simple words. This man, Ric Estrada, is an absolute paragon of the Celestial being. For those unfamiliar with the doctrines of the LDS church, this means that he is everything I could ever aspire to as I strive to do my best as I prepare to return to meet God. The things he has been through in this amazing life of his (and overcome) are things I will never have to experience, yet he has overcome them and flourished. He is a wonderful artist, storyteller, home teacher, mentor and friend. He has worked with some of the biggest names in the art world: Hanna-Barbera, Dreamworks, Marvel and DC comics and many others. His artwork fills page after page of sketchbook after sketchbook that I have had the privelege of seeing. He did many of the storyboards for 'Prince of Egypt'. Comic books were favorites of his. He had a whimsical nature that was apparent in all of his artwork. He was asked to be our home teacher; to come to visit our family on a regular basis to make sure that we were doing OK. When he fell ill this final time, and was not able to visit personally with us, he checked up on us by letters written in his own hand and liberally sprinkled with beautifully amazing little illustrations. These letters are very precious to us, and reflect the character of the man. When too ill even to leave the house, he was thinking of others. He had a keen mind for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and willingly shared his vast knowledge and love of it with all. His conversion story and testimony were precious beyond description. I am proud to have called him my friend. If he doesn't have his exaltation in the highest realms in heaven, there is no hope for me or anyone else I know. I have come to dearly love this man and I will profoundly miss him.

Hiatus

While a temporary hiatus for Floydshow grinds to its conclusion somewhere around mid-April, I decide to participate in a community theater production. Happens to be one of my favorite productions; I've done it before and had a wonderful time, so I anticipate having a great time again. Biggest problem is that it's in Lehi. Not that Lehi is a terrible place, but it means that I have to drive on I-15-AKA-freeway-of-doom again through the Pleasant Grove/Lindon curve at 6:00 or thereabouts. You know, the section of freeway that comes to a grinding halt every day for some mysterious reason that even UDOT can't figure out. The section of freeway that is personally responsible for my move from Eagle Mountain to Provo in 2003. As it turned out, I only got caught in the maw of hell a few times.
Anyway, the show is Smokey Joe's Cafe. Helen and I did this show a couple of years ago when the Pleasant Grove Players did it. We had a piano player, Helen on tenor sax and me playing bass guitar. We had a great time with it. My name was mentioned by a friend of ours from Eagle Mountain for whom Helen and I had played when they did Nunsense. MD Glen M called me and asked if I'd be interested in participating. I said yes pretty much on the spot, then asked about the dates. Turns out the dates were right when my wife and daughter would be in New York with the Provo High Chamber Choir. Helen was out. I was still in. About this time, a place contacts Floydshow to see if a gig could be arranged for the 3rd of April which was, coincidentally, next to last night for Smokey Joe's. Instant conundrum. Add to this, HCTO announces auditions for As You Like It, which would open on April 10th. Not a big temptation, except they also announce they are looking for musicians as well as actors. *perk* Now they have my attention. Like a dummy, I go and audition and get called back. I go to callbacks with a very peculiar feeling in tow; I don't know if I really want to do this show. It would be a lot of commitment right at the time when these other 2 things are coming up. I don't know if I just did horribly at callbacks, or what, but as it turned out, I wasn't cast. Can I just say, "Thank you, God" for that? Or whoever was responsible. After callbacks, I began to have weird feelings about the show. I didn't WANT to be cast, although I decided that I would go ahead and take the part if it was offered. Whew! I am really curious who they decided to cast and do the music. There were a lot of really great actors at callbacks, but not so much musical talent. To be sure, there were a few outstanding musicians, but seemingly not as many as they said they were looking for. Guess I will have to see when it opens.
Now here it is after the closing performance. The run is finished, and I am a free man for a couple more weeks until the Floydshow Hiatus is over. The gig for the 3rd never materialized, so it was not a conflict. We found neither a sax player nor another bass player, so I played bass for all the numbers except the 3 I played tenor in; the 3 the directors decided they HAD to have the saxophone in. It was all good. I found that I love playing sax in jazz bands, but I really needed to play bass for Smokey Joe's. We had a very good combo of musicians; Blair on drums, Steve on piano, Liz on keyboard and Jim on guitar. All of them were good musicians, and we were able to play well together. Really makes me want to do it again. The cast was awesome as well. It was a pleasure to get to know everybody involved with this production.

Pink Floyd Shows (Part 3, The Return)

Oh my heck! Remember the 55 MPH top speed thing? Well, I think that on the way home, we averaged 50 or less. In an RV that smelled of Febreeze and upchuck. Anyway...
We Left Lafayette sometime before noon, and headed north for I80. It seemed like it was all uphill and with a headwind all the way home. We got gas as we left town, and stopped in Cheyenne for gas, then we stopped in Rawlins (I think) then we stopped in Evanston. Come to think of it, it's a miracle we made any money on the trip the way the RV was guzzling gas. Lots of great sights along the prairies of Wyoming might I say. From the 300 or so windmills whirling away somewhere between Cheyenne and Evanston (I know, lot of territory there) to the tedium of being passed by 18-wheelers, it was quite a yawner for most of the trip until about 30 miles out of Evanston where we encountered a VERY long downhill grade, and we started picking up speed. A lot of speed. Jason was driving at the time, I was riding shotgun. He was white-knuckling it down this long grade as we flew by cars and semis and small animals all at 85 MPH or so with the Git-'er-done trailer flying along behind us. All in all, quite the high point of the trip home, until we got the Parley's Canyon and crawled past the jackknifed tanker truck at 5 MPH. We finally got into SLC somewhere around 11:00 PM, where we decided to all go home and worry about the offload another day.
The gigs were a lot of fun. It's a great group of people we've got involved in this band, with a lot of talent. We're going places now, just as long as we don't have to take the RV of Doom with us.

Pink Floyd Shows (Part 2)

We finished the show in Red Cliff really late and spent a while cleaning up the equipment and loading the trailer. By the time we were done, it was approaching 3:00 in the morning and I was very tired, to put it mildly. We got into our rooms across the street and quickly got to bed. The bed was really hard, but apparently it didn't matter, because I was asleep in seconds. The rooms were really nice, but they all had one quirk: they had a light switch at the door that controlled power for the entire room, including the bathroom. Once we figured that little quirk out, everything was good.
We ate breakfast the next morning in the grill and left town at about 11:30, expecting to get to our next show with a lot of time to get set up and get a sound check and everything. Didn't work out that way, of course. We got stopped for a while in Denver rush-hour traffic and lost for a few minutes, but eventually we made it to the next venue, a place called Nissi's in Lafayette, just East of Boulder. Nice venue, nice owners, small stage for a ten-piece band. We got all set up and got our sound check done with minutes to spare before opening time. Nissi's is a restaurant and music venue. They have nightly entertainment, and we happened to be that band for 2 nights. This is the web site for the club. Our performance started between 7:30 and 8 and we played for just over 2 hours with a short break in between. Overall, the show went well, minus one song screw-up and having the sustain pedal for the main keyboard plugged in wrong.
When we were done, we left everything there (since we were playing the next night as well) and headed for our overnight destination, the owners' cabin just over an hour from Nissi's. It was a gorgeous house built among the pines with great scenery and room for all of us to crash until we met the next day for the second performance, which went better than the first. Afterwards, we went back to the cabin for the night. We loaded up the trailer on Sunday morning and headed back for home, which will be the subject of the next entry...

Pink Floyd Shows Part 1

First off, I'd like to say thet there's nothing quite like riding to Colorado and back in an RV that has a top speed of 70 MPH downhill and with a tailwind. The cruising speed was more like 55 on the flats. The ride back was made longer by several factors that I may or may not go into detail over; suffice it to say the the RV spelled heavily of Febreeze on the way home.

The trip started out with a bad omen of sorts. I got a call from our keyboard player saying that they hadn't left Salt Lake yet, and that was about an hour after they said they were leaving SLC. Kudos to the guys, 'cause they were dealing with a U-Haul rental gone awry. Instead of reserving us a small, enclosed trailer for our gear, they had an open-air car-hauling trailer; apparently confusing us for classic RVers with a car. *eyeroll* Anyway, they pulled in to Provo 11-ish with a humongous trailer in tow with flames on the sides and "git 'er done" on the back. Not kidding! It was so large that we single-layered everything we had on the floor of it and had room for a couple more bands' stuff as well. We headed out and started toward Price on US-6 up Spanish Fork Canyon. Pretty uneventful stuff; several stops for gas and snacks along the way. Lots of getting passed by cars and semis. Finally got to the exit for Red Cliff, Colorado. Noticed the air was pretty cold, but didn't think a whole lot about it. Wound around a small canyon road with switchbacks for 10 miles or so, and came up to this:

But from the top of it. I thought we were going to get to cross it, but there was an itty-bitty turn-off just before the approach that we turned on to instead. That single-lane road wound around for a couple more miles until finally we got to a town that Park City, Utah must have looked like 50 years ago or so. A bar/club a hotel/liquor store/general store and about 100 houses scattered around the hillsides. Here's a look at the town coming in from the highway:

The building on the right is Mango's Mountain Grill which is where we played on Thursday night. The image of the town pretty much says it all, complete with all the snow on the hillsides. It was very cold, and of course I hadn't brought a jacket of any kind. Duh! Anyway, we got set up, ate dinner and were ready to play by about 10:30. We played a full set, and overall had a pretty good show.

Next: pushing on into Denver...

Lunch

On Monday the 5th, My friend Julie and I drove north into the next valley to have lunch with a friend of ours who is visiting from Arizona. We had a very nice visit and a very nice lunch at Zupas in Draper. I highly recommend the Thai Lobster Curry if you get the chance. They allow you sample any soup you want to before you buy, which is a real bonus. Not in a Sam's-Club-on-a-Saturday-in-place-of-lunch kind of way, but I am glad that they do that. I have several observations about the trip:

I don't see Julie nearly enough.
It was lovely to visit with Lisa
I work at a place that makes it somewhat difficult to take long lunches on a whim
Food is often more expensive than is comfortable to my budget
I don't get out with friends nearly often enough
I'm glad that my home and my work are about a mile apart; I couldn't commute a long way to work.

Today, as I noticed someone in the mens' room changing their clothes, a thought came to my mind: When Clark Kent went into a phone booth to remove the shirt/tie/pants/etc., whatever happened to those clothes? Did someone come to use the phone and say, 'dangit! What slob left these clothes all over the place?' Maybe he used the heat vision and vaporized them. *eyeroll* That would get expensive.

At least Underdog took care of the problem; the phone booth blew up, presumable taking the clothes with it.

With the advent of cell phones and the demise of the phone booth, where does Clark/Superman change now?

A lot of weird questions, I know. All brought to you by the rambling mind of JoesKnows© *smirk*!

It makes me laugh

For those of you who are on Facebook, you have likely been inundated with requests to load the 'My Heroes Abiliy' application from friends of yours who are currently using it. It's really a lot of fun, and I recently rearranged my abilities. I currently have Precognition (the ability to forsee the future and such), Memory manipulation and Teleportation. I am currently playing with the teleportation ability, because it's so new. I have discovered the ability to teleport into a battle zone and grab a random fighter and teleport out to a random location. This would be SO much fun in real life, don't you think? This could be a good thing for people who are on the verge of being knocked out in the battle zone, but I imagine it could be really frustrating for people who are about to knock somebody else out. Anyway, I laugh to myself every time I do this, because I just picture my victim asking themselves, "what in the heck just happened?". Just so you know, as I am easily amused. See you in the battle zones! Heh, heh, heh!

It starts

One of the best lines ever from a movie that I have actually seen, and perfectly appropriate for the beginning of a blog, I suppose. I don't usually rant and rave in public or in private, so I suppose my posts will be pretty random for the time being. I will start with a few things that make me happy at the moment:
1) Playing the saxaphone. I still get a kick out of telling people that I play tenor sax for a Pink Floyd cover band, and I can now play 'Wish You Were Here' on the guitar, which is difficult for me to play for some reason. I also play saxaphone for a couple of different jazz bands.
2) Being the Ghost of Christmas Present. I look forward to the Hale Center Theater (Orem) yearly production of A Christmas Carol every year, and still love it after participating for the last 9 years.
3) My dog, Aiden. He is a Shi-tzu, and just came to lick my nose. He's less than a year old and so is still a puppy. My daughter will try to tell you that he's her dog, but I paid for him and he loves me best, because I play tug-of-war with him.
4) My family. My two oldest are at the point in their lives where we can have deep, meaningful discussions. My youngest is still a pre-teen with ADHD and school issues, so we don't have quite the meaningful discussions as with the others, but we can still have fun.
5) My wife. Even though we seem to argue a lot, and have issues with each other, (who doesn't, I guess) I still love her very much. Who knew?
6) My friends. (and their blogs) I don't get to spend a lot of time with my friends, but these blogs allow me to read about them and what they're doing, which is almost as good. I'd really like to spend more time with them, but as a husband, father and full-time wage earner, I feel like my responsibilities there override my desire to be with friends. Thank you all!

Well, it's rather late and need to wrap this. We'll see how often I am able to update my blog, as I am notoriously bad at it. Perhaps my friends will provide the inspiration.