Radio Paradise

Well, I Missed Posting a Day

So as a bonus, today you will get two and because it is the Summer Solstice (AKA the longest day of the year) I will have plenty of daylight to accomplish them.

I’m blaming it on the ‘roids. My synapses are firing all over the place, trust me, the stream of consciousness that is going on it there is deafening and somewhat alarming.

My lovely bride has to except a little of the fault for the ‘no post’ too though. When I got home from work she was already a bit hungry, so we did the evening meal an hour early. Compound this with the fact the FRS are playing ball in the mid-west, so their games are starting an hour later, I now had 2 extra hours to kill until I had something to occupy my brain enough to tamp down the cacophony.

I tried reading a book I’m partway through on the Kindle and I couldn’t concentrate on the sentences because all I could think of was poor Jeff Bezos who is just missing out on being the richest man in the world with only Bill Gates left to catch. I wanted to help, but didn’t think running down to Whole Foods and buying a gallon of milk that the money would get back to him yet.

I tried watching a Season 6 Episode of VEEP, but it had already started to lose it luster before my head got this N20 shot. I’m just watching now out of morbid curiosity to see if body man Gary ever gets to hook up with Ex-President Selina. Sort of like I keep reading the Beetle Bailey cartoons hoping for Beetle and Miss Buxley to do something besides casually date.

With still another hour to go, I thought maybe plugin some headphone to Radio Paradise and just close my eyes. Well that worked. Only too well. I fell asleep. Donna went inside to accomplish some stuff, clean up after dinner, etc. and when she came back an hour later I was snoring peacefully. Thinking I needed more rest, she suggested taking a shower and going to bed early. This sounded like a great idea. So, about the time the Red Sox came to bat in the top of the first inning in Kansas City I was pulling the covers up to my chin and exhaling slowly. Perfect.

Until about 12:23 AM this morning when my eyes snapped open. Suffice to say there is another 10,000 words I can write here to tell you all about the machinations I tried to get back to sleep and all the random, tangential thoughts that developed in my head, but you’d be exhausted reading them. And frankly I think that they exhausted me enough that I did manage to fall back sleep about 3 hours lateranyway…

Shouting At The TV

Growing up I remember my mom watching the network evening news and getting so upset at whatever was happening in the country and world that she would literally shout out her disgust at Chet Huntley or David Brinkley or both. I remember thinking what good does that do?

Donna likes to watch the network evening news, so if I’m in the room, by proxy I do too. We watch ABC because she liked to watch Diane Sawyer when she was the anchor, but we are still watching ABC long after she is gone. Diane used to always start the program by saying, “BREAKING NEWS!” even though it was only breaking if you didn’t have access to a 24hr news channel or the internet. I think the breaking news qualifier for them could be added if it happened since their broadcast ended the night before.

When David Muir took over I was hoping that he would drop the charade, but no, he’s even amped it up a notch. Plus he has continued the ridiculous “the Index” feature, 4 or 5 stories hyped at every chance during the first 20 minutes of the broadcast. They are the television version of clickbait, eight to ten word headlines that make you want to find out what they are about. They are saved until near the end and you get one 10 second Index item followed by a minute and half of commercials for prescription drugs your insurance won’t cover the cost of. Then another tidbit and another 2 minutes of commercials, rinse and repeat until it is time to see what the daily lottery numbers are.

It used to be just watch the show and listen with 1/4 of our concentration letting the news wash over us, but since what’s his name took over the news cycle over a year ago, that has been impossible. We don’t shout at the TV, but Donna has taken to sighing a lot and I cussing non-verbally in my mind. Now that the hirsute yellow-fin tuna has taken office Donna’s sighing is becoming words of disbelief and I’ve started muttering incoherently. It is only a matter of time until one of us turns into my mother and starts shouting at the TV.

I’m here to tell you, it won’t be me. From now on if I join her on the couch anytime between 6:30 and 7:00 PM I will have my headphones on listening to Radio Paradise and staring at my Kindle.

Thanks For Nothing

We got a letter in the mail a couple of weeks ago to let us know that there was another 2 week free trial of XM Satellite Radio coming up. Cool, I thought, that would give us something different to listen to in the Purple Whale on the weekend trip to Florida. The Friday before Labor Day on the way to work I punched the button marked XM and turned it to my favorite (and really only) station, #31 – The Coffee House, and got a few seconds of song, a few seconds of static, song, static, song. I punched the AUX button to go back to the USB drive.

In the past we have had issues with reception around home because of the copious tree cover, so I figured we’d try it again once we started the trip and got out into the farm land near Barnwell. Well, it wasn’t any better out there, so I went back to the recorded stream of Radio Paradise. I tried it one more time along flatland I-95 and this time it never even locked on the station, the display just showed “LOADING” for a a minute. Then I just gave up on it.

I don’t know where the problem was, my end or theirs, but where ever it was, getting 14 days of one channel of satellite radio was not reward enough to call anyone.

Track 01 – These Are Days

Just love Natalie Merchant. I had almost every CD that 10,000 Maniacs put out and her first two solo albums. She has released a few more CDs since then, but I’ve stopped buying physical and downloadable music, so the only exposure to her music I get now is when I catch a tune on RadioParadise. The latest one is something called Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience which not only has Natalie singing, but the cello opening reminds me of the theme music for the TV show Firefly.

The Sounds Of Silence

The only radio we listen to in the Miata is from RadioParadise.com. OK, occasionally on a Saturday morning I’ll tune to an NPR station to catch some classic Click & Clack, but 99.9% is an MP3 ripped from an internet stream and burned to a CD. Ten of those CDs sit inside a cartridge housed inside a Sony Disc Changer that is tucked into one corner of the trunk. It has been that way for the 9-1/2 years the Emperor has been in the family. This same changer even predates the Emperor for a couple years prior it sat inside the spare tire of the trunk of our previous Miata With No Name.

Recently this unit has been randomly powering off leaving nothing but static emanating from the speakers. I’ve checked all the connections and they all seem sound, wiggling any of them (especially the power cable to the changer) will not make it hiccup, once or twice a ride it will cut out for anywhere from a few seconds to around a minute. Annoying to say the least. Last week I decided to do something about it.

I ordered a GROM AUX-IN Adapter that that allows the use of an iPod and plugs into the back of the Miata’s head unit where the OEM Mazda disc changer would have went. We happen to have a 4Gig Nano that only gets used one or twice a year when Donna and I fly in an airplane, the rest of time it sits in a charger waiting patiently, this will give it reason to get excited for each new day.

The adapter arrived in the mailbox on Monday, so naturally the rest of the day was spent ripping out the Sony Disc Changer, reclaiming 5% of the Miata’s tiny trunk space. Then I needed to remove the OEM radio to get at the connector on the back. Using instructions found in the Miata.net Garage I made my removal tools from a coat hanger, but no amount of pushing/pulling/squeezing/ wiggling would get it to come out. After 20 minutes, a couple of cuts, several bruises and a blood blister on my left index finger I gave up. I guess I might have to breakdown and buy 2 sets of the official removal tools. I had disconnected the battery to take out the CD Changer, so I hooked it back up and set the time on the clock and even loaded a couple of the local radio stations as presets.

Tuesday morning when I got in the car to drive it to work the radio didn’t come on! Pushed the power button and it just bounced back at me, no click. The display didn’t even light up with the clock. There wasn’t any faceplate illumination either. Didn’t have time to do any troubleshooting, so we took the Sonata to work.

At work I called a couple auto parts stores to see if they had any of the removal tools and struck out. Then I tried a local car audio place and the guy there said just bring in the car and I’ll pop it out for you. After work I went there and lickity split he had the unit loose. Amazing what the proper tool for the proper job will do. I thanked him and came home. The radio fuse was fine. I pulled the head unit out and disconnected the harness. Got out my trusty Radio Shack Multimeter and with with the pin out diagram for connecter (thanks again m.net garage) checked for 12 volts. Unfortunately I had the correct voltage at the correct pins. I say unfortunately because that meant the radio was dead.

Hooked the radio back up, slid it back into the dash, buttoned it up so the interior looks good and wishfully tried the power button again (still didn’t work.) Now comes decision time, try and locate a very scarce used Miata Bose head unit keeping AUX-IN box or return the AUX-IN box and just buy a new aftermarket head unit with the iPod function already built in. Until a decision is made it’ll be kind of quiet in the Emperor’s cockpit.

The sound of silence will not be as hard to get used to as it will be to not see the time on the radio display…

Oh, You Temptress

Got a letter in the mail the other day from my old friends at SiriusXM. They are turning on my satellite radio for 2 weeks starting today, running until the 27th. Hoping that if I like it I will renew for 6 months for the low sum of $25 (of course that doesn’t include taxes and fees) They are also they are hoping that after the six months you will forget to call and cancel and the price will automatically jump to the regular price of $15+ a month.

I’m not really tempted as all they have to offer me is the one channel in their line-up I did like, The Coffee House. Sorry Ms. XM I’m already married to the lovely and eclectic RadioParadise and I’m quite happy. I will probably listen in for the fortnight though, a guy can listen, right?

Radio Paradise HD

My favorite internet radio station has it own channel on the Roku box. It is called Radio Paradise HD and it streams the same music as the radio stream, but with the addition of photos that compliment the title, artist or lyrics.

Tonight I decided to upload a few of my photos to see if they might use them. The submission form had room for eight files, so that is how many I uploaded for now. Maybe next time I do a few Enchanted Ceiling shots. One of the one tonight was the above image of Carhenge from our 2009 trip out west.

For the first time in about 3 weeks we rode the tandem to work. This is a great time of year for this because now that school is out for the summer traffic on the way to work is almost non-existent and not much more on the way home.

This is going to leave a hour long hole in my Saturday morning – Click & Clack Hang Up Their Microphones