Taking the advice of my friend Rafe Colburn, last night I signed up with eMusic.com. I was not sure about it, since I couldn’t view their catalog before signing up, but since they offered a no-strings-attached trial (I scrutinized the entire agreement), I decided to give it a try. Last night, I ended up downloading ALL of my trial songs (for the curious, I downloaded songs from Richard Shindell and They Might Be Giants) and converting to a subscription. I was impressed with their selection, their price and the fact that the MP3s aren’t encumbered by DRM. The price and lack of DRM beats iTunes hands down.
As for their selection, it’s not as extensive as iTunes, but it fits my music tastes perfectly. This is from eMusic’s FAQ about their music selection:

Do you…
a) Already buy or download about one CD per month?
b) Listen to college radio or other non-profits? (Like KEXP or WFMU?)
c) Read music criticism? (Like Pitchfork, NYTimes, or Salon.com?)
d) Already troll the ‘net for legitimate free Mp3s? (At Epitonic, BetterPropaganda, Insound?)
e) Go to three or four live performances a year?
f) Ever listen to stuff that is not pop, rock, or hip-hop?
If you answered yes to at least one or two of these questions, eMusic is probably for you. You’ll be able to find plenty of stuff to listen to. Start by *browsing* rather than searching and check out what’s really here. Also, you can ask on these message boards and you’ll get a lot of recommendations, fast. And, of course, even if you aren’t a hardcore music addict yet, eMusic is a great way to become one. You’ve been warned.

In a new blog post, John Scalzi recounts his move from print to online writing back in 1995. This is what John learned from the experience:

The most important thing the move taught me was simply this: There is always another way. What is required is the will to confront change from without and roll with it so it becomes change from within. My job came crashing down on me, and I had a choice of accepting it or finding another way. I found another way and and took it. My editors forced change on me; I turned it around and worked to make it a change on my terms. In this particular case I was fortunate that work I had been doing had prepared the way, so I could move quickly — but even had I started from zero, with work another way would have presented itself in time.

I learned a similar lesson back in 1992-3. As I was getting closer to completing my Ph.D. in German, I realized that I no longer had a passion for my academic work and that my personality and work style were not well suited to an academic environment. I also noted the glut of freshly minted humanities Ph.Ds relative to the academic job openings. So, I made a conscious decision to be open-minded about other career opportunities. Because of this decision, I jumped at a part-time opportunity to work as a computational linguist. One thing led to another, and here I am today.
Some of my grad school associates think that I couldn’t cut it in the academic world. Others think I sold out. There’s some truth in both of those judgements, but there’s also a certain amount of narrow-mindedness. But as I’ve aged, I’ve realized that my professional life is only a relatively small part of my identity. I’m very thankful to be able to provide for my family and to have a career that I find rewarding and intellectually stimulating in its own way.

We now have electrical utility deregulation in Texas. Sometime toward the end of last year, a salesperson for Reliant Energy showed up on our doorstep. Katie mistook this company for the company to which some neighbors had switched, and she agreed to switch service to them. When I got home that night, we decided we didn’t want to switch after all.
In the packet that the Reliant salesperson had given Katie, I noticed a form to revoke our decision within three days. I faxed it in the next day. I never heard anything from Reliant, so I assumed all was well.
Well, at the end of December, we got a final bill from our previous provider. After several long telephone calls, I determined that Reliant put in the switch request to our old provider, but then never set up an account for us. As far as I can tell, we’ve been getting free electricity since December 16th. Unfortunately, I’m too upstanding to let that continue. I re-established service with our previous provider today (though I think we still get almost a month of free electricity, as they will establish new service for us this week). Gotta love bureaucracy.
P.S. Too bad the free month was in winter, not in August.

When I’m driving by myself in slow traffic, I absentmindedly read the license plates of all the cars around me. I chalk it up to boredom and a little OCD. I can’t recall a license plate number a few seconds after the car passes, but I’m concerned my mind is actually storing them all away in long term memory. My fear is that when I’m old and senile, I’ll start babbling out all the license plate numbers I’ve read over the years. I can just see myself slumped in my wheelchair, drooling, and saying “W12-TXL, BB3-56J. Oh! RTL-3S4!”, etc.

Yesterday, I put down laminate flooring in the downstairs bathroom. Installing the flooring was as easy as the Lowe’s employee had promised, but I had a few problems figuring out which way 45 degree miter cuts went on the quarter round moulding. Fortunately, a couple of extra pieces of moulding only set me back a few extra dollars.

My family has a history of mangling or chopping off appendages. My grandfather hit his knee with an axe and it was stiff the rest of his lfe; my dad ground the toes off of one foot in an industrial accident; and my mother lost a finger in a recreational accident. Katie lives in constant fear that I’ll be the next victim.
Yesterday I was working with a borrowed power miter saw. With my family history, I should have realized that Katie wouldn’t find it very funny when I came in from the garage with a towel around a finger and saying I’d had a little accident.

If you think Heather Armstrong’s dog Chuck is gross, check this out: back when we used to leave Tippie free in the house while we weren’t home, sometimes we would come home to find the bathroom trash can tipped over and Tippie running around with a string hanging from her mouth or bits of adhesive backed absorbent material stuck to her snout. She quickly gained the nickname ‘Kotex.’ For obvious reasons, we now put Tippie in a crate (let’s be real, it’s a cage) when we’re away from home.

So far, our new dog Penny is known in our household by these alternate appellations: Pen-Pen, Wenny the Poo, the Tootsie Roll factory, Chi-Hua-Hua (pronounce each vowel), Terriwawa, Puppy Doodle.

Katie really likes to listen to music when she drives, especially when she’s alone in the car. Last summer, we got her a new(er) van, but it doesn’t have a CD player like our old one. Katie has been asking ever since if we could get a CD player installed. I told her that it’s obsolete technology: she should just get an iPod that she can use in the car and elsewhere.
But, because she didn’t really understand why an iPod was better, we haven’t done anything about music in the car for her. Well, about three weeks ago, my brother-in-law bought me an iPod Nano, and this morning, Katie took it with her to work for the first time. As soon as she got to her office, Katie called me and said: “I want to marry your iPod!” I asked her if she now understood what I’d been telling her for months, and she agreed that she did indeed. I’d better start figuring out how to get her an iPod; she was threatening to kill me so she could inherit mine.

They say that the weather in Texas changes quickly. (Of course, I’ve heard the same declaration about other places I’ve lived). That’s certainly not true in the summer, which is predictably hot and sticky. But this time of year, we do live up to that claim. Yesterday, it was in the mid 80s and very humid. We got a cold front through during the night, so it’s in the 40s with a brisk north wind this morning. Today’s high will in the low 50s. Fun.