stone age

thanks to verizon dsl, which disappeared for a solid two weeks and then returned in half-usable form, the pandora experiment is officially on hold until february.

what have i learned so far? i have learned that there's a disconnect between the importance placed on communication in the eyes of those who propose moving data to the cloud and in the decisions of those who provide actual internet service. i've decided that until such time as major internet outages become nightly news - like power outages - the cloud may not have enough lift to keep us afloat. i've learned that having unreliable internet speed may not leave you in the stone age, but it certainly separates you from the things you want to do on a daily basis.

reaching the first limits

well, after a couple hours listening to my vampire weekend station on pandora, i have hit the 'you can't skip more songs' limit for the first time. i've already banished regina spector and the beatles for different reasons, and skipped the arcade fire and phoenix for the same reason the beatles are gone. i suspect nothing much has changed, which means those songs will keep showing up until i tire of them. i tend only to like pandora for music i don't listen to otherwise. so spoon, wilco, and the killers work for me.

as if reading my mind, they are now playing the shins, which i will not banish and hope only to hear again after a good long delay.

0 for 1

my former roommate and i picked the playoff games to see who'd get more right. we were both wrong about the patriots, and he got all the other games right. i had everything wrong but the jets, which makes me 1 for 4 but really 0 for 1, since i was defeated for the week. sadly, i was feeling great about the packers as my chance to tie.

in addition to this nonsense, i have challenged the music site pandora to a bonkers contest. i plan to see whether i will be driven bonkers by the limited size of the playlists that it creates before i run out of monthly free usage. starting in the middle of the month, i will have to rely on there being a counter of some sort.