Sometimes I write an entry here just to get rid of the previous one being first in line. Not saying that the "warfare" in the Middle East should be shoved aside, because there are lots of human beings over there who are not interested in warring with their neighbors but get attacked anyway.

But enough. For now.

Just wanted to give you a blurb about my ongoing saga with


Pandora Internet Radio


Michael (Bunt Sign) turned me on to this in some blog comments recently, either in his blog or mine, I can't remember. He raved about how much he loves clicking on that site and leaving it playing on his computer for the day while he works at home. Also, Michael tends to enjoy a lot of the same types of music that I enjoy - we are both children of the 60's/70's music scene after all, and you just can't find that type of folk music much anymore on the radio, at least not on my limited stations here. Yes, paying for Sirius Radio would probably give me all I wished for, and then some, but I don't want to pay...

...ergo Pandora Radio. It's not exactly like a radio station but similar. You pick what type of music, what composer, or what artist you would like to hear and it searches and comes up with a sampling of that choice. You can then choose to make that "a station" (like the "Emmylou Harris" station, or the "Stan Rogers" station.

Now, within each station when you go to click on it, you won't necessarily get that very person, not right away anyway, but you will get a sampling of music that is in the same ballpark, so to speak. Like if I click on Emmylou's station, I might hear some songs by Nanci Griffith or Linda Ronstadt, etc... from the same genre.

At first I wasn't sure I liked that but now I do, after having used it for the last two days.

But the story about this whole drama was that after I signed up for Pandora (it's free OR you can pay but not sure the paying membership is that much better than the free one to be honest! - oh, no ads maybe, but the ads aren't that bad), anyway, after I signed up I went to it from my computer upstairs, my desktop, and it worked fine. But I hardly ever use that computer any more, just to do emails before bed and when I first get up... and then for the remainder of the day I use my laptop. But when I went to listen to Pandora from my laptop, I would get some pop-up box everytime saying "Error --- their fault --- click "reload" and continuing listening..." but I could never actually listen... just that pop-up box all the time.

Figures, right?

I tried everything in my meek little brain to fix this situation. Finally when nothing worked, I emailed Pandora (this was over the weekend) and laid out my problem for them. Then I emailed Michael (Bunt Sign) and he wasn't sure what to do either. His has always worked fine!

Finally, on Monday morning of this week I heard back from Pandora (hi Meghan!) and she wasn't really sure either, so she sent me a link to a "diagnostic page" where it would run a diagnostic test on my laptop and then I would send her the "report" it generated. I did all that.

A little while later that day she emailed me back and gave me some things to try. First, she said to try changing browsers, like from IE (which I was using) over to Firefox (which I also use occasionally). I tried that, and IT WORKED right away!

Wow.

But I emailed her back and said that while it worked while I was using Firefox, I don't really enjoy using Firefox for various little reasons, and I just wish I could use it with my IE here on the laptop! So pickey, I know...

Then in a little while I got another email from Meghan at Pandora and she gave me a long laundry list of settings to go in and change in my IE browser. You know, those settings buried deep in pop-up boxes that you only ever see your computer guy fiddling with? I did just what she said, about 8 or 9 items, and finally, when I emerged from the depths of the settings cave, out into the light of day, I went to Pandora and it WORKED! Using I.E. Yay.

I sent my effusive thanks and gratitude back to Meghan at Pandora and went about my merry way listening to my favorite songs here while I did other things online. You can have it running in the background whilst you do other online stuff with no problem.



So that's my drama for the week. At least I hope that's the worst drama for the week, it's only Tuesday and there's still time....

I hope you all have a good and fulfilling Thanksgiving Day if you so choose. Paul and I will be cooking a slightly more voluminous dinner than usual here, just the two of us, and cooking a roaster chicken with stuffing instead of a turkey (not a fan of turkey really) with the usual suspects of veggies. Skipping the pies because we have a lot of cut-up fruit in the fridge we need to eat up.

Ta ra friends, and cheers,

Bex

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