18 May 2007 - 10:40 am

A little snapshot into my day:

I get into work, usually twenty or so minutes before I need to begin working. This is a result of carpooling, otherwise it used to be 15 or 20 minutes the other side of the hour.

I turn on my computer, log in, and start up my email. I walk away to go get my home brewed Mocha: hot chocolate and coffee and hot water mixed with hazelnut flavored non-dairy creamer. Yum. I walk back to my desk and email has hopefully finished opening. It usually takes about five minutes. My computer is slow, but still faster than my ten year old computer at home!

I then log onto the internet, where IMDb is my home page, and I usually get distracted there. Important news that may relate to something we are releasing, or suddenly I have an urge to look up a movie I watched or heard about, or something. Like right now, when I wanted to look up a film Yvonne mentioned a co-worker mentioned: Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter (a Canadian Musical). Or when did Kate Beckinsale meet and marry Len Wiseman, having watched Underworld Evolution last night. (She met him during Underworld, and they were married by the time of Underworld Evolution’s director commentary, where Len mentioned how difficult it was filming a love scene involving his wife and another man, how quickly one’s blood can boil when you yell cut, and they keep on kissing….) Important stuff like that.

But I got on the internet to get to my email account at yahoo, where all my actual personal email gets sent. It was getting too thick and furious having the personal stuff sent here at work, so I re-routed all that stuff to another account. Now I miss out on announcements of secret shows or cheap shows that got added last minute, but usually I don’t feel too bad. More like, oh well, didn’t know about it, can’t feel like I missed out. When I was receiving the announcements all the time at the time, I would feel a certain anxiety about needing to attend events because I DID know about them. No longer a problem. I just haven’t figured out where I should direct friends to send emails, since I don’t check that yahoo account on a daily basis. Well, I still have a phone number, if it is really urgent.

At the hour, I start up all the programs I need to be running for work and get started on that. Then I notice something is missing, usually around an hour later. No music. It is time to fire up iTunes and listen to my daily podcasts. I start with the daily music offerings from various Public Broadcasting stations. MPR in Minnesota gives me The Current Song of the Day, noting when an artist is from Minnesota. Then KEXP’s Song of the Day, and then local KCRW’s Today’s Top Tune. Having gotten my daily music fix, I then turn to the news. I listen to BBC Radio’s NewsPod, getting a more rounded world view of what’s important from a non-North American perspective, and then I listen to American Public Media’s Marketplace for an irreverent American perspective on the world of business and finance and everything affected by it. I find it good journalism, and like the Wall Street Journal used to be, able to cover any topic because finance and business are all connected in this modern world. There are a few other podcasts I listen to, but they are updated on a weekly (Radio 1’s Best of the Unsigned Artists (again, from Britain) or Trance Tuesday which hasn’t updated recently) or a few times a week (IndieFeed: Electronica Music) or randomly like Bands Under the Radar, hosted by Kami of the Viper Room here in LA, whose musical tastes I agree with, but whose voice and commentary I can’t stand. Fortunately, she plays more music than she talks. But she’s been running afoul of legality because she likes to do a number of songs in each podcast, but since many are already signed with labels, she has been asked not to do that. Perhaps why she hasn’t posted anything recently.

This whole issue of podcasting and internet radio and royalties due musicians and their labels I only know obliquely, I know there is an issue and all that my morning routine is based on may be changing soon if various compromises and compensation is not negotiated soon. What people don’t seem to realize though, is I personally don’t find the quality of the sound available over the internet to be high enough to rely on. I would far rather still go buy a CD of my favorite bands than listen to MP3s. And hearing of a band on the internet, that I have never been exposed to, and won’t by listening to most of the radio stations available here in town, if I really like the music, I will go and buy an album. Why can’t podcasts be considered marketing for music? Because that in the end is what it truly ends up being.

Anyway, that is my morning, listening to podcasts on my headphones, catching up on what’s going on in the world, while working away. The afternoon tends to find me listening to entire albums.

Just thought I would share. A morning in the work day of Sarah.