Another Snow Emergency: Glad it ain’t me this time.

RealPlayer is… dumb?

Remember when realPlayer was new and mandatory to watch or listen to streaming media on the internet?  What was that, the late 90s?  Mid-90s?  Competing with Winamp for underground dominance of the internet radio phase.  Ahh, those were the days.

Well, realPlayer went up and got too cheesey for itself around the turn of the milennium, quickly lost the programming wars with the likes of iTunes knocking on its doorstep, and, apparently, has been lying dormant in cyberspace.  To their credit (and I shudder to say this), they’ve kept up with the current trends in streaming media technology, albeit as an aparent onlooker, and still offer their basic program as freeware.  And it is modernized.  And it remains otherwise useless.

But there’s a new option.  A new, intriguing option.  Once realPlayer is installed on your computer, you obtain the ability to easily download any video you stream from any website online, like… say… youtube.  When you mouse over the video, a small box fades into view.  Click the box, and you’re “recording” the video to your computer.

Not bad, realPlayer.  Not bad.

Incidentally, the good folks at WAER Jazz 88.3 in Syracuse, NY, haven’t kept their website up to recent standards, and their live stream is realPlayer only.  I’m definitely willing to suck it up and use realPlayer to listen to my favorite radio station, but COME ON, 88.3, get with the program!

“And there you have it, the first, and most certainly LAST good thing I’ll ever say about realPlayer.”  That’s what I’d like to say, but I just can’t get around one thing:  why on EARTH would anyone want to download anything from youtube?

A Real Nowhere Man.

The Beatles are haunting me, while Umphrey’s is blowing my mind.

I’m absent.  Sofaras existence is concerned, I’m nowhere.  I’m sitting, at a desk, in a corner of the world where no one, anywhere around me, knows that I’m here, nor that I exist.  This is new to me.

For the sake of balance, the one person who knows I’m somewhere is somewhere else being nowhere for the evening.  Actually, she’s being somewhere, for the evening.  Which brings me back to… being nowhere.

It’s an existential trip.  Summoning all the experiences that make up my state of mind and employing activity to supplement for the doubting of my own existence.

And blogging about it.

Comcast is truly God’s gift to the airwaves.

A little bitching, if you will.

I had to make the unfortunate transition from Time Warner (a cable company that has its shit together) to Comcast (a cable company that sucks at life).  Not only do you get more bang for your buck with Time Warner, but organizationally, Comcast is a nightmare.

First off, dealing with their customer service is like having a discussion with a 16 year old Friendly’s Ice Cream employee about quantum mechanics.  Then, just to throw a wrench into the excruciatingly intelligent conversation, the Friendly’s employee morphs into a man named Arnold from Pakistan.  Arnold tells you something different than what the Friendly’s employee tells you.  He also gives you a different quote for your bill.  Arnold then informs you that he can’t help you, and you’ll have to call back tomorrow, because the people that can help you only work during the week, which implies that Arnold’s job is to NOT help you.  Which also wasted a whole lotta time.

So you call back tomorrow, and Arnold is now Davey from the local office.  Davey tells you something different than Arnold and ALSO quotes you a different, more expensive quote for your bill.  Reluctantly, you and Davey become friends and hang out.  Now you have cable.  Let the organizational nightmare ensue:

You go to the menu guide, you choose a channel, the cable box displays a message saying, “NO!”  You cower, wag your tail, and try again.  “NO!”  Eventually, when Comcast isn’t looking, you sneak in and find the channel you wanted.  What I’m saying is, everything is not only different (as can reasonably be expected), but the layout of the commands, menus, etc., is full of loopholes and misfires that you can’t correct with a proper “back” button.  It boils down to this:  everything seems to work OK with Comcast, HOWEVER, it’s a pain in the ass to do anything.  They over-simplified the controls to the point that it becomes confusing.

So now, not only am I paying more for less, but it’s an inferior quality of product, to boot.

Awesome.

The Paper Raincoat, and other thoughts.

The Paper Raincoat – Jan. 8, 2009 – Club Passim, Cambridge MA

I didn’t know what to expect going to this show.  It was the first show I’ve seen since moving to Boston, at a venue I’ve never been to – a coffeehouse at that, seeing a band I’ve never heard, featuring an artist I’ve had only limited exposure to.

Amber Rubarth makes up half (or one third?) of The Paper Raincoat, along with Alex Wong, both Brooklyn-based songwriters (they also had a drummer for this show whose name was… Tappy… Mc… Drummerguy… incidentally).  I’m faimliar with Amber Rubarth, having recently been turned on to her new album, New Green Lines – friggin fantastic album, but never heard a lick of The Paper Raincoat until the first notes were played.

Acoustic-based and enthusiastic, the vibe was entirely positive throughout the set.  The atmosphere was an oddity for me, however, since the last time I had a seat for a concert was… well… I’ll have to get back to you on that.  I suppose it’s harder to get the energy in the room flowing when everyone is sitting at tables, picking at the remnants of their required-purchase dinners.  The waitress didn’t do me any favors either by scoffing at my monetary donation to the kitchen (I wasn’t hungry… what do you want from me??!) and screwing up my coffee after forgetting TWICE to bring it to my table… I digress.

((It’s not that I didn’t want to eat.. I mean, the food looked good, but the portions were mammoth.  Seriously, how much organic vegan pizza can one person put down??))

So the music, anyhoo, was good times all around.  Alex Wong has a great back-and-forth with Rubarth on stage, and their efforts greatly benefit from the band’s willingness to be a little goofy, swapping instruments and laughing at their own slip-ups.

Good stuff, though.  Club Passim is in Harvard Square.  I did pop in at a local tavern before the show and saw that the Bruins were winning.  That in itself is still a novelty to me – the whole, seeing Boston sports on regular TV thing, still think I’m living in New York on some level I guess…

It’s definitely a trip being able to just hop the T and get to wherever you need to be.  Harvard Square is only two stops down, and the venue was less than a block from the station.  If I’d mapped out the distance walked from home, to the bus, to the T, to the venue, and back again, (and aside from curious meanderings) I probably walked less than a quarter of a mile from my living room to the venue.  Public transportation in Boston is outstanding.

Oil Heat is.. where it’s at? (and my computer rocks!)

Oil Heat.  Uhh, I’m not so sure about this.  I mean, it’s nice not having forced air powering through the apartment at all times (also nice having decent insulation), but today I experienced what it is to wake up with an empty tank in the basement.  No heat, no hot water = bad day.

So, I called in the “pros” and set up my account with a local heating service.  They come by once a month or so and top off the gigantic oil drum in the basement of my house.  Prices these days for gas/oil is pretty much a bargain, so I’m winning right off the top.  The problem is, it’s 8 PM and we only just got back up and running.  Had no idea when the idiots were coming to fill ‘er up so I had to sit around all day (actually, lay around under every blanket in my stash) waiting, hoping, wishing the bastards would just show up.  The apartment bottomed out at 50 degrees, which I guess could be worse, WOULD have been worse in the Cuse apartment.

Otherwise, I’m just not sure.  Having someone come on a monthly basis to up my stash is kind of a weird thing.  Cheaper than National Grid?  It’d better be.

Also, of note, having a computer up and running again is a trip.  I haven’t logged out of my email in DAYS.  That may seem trivial to the rest of the world, but it’s worth noting what a joy it is to have technology functioning as it should.

Aight.  Laterz.

Davis Square (and why Boston is SO not NYC)

OK, Davis Square, Davis Square… where do I begin? Let’s start at the T stop.

We catch the bus (el autobus) in our front yard – if the weather isn’t too bad, we walk – it takes us half a mile down the street, and we get off at the T station. The T station is in the heart of Davis Square. From here, we find our access to all things Boston. (Mind you, at this point we’re still walking distance from home)

Around Davis Square, there are multiple venues, pubs, restaurants, specialty shops, etc. And here’s where my first review gets going:

Mike’s: Looks like a cross between a Subway and a Bally Total Fitness center from the outside. Couldn’t be more chain. Open the door and it’s one of the best Italian lunches I’ve had since the move. HD TVs, a full bar, and good food.

Johnny D’s: I’ve developed a sincere distaste for places that name themselves after themselves. Despite the sports bar-esque title, this appears to be the place to see a show in Somerville. If it weren’t for the cover every night, I might actually hang out there. I’ve been twice and left just before a reggae-dead cover band and a blues player. Not bad, for random selection.

The Joshua Tree: Took me a while to figure out why their website plays U2 during the intro. Guess I’m not as up on culturally dictatorial bands as I used to be. The bar itself, however, is another sweet spot. Bands on occasion (or so the flyers on the walls would have us believe), trivia night, and to their ferocious benefit, I watched the second half of a Cuse game there a few nights ago.

The Burren: Directly across the street from the aforementioned… is the local Irish Pub. Open mic nights, Irish music “every night”, Sunday brunches (come to think of it, I think every bar here has a Sunday brunch and a trivia night), and presumably better Guinness than any of the other bars that serve Guinness.

“That Diner place“: The Diner in Davis Square is by FAR the best Diner in the area. This deserves a little more of a spiel than the rest. Upon moving here, we immediately charted out and sampled, over many mornings, all of the diners we could find within a mile (approx.) of our residence. Fortunately for that quest, we saved the best for last. Our rating was based on a five point scale, weighing everything from quality of food, to service, to price (for a 2-egg breakfast, four bucks!), to atmosphere, and perhaps most importantly, quality of homefries. While the others in the area had both positives and negatives, the Rosebud Diner absolutely crushed the competition. (Sorry, Highland Kitchen. You shouldn’t have Rosemary’d the Homefries without telling me first.)

That’s the gist, so far. Of note, we’ve also sampled a towny bar, an Indian Restaurant (Diva – awesome food, terrible service), and several of the specialty shops (meat market and produce store directly across the street from one another!), but have not yet been to see our local Crepist.

On Moving: Part II – 7000 miles in 3 weeks.

OK, so that’s a rough estimate. But basically, we made enough trips back and forth from Boston to Syracuse that we alternately could have driven to the west coast and back, while taking an additional thousand or so miles to wander off course along the way. Not bad for a month’s work.

And work it was. Quite often, we found ourselves waking up in the morning, underslept, aching from the day before, only to carry another stack of boxes to the car, jam in as many knick-knacks as possible, carry another ten bags of garbage to the curb, hop in the car, drive 5 hours to Boston, take one look at the packed car, say “fuck that”, park the car somewhere for the night, get into the apartment and collapse asleep. Only to then wake up, underslept, aching from the day before, wander down the road, pull the car around, bring all the boxes and knick-knacks up to the third floor, spend the rest of the evening unpacking, and then collapse. Only to wake up the next morning, underslept and aching from the night before, stumbling down the stairs with another six or eight bags of trash that are now coming back to Syracuse with us (thank you, by the way, city of Syracuse, for whoring out your utility vehicles and swallowing every last thing I was willing and able to drag out to the streetside), drive the 5 hours back to Syracuse and start the whole dang process over again. Over, and over.

And for those of you that didn’t bother with the math, I’ll do it for you. That’s roughly 11 round trips (at 312 miles each direction) in approximately 3 weeks, which averages out to just under two days in each place. Back and forth. Over and over. And so on, and so forth.

I’ll tell you what though. As exhausting as the process was, and for how much stress it caused us, that we unpacked everything AS we moved it saved an immense amount of time, kept the entire process very well organized (we started moving only essentials, and somewhere around halfway through the whole process we found ourselves moving the least essentials – or just throwing them out), and allowed us to put everything in its permanent place as it got here. What does that mean? Well, my friends, it means our apartment, now settled and fuckin sweet, is clean and organized and hip and proper. Neither of us has ever lived in such a manner (what with dingy old Tennyson being my greatest sense of reference… I miss that dirty old bird already).

And there it is.

Next up: Davis Square, and why Boston is SO not New York City.

ADDENDUM:  To answer the question in the comments, we hired movers for the “big stuff”, namely furniture and the larger of the boxes.  So, basically, yes, we did.