3/22/07

Streaming audio:
Yesterday (Wednesday, March 21; Bach’s birthday) I got the streaming-audio feed from the classical-music radio-station in Rochester we listen to, WXXI, to play on this here rig.
No doubt this will prompt the usual tiresome blustering from West Bridgewater about advancing age, wrong century, whatever.
But I got it to play long ago; and every time since it’s wanted me to download a RealPlayer.
I got it to play once — who knows why it couldn’t find that RealPlayer. I already had at least five RealPlayers, yet it wanted me to download another for every attempt.
It may have worked recently. WXXI opens their stream-feed with a solicitation-promo. It lasts about 30 seconds, and then switches to the audio-stream. I may have been giving up before the stream-feed.
But yesterday there was a new angle. No RealPlayer; it wanted me to configure iTunes.
Well, okay; iTunes was a downloaded install of an Apple app — free.
So now the WXXI audio-stream resides in my iTunes library. Double-click it and I get the WXXI audio-stream. (No monkeyshines.)
With RealPlayer I had to manually crank the WXXI-URL into it and enter.
Why should I go to all that trouble just to play an audio-stream — especially when background-music is so distracting I can’t play it? (I have to quit the iTunes.)
Thank ya iTunes; thank ya OS-X. Boom-zoom!
With iTunes I can also construct playlists; so that perhaps some day I can reconstruct the fabulous audio-cassette I had of ‘50s rock-n-roll: “strummin’ to the rhythm that the drivers made;” “Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on;” “Let’s go to the hop,” and “a-WOP bobbalew-bop, ba-LOP-BAM-BOOM!”

New apps:
Yesterday I 1) ordered a new OS-X Tiger (10.4 I think; I currently have 10.2), and 2) downloaded a new OS-X compatible Netscape browser (7.2 as opposed to my old 7.0).
The Tiger cost $129 (cue Bluster-King), and apparently will ship as discs. I.e. it wasn’t a download; which was what I was expecting.
Well, I’m not in a hurry. 10.2 is fine for the moment.
And who knows; downloading an OS-X might have taken hours.
Netscape was a download, another .dmg. Double-clicking on that instituted a StuffIt expansion, after which the new Netscape installed on the desktop.
I thereafter moved it, and FireFox, into the Applications-folder.
I then made an alias (Windoze “shortcut”) to that new Netscape and dragged it into the dock.
That left two Netscape aliases in the dock: one to the old 7.0 and one to the new 7.2.
But this morning (Thursday, March 22, 2007) when I fired up this here rig only the one to 7.2 was resident. Who knows what happened to the one to 7.0.
Supposedly the 7.2 would upgrade the 7.0, and grab all my bookmarks.
Looks like it grabbed some; but not all.
So I started reconstructing new bookmarks, but then found that it had already grabbed quite a few — it’s just that they were in folders no longer on the toolbar.
So it’s a mess, but I guess I don’t have to reconstruct bookmarks from scratch.
FireFox apparently upgraded too. The OS-X has a software-update search, and in the case of FireFox the update was automatic.
I still need to crank bookmarks into FireFox. So far I have the blog(s) and also MyFamblee.com.
It looks like I may start fiddling MyFamblee with FireFox. It’s the same size on my monitor as Netscape; and we were thinking it might be smaller — Linda’s was smaller at first, but that was on her laptop.
So I might make MyFamblee the FireFox home-page. I was thinking I’d make the blog-publish the home-page, but not if I fiddle MyFamblee with FireFox.

Diplomacy as usual:
This morning we were to take Sabrina from the Honeoye Falls Veterinary Hospital to Mendon Veterinary Hospital — as a referrel for an ultra-sound; since they couldn’t do ultra-sounds at Honeoye Falls Veterinary Hospital.
“So where is the Mendon Veterinary Hospital?” Linda asked.
“Simple,” the girl said. “Just go back into the village and turn north on Route 65. Then take 65 all the way into Mendon.”
“Whoa-whoa; wait a minute!” I shouted. “65 doesn’t go through Mendon.”
The girl corrected herself. “65 to 251, and then 251-east into Mendon.”
”Yep,” I said. “251 goes through Mendon.”

“The moving finger having writ moves on.......”
We had to give up on Sabrina.
The ultra-sound determined she had inoperable cancer of the liver.
So “the end.” No sense bringing her home to die — not when she’s so zonked she hardly knows who we are.
A tragedy — another “my dog;” although not as much as Tracy.
But she made over 11, and had a wonderful time the other day.
A really nice dog. Now Killian is the “only dog;” and I think he’s wondering why Sabrina is gone.

The “Bluster-King” is my all-knowing macho younger brother in West Bridgewater, Ma.; near Boston.

MyFamblee.com (actually it’s MyFamily.com) is the location of our family’s web-site.

“Sabrina” was one of our two dogs. Both are “rescue”-dogs; Sabrina was seven when we got her, and was the older of the two.