Pandora

Pandora is one of the best reason to have a web browser. Seriously.

I love music. Pandora gives me gems of music over and over and over. Between Pandora and suggestions from a few co-workers, I have dove down this rabbit hole of amazing inde groups/artists. Sometimes when I mention the band, I feel like I am the last one to the parade, because these groups have been around for a while, just waiting to be inserted into the next Apple campaign.

I have created several stations but they tend to center around the following groups/artists:
Tegan and Sara, Cat Power, Lilly Allen, Kate Nash, Frou Frou, Imogen Heap, Regina Spektor, Camera Obscura, Jenny Lewis (w/ and w/o the Watson Twins), Rilo Kiley, The Postal Service, Feist and probably several others (which I may update later).

And for most of these artists I have bought at least one album, solely because of Pandora. Yet, the labels want to charge a huge sum of money for them to continue, when it gives them sales. My only guess is, they want more control over what is played, and something that plays what people want, not what the labels want, could impact their bottom line, or more likely, move the industry back to real artists instead of over-produced, over-controlled and over-commercialized manufactured drones.

Oh, also speaking of the web, twitter is great! Much better than reading a ton of blogs to find out what somebody had for breakfast. Now, I just get the important information, "eggs and toast - yum".

So That One Time I Almost Died...

My family went on vacation in Tennessee in July. Just me, my brother, his wife, my parents and my sister all in this amazing cabin just outside the Smokies. About as awesome of place as you can go for a week.

I have to first say, I love TN. I would seriously consider moving to TN. My former employer is now in Nashville, but they are way too small to need somebody with my skill set. (I deal with computers now on the scale of thousands). So, just being down there and driving around was a lot of fun. Its sooo peaceful.

Speaking of peaceful, there is this really cool river running through and outside of the park. Lots of people love to grab an inner tube, hop on board and float for an hour or so down stream. My brother and his wife did this earlier in the week and then proceeded to rave about it the rest of the week.

So we decided to do it later in the week. Oh, by the way, it rained several times, which caused the river to rise, and the water to run a tad faster. This made for a slightly less peaceful river, but hey, it can't be that bad. And launching 1 mile upstream from where all the inner tube companies drop people off, should be fine, really.

And so begins my brush with death.

As my sister said later, I should have known better after falling off the inner tube backwards, losing my sunglasses and almost losing my shoes before even launching. Even then I came up gasping because the whole thing came as a surprise. After a little help, I got on the tube and began floating down stream.

The floating quickly became bouncing and bobbing.
And then not so much floating but holding on to the tube while scrambling for a break in the rapids to get back on the tube.
And then it turned into me stuck up against a rock, water rushing around me, and holding on to the stupid $4 tube, trying to keep the river from ripping it away.

The river won that battle.

And then it won the war. Not more than a few seconds after watching my inner tube go bouncing away down the rapids, my body joined it. I bounced around. I bobbed. I dunked. I tried to brace myself. I had to have gone completely under half a dozen times, one of which, where the bottom was well below me, so I had no place to push off of.

Thankfully I am mostly buoyant. That and the river eventually slowed down.

I end up rolling over to the bank, out of breath, completely annoyed, but happy to still be breathing, slightly battered and bruised and turn around to make sure my brother and his wife know I am ok. As I sit there panting, waiting to see them come running up, expecting to see the joy in their faces, I wonder what they thought of seeing me be ripped away like that. I sit there a little longer and eventually they come around the bend, walking. WALKING. And we then discus if its worth getting the inner tube back or leaving it.

I end up walking with the sister in law to make a phone call to get picked up. A father of some teenage boys does one better and gives me a ride back to the cabin. When I get in, I thank him and explain how I was just bounced down the river. He then shows how he too has battle scars from the river, which looked twice as bruised and was actually somewhat bloody. Maybe I didn't have it so bad after all.

The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful. We saw trees and hills and mountains and waterfalls and a cave. That and tons of crafts...

I did get to see The Dark Knight with a friend of mine in Nashville. He brought two of his friends. It was a real geek fest. I love meeting brilliant people with similar interests.

So anyways, thats the one time I almost died on a family vacation.