Woo-hoo, the Arizona no smoking proposition passed (the real one, not the one sponsored by R. J. Reynolds). I can hang around in bars again!<\/p>\n
As for the election in general, I, for one, welcome our new congressional overlords. Try not to screw up, okay? And while you’re at it, try not to screw us either.<\/p>\n
But I digress. What I want to fix is satellite radio. Two years ago Donna bought me a Sirius receiver and subscription. I listen to it at home, but never for very long – there’s always something else going on. Lately, though, I’ve been driving across southeast Arizona with it, listening for hours at a time. Satellite radio, I’m finding, is something less than it’s cracked up to be.<\/p>\n
I’m an NPR addict. When Donna asked me to choose between Sirius and XM, it was a no-brainer: Sirius had NPR, XM didn’t. But Sirius doesn’t give you NPR news – no Morning Edition, no All Things Considered – just the talk shows, which are great, but still. Sirius has two NPR talk channels, and until recently a Public Radio International channel, which suddenly disappeared without explanation. They also had Air America, but it’s gone too, replaced by a copycat called TalkLeft.<\/p>\n
One of the great promises of satellite radio was no advertising. Apparently, that’s been OBE’d* – satellite radio is full<\/em> of advertising. Granted, a lot of it’s in-house stuff, plugs for other Sirius channels and programs, but also quite a bit of plain old commercial advertising, the same crap you hear on AM and FM. Just as annoying, and only slightly less frequent.<\/p>\n Did I mention the sound quality is shit?<\/p>\n But here’s my biggest complaint: the satellite signal keeps cutting out. Of course the signal’s line-of-sight, so losing it in parking garages and under bridges is to be expected, but losing it on a 40-mile stretch of I-10 in southeast Arizona, same place, every day? What, the satellite’s behind the Moon or something?<\/p>\n Maybe after Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid nab Osama, get us out of Iraq, and make gay marriage mandatory, they can do something about satellite radio. It’s a national disgrace.<\/p>\n *OBE’d: overcome by events<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Woo-hoo, the Arizona no smoking proposition passed (the real one, not the one sponsored by R. J. Reynolds). I can hang around in bars again! As for the election in general, I, for one, welcome our new congressional overlords. Try not to screw up, okay? And while you’re at it, try not to screw us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,10,16,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-current-events","category-media","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}