Big Wheel

The EX71s are great-sounding low-end earbuds, but are made like crap. I've gone through several pairs, some lasting months, others days. The wires and connections are really fragile, and the wires' rubber coating wears off very easily. (My last pair went bad within the 30-day warranty period, but you have to spend $10 to send it back for a replacement.) My EX51s just went to shit on me - I think the wire on the left earbud broke somewhere, as only the right earbud works now. I've been sort of soured on Sony products and am trying not to buy any more, even though I rather liked the sound out of the EX51s. Anyone have any other recommendations than the ones covered here already?

Another unfortunate wrinkle to the story is that shortly after I moved out here my cousin broke up with her boyfriend and moved out of the house that I sent the boxes to. She's not on terrible terms with the ex, but she is finally changing her address on Monday. Does this mean that the box will not be delivered, but will instead be returned to sender (or worse) by the post office when it sees that she no longer lives at that address? I was under the impression that regular mail forwarding doesn't apply to packages, but I could be mistaken.

I sent a box of books to my cousin from Boston to San Francisco before I moved out here, around February 27 or 28. I believe I sent it either Media Mail or Bound Printed Matter. It's now March 25 and the box still hasn't arrived. Should I wait another week or more before presuming it's lost? (The check of mine that hasn't reached Chuck Nessa in 5 months is a different postal matter altogether. My apologies, Chuck - I'll finally have a permanent address in a week so I can finally place that CD order...)

I just spoke briefly with the roommate last night about this. It turns out that she actually handles a lot of the Japanese ITunes store. Honestly, I wouldn't hold out hope of ever seeing Japan-only tracks in the US store - apparently ITunes has strict rules about this, although I don't really understand why. Maybe one of the Japan-based board members can figure out how to send these tracks to us? I don't use ITunes, so I have no clue how it works, but I'm guessing it's not gonna be as simple as simply sending the files by email. Probably some sort of re-encoding from the analog signal will be necessary.

Dexter Gordon was Lars Ulrich's godfather!?

My probable new roommate works for Itunes. Maybe I can pump her for info.

I've seen 4 or 5 episodes so far. I think my favorite (warning: minor spoilers ahead) is the one where Larry gets roped into supporting his friend at her incest survivor's group, then realizes that he's the only non-survivor present and makes up a terrible incest story so he'll fit in. Or maybe the one where he brings the hooker to his dad's house, where they all smoke pot and the hooker starts teaching Larry's 80-something year-old dad how to talk like a gangsta.

http://www.nbc.com/Video/videos/snl_1439_natalieraps.shtml I haven't laughed so hard in months...

Dick Oatts may be underrated by the critics, but he certainly isn't underrated by the young alto players I know.

Way too slow. Someone else took the apartment an hour after I posted.

Well, it seems as though this might not be a problem. I can't set up a bank account for at least 2 business days anyway, and the guy doesn't accept Paypal credit card payments. So it looks like I'm in limbo no matter what...

I'm putting down a deposit on an apartment, and since I'm coordinating things from three time zones away the guy i'm renting from wants a deposit sent via Paypal (bank transfer only, since he doesn't have his account set up to accept credit cards). I'm a complete Paypal novice. The guy looks like he's legit based on a quick google search, but I'm still a little concerned about this transaction just because it's $200. On the off chance this guy is a scam artist, what recourse do I have to recover my money?

Epilogue: My last day at work was yesterday. (I accepted a new gig out in the Bay Area.) On Thursday we had a farewell lunch which turned into a roast as everyone recounted my various workplace shenanigans. The boss mentioned my interview and said that "it was only your knowledge of Tina Brooks that got you this job." My going-away present: the Hill, Patton, and Moncur Mosaic Selects.

Has anyone tried contacting yourmusic's customer service? I have what I think is a bad copy of Ready for Freddie--there's a terrible skip right in the middle of "Crisis", and there's no sign of a visible scratch. The problem was present from the first playback, when I ripped it to my mp3 player.

Since according to the 2000 Census the median age in the U. S. is 35.3 , the sampling error is huge and of a type that could explain the under-reporting of females if we assume that the more promiscuous females tend to be younger females . Not necessarily. Doesn't this just mean that nobody was surveying 8-year-olds?

Thanks - not a bad idea as it's looking like I am moving to San Francisco in a few weeks. Tonight is Mexican food though.

Oh man...definitely psyched to see all those old clips of MTV's The State on there.

Translation: "Music made by a young middle-class* white guy from California doesn't meet my authenticity threshhold, therefore I'm incapable of appreciating it on its own terms." *Actually, Hunter didn't grow up "middle-class" at all, according to his online bio.

I should add that there are a couple of BN CDs still there that I have never seen in a store before: One was the Noel Pointer reissue from 1999, I don't remember the other.

I happened on this yesterday. Everything is 50% off. Most of the jazz CD stuff has been picked over at this point, but there is still plenty of vinyl left over. For under $18, I managed to snag Dr. Michael White's New Year's Eve at the Village Vanguard and the Anderza and Mulligan WCC's. The store is on Mass Ave, in Central Square, about 1/3 of the way to Harvard Square.

Ingrid Jensen was part of the best concert I have ever been a part of. She was the guest artist at my high school big band's end-of-the-year concert, at the Lincoln Theater on Miami Beach back in 1998. The charts she picked out were absolutely amazing: Maria Schneider's "Last Season," a big band arrangement of "Vernal Fields," Dave Holland's "The Oracle" (arranged by someone German, I think--I played electric piano), the Diva version of "Caravan," "My Ideal"...I think we may have played "Marsh Blues" from Vernal Fields as a combo, also. Everybody somehow rose to the occasion and managed to pull the charts off. I ran into her at a show at CBGB earlier this year with Joel Frahm...she's gotten married recently and seems like she's doing really well, playing with lots of up-and-coming people.

Yes, and this is a good example of the real problem: a person in authority (you) has implicitly told your students that it is OK to do this. The students shouldn’t have to buy copies, but the school district sure as hell should. Or maybe if the school district is poor, it can just copy it now and pay for it later when they have the money? It seems to me that the problem in general has progressively become worse over the last 20 years. And it will continue to get worse unless we all stop kidding ourselves by rationalizing this type of behavior. This seems problematic from a utilitarian perspective, though. To me, it's pretty obvious that the greater good is served best by just going ahead and copying, given these constraints. I'd much rather have kids learning literature than the alternative, even if it means that they have to take money out of some faraway rights-holder's pocket. To put it somewhat differently: it's one thing to argue, as Jim does above, that just because some people are richer doesn't mean that we all have the right to the same cars or stereos or whatever. But it's quite another to argue that because some people are richer means that there are circumstances under which we don't all have the right to the same quality of education.

http://www.garbagescout.com

Weird...my roommate seems to think that the Globe Jazz Festival is no more, but nobody knows what happened to it. There is Berkfest out in Western Mass., but that's more jam-bandy/granola-crunchy than a jazz festival.

HOLY SHIT, PHIL LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!!!! Clearly you guys don't have to ride the Green Line B branch on a routine basis. That train is still about 45 minutes away from reaching Phil. (Beantown in-joke: the Green Line, especially the B train, is agonizingly slow.)