Penuriousness Is Precious

How much are you going to spend on Christmas this year? Every year the news organizations send reporters out to ask us this same question, and whether we say more or less the net result is always the same. When the holidays are over the analysts tally the scores and announce that, once again, we spent more this year than the last. Dire predictions about dangerous amounts of debt and overextended consumers and bursting bubbles soon follow, and then, again, as always, we refinance our homes and raise our credit limits, and next year we're off to the races all over again.

And that's just the way it is. No, it's not like the old days when our mothers and fathers scrimped and saved and knew the value of a dollar. In fact, these days we don't save at all. According to the statistics, we now spend more than we earn and the savings rate has actually gone negative. To which I say "So what?". Of course our mothers and fathers scrimped and saved, but that's only because they didn't have all this cool stuff to buy. When they went shopping they went to Sears, for crying out loud. Believe me, if they had been alive today they'd be spending like a bunch of drunken sailors too.

Which brings me to my point. Namely, all these people who preach austerity and responsibility and living within your means don't know anything about real people or the way the real world works. The fact is that from the time an American child leaves the womb till the day he lies down in his grave, he is under constant study and scrutiny by marketing experts, media experts, retailing experts, doctors, psychologists and all manner of high-level advisory types whose sole aim is to analyze and poke and prod to find just what it is that will turn people into happy spenders. It's a pitched battle between an army of experts with million dollar budgets and one poor bastard with a credit card, and that poor, dumb bastard doesn't stand a chance.

That's why the news organizations cover the same story every year. It's like the war news, and everybody knows that the future of the country depends on the guys with the big guns coming out on top. As soon as Thanksgiving rolls around, editors across the country start to fidget.

"Why aren't they spending? What's wrong with them? Quick, Ed, send a crew down there and find out what's going on. What's that? What'd you say? Best Black Friday ever? God, it's great to be an American."

So with that in mind, let me just say don't be a cheapskate and have a festive holdiay season. I don't really have any great gift ideas for you. Clothes are always nice. Nothing makes a person feel interesting and new like a fashionable wardrobe, unless you're buying for a geek, that is. In that case forget the clothes and go for something like a portable GPS for the car. They're hideously expensive and not really useful unless you spend a lot of time driving in strange places, but they're very geeky.

In a somewhat related story, Louis Uchitelle of the New York Times wrote an interesting article about wealth in America. Everyone knows that over the last couple of decades the rich have been getting richer, but what does that mean? Well, apparently it means that nowadays there are the wealthy, and then there are the super-wealthy. According to Uchitelle, 1 in every 845 Americans now has an annual salary of $2 million or more per year (here in the Silicon Valley I believe that figure would be more like 1 in every 8.45. When people here buy "his and her "Lamborghini's that doesn't mean they're overspending - that just means they have to go upstairs and find their checkbooks).

So what does that mean for the other 844 who aren't earning $2 million per year? It means we've gotta get the limits raised on our credit cards, that's what. How else can keep up? Just because we aren't earning 7 figure incomes it doesn't mean we have to let other people know that, and as long as we spend like we have 7 figure incomes how is anyone going to find out?

That's my philosophy anyways. No, actually it's not. My philosophy is that if you're going to spend thousands of dollars on things you don't need, then you better be earning a 7 figure salary. In other words, if you can't downgrade your spending then you better upgrade your earnings. I think that's a more realistic approach than all this austerity and simple living being preached nowdays. What good is a National Don't Buy Anything Day, if you're only going to spend twice as much tomorrow?

Turning back to the article, you can see what this Dr. Glassman did. He was a medical doctor with a perfectly good practice, but he decided that he needed to upgrade his earnings if he was ever going to be super-wealthy, and that's just what he did. He said goodbye to curing cancer and easing suffering and healing the sick and comforting the afflicted and all that, and went to Wall Street. Now there are no sick people to bother him and the money comes in by the bucketful. I love the part in the article where he goes back to his 20th college reunion and sees these poor suckers he went to Med School with, who even he says they were 10 times smarter than him. There they are, still caring for the sick and doing good deeds, making a comfortable living while he's raking in the big bucks and getting filthy rich over at Merrill Lynch.

I say let that be a lesson to all you kids out there. Doing good works for your fellow man may be a noble pursuit, but it won't get you a fancy sports car or a mansion in the hills or a trophy wife, and if you want to spend money on things you don't need and you aren't a movie star or a musician or a professional athelete, then you better find your way to Wall Street.

And that's my Christmas message to you.

The Hunter

The hunter crouches in his blind
'Neath camouflage of every kind
And conjures up a quacking noise
To lend allure to his decoys
This grown-up man, with pluck and luck
Is hoping to outwit a duck
-Ogden Nash

Exactly how do you get a squirrel out of the house? In this blog I've pondered over many of the great questions and thought heavily on many of the great issues of the day, but have never considered this particular problem before. That is, not until I found a squirrel in my house. Not in the attic, mind you, but in my kitchen.

I know a squirrel in the house would not be a problem for some folks. They just love the little critters. "Oooh, just wook at their puffy wittle cheeks and their bushy wittle tails." They go to the park to feed them, and long to hold them and pet them and catch all of their plaguelike diseases. "Ah, awen't they cute. We just wove the wittle squirrels, don't we? Yes we do. We just wove 'em to death."

Different story when they decide to set up household in your living room, though. Suddenly, those "cute wittle squirrels" start to look a lot more like big, fuzzy rodents with serious adjustment problems. Believe me, when you enter a room to find everything that used to be high on the shelves now littered across the floor, and little bits and pieces of that apple you stupidly left out the night before now trailed among the generous droppings of your uninvited guest, then they stop being cute real fast.

So how do you get rid of one once he has gotten in your house? We called up the Animal Control people and asked them. They told us to open a window and he'll leave eventually and good luck and don't call us anymore, ok? Well thank you very much, but I'm not sure opening a window will work. It might, assuming the squirrel is stupid, which they're not. Why would a squirrel leave a place that is warm and sheltered, with plenty of food and water, for the harsh winter weather outside? The answer is he wouldn't, so scratch that plan Mr. Animal Control person. Thank you for being so helpful.

Instead of opening a window, I fired up the computer and did some googling, and lo and behold I found the answer. In case you're wondering, here's how you get a squirrel out of the house ( just click here to go straight to the source).

The first step is to be patient. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day, so vini, vidi, vici and vox populi and all that. The bottom line is you're going to need patience. Remember, even though that squirrel is smarter than you, he's still pretty dumb. What I'm trying to say is don't expect the squirrel to fall into your clever little trap right away. Let him get hungry first, which takes time and also takes me to step two.

Isolate the S.O.B. Try as best you can to restrict the squirrel to one or two areas of the house. You can do this by closing doors or moving some furniture or whatever. Just make sure that you block him in good, and then deny him food and water. We did this by blocking off the kitchen and the upstairs area and isolating the squirrel in the family room and living room areas. We then removed every last bit of food and water, and even though squirrels are notorious for caching their food, we knew that sooner or later he was going to start getting hungry. That all led to step three.

Buy a squirrel trap. Now wait a minute, wait a minute. Before you start getting yourself up in arms and calling your local PETA representative, the squirrel trap I got is from Havahart, and it is totally humane and non-lethal. It consists of a cage with a trap door on one end and a trigger plate at the other. You bait the cage near the trigger, the animal enters the cage, steps on the trigger plate, and the trap door closes trapping the animal inside. No blood is spilled and no injury of any kind is done to the animal.

So we baited the trap and set it up near one of his favorite activity zones (as shown by the presence of numerous pellets). Then we waited. One day, two days, three days, and on and on and on, until the other evening when I walked into the house and noticed that the trap had been sprung and...

No squirrel inside. The little b*%$!#d had taken the bait and set off the trap, but still managed to make his escape. Ok, apparently this squirrel has an IQ. The kind that spends his leisure time watching PBS and reading The Atlantic Monthly. He must be getting hungry, though, so I baited the trap again and waited. Then, this afternoon, we got us a squirrel. All my patience and planning paid off.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.... Who's the genius now, Mr. Squirrel? Yeah, that's right. I may look dumb but I can still outsmart your average bushy-tailed rodent.

Now I've got him sitting in a cage outside. After all the trouble he's given me I always thought that when I finally got a hold of him I'd ring his little neck, but when I saw him sitting in the cage looking so helpless and pathetic, I had a change of heart. The exterminator people say the best thing to do with a problem squirrel is to put him down, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I mean he's so cute.

So, tomorrow I'm going up into the hills and find a nice spot to open the cage and set him free. The exterminator people said this isn't a good idea because squirrels are very territorial and if I set him free he's probably going to starve anyways because no other squirrel will have him for a neighbor. I guess that's probably true, but what else am I going to do? I'm not going to release him back into the yard and take a chance that he'll find his way back into the house. At least up in the hills he'll have a fighting chance. Live free or die, right?

Geez, now I feel so guilty.

Things Ain't What They Used To Be

Greeting from L.A., where the air is warm and the sun is shining. You may be wondering what I'm doing down here, but I doubt it. Let's just say that after suffering with the flu for the last couple of weeks, I was ready for a change of scenery, albeit a brief one.

So here I am at the Hilton (where they've got some nice, fast Wifi, by the way) and glad to be out of my sickroom. When I got here I realized that this particular hotel is very close to the very hospital where I was born, or at least to where the hospital used to be before they closed it down. Kind of strange for me to have travelled so far just to get back to where I started. I have no intention of telling you where that is, by the way, so sorry all of you identity thieves out there; you are just going to have to find some other rube to appropriate personal information from (try Myspace.com).

But yeah, I was born just a few miles from here, and I was thinking that I'm probably the only person left alive that was there in the delivery room that day. I'm not positive but I'm willing to bet that the doctors and nurses have all passed on, and I know my mother and father are gone, so that just leaves me. There's a morbid thought for you. Kind of makes me feel like a little speck of dust or something.

Anyways, you don't want to hear about that. You're reading this blog because you want the hard news, the plain truth, the straight poop, the real...aw, forget it. To tell the truth I've been sick and haven't really been following the news much. I hear the Dems won an election and the President is over in Asia winning hearts and minds, but other than that I seem to be a little behind.

No wait, there was some big tech news last week. Something about a $600 video game machine and people waiting in line for days and getting into fistfights and shooting each other and rioting and stuff like that. Geez, and then the news that a lot of these people weren't even buying the thing for themselves but were putting them up for sale on Ebay and getting 2 or 3 times what they paid for it. Man, does anyone remember when video games were just toys? Well, not anymore. They're big business, and I feel pretty stupid for not standing in line and getting one of those machines myself. What a racket. Spend $600 and then turn right around and flip it for a $2,000 or $3,000 profit. Beats the hell out of stocks and bonds, that's for sure.

In a somewhat related story, here's an interesting article by Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee. It's about the midterm elections and the demographics of who did and didn't vote in California. What Dan found, basically, was that the California elections were decided by a bunch of old white guys. 75% of the ballots, it turns out, were cast by non-Latino whites over 45 years of age. I say the story is somewhat related because you might be asking why it is that so few young people bothered to go to the polls and cast ballots, and the answer is obvious:

They were all camped out in front of Best Buy waiting to get their PS3's. War? Jobs? Government corruption? What are they compared with high-res graphics and a built-in hard drive.

The other big tech announcement from Sony that might have escaped your attention was their new PRS-500, which was finally released for sale earlier this month. This is that new portable ebook reader that I've blogged about in the past. They had them for sale at the local Fry's so I went down there a couple of weeks ago to have a look. Sorry it's taken so long to get the details out, but like I said, I was sick.

The PRS-500 is about the same height and width as a Gideon's Bible, though much thinner. I'd guesstimate it's around 1/2" thick, maybe a little less, and it weighs in at a svelte 9 ounces. At that size it's too big to fit in your pocket, but will fit nicely in a backpack or purse (and if I ever decide to start carrying a purse I'll be sure to buy one). Okay, a big purse, maybe. It might be a little tight trying to get it into a clutch, but it should slip quite nicely into a nice big leathery handbag. It runs on a rechargable battery, and Sony claims each charge is good for approx. 7500 page turns.

The display uses a technology called electronic ink, which works off of a principal very similar to the good ol' Etch-A-Sketch. The page is drawn on the screen and then remains there until you turn the page, at which time the screen is erased and a new screen is drawn. This differs from the LCD technology used in most portable displays which needs a constant of draw electricity to keep it's screen refreshed. The bottom line is a very crisp looking screen and excellent battery life.

In addition to displaying ebooks, the PRS-500 can also display text files, Microsoft Word documents, PDF files, and most common graphics file formats. It can also play MP3's, although I assume that would be to the detriment of long battery life.

In comparing it to other ebook readers such as the Microsoft Reader or Mobipocket, however, the PRS-500 has two notable deficiencies. The first is the lack of a built-in dictionary. For an experienced ebook user that is a deal killer right there. If there is an unfamiliar word in the text we want to highlight it and get an instant definition, and there is simply no way to do that with the PRS-500. The screen, though incredibly sharp and clear, is passive with no way to interact with the text.

The second deficiency is related to the first, and that is the PRS-500's lack of a highlighting and note-taking capabilities. Again, if you can't interact with the text then there is no way to highlight or add notes. That's not a feature I ever use, but I know there are people (e.g. students and academics) who do.

Actually, I should have said that there are three deficiencies, with the third being the price. At $349, this device is simply too expensive. If Sony were able to sell this thing for under $200 then it might stand a chance, but $350 is a lot to spend for book reader. I know because I wanted to buy one, but not unless the price comes down.

On the plus side, the Sony ebooks are quite affordable. I compared prices at Sony's online book store with prices at ebooks.com and mobipocket.com and The Connect Store's prices all seem to be cheaper than the competition's. I also found quite a few titles available at The Connect Store which were not available elsewhere, so Sony does seem to have a bit of an edge in terms of price and selection. However, that doesn't mean the selection is good, it's just better.

So there you have it. That's my little tech review. If you don't want to trade in your car on a new PS3 then you might want to consider a PRS-500 instead.

I guess.

Anyway, that's all I have for tonight. I was thinking of heading over the the Huntingdon Library tomorrow morning for a little cultural enrichment. That's where the original Blue Boy is, you know. Yeah, I know. You thought the original was hanging in your Aunt Martha's parlor, didn't you? Sorry, but I'm betting that one is just a copy. Anyways, my Aunt Sunny took me to see the Blue Boy when I was a little kid, and for some reason I just have a hankering to go see it again. Don't know why, but since I'm in the area I thought I might as well go. In case you didn't know, The Huntingdon Library was founded by Henry Huntingdon, nephew of railroad magnate and Southern Pacific Railroad founder Collis P. Huntingdon, who once famously said "Anything's that's not nailed down is mine. And anything I can pry loose is not nailed down."

And then they threw his sled in the fire and that was the end of that.

Poor Jud is Dyin'

You probably don't care how sick I've been. In fact, I know you don't care. You don't care about the pain or the drama or the angel of death hovering over my bed. I realize that. Sickness is something each of us goes through alone, and no one wants to hear about our suffering or share in our misery. It's just a cruel and heartless world we live in, full of hideous, uncaring people.

On the other hand, if I were in your place and you were about to unburden yourself on me for the next half hour with your tales of sickness and woe then I'm sure I'd feel the same, though unlike you I'd at least try to stifle my yawns and feign a little interest. Be that as it may, I promise I won't bore you with a blog about how I've been on my back for the last four days, my body wracked with pain and myself only inches away from death's doorstep. Nope, you're too busy with your own problems to think about me so I'll just skip on to the next subject.

Which is...?

Oh, that's right. I haven't got a subject. It's the fever, you know. Haven't been able to think straight. I've got an idea, why don't you watch some TV while I think of something. I'll be right back.

"Hello, and welcome to the show. Joining me today is Ted Turner. Mr Turner, thank you for being with us."

"It's my pleasure. And call me Ted."

"Ok, Ted. So tell us about these new Ted's Montana Grill restaurants of yours. I hear they're doing quite well."

"Yes, they are. I'm very excited about being in the restaurant business."

"Why?"

"Excuse me."

"Why are you excited about being in the restaurant business?"

"Well, everybody's got to eat."

"How true. (pause) You know Ted, I bumped Warren Buffett just so I could get you on the show today, so do you think you could be a little more responsive to the questions?"

"No, I think I'd rather be affably vague if it's all the same to you."

"Well Ted, that may work for you but I think our viewers might start reaching for their remotes if you keep giving these short, non-descript answers."

"That may be true."

"I mean I could have just put a couple of politicians on the show if all I wanted was a bunch of empty, platudinous gobbledegook."

"I understand."

"You're not a politician are you Ted?"

"No I'm not."

"Ok, how about this? Let's do a little word association game. Would you like to try that? I'll say something and you say the first word that comes into your head. Ok?"

"Uh, sure, ok."

"Ok, let's start. If I were to say 'Kim Jong Il', what would you reply?"

"Uh...puppy?"

"Puppy? I say 'Kim Jong Il' and you say puppy? Why would you say something idiotic like that? He's the leader of North Korea Ted. What has that got to do with puppies?"

"Well, it was the first thing that came into my mind. You told me to say the first thing that came into my mind."

"You're right, I did. How about if we try this again. You want to try it again? C'mon, play along this time."

"Fine."

"How about if I say 'Iraq'? What's the first thing that comes into your mind."

"Uh..dental floss."

"Dental floss? Why on earth would Iraq remind you of dental floss?"

"I got something stuck in my teeth."

"Hezbollah."

"Popsicle."

"Republican."

"Waterfall."

"Terrorism."

"Skateboard."

"Time Warner?"

"Dirty, rotten, scum-sucking bastards."

"Washington?"

"Lilacs."

"Al-Qai...Hold on. Let's back up to that previous answer. I think I might have found a chink in your professional dealing-with-the-media armor."

"That's impossible."

"No, no...let's try this again. Ready?"

"Sure."

"Time Warner."

"Blood sucking curs."

"There. You see. You said 'blood sucking curs'."

"I did? That can't be. The vague, non-commital Ted wouldn't have said that. That must have been..."

"The evil Ted?"

"I'm tired of this game. Let's try something else."

"No, let's do one more. Ok?"

"Well..."

"Richard Parsons."

"Parasite."

"Steve..."

"Two-faced, backstabbing, son of a..."

"...Case."

"Greedy, arrogant, punk."

"Whoa, now that was fun. I knew I could break you."

"What did I say?"

"I want to thank my guest Ted Turner for being on the show. Ted, it was great having you on."

"What just happened here?"

"Please be sure to tune in next week when we'll play the word association game with outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and find out what's on his mind."

(And now back to our blog already in progress)

...and then I felt better on Monday, except for a throbbing headache. So I took a couple of Tylenol and came home and ate some dinner and I feel alright now.

But you don't want to hear about that so I should blog about something else.

La blog, la blog, toujours la blog.

Oh yeah, there's a new James Bond movie coming out Friday, like anyone cares. It's always strange for me to watch a James Bond movie because the parallels between his life and mine are so eerily alike. You know, the beautiful women, the constant danger, the exotic locales, the mystery and intrigue-I swear it's like seeing my own story being played out there on the screen.

Well, kinda...

Actually, Ian Fleming was going to model the original 007 character after me (that's a little known fact), but decided to make him a British superspy instead. Can't say I blame him. I mean who wants to see a movie about a bookish, misanthropic introvert with delusions of being an undiscovered Faulkner? British superspy just makes for better box office.

I'm not bitter, though. I've still got my blog, and as every blogger knows you can be anyone you want on the internet.

"Mr. Bond there's a semi-naked fashion model with a gun waiting for you in your bedroom. Her hair is perfect and I think she wants to kill you. Be careful."

"The world is full of semi-naked fashion models trying to kill me. Fix me a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred, while I go seduce her and get her to reveal vital information."

"Yes Mr. Bond. You know you are very brave for a bookish, misanthropic introvert with delusions of being an undiscovered Faulkner."

"Yes, I know. Isn't blogging fun?"

Sirius 85

Denzel Washington has written a book called "A Hand Guide To Me." Geez, and people think bloggers are self-obsessed.

But I'm not going to obsess about myself tonight. Instead, I'm going to talk about something new. Well, new to me anyways. Last week I got an invitation from the Metropolitan Opera to try their new radio channel on my computer, free of charge, for 3 days. "Free" always works for me so I gave it a try, fell in love, and the next day I was shopping for a new Sirius receiver to put in my car.

Here's what I found:

The Installation

If you want to listen to Sirius then the first thing you need is a Sirius radio. You can shop for them online, and if you're handy with tools and don't mind tearing your car apart then you can order it and install it yourself. That didn't seem like the option for me so I went down to my local big-box electronics megastore and asked a few questions.

I found out that there are 4 ways to get Sirius in your car. The first is to buy a head unit (that's fancy car audio guy talk for the part with the radio and all the knobs) that has Sirius built-in. Unfortunately, they don't make any head units that will fit my car so that option wouldn't work. The second way to hook up to Sirius is through a direct, line-in connection to your car stereo. No dice on that one either, so option number 3 was to connect an FM modulator to the Sirius radio and broadcast the signal to your car stereo. I've tried FM modulators in the past and they work ok, given pristine conditions and a lack of interference from other radio stations in the area. If push came to shove I could always try that, but luckily there was one more option.

Sirius calls it a FM Direct Connector, and it's simply a little switch that goes between your the car's radio and its antenna. You plug the antenna into the box, you plug your car radio into the box, and you plug your Sirius radio into the box and now, instead of broadcasting the FM signal, your Sirius radio sends the signal to the little box, where it is routed directly to your car radio. While the Sirius Radio is sending it's signal it also cuts off the outside antenna. This eliminates the hiss and noise you typically get with all the FM modulators.

So, twenty bucks for the FM Direct Connector and I was all set. I signed the papers and told them to install away.

The Radio

Sirius offers several radios. I went with the Sportster 4 unit, which happened to be the most expensive, but it wasn't that much more then the next most expensive units. Anyways, it's a pretty fancy-dancy little unit with 30 station presets, a nice big LED display (important for us older folks), a remote control, pause, rewind and fast-forward controls, and thousands and thousands of confusing little features that I haven't figured out yet.

By the way the installation that the car audio guys did was beautiful - much better than anything I could do myself. They put the radio inside the CD/storage compartment in the cars dash, and left the little door on it so that I could close up the compartment and keep the unit out of sight and hidden from prying eyes. They left no hanging wires and cables and no odd looking things sticking out anywhere, and just did a really nice job with it.

But back to the radio. When you fire up your Sirius radio for the first time the only station you get is the weather channel. You then have to either call Sirius or visit them online to set up your account. The basic subscription is $12.95 month, but they offer quarterly, semi-annual, annual, and 2 year plans that bring that price down. Once you've signed up and payed your money then they activate your radio, and that's it. You're now all set to go.

Like many new hi-tech gadgets the Sportster 4 was pretty confusing at first. However, once you learn to navigate your way around it's really a simple unit to operate, with a lot of extra features that you'll only occaisionally use.

Just like any other radio it comes with presets. There are 30 on the Sportster 4 with one special preset they call the "Jump" button. The idea behind the "Jump" button is that you preset it to a station, and then whenever you want to go to that station you press the "Jump" button, and when you want to return to what you were listening to before you press the "Jump" button again. One press "Jumps" you to the station, and another press "Jumps" you back.

So what's it good for? Well, Sirius offers traffic and weather information for about 15 metropolitan areas around the country. The idea behind the "Jump" button is that you set it to your local traffic station, and then when you just want a quick traffic update you "Jump" to it, and then you quickly "Jump" back when you're through. I set mine up and it works great.

The other major controls on the radio are the pause, rewind, and fast-forward buttons. The Sportster 4 has enough memory in the unit for about 44 minutes of audio, so that makes it possible to pause and rewind live radio. This is also very cool. When one of your favorite songs comes on, you just hit the rewind button and you can listen to it all over again. Hit it twice and you'll go back 2 songs, 3 times and...well, you get the point. The pause function is a little strange because I'm not sure what you would use it for. It would be great if you could pause the radio while you went into the store or something like that, but unless you're in the habit of leaving your keys in the car and the radio running while you do your shopping, then that's not really of much use. I suppose it would be handy if you take a lot of phone calls in your car, but I don't have much use for the pause.

There are also lots of nifty features in the Sportster 4 which are just too numerous to explain. Let me briefly mention the abilty to save favorites, like musical groups or songs or sports teams. If you tell the radio to remember, say, the San Diego Chargers, then the radio will automatically alert you whenever the San Diego Chargers are playing a game and give you the option to switch to that station. The same with a musical group. If that group is being played somewhere on the satellite then the radio will alert you and let you switch to that station. Also pretty cool.

The Service

You get music, talk, news, sports, Howard Stern, Martha Stewart, and all kinds of stuff. Just go to Sirius.com and look at the channel listings to see what's available. So far I've been listening to some of the Comedy Stations and the Old Time Radio station (isn't it ironic that I'm using all this 21st Century technology just so I can listen to the Burn and Allen Show), but my favorite channel and the whole reason I got this thing in the first place is Sirius 85, Metropolitan Opera Radio.

I can't stop listening to it. Finally, FINALLY I've found a radio station that plays the stuff I want to hear. Of course the station is built around the 75 year archive of Metropolitan Opera broadcasts that the Met has accumulated over the years. Each day they broadcast around 5 complete operas, some live but most from the archives. In between performances they broadcast miscellaneous choral works and vocal music featuring some of the great Met Opera singers both past and present. If you love Opera, then you want this station.

When I first got my radio activated I tuned in Met Radio and started thinking that maybe I should just live in my car from now on. In fact, I had to go to the store for milk and ended up taking about a 20 mile detour just so I could listen to Act II of Madama Butterfly. I don't think that's good for the environment.

Since then I've calmed down a little, but it's still so awesome to be able to listen to Bellini on the morning commute and Verdi on the trip home. I'm telling you, if you love Opera then you want this station.

You're Sirius subscription also includes the access to Sirius' online streaming, so you can listen to Met Radio over your computer when your at home. That works ok, but I think you can get burned out listening to the same station 24/7. Then again, it's available if you want it.

Lots more I could say but I've already gone on too long. If the Met gets the word out on this channel and opera lovers start hearing about it, then Sirius is going to sell a lot of radios. The problem is getting the word out, and also getting over that initial hurdle of finding a radio and getting it installed in your car. All I can say is that it's not a big hurdle and I'm glad I took the plunge. Subscription, you say. Pay money? Yep, and worth every penny.