Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Oh woe is Pandora

If you haven't heard by now, Pandora might be closing due to rising royalty rates. Now some of you may remember a while back, when you heard that Pandora was possibly shutting down because the rates were too high. The truth, it sounds like, is that Pandora kept on chuggin' even though they had to give 70% of their revenue to record labels and artists (70%!!). They decided it was better to keep going while fighting the rates (I assume in some sort of court...). Their hope is that this situation will be resolved and they won't have to shut down, but wired.com says they've already stopped broadcasting in the UK, and the US is next in line. In fact Pandora says they're losing money right now. It seems they're just holding on in case they win the fight and can afford to stay afloat.

Hi recording industry. You're all idiots. You're the old man in the rocking chair with a blanket over his knee wheezing and reminiscing about the 1950s. Do you not understand that the world only turns in one direction? (unless superman's around, but I don't think he's gonna get out of bed for the recording industry) We've gone beyond CDs and albums! We can share information too quickly these days to be hoarding it. Do record labels and some artists really want us to go back to the days where we listened to the radio all day and then went out and purchased a CD when something the DJ and record companies decided we should listen to caught our ear? It's not gonna happen, and I'm hoping I'm a perfect demonstration of why. This is how I listen to music:

In the car and pretty much only in the car I listen to the radio. I listen to country, classic rock, and alternative. I can pretty much gaurantee you that I will never again buy a CD containing music I have heard on the radio, and I'll tell you why--it's probably not the reason you're thinking. It's because I know that I will hear it again on that station. Stations overplay everything! I won't buy the CD, because I know that by the time they are finished playing it everyday on the radio, I will have decided that I'm pretty much bored with it. Hey, I'm not even in the car that much, and I still can't believe how often some songs are played.

I don't listen to the radio that much. (Hi record companies, this part's important!) In fact I get most of my music from computers. I buy new albums online from artists I already know, I use playlist.com to create playlists of music I enjoy or am listening to right now (there's one in the sidebar right over there!! -->), I listen to friend's playlists and suggestions, and oh yeah, I listen to pandora. If I am ever wanting to hear something new and interesting, I listen to pandora. If I find something I like (which I often do) I go to itunes or amazon or somewhere else ... and I purchase it (which I also often do). oh boy. Then I can listen to it just long enough that I know it by heart, but not quite so long that I can't stand hearing it anymore. It's a very simple system. Now maybe not everyone listens to music like I do, but I've got a hunch that at least many of my friends do . . . eh?

So I got worried when I heard Pandora could possibly shut down, because there are a few playlists that I just absolutely love, and I haven't gotten around to purchasing some of the music on a couple of those lists. So I just opened it up and starting writing down the name and artist of every song, and holy cow!! They really have a spectacular variety of music. I never realized how much it was. I filled a couple of pages of a legal pad in an afternoon ... Pandora is amazing--not just for the internet radio hole it fills, but also for the whole project. You can give them nearly any song you can think of (not German songs though, I've tried ) and they will be able to come up with similar styles and artists. The project was massive, and it turned out so well. I think I took it for granted how easy it was for me to type in "Fratellis" and have it spit out everything from The Real McKenzies to The Young Knives. It just came out with good stuff everytime, and that took a lot of work, and I really hope it doesn't get shut down. I think I would cry. Or at least be really really sad if I am ever forced to listen to the radio at work . . .

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Friday, August 22, 2008

It's over!!!

The olympics are over now, and I can get back to normal life, although I've got to be honest with you, I was a little busy working 2 jobs all week last week in order to make up for my being on vacation in Boston over my 'extended' weekend (extended is in quotes, b/c I extended it ...), and I didn't really watch it at all. How sad. I kinda miss it now that it's gone. Perhaps China will, too.

Anyway, since I've been obsessing with the olympics and on vacation, I have missed a few updates that you might want to know about.

One is that the FDA recently declared BPA safe. This article was from just before everyone started freaking out about BPA. This is an obviously dissatisfied washinton post follow-up article (but of course they're dissatisfied--they didn't get their way!). And this is an article I like because, it's not so much a level headed evaluation as it is a direct oposition to the washington post articles in tone as well as spin. Turns out straight forwardness doesn't always get you what you want. If you want a more level-headed approach, you should go for the Web MD article. Now that's some good journalism. They displayed and defended all 3 viewpoints in this matter. The FDA seems to be continually monitoring new research about BPA just in case. They sound like they're doing a pretty good job to me, so feel free to drink your nalgenes!!! all day long!! Alright, don't drink the nalgenes. Just what's inside of them. Unless it's been in there since you were first worried about BPA. Then I might wash it out first ... I don't think BPA kill bacteria

The next part I was going to let you know about has to do with Pandora, but I don't know how long that's going to be, so I'll just wait until next post. I can, however, show you how the consumerist called Sam's club on being deceitful when it comes to polystyrene cups. Just check the picture out. It's from this post. Oh boy. You are so very not environmentally concious. Though, it doesn't actually claim that it is better for the environment. But if that's not what they are wink-nudging at, I don't know what it is. Sam's club (aka Walmart), you suck, and I am not amused!

More on my summer vacations and Pandora later!

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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

I <3 Olympians

Ah! I am pissed! Because I wrote this cool half-blog *before* Michael Phelps won all 8 of his events, and then I went to Boston, and it turns out I never published this. But here it is for you to enjoy, because while I'm not one to brag, I think it's pretty funny. It was actually right after he won his 5th medal and thus surpasses the record for most gold medals won (over multiple olympics):

"I have not gotten anything done in lab this week. It's mostly because the friggin olympics is on all friggin day! How can I go to lab when beach volleyball is playing flanked by the 200m Breaststroke?? And right now, all they're playing is volleyball, swimming, and gymnastics. Yay, yay, and yay! When does the running start? Track and Field is pretty awesome, and I'm excited about that.

"So what would you do if you were Michael Phelps right now? I bet you would don all 11 of your gold medals and where them around town. Phelps opens suitcase and, "oh look. How in the world did these 6 medals from the previous Olympics get in here? Lucky for me they were here, because now I'm going to wear them around town!"

"Around town (I guess 'town' shouldn't really be used to describe Beijing, but whatever): 'Hi! Look at me. I'm Michael Phelps and I have just won more gold medals than anyone in olympic history. What am I going to do next, you ask? Well, I'm going to win 3 more gold medals, and then will I not only have the record for most gold medals, I'll have beaten the other guy by 4, I'll surely have a world record in every event I swam in, and I'll also have the world record for most golds won in a single olympics. Please come bask in my awesomeness.'

"'So Mr. Phelps, can you tell us why you looked pissed after you won a gold medal and broke a world record in the 200m butterfly?'

"And this is an actual quote from nbcolympics.com, 'I'm disappointed because I know I can go faster, but there was nothing I could do. I handled it the best way I could.' Turns out his goggles were filling up with water and he couldn't see a damned thing. And he still won the race with the best time ... ever. And he was mad because he could have gone faster. wow. If anyone deserves all the praise and shiny things he is getting right now, he does."

That was it. The entirety of the half-post. Beautiful, I know. So now he has all the medals, and what do we have to say? Well, I just don't have much really. We were watching the final race in a bar/bowling alley in Boston, and I said 'wait, is this the final race??' My friends said 'Yes!!!' Turns out I missed a whole 2 races the night or two before ... boo! Anyway, it was great, because the whole bar was screaming at the television (of course, they didn't care about the women's 4x100 medley that had just played, but whatever). It was pretty fun. Looking back, I believe I did not publish the post, because I did not want to jinx his chances at actually winning 8 gold medals in one olympics. Unlike Dana Whitaker, I don't like to mess with the mojo.

Right now I am fighting with my photoalbum software to get it to spit out a photo album that doesn't look like the crappy one I have right now, and one that includes my trip to Boston as well as my trip to Colorado. Soon the pictures will be available on the album. Also, I spent about an hour last night uploading the Boston pictures to facebook (slow internet at night due to crappy cable and wireless through my desktop because the rooms aren't wired for a network--seriously??), and then it tells me that it failed. No more information than that. Not that a few pictures succeded, the whole thing just failed. Wow, facebook, I hate you. Don't you think it would have been nice to let me know that I was not succeeding, I dunno, like an hour ago?? If you're lucky, the pics will be up later tonight. I will be at the restaurant tonight, but when I get home, I'll get to typing ...

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Monday, August 11, 2008

More about buying cars

My friend Stephanie, it seems is trying to buy a car, and has expressed many burning questions about buying a car, and instead of write a blog post in her comments section like a blog-hog, I thought I'd just write up another post to clarify a few things and answer more questions.

What I first decided was why I wanted a new car. Fuel economy. and I looked like a soccer-mom. Probably good for not getting tickets driving through a college town at midnight, but not so much for the 'hey, let's take my car' response from friends. So I concentrated on Fuel economy, and figured not looking like a 45 year-old woman while driving would follow suite. And I think it did. If you like to go camping and hiking or just like destroying the planet, you could go for a 4 wheel drive SUV of some sort. If you actually *are* a soccer mom, then there's a used van waiting for you at the Hyundai Automax in Norman, OK. Old, but works great. Just had the transmission replaced, but you'll have to replace the left tie rod next time you go in for an alignment. I also decided to go with a used car, mostly because I'm cheap. But I've also read it's a better investment to go with a used car instead of a new one (especially if it's certified and all that), since the value of the car drops tremendously as soon as you drive it off the lot. The difference is that a new car will have a warranty and shouldn't be difficult for at least a few years. A used car will most assuredly have a much smaller warranty if any at all, and you'll be paying to take care of it. But your monthly payment will probably be smaller.

Once I decided what I wanted, I got on Autotrader and checked out everything in the area that was within my budget. If I found a car that interested me, I looked it up on consumer reports to check out it's reliability and fuel economy (my parents have an account, and it's awesome). Some years for some models aren't very good, and some are spectacular. After a while, that gave me an idea how good certain models are and what I should be looking for. I also checked out the blue book price for the year and model to see if it was priced well. During all of that, I had a carfax.com account to look up vin numbers. If a car is new with low mileage and dirt cheap, there is probably somehting wrong with it. Carfax.com can tell you how many owners the car has had, and how many miles were last reported on it. They can also tell you if an incident has ever been reported by a DMV or if the manufacturer has canceled the warranty. I'm not sure if it's neccesary, but it's cool.

So by the time my dad came out to Norman to help me check out dealerships, I had a pretty good idea what was available and what was good and possibly in my price range. It happened pretty quickly, but I had done my homework, so I was ready.

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Friday, August 8, 2008

And also for the olympics

My friend Spike found these drinking game rules for these summer Olympics. Please enjoy. Haha they sound like great fun.

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08.08.08

My last post was going to be about my vacation in Colorado and also about Murphey's law since I came down with a cold about 3 days into the trip. But I actually just bought a used car last night (sweet!), and I figured I wouldn't jinx it by writing about Murphey's law. And since this is right after my post about my old white van breaking down and recycling Starbucks cups to help with my 'carbon debt' (yay for buzzwords. Now if we just start calling it a nano-carbon debt, we'll confuse the hell out of the news-media) I figured it was well placed.

That's my new car!! It's a 2005 Hyundai Elantra, and not to be a Hyundai salesman or anything, but Hyundais are pretty good cars that you can usually get pretty cheap. It gets twice the gas mileage as my not-so-hippie-van did--that's right, over 30 instead of around 15!! . . . I thought I might enlighten those less fortunate *cough*Kevin*cough*, and tell the story of how I bought the car. ( ;-) Kevin, it seems, recently bought a car and thinks he got jerked around a bit) Well, I don't know if I got a spectacular deal, but my dad is a salesman and also knows a bit about cars, and he helped me out and seems to think I got a good deal, so that's good enough for me.

We went to a few places on Wednesday and drove some cars around but didn't really like them terribly. I'm also difficult to please b/c I'm cheap! I wanted a car under 9,000 and half the dealers just didn't have anything in that category. I had decided on 9,000$ because we thought we could trade the hippie van in for around 2,000, and I figured I could pay 7000 off in 3 years just fine. I also figured that any car in my price range would be so old that I wouldn't want to be paying it off for more than 3 years anyway. So we walk up to this Hyundai dealership and tell the lead salesperson that we are looking for a fuel-efficient car under 9,000. She brings us a salesman and he shows us a car that I test drive. It's the Elantra above. It's an 05 and it's still under warranty, so obviously we are interested. We ask for the price. Here's where it gets sticky.

First they just give us 2 numbers. 1500 down and 250/month. I was amazed that they didn't even give us a term. I had no idea at that point how much the car actually cost--apparently some people take the offer just like that. crazy people. So we let them know that I had my own financing (we use USAA who generally gives a fairly good rate), and that we really just want to know HOW MUCH the car was. oh. they got it. They then offered us 500$ for my van (what??) and priced the Elantra at 11,000. Not even close to our 9000$. We were a bit annoyed, because we'd just wasted time on a car that was 3,500$ out of my price range. Oi! We tried to tell them it was too much and get out of there, but of course they will not allow that, so they brought out the viper . . .

The dealership is more concerned with how much you can afford per month than how much you want the car to cost. If they can get most any price within your monthly payment range by stretching the payment out for 7 or, it turns out, sometimes even 10 years, that's what they try to do. The head of sales came out and tried to weasel out of me how much I was willing to spend per month and fix me right up. I swear we had to explain to her about 3 times that we were choosing a car based on the overall price and not the monthly payment . . . we also told them that if we could only get $500 for the van, we would just sell it ourselves. Then we told them we would not be purchasing a car that evening under any circumstances but that we would keep in touch. Numbers were exchanged.

The next morning I got a call from the salesman who we had test driven with (good thing, too, because the head of sales was the scariest lady I had ever seen, and I was not inclined to do business with her ever.) to inform me that they could definitely get me 1000$ on the van. I called him back later that afternoon to let him know that if we couldn't get 1500$ for the van, we weren't even going to bother trading it in and that I was going to shop around a bit first. He said it was plausible to get 1500 for the van, but that I would need to bring the van in so their people could check it out. They always want to bring you in. I suppose it's home field advantage. My dad let me know that it's always easier to negotiate on the phone. On the phone, you're on equal footing. You can cut him off or even hang up on him if need be ;-). So I discussed it with my dad, and we both agreed that paying off an 05 for 4 years is acceptable, but that it was still too expensive. I figured I could do 10,000-1500$ = $8500 over 4 years, so this is what I did (at my dad's wonderful suggestion): I called the dealership and told them that I was busy (which I am) and that if they couldn't get it down to 10,000$ with a 1500$ trade in on the van, I just simply did not have time to come in and talk to them (which I did not). So the guy told me he would talk it over with his boss and call me back.

He called me back in about 5 minutes (it was raining, and nobody seems to go anywhere when it's raining--especially to dealerships) and said it was a deal, so I went over and bought the car. whew.

Hah. And after I filled out the paper work and did the loan stuff and got my keys and everything was settled, I pulled my new car around to empty my stuff out of the van. I unlocked the car and one of the sliding doors wouldn't open . . . sometimes that lock sticks, but it hasn't done it in ages. I thought it was pretty hilarious that it did it right after I traded it in and right in front of the salesman. oh well, it's yours now! Maybe they know how to fix that. Lord know we had no idea . . .

Anyway I hope it was a good story. I've already had a dream that someone stole my car, so you know that I like it! Have a happy olympic starting day! I really love the 08.08.08. Why in the world is that so cool? It's just another day, and yet . . . it's epic.

PS. I just google image searched 'carbon debt' and the second page is my starbucks cup from the last blog post. wow! I had no idea there were so little pictures related to carbon debt. Cool!

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