Catching up

What is the one thing that a traveler doesn’t want to hear?

“Your flight has been canceled.”

After a whirlwind Saturday—which included tons of laundry, packing, taking the lad out to buy some new summer duds, and ferrying him to the closing performance of his play—we were finally ready to head out to his Dad’s house at 10:30 PM. That’s just about my bed time. And I was tired. But off we went. And hour later we pulled into the driveway and he came rushing out with a funny look on his face.

“I tried to call you,” he said, “but you’d already left. The airline called about 10:40 and said our morning flight is canceled. They said they couldn’t get a crew. I have no idea.”

Well, heck. The lad could have gone to his cast party and I could have gone to bed. We should have dallied around the house for another 10 minutes. The vacation flight was postponed until this morning. As far as I know, the airline managed to scrape together a flight crew this morning. I believe that’s the first time I’ve heard that excuse used on anyone I actually know. It must have been a rough weekend for flight crews. Presuming that they all got off the ground at the appointed hour, this morning, they should be well on their way to PR at this moment. But that’s one less day of vacation and that’s irritating for all concerned, on both ends of the flight.

Yesterday morning dawned sunny and bright. I didn’t have anything pressing going on other than cleaning up the carnage from the previous day’s whirlwind. The house is pretty much put back to rights. And then my vacation began. Nothing exciting, mind you, but I have projects lined up. It’s always easier to do projects when there isn’t a teenager running in and out, dropping stuff by the front door and leaving a trail behind him.

But before major projects could get started, I needed tunes and a new vehicle for delivering them. Via computer. I’m tired of Windows Media and Real Player. What I wanted was a radio player. A very simple one that I could program with my local public radio stations and a few of my other favorites. One with little preset push buttons would be nice, I thought.

After hunting around for a while, I found Viddi Radio Player. It didn’t have little push buttons, but I could easily program it. It’s uncomplicated. And it had a few nice radio stations already built in. It’s a stand alone player and it’s very small. It hardly takes any RAM and, so far as I’ve been able to determine, it doesn’t conflict with anything or cause trouble. I like it.

But I never leave well enough alone and looked around for other radio players. Live 365.com had a nice one with buttons! And their radio station selection is massive. I downloaded it and thus began a world of woe.

I love Live365. I really do. I want it. I want to use it. I love the radio stations. However, the software comes with some miserable little bit of adware that cause a sea of popups and sent my firewall software into an absolute tizzy. When I closed the Live365 radio player, the player’s software turned into a little hijacking engine and my firewall kept popping up messages asking for permission to let the Live365 program contact just about everyone in the known universe—including my bank! Now, if my bank was a large nationally known bank, I might not be as suspicious, but my bank is a tiny little community bank without any national presence. They also don’t advertise online very much, if at all. Why would the Live365 software be contacting my bank??!

I told my firewall software to deny all hijacking attempts coming from the Live365 program and it did. And that shut everything else off, too. I couldn’t open one single web page. It was as if my internet connection was totally blocked.

So, I uninstalled the Live365 radio player and spent considerable time with various spyware and adware cleaners to get all vestiges of the program off my computer. And it seemed as if it was all gone. The firewall software piped down and I couldn’t find anything related to Live365 on the computer after all the cleansing.

But, later, when I turned on my Viddi Radio and paused it, a Live365 radio station came pouring out of my speakers. It was one of those surreal moments, sort of like hearing about those people who swear they get radio transmissions through the fillings in their teeth. I think I even looked under my desk. When I un-paused the Viddi Radio player, the Live365 radio station stopped. I tried it again and it happened again. Several times. Obviously there is still something left over from Live365, but at least it doesn’t seem to be causing too much trouble. Still.

I wouldn’t recommend Live365 for anyone after my experience. Even though I loved the radio player and all the stations. Really. I’m so annoyed. Why on God’s green earth would a company do something like that if they hope to entice you into actually subscribing to their expanded services? I wouldn’t subscribe now if they were the last media outlet left. And that really makes me mad because I LIKE their product! Idjits.

BUT. That’s not all. I still looked around for radio players and whaddya know, I finally ended up with WinAmp. Good old reliable WinAmp in all of its new and improved glory. Of course, one of the selling points was this: “Fixed critical security vulnerability!!” *Sigh* I haven’t had WinAmp on my computer in at least 4 years. It has changed. I like it. And it’s easily programmable. No, push buttons, but I’ll survive the small inconvenience. (Still really like the Viddi Radio player, though, and would unreservedly recommend it.)

During the course of hunting for radio stations that I like, I re-discovered Hearts of Space. They have had an hour long radio program on Public Radio for the last 20 something years. It’s usually broadcast late Saturday night around here, so I rarely hear it. But I’ve always really liked it. Hearts of Space promotes what they call electronic space music. Or ambient music. It’s not something I could actually describe other than relaxing and contemplative and serene. Alternative music, certainly. As the company’s founder says, there is excellent quality out there and then there are a lot of wannabes. He focuses on the best of the best each week and it really is good stuff. Indie musicians. Now, the company offers a free registration on their site (just email address and user name and password), after which you can play the current week’s program as often as you please. Until the next program goes up. (They also broadcast seven nights a week on XM Satellite Radio, Channel 77.) Or you can subscribe to the website (several different inexpensive packages) that permit you to listen to the current program plus any of the archived programs from the past 20 years. Sometime in the next couple of months, they’ll also offer a download service of the albums on their label. I haven’t subscribed, but I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the current program. Recommended. Highly.

Now I have oodles of tunes to do projects by. Cleaning closets was never this much fun.