life as a dog…

I signed up for XM radio back in November 2001.  A friend of mine had it and I fell in love with it immediately.  A lengthy and deep playlist.  No DJ chatter.  A good price ($9.99 at the time).  There were commercials at that time, but they were few and far between.
Yes, I am one of the early adopters…and am without a doubt one of your longest running subscribers.

A few years later, I picked up a portable XM radio (the Inno) for those times I was traveling.

When Sirius and XM decided to merge, I was a little hesitant, but figured it would be ok – they were close to identical in programming, so how much different could it be?  They promised to not raise prices for three years.

How wrong I was.

First, the company weaseled around the “not raise prices” by jacking up the price of the second radio, using the excuse, “we promised not to raise the base rate of the FIRST radio.”  Nice loophole.  I immediately cancelled my second radio.  (Not to mention the decision by Sirius to start charging for online access.)  Before this change in pricing, you were getting $20 per month out of me.  After that, you were only getting $13 out of me (instead of what you hoped would have been $26).

Second, the programming has gone down the tubes.  The playlists have become increasingly thin and there are way too many channels based on a single artist.

Third… the DJ chatter has gotten out of hand.  One of my favorite channels on XM was Fred.  You decided to kill Fred and put First Wave from Sirius in it’s place.  That in itself wouldn’t have been a big deal.  Except for this DJ named Madison.  I have heard her on several occasions basically berate the listeners.  She has read email on the air telling her she talks too much and her reply was in essence, “I’m here, you’re not… I’m going to talk as much as I want…deal with it.”  What a great way to treat your listeners.

Fourth, and the final straw, is this new “Music License Fee” charge.  This is a complete and utterly ridiculous charge.  You CLAIM that you are not raising the base price.  But please explain this to me…

You were originally including the licensing fee in the $12.99 monthly fee.  Now you have itemized it outside of the monthly fee.  But the monthly fee hasn’t changed – in effect, you HAVE RAISED the base rate.  Also, the music licensing fee you pay was 6% in 2008.  In 2009, that went up to 6.5%.

So basically, you were paying around 78 cents for my $12.99 subscription in 2008.  In 2009, that went up to 84 cents.  And yet you are charging me $1.99???

So lets see… before this rate hike, I was basically paying $12.99 for service (with 78 cents of that going to royalties).  Now you expect me to pay you $14.99.  Royalties on $12.99 should only be 84 cents.  Royalties went up 6 cents, but I’m paying $2 more.  Where is that extra $1.94 going?  Maybe into Mel’s pockets with this new compensation package he got?

When will you be adding a “Fuel surcharge?”  I mean, you have to spend money to heat the offices, after all.

Add me to the 400,000 subscribers you lost last quarter.  I cancelled my subscription to XM Radio today.  I will get by with Slacker, Pandora, my iPod and yes… even terrestrial radio.

I’ve mentioned this before.  I really hate Yahoo’s “news” on their front page.  There are a few things that really bug me about it.

First is their “featured” stories.  They always have some sort of entertainment headline that should elicit a “who cares?” response from EVERYONE.  The first time it really bugged me was with the headline “Survivor Richard Hatch getting by in jail.”  Really?  That’s news?  Beyond his family members and maybe his friends, who cares?  It’s not like he was in some maximum security prison, anyway.

The second is misleading headlines.  The latest I saw was “New threat to iPhone?”  It was a link to the new Microsoft Zune.  The first thing one should notice is that it’s not even a phone.  So how exactly does that make it a threat to the iPhone?  If they had said “iPod” or “iPod Touch” I would understand.  But iPhone?  Come on, Yahoo.  I guess based on their track record, I shouldn’t be surprised.

A third thing that bugs me?  They repeat stories over and over and over.  Maybe it’s just that I see it on a real news website a week or two before Yahoo finally posts it…I dunno.  But still…once is enough, Yahoo.

I haven’t been to Wisconsin in a while, let alone Madison.  It’s another 3 days quick trip:

• Tuesday: Fly to Madison.
• Wednesday: Event Day.
• Thursday: Return to DC.

I like Madison.  It’s a small town and doesn’t seem to be ridiculously conservative.

Day 1 – Tuesday

I had to change my outbound flight a couple days ago – that really added to the cost of the trip…about $500 when I include the rental car addition (just a few hours added made it a full day rental, which doubled the price).

I feel sorry for all those people who spent some $350 on the “Clear” program.  When I got to the airport, I passed by one security checkpoint that had a sign up… “As of 6/25/09, Clear is no longer operating.”  Scary to think that about a year ago I was wondering if signing up was worth it or not.  That question has now been answered.  I checked their website while I was sitting at the airport.  Yep…looks like Clear is gone everywhere.  I can understand that.  Why pay $350 a year for a service that was only available at a handful of airports?  If it were available everywhere, I can easily see business travelers using it constantly.  Though that may have just rendered it just another security lane.

I read a story while sitting at the airport that made me kind of take notice.  Southwest had a flight that made an emergency landing in West Virginia.  The flight was going from Nashville to Baltimore.  That may have been the same flight I flew a couple weeks ago.  It would be interesting to see if it were the same aircraft.

Madison isn’t that big of a city.  Just from what I saw the first evening, I think I would like it here.  The airport is nice and small (maybe 10 gates?).  Getting out of the airport was easy.  Driving around the city at 4pm reminded me of driving around DC on a Sunday morning… I would LOVE to have a rush hour like that again.

When the job is finished tomorrow, I plan on driving around taking pictures.  I know there is a church nearby that Frank Lloyd Wright designed.  Maybe I’ll head over there.

Day 2 – Wednesday

I’m going to try something new today.  Posting a picture that I took today.  (Explanation of this one below.)

The event was today.  I arrived at 8:00am for a 4:00pm event.  Normally I would wonder why we all showed up so early.  I guess it was the hospital’s request.  Some of us have not been to this hospital before and had to go to a “Contamination Orientation.”  Just in case someone got into some fluids they shouldn’t.  Unfortunately, we were also informed that Wisconsin has the highest number of reported cases of Swine Flu.  Great.

This is the 7th time I’ve done this kind of event.  It’s pretty routine now.  They did throw in an extra piece of equipment this time, but it wasn’t too much of a hassle.

After the event I was able to get a little bit of camera time in.  I made it to the Frank Lloyd Wright church (the Unitarians) and get a couple of pictures.  Unfortunately, the sun had already gotten to a position that wasn’t the most conducive to photos.  When I was done there I headed toward the state capital thinking I could get some pictures there.  Traffic was horrible trying to get to the center of town (I’m sure it doesn’t help that the center of town is on an isthmus).  There was some sort of event going on, because the streets closest to the capital were closed and tons of people were walking toward it with lawn chairs.

I got back to the my hotel and what did I see?  Yep…the weinermobile.

Day 3 – Thursday

I had an early flight today… I would normally not do that, but since there were no direct flights, I had to go early to ensure that I’d be able to pick up Harley today.

Apparently those people in Michigan are pretty hearty people…hence the signs on the restroom wall.

My hotel (Staybridge Suites in Madison) failed to give me my wake up call this morning.  I let them know when I checked out.  It wasn’t a big deal, as the alarm clock did wake me.  But I have had times where the alarm clock failed to wake me.

After this trip, I have to add another airport to my favorites list.  Madison is a great airport to fly to.  Obviously, it’s small.  There are only 13 gates.  You can walk the entire concourse in about 5 minutes.  The rental cars are about 100 yards from the baggage claim.  The drive into downtown takes maybe 10 minutes – through city streets.  No highways whatsoever.  The only downsides, I guess, would be that because it’s so small, it’s mostly puddle jumpers that land at Madison.  Mostly.  When I flew in, it was on a DC-9 (or whatever Boeing is calling them now).  I wouldn’t call that a puddle jumper at all, but it is a small aircraft.  Flying out was on an Embraer, I believe.  It wasn’t a prop plane, but it was still small.  Any aircraft that has only one seat on either side of the aisle is a small plane.

The other downside (and this goes for what I would guess is 95% of the airports out there) is no free wireless.  I’m sorry, but I refuse to pay $10 to get online.  Thank God I have my wireless card for work.  It’s slow…but it doesn’t cost $10 for what amounts to about 30-45 minutes of online time.  I know there are airports out there (McCarren in Vegas for example) that provide free wireless.  I understand it’s a way for them to make money…but I still they should provide free access as a courtesy.  Traveling by air is already a pain in the ass… why not make one thing a little nicer for us?  Same thing goes for hotels, by the way.  My hotel had free access.  That’s something I appreciate.

On my way to Madison I had to fly through Detroit.  That airport is a pain.  They’ve made the terminal so damn long that they have a tram within the terminal itself…not to get you from terminal to terminal…but to get you from one end to the other.  Even Atlanta doesn’t have that.

Flying back to DC took me through Cincinnati.  Of all the large airports, I’d say that Cincinnati is probably my favorite to have to fly through.  It’s laid out pretty well and is easy to get from one gate to the other.  That being said…  My flight to DC was supposed to go out of gate B16.  That’s what Flight Tracker said when I checked in Madison.  That’s what it said as soon as we landed in Cincinnati.  That’s what the agent said as we got off the plane.  I went to B16.  Sorry… your flight is going out of B30.  Why do they not tell people these things?  It’s not like the plane wasn’t already at B30 when we landed from Madison.

Post

I think my next trip is to Kansas.  It will be the first trip where I post just once at the end instead of posting every day.  If it seems to work better that way, I’ll stick to it.  I don’t think posting every day is that necessary.  Plus… it gets difficult when I have other things I need to get done while I’m on the road.

Wauconda??  Sounds like a trip to the boondocks, like Festus, Missouri a few years ago.  But it’s not quite that bad.  It’s about 30 minutes from downtown Chicago.  Yet another quick and dirty trip (aren’t 90% like that?).

• Wednesday: Fly to Chicago, drive to Wauconda.
• Thursday: Event day.
• Friday: Drive to Chicago.  Fly home.

Day 1 – Wednesday:

It’s bad enough that I’m past 40 now.  I don’t feel like 42, but that’s what the calendar says (well…almost…42 comes at the end of the month).

Recently, I’ve seen a few things have told me I’m old.

First, the convention down at the convention center this past week was for AARP.  It dawned on me…in about 8 years, I can join AARP.  Sheesh.

Another…today an advertisement came on the TV that…well…told me I’m old.  You see all these ads about life insurance for old people – they usually say something like, “if you are between the ages of 60 and 75″ or something like that.  No…not this one.  This one started out with graphics that said, “If you were born between 1923 and 1968.”  Yes…1968.  It’s the Heritage Plan.  They don’t come right out and say it’s life insurance, but the fine print says it is.  The scary part, though…is when they started talking about funerals! Yup…funerals.  I seriously hope I don’t need to be worrying about that right now.

And yet another…  I was watching some show and an ad came on for Time-Life.  Time-Life of course, has all the music series compilations.  This time the compilation was “Hard and Heavy.”  Basically, it was all the hair bands of the 80s.  Poison, Winger, etc.  Brett Michaels himself introduced the collection.  How sad is it that the music from my “formative” years is just about to start hitting 30 years old…