Morning Commute: Entry Twenty-Eight:

I should go back to the train commute but it's Spring and so very hard to leave the garden so very early My bands are recording too That means lots of roughmixes to listen to and I don't like headphones and the car stereo is so very nice and I can sit back and hear the songs over and over and over again so very loud Besides I have a new toy that allows downloading mp3's and listen to them in the car over an empty FM frequency That is so very neat Although it wasn't so very neat at first because it didn't work and I had to send it back and get a new one and even this one is quirky Like sometimes it won't start up until I take the controller out of the "backpack" replug the backpack into an outlet and then stick the controller back in I thought it was my fault so I went to the Neuros forum and saw that other folks had the same problem and other problems too Yet users are posting over and over and over again the Neuros Support Staff is eager to please And I have to agree I called Neuros Support from my car phone well actually my cell phone in the car but that seems so long and drawn out to say or write sort of like this aside I do most of my support calls from the car phone I'm in the car so very long It's a great use of commute time and in my former life I was a technical support engineer so I know the ropes It's a bit tricky to call somebody about a software problem from the car because they always want to walk you through the problem so I memorize the steps at home and when they ask if I am in front of the computer right now I say yes yes I am My computer screen should in fact be as big and nice to look at as a windshield Anyway I told the guy my problem He didn't ask many questions before getting an address to send a new one He said they'd made big improvements just in the last week Then came a pleasant surprise He said that he lived right down the street And as it turns out Neuros is headquartered in Chicago And so a new controller wouldn't take so very long to arrive We talked about the neighborhood a bit how much we like the Skylark down on Halsted and the biannual Pilsen Art Walk I told him about the Italian Deli on my block which he was happy to hear about Well after a while he had to go and I told him to enjoy the beautiful day After that even with the quirks I was determined to support my neighborhood audio technology industry and so far so good Even though the Neuros forum has lots of complaints about not being able to find an open frequency in large metropolitan areas I thought it might work in Chicago because to the left of the dial Chicago radio stations have about as much transmitting power as my Neuros HD30 In some ways of course that is too bad I can't enjoy all the good radio on my commute particularly my neighborhood station Radio Arte which is sponsored by the Mexican Fine Arts Museum and run by neighborhood kids who have surprisingly good tastes You have to be under 23 to be a dj there or I would volunteer Anyway I downloaded some songs recommended by astrobleme and they were a first attempt at playing stuff from the Neuros over the car stereo The Neuros automatically finds an open frequency in this case 88.5 which is a fine example of an excellent station with lowwattage The songs are ambient and at times so very quiet yet there wasn't much static I'm going to do lots of stuff with this Neuros in a short time because it is quirky and if it's going to break it should break sooner than later so I can get a new one or money back So tonight on the commute home I'm going to buy a tiny preamp and a tiny microphone and then at band practice record which this thing can do which is so very cool