The Entroporium

One last mention of Walter before we return you to our usual pontifications on media, music and so forth. After four weeks of having him here, I conceded that I was not going to be able to find him a home on my own and enlisted the help of San Rafael’s Milo Foundation. After a teary farewell on a Thursday, he was rehomed by the following Sunday. Quick work! He was adopted with another little friend, a puggle named Princess, and is now residing in Fairfax.

Though we do miss him a little, it’s also something of a relief to have moved on from one of my proxies for unemployment depression. I suspect from the picture below that he might miss me a little, too, but I’m calling this a happy ending for us and a great new beginning for Walter.

An update on Walter’s progress

This is Walter as I found him wandering alone in the Oakland hills.
The photo on the left was taken just minutes after I managed to coax him on leash.
Weight: 13.5 pounds

Two weeks later – neutered, eye surgery, haircut, two squares a day and a little love.
Weight: 15.1 pounds

How ’bout that?

A major reason that The Entroporium went on an unintentional 15-week hiatus was the untimely demise of my iBook 1.33, pictured at left. One moment it was burning a copy of an Optimo mix, the next it’s screen was dead and an acrid battery smell was rising off of it. This was especially bittersweet given that I had touted this iBook to all my friends as the best & only non-buggy Apple product I’ve owned out of the… many. I think this was my sixth Mac since the first one in 1984. I’m on my third iPod, too, with the first two dying pretty horrible self-inflicted deaths. So why exactly am I so loyal? (…he typed on his new work-issued MacBook Pro, which has already proven itself buggy, too).Just for fun, let’s run down the fates of the last batch of Apple products we’ve owned:

• iMac G3: Sold it to a friend while still under Applecare warranty. Hard drive went bad.
• Susie’s iBook 800: Major issues with the touchpad. CD stuck in the CD drive.
• Shawn’s iBook 1.33: Self-immolation.
• Shawn’s last iPod: At different times, replaced the battery, screen and hard drive. Frankenstein iPod! Then the screen died again… (I should mention that my current iPod, purchased a year ago, is still in fine shape.)

The moral of the story, dear readers, is if you have to have the Apple gear, go for the Applecare warranty. Which is another way of saying, the price on a new Apple laptop is really $169 higher than is posted.Another thing I learned is that there is a lively ebay market for Apple parts for dead machines. I’ve already scored $265 for the screen. Since the assembled working machine was worth $700, that means by the time I’m done selling off the bits that I’m going to get tantalizingly close to its full market value. Don’t trash that Apple! Sell it for parts!

Migration to WordPress is complete. There’s some unfinished business to attend to, and off we go! There are places to go, people to see…

First, there’s the little matter of not writing for over a month. I’ve had some all-consuming real estate issues that have absorbed a lot of my free thinking time, the end-of-season and playoff grind of baseball did its annual number on my brain and frankly the pile of music to “get through” got daunting enough to the point of Denial. I’d also be crazy if I didn’t give credence to the post-Burning Man blues; after weeks of pushing my creative side, it couldn’t help but overheat and temporarily burn out.

When you reach the point, however, when all your entries have fallen off your front page, it’s time to reclaim your soapbox. Oddly, my New Orleans was so popular that I used up all my bandwidth in September. So much for capitalizing on my popularity..

Whatever. I’m back, I’m recommitted, I actually have some interesting stuff to say, so let’s carry on…

Two weeks ago, I attended a workshop on “Writing About Music” at 826 Valencia in San Francisco. The panel included music criticism luminaries and pioneers like Greil Marcus and Ben Fong-Torres, the room was filled with earnest, erstwhile music critics and the dialogue for the most part was at a high level. I took lots of notes and got inspired. Why not me?, I thought. Why shouldn’t I be one of the good ones?

I vowed to stop writing in such a free-form fashion, get outside the tiny boxes that Movable Type provides for editing, start using a proper word processor. To Practice getting to the art and heart of quality writing about music. To give the music the proper critical attention it deserves; and not fall into the trap of constant flippancy that so many of our blogging brethren fall into. To quit inserting my own experience into the artistry of others who are
literally singing for their supper.

So armed with a shiny new set of standards, ethics, hopes & dreams, I intimidated myself right out of posting for two weeks. By setting ground rules that say, “It’s got to be good,” I’ve played my way right off my own blog.

I’m just going to go for it from here out. The previous eight months’ output is a nice experiment, and Entroporium may well continue to be an experiment into perpetuity. I am, after all, a professional with a home, loved ones, and a responsible job to care for. I’m a hobbyist, sure, but what hobbyist wants to feel that they are just mediocre at their passion?

Darn you, Greil.

I’d be interested in chatting with music bloggers from San Francisco. I have an idea for a project, and it would also be great to have a little networking, like all those NYC bloggers do.

Give me a shout at shawn at entroporium dot com

Yes, I did it. I joined the blogging age. Just in time for the election to end. Not quite an early adopter, but not quite a senior citizen either.

The main triumph was loading the Movable Type software. I spent three hours with this last night trying to get the .cfg file just so. It’s hard to blame the technical writers for a free product, but there’s got to be a better way.

So what the hell will I do with this forum? Well, hopefully will read it on a semi-regular basis. It they do, I hope to keep them up-to-date on what’s going on in my head. You always seem to be on some sort of journey, but if you don’t keep track, sooner or later you have a bookshelf or CD cabinet or bedstand full of objects and authors and tastes that you don’t even remember having. And at some point you must have thought they were important, right? In a best-case world, this blog will provide me a roadmap for those flights of whimsy and self-importance that become the memories you’re left with at the end of the day.

Look for entries about me, new music I encounter, random experiences, a smattering of soapbox abuse and just plain stuff.

Don’t mind me, just out here looking for my voice. In public. Where you have to hear me.

Ha.