a happy cable story

I’m sitting and waiting for the Comcast service person. On Sunday we had intermittent service. I called the help line and spoke with a person with a heavy Indian accent (of course). She was helpful, but I objected to her scripted attempt to sell me more service before fixing a problem. I mention this to her as a critique of her “routine.” She was undaunted of course, no doubt reading from a script.

This morning the internet seems to be working. It acted up yesterday afternoon. We have been using our phones to connect our devices (computers, tablet). Our phone service has a small allotted time of online data each month. After that it becomes very expensive.

Cable dude is here. I’m working offline.

The Facebook conversation I started about switching to Apple products has been helpful. Jen Adams, my boss at church, noticed this conversation and on Sunday morning she mentioned that the church would go in half with me on a new laptop. She and her partner, Beth Trembly, are avid Mac users. I knew she would probably do this, but our church is stretching itself financially to cover costs and I hesitated to ask for more bennies like this since part of the stretching was Jen’s attempt to bring my salary closer to guidelines suggested by professional organizations such as the American Guild of Organists.

It was much nicer for me that she volunteered to do this. I feel more ethical about that for some reason.

I still am thinking of my original plan to purchase a Mac Mini for the house before the laptop. Primarily I am thinking of doing it this way because the Mac Mini is so much cheaper than a laptop. All of this purchase activity is going to have to wait for a while. Eileen and I have agreed that it would be best to wait until we buy down our Discover debt (our only debt these days) or until I receive a bit of an influx of extra income from stuff like the upcoming Solo and Ensemble gig or the funeral Saturday (for which I haven’t been paid yet).

So there’s that.

Since I have finished reading the bio of Mao I have a small hole in my morning routine. This morning I filled it by returning to a bio of Buxtehude I was reading last summer. Written by Kerala Snyder I became a bit disenchanted with it. This was especially after reading John Gardiner’s splendid book on Bach. Snyder is much more typical of the academic world of writing. That’s not a good thing for me. I prefer books that grab me with their ideas and clear simple prose like the Gardiner.

However I am very interested in learning more about Buxtehude. I picked up where I had left off. In this section of the book, Snyder is doing a blow by blow of genres, discussing specific examples of works.

I thought it might interesting to play through Buxtehude’s concerto, Jubilate Domino, BuxWv which Snyder was specifically discussing.

It was easy to find the score online. I then went to the college Naxos page which refused to load.

I checked and the Oxford English Dictionary came up quickly so I figured it was a glitch between Hope and Naxos.

I then checked YouTube and found this lovely recording.

It conveniently scrolls the music score while it plays. How bout that?

I have to remind myself when I read or hear conversations about the internet that few people are using it to connect to a wide range of materials like this. These material would otherwise require more time if not money to access.

So the cable guy has come and gone and the internet is fixed.