I’m a little over halfway through my 100 free songs from Dockers and eMusic (see first post). It’s been a challenge to find things I want and also a lot of work researching groups that I might like. Because they have so few artists you’ve heard of you pretty much have to stumble across them by finding a few bands and then seeing the recommendations based on what other people have downloaded who downloaded songs from that band. Then I go to AllMusic.com and see what they say about them and which albums they like and which are the best tracks from those albums. Then back to eMusic to see if they have that album. Sometimes they will only have early or later albums when the band wasn’t as marketable and was on a smaller label. For instance they have some very new Rickie Lee Jones but not her famous stuff from the 70’s and 80’s. Still, I downloaded a nice cover she does of The Beatles’ “For No One,” which I’d never heard of but sounds better than the original.
Year: 2004
Government Speed
With my birthday coming up next month, I mailed in my car registration on Thursday. Today (Saturday) I got my new Wildflower tag. That means the post office delivered the registration and plate in one day each and Dekalb County processed my tag order the same day they got it.
Buying this plate gives money to the DOT to plant decorative weeds in the median, looks better than the regular Georgia tag, and matches my black car.
AdSense Starts Making Cents
The battery on my cordless phone hasn’t been lasting very long lately, so it is time for new one. I knew Best Buy had them but for some reason I looked around on the internet and found batteries.com. They sell the battery I need for $5 less than Best Buy ($9 vs $14) and there is free shipping. As I was registering with them and placing the order they asked where I had heard about them. Then I remembered that I think they were one of the AdSense advertisers on my iPod battery pack page. So I thought I should click through from there and get the battery. I’m glad I did because the advertisement had a code that gave me 10% off my purchase!
Geeky stuff: I wound up upgrading to the NiMH battery instead of the standard NiCad battery after seeing that it offered 1500 milliamp-hours instead of 700 for the NiCad, has no memory effect, and is better for the environment. However it cost me $17 instead of $9. I found a website that said it wouldn’t be a problem substituting NiMH and in fact it was recommended.
BTW: Last month my AdSense account racked up $3.42. My all-time revenue is $15.89. Not bad for nothing. See first entry.
eMusic
I bought some Dockers this weekend and it included “100 free music downloads” which turns out just to be a trial month with eMusic, a subscription download service. Previously McDonald’s had given away a free song on Sony’s download service, but I investigated that and found out that they used some proprietary music format that only Sony players would recognize. So I never bothered. But 100 free songs sounded pretty good since on iTunes that would be worth $99!
So I looked into it to make sure it was worth it. Interesting. They let you download true MP3 formatted songs with no copyright restrictions and recorded at high variable bitrates for best quality. They don’t have as many songs as iTunes, only 250,000. So what’s the catch?
The Pine Cone Game
Susan’s dog, Beacon, invented a game they play when they go on walks. Beacon will find a pine cone, pick it up, walk with it for a little while, and then drop it. In a few steps Susan will catch up to it and kick it. By that time Beacon has stopped and, facing Susan, is set up like hockey goalie to try and stop the pine cone. Whether it gets past Beacon or not she gets the pine cone in her mouth again and walks with it. The game starts again as she carries it for a few seconds and then drops it on the street for Susan to kick again. Beacon only plays this game (or with pine cones) while they are on walks because really it only works on walks. And her other dog, Belle, never plays the game. If a pine cone isn’t available sometimes Beacon will use a magnolia pod. After she does the game five times or so, she will stop playing and that’s the end of the game. This didn’t take any training, it’s just something Beacon does. It’s a great adpatation of fetch except that Beacon knows she doesn’t have to bring the pine cone back, just drop it and Susan will catch up.