I worked in our headquarters in Decatur for 14 years. Then I worked out of a plant in Conyers for 3 years. The plant was closed, and I moved back to headquarters last year. For most of the plant workers, it meant their drive was going to be much longer (20 minutes instead of 5 minutes). For me it went from 30 minutes to 40 minutes. For a few people the drive ended up being shorter.

All of us were given a one-time “commuter bonus” to help compensate for the move and to encourage us not to quit. I thought it was ridiculous that management (or people who got a shorter drive) be included and even said so. I did not apply for the commuter bonus. I got it anyway, as did everyone in management.

I do have a longer commute, and I’ve considered getting XM Radio (satellite radio) to make for a more pleasant drive. A new iPod-ish portable radio, XM MyFi, is all the buzz at work. I have not purchased an iPod (people seem surprised by that) because I can listen to music at a computer when I want, and I don’t see myself wearing headphones to the store, driving to work, to the kid’s sporting events, or to church. These are the only time I leave the house. I’m not going to wear headphones in the yard. The chain-saw could cut the wires.

I have always known I would end up getting an XM Radio kind of service because I like the idea of letting someone else randomly serve up a variety of music, and I hate commercials.

I doubt I’ll get the portable, but I may look at getting the semi-portable version that can play in your car or at your desk. You may have seen it in the commercial where the guy is driving a little car into the building, up the elevator and to his desk, listening to XM all the way.

At the moment I am listening to XM Radio on the iMac. You can sign up for 36 hours to try it out. Currently playing Cedar Walton’s “I’m Old Fashioned” on the Jazz station. It’s great. I’m going to do this a lot whether I get XM or not. With Bloglines, you can create a disposable e-mail address to receive the access code! The disposable e-mail addresses are a way to receive newsletters, which I do with Clark Howard, Apple, and Motely Fool newsletters. I assume XM won’t send an access code to the same e-mail address twice, but with Bloglines, you can create as many temporary e-mail addresses as you need.

I thought this was Pat Benatar’s song. Nope. Yet another one The Boss wrote.

Kelly left a funny message on our phone. I wanted to record it and post it as an MP3. Seems like a simple enough task, but it wasn’t. Our iBook has a built-in Mic, but the only recording application is iMovie. I recorded the message as an iMovie soundtrack (QuickTime). iTunes has an advanced feature that will convert QuickTime “movies” into MP3s. I had not noticed that feature until I found this tip…

macosxhints – Use iTunes to create MP3 ringtones for cellphones

Jesus Christ Superstar, the DVD and soundtrack, get regular play in our household. Kelly and Mary Claire can sing many of the lyrics. We were trying to figure out the haunting words sung by the chorus at the end of Judas’ Death.

We found them: So Long Judas. Poor old Judas.

Carl Anderson was the amazing singer/actor who played Judas in the movie. He also played the role on broadway. Looking for more about him, I found he died on February 24th this year of leukemia. This is a good bio on Carl Anderson.

An article on the making of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.

Ted’s catalog method on his Archos is efficient, but it almost assumes you know what is in the catalog. It isn’t very easy to browse. I wanted to create a list of what was on the Archos to scan the contents.

When I archive files to CD, I use Catfish, a catalog utility, to create a text list of the directories and files. I then keep the text file in My Documents under an @Archives directory. That way, if I’m looking for an old file, I can search the archive text listings.

Since the Archos acts like a hard disk when hooked to the PC, I ran Catfish against it to generate this file.

Having the list in a blog makes it easier to see what is on the disk from wherever I may be. In fact, I just discovered it has a fine U2 collection and an @Downloads that is worth putting on shuffle play. (Kathy thinks having some downloads and listening to them in shuffle mode is the same as recording songs off the radio.)

Did Ted’s @Downloads lead to any music buying? I know in our case my Tom Waits collection of paid CDs has filled up thanks to Limewire test drives.

I also plan on buying all of Eva Cassidy’s CDs thanks to NPR and Limewire.

iTunes has a “Join CD Tracks” feature which is not intuitive (but in the help file.) I’ve used it for Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. Neither of those CDs have real breaks in the tracks. Each song flows one into the other.

If you highlight one or more tracks on a CD prior to importing, an Advanced menu choice is available: Join CD Tracks.

This creates a single large file. You lose the individual track names and numbers after import, but that’s a small price for breakless listening.

Took me a while to figure out how to share my iTunes music library over the web, but to have it password protected. (Don’t want to be a pirate, so I’m limiting listening to family.) My iTunes library is on a second volume. Had to set up an alias in the http config file and switch AllowOveride from None to All. This allowed an .httpaccess file in the music library directory to control access.

Alias /tunes “/volumes/Disk2/tunes”

<Directory “/volumes/Disk2/tunes”>

Options Indexes MultiViews

AllowOverride All <— was set to none in template

Order allow,deny

Allow from all

</Directory>

I really like Randy Newman’s musical, Faust. It sounds like a great show. Not sure I’ll ever get a chance to see it performed.

Looking for lyrics, I ran into this plot summary. I don’t know who typed it or where it came from, but it Turns out these are the liner notes, which sure help fill in some gaps. Makes me want to read the original.

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Where Greg goes to get chords…

Harmony Central??

I’ve used that site, and it’s predecessor OLGA, for years. I don’t have the patience to read sheet music. I just want to play songs. So I’ve learned the basic chords on both guitar and piano and go from there. If I want to play a song, I look on harmony-central to see if they have the chords, and as long as I know how the song goes, I can usually play it on either instrument just by knowing the chords. — GW