Goals 2018 -- June Recap

My goal, as you may recall, was to find an alternative to iTunes, since my old computer (which is only still around for the purpose of preventing me from putting iTunes on my new computer) is kicking the bucket.

My first attempt at an iTunes alternative was Floola.  I had read some pretty positive reviews, and I especially liked that it is a portable program -- meaning that it lives on the iPod, rather than on the hard drive of the computer.

However, after messing with it a bit, I got frustrated by the seeming inability to identify the podcasts that were already on my iPod and to download the new episodes. So I ditched Floola.

I looked at several other options, including MusicBee, Sharepod, and Songbird.

Eventually I settled on to MediaMonkey.  It appears to be a bit more user-friendly, but it is a desktop application.  (There is a portable version available, but that's more for moving your music between various computers than it is for running on an iPod.)  So now I have software on my computer which I'm not thrilled about.  It seems to be a little bit easier to use, though I'm still struggling to update my podcasts.

I'll keep working on it, but MediaMonkey is the winner so far.

Quote of the Day

"Always do right!  This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
 -- Mark Twain

Orfeo and Euridice

K and I went to see Orfeo and Euridice as my second show of the season, and it was another winner.  It is another classic story.  It's the tale of Orfeo, who must rescue his recently-deceased love Euridice from Hades.  There is one major caveat to his rescue mission: if he looks at her, she will die.  Again.  So that's not great -- and it gets worse when he breaks the rule and looks at her.  As predicted, she dies again.  Orfeo is so distraught that he is determined to kill himself rather than live without her.  It's a very Romeo and Juliet story -- until the god Amore resurrects them both, in an homage to the power of true love.  A twist happy ending!

The whole performance was well done, but the two things I liked best of all were the joyous ending and the dancing. Big Muddy Dance Company collaborated in the production of the show, rendering it a hybrid ballet-opera -- an unexpected combination which I quite enjoyed.

Oh, add a third thing that pleased me - all the leads were sung by women (including Orfeo). They killed it.

Before the show, we dined on a Greek-themes menu to accompany the show, including bleu-cheese-stuffed olives; watermelon, feta, and mint salad; pork kebabs (which had been de-kabob'd for packing purposes) with cucumber mint sauce; baklava; and Santorini Sunrise cocktails.  It was a lovely dinner in the much-needed air conditioning!

Happy Summer Solstice!

Today is the summer solstice (at least in the northern hemisphere). What a great opportunity to get outside and enjoy a bit of sunshine!

Happy Father's Day

Old TV is New Again

S has discovered a couple of old TV shows on Netflix that have been the source of much entertainment lately.  Most notably, we have been watching Cheers and Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I have been delighted by the humor and good clean fun provided by these classics.

Happy Birthday, K!

I'm a Ham

Here's a fun fact: S and I are now licensed ham radio operators!

Quote of the Day

"Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."
 -- Terry Tempest Williams

La Traviata

S and I had a lovely night for the first opera of the season, La Traviata.  It is one of Grandpa's favorites and just happened to be on his birthday, so we had dinner with G&G before the show.

I've planned out themed menus for each opera this season, and hopefully I can see them through!  I tailored the menu for La Traviata down a bit due to time and travel constraints, but my Italian/French menu included roasted tomato and goat cheese quiche, roasted red pepper tapenade with crackers, and French 75s to drink.  Unfortunately my dessert plan went the way of the dodo because I had (unrelatedly) recently made a blueberry pie, which is always better for a crowd than left sitting on the kitchen counter, so that very American dessert threw off my theme, but I'm over it.

The show itself was lovely.  It's a classic, and what a fun first act, and the first half of the second act.  The remaining portion of the second act and the third act were expectedly depressing.  All-in-all, a classic, stand-up performance with strong voices carrying the lead characters.

Goals 2018 -- June Edition

It's summer in St. Louis!  Does that mean it's time for my semi-annual unpacking of a single box?  I suppose it does.

However, in light of my annual effort to improve myself (not that finally unpacking isn't an improvement), I will also finally make the full switch-over from my old laptop to my "new" one.

New is in quotation marks, because the new one is over a year old at this point.  The old one barely still works -- it has no battery life and must be plugged in, it struggles to run a web browser, it overheats, it mysteriously throws up the blue screen of death...you get the picture.  The only reason it's still hanging around is because I didn't want to put the big, clunky music software that is iTunes on my new computer.  I have been trying to keep my new one as bloatware-free as possible, and iTunes is famous for slowing down your whole system and being impossible to uninstall even if you've decided you don't want it anymore.

The nail in the coffin has finally come though -- the old laptop will still recognize my iPod when I plug it in, but it won't sync (which means I can't update my podcasts -- the horror!).

I've been looking for alternatives to iTunes.  I understand that none of them are going to be wonderfully quick, streamlined programs.  They do a lot and manage a lot of big files.  But I've found some ones that look promising, and at least appear to be easier to wipe from your computer if you decide to go a different route.

The other cause for the delay is that I want to clean up my music files before I dump them onto a new computer.  Right now there are a lot of duplicates, a lot of mis-named files, a lot of empty file folders from which the music files themselves have been long-since deleted...again, you get the picture.  If I'm going to take the step of bogging down my "new" system with all this junk, I might as well at least start from a place of organization, don't you think?