Listening to XM Radio Online

My wife and I have been subscribed to XM Satellite Radio for a couple of years now, after we received a complimentary boombox-type XM radio from Cadillac following the purchase of one of their cars. We've now had XM installed in both of our vehicles and will probably never be able to listen to commercial radio again.

The boombox works great as long as you have access to the southern sky, where the satellites are parked, which means if you're in a building, you need a window. I work in an office situated in a brick building and listen to music all day, so I wanted to take my XM to work from the very start. The problem was there wasn't a window in my office, and the signal couldn't reach me.

Then, XM started streaming many of their channels over the internet, and after a few months, made online listening free to XM subscribers. Non-subscribers can get and online-only subscription too. XM provides their own media player which probably works fine in most cases. But the internet service where I work is a little flaky at times and I noticed that the sound was sometimes sort of "warbled". I don't know if that's a radio term or not, but it describes the problem pretty well.

So, I decided to see if I could figure out if others were having the same problem. I visited a couple of places, including xmfan.com and xm411.com, both of which feature forums for all types of XM-related topics. And, I discovered that a whole cottage industry has sprung up around the shortcomings of the XM-provided media player. There are a number of optional media players that these programmer types have designed, and mostly provide free of charge to download. I decided to go with one that sounded pretty good called XaMp.

Once I downloaded and installed it, could tell a noticeable difference in the sound quality. It eliminated the warbling sound and gave me some additional cool features. So, if you're missing your XM when you're stuck inside at the computer, give listening online a try.

Remember when?

What is it about collecting that gets deep into your psyche and becomes an addiction? Does it start out when we're small children, gathering blocks into a pile, or digging through Mom's flowerbed for different colored rocks? Some collectors do start young, probably influenced somewhat by their parents' habits. But others take it up later in life, possibly as a way to hold onto things that represent a life speeding away at an ever-increasing rate. As for myself, I think I fall into the latter category. The only thing I ever really collected before I was over 40 years old (which coincidentally was when I became acquainted with eBay) was photograph records. But that wasn't really driven by wanting to collect for collecting's sake, but rather to be able to listen to a particular piece of music whenever I wanted to. When the internet came along, I suddenly had the ability to look at things that I could only see in books at the local library before. I remember reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about collectors of antique radios and thought that sounded pretty cool. So, I visited eBay and discovered hundreds of different models for sale.

My favorites were the streamlined plastic models from the 40's and 50's, probably because I remembered seeing them when I was growing up. That's another important aspect of collecting: attempting to recapture our youth. Nostalgia has always been important in the field of collecting. Who cares about the stuff we have today, look at this: remember how they used to be made? Weren't things a lot cooler back then? Why, you look at it hard enough and it's almost as if you were back there in those simpler times when life was easy. Well, it wasn't long before I had half a dozen cool looking plastic radios from the days when my parents were newlyweds. Some of them even worked, although hearing modern-day music coming from the dusty loudspeakers sort of ruins the mystique.Eventually, I moved on from radios (and they moved into the attic) to other things. I had brief romances with all sorts of eBay categories: fruitcrate labels, pinup art from the 1940's, railroad memorabilia, Hawaiiana, tobacco silks, soda pop bottles, rubber toy cars, 60's psychedelic concert posters, stereoview cards, stamps and probably some things I've forgotten (see my attic for further details). Most of these fixations lasted for a few months, long enough for me to acquire some examples of the collectible in question, learn a little about them and realize that the primary enjoyment came from discovering that these objects were still around (or existed in the first place in a few cases) and looking at them. I can't explain it to my wife, but I actually gain pleasure from wandering through antique malls piled high with decades-old castoffs. I remember when walking through one such store I came across a rack of metal and canvas shopping baskets like those that the local Woolworth's Department Store used to have. They were the kind that looked sort of like a picnic basket.

You would pick one up at the front of the store and carry it around, putting your purchase in it as you went. I hadn't seen or even thought about those baskets in over 30 years, but here they were, looking brand new. It was such a simple thing-seeing them again, but it actually felt good. There's gotta be some sort of scientific explanation for the pleasure you get when you dredge a memory up from so deep. I predict that in the future, one of the entertainment/pleasure options we'll have will be some sort of device that helps us remember things from our childhood that we don't even know are there to remember. I can't wait to go back there.

Another year, another convention

It's hard to believe my last post was over a year ago. When I wrote it, I had just returned from the annual Casino Chip & Gaming Token Collectors Club convention in Las Vegas. This years convention starts next week and we'll be leaving for Vegas in just a few days. I've volunteered to work in three different locations during the convention. Wednesday I'll be helping with registration and pickup of "goodie bags" for those who have pre-registered. Thursday I'll be on the membership table trying to sign new members up, and Friday I'll be volunteering at the Building Fund table, trying to raise additional funds to provide the club with a permanent home. I'm really looking forward to seeing some of the collectors I've met in years past and to meeting new ones. Of course it's great to see thousands of chips available for sale in one room, but I think people are what makes this hobby worthwhile.