Month: June 2005

Demolition Man

As I ripped lathe after lathe down from the ceiling in our basement, cleaning a sixteen-inch wide strip running the width of the house for our new AC central trunk, I found myself humming the Police’s “Demolition Man” for the first and probably last time. I wasn’t singing it, because my face mask wouldn’t let me open my mouth wide enough.

We have probably found the only HVAC contractor in the world who doesn’t like to do demolition, and the result was a merry two hours figuring out how to take part of a plaster ceiling down. The location for the trunk is planned to run alongside the interior partition wall in our basement that divides the utility and workshop/storage room from the library. Since the ceiling is finished throughout the basement, we had to take the plaster down to make room for the trunk. After much trial and error, we arrived on the following sequence of steps to clear out the plaster:

  1. Locate the nearest crack running along the outside edge of the cut (this was a remarkably good way to locate the “keys” running between the lathe, which was the right place to cut).
  2. Use a Sawzall with a demolition blade (brilliant on plaster, absolutely useless on lathe) to cut along the outside edge of the demo zone.
  3. Use a crowbar to break the plaster off until the end of the lathe, where it nails to the joist, comes into view.
  4. Go to town with the crowbar on the lathe, bringing down a shower of plaster and dust on everyone in reach.

(About the last point: cleanup is obviously a big challenge with a project like this. We used a dustpan and broom, and a new 12-gallon shop vac, promptly nicknamed Artoo, for the floor. For the workers, safety goggles, a hat, gloves, and a mask designated for drywall and insulation work. Plus a thorough vacuuming from head to foot and a shower when everything is done.)

At the end of this, my hat is off to all the other housebloggers who made plaster removal look easy. I was still picking grit out of my ears after the shower.

How to tell it’s summer in Boston

Just as spring in the Boston suburbs is heralded by the appearance of mud and street sweeping trucks removing the sand from the roads, so summer is heralded by clear signs:

  • The temperature spontaneously jumps about twenty degrees overnight.
  • Upstairs floors in un-air-conditioned houses become uncomfortably hot, even if the outside temperature is only in the low eighties.
  • There are major home contractors in every other house on your block.

Our house is no exception. With a little luck, our HVAC contractors will be working next week to get our air conditioning installed. It’s exciting for us: not only will this be the first Unico system we’ve been involved with (aside from seeing them on This Old House), it’s also the first time we will have owned a house with air conditioning. Very exciting times, indeed.

I’ll post more details over the weekend. We have some exciting demolition work to do; we agreed that we would tear out part of the basement ceiling in the boiler room to make way for the central trunk. My hand is healing nicely, but I guess we’ll find out if I can handle a reciprocating saw left-handed—or whether Lisa can manage ceiling work.

Apostasy: eMusic is better than iTMS

As a (former) professional online behavior analyst, when my own online behavior changes, I take notice. So when I realized that I am waiting for albums to become available on eMusic rather than buying them on iTunes; regularly buying several 50-tune booster packs per month; and now have a “Save for Later” list containing 47 albums, I conclude that I have developed a preference for eMusic.

What’s changed? Two things: selection and currency. eMusic has added a ton of labels recently, including Merge, Sun, Vice Recordings, the always excellent Bloodshot Records, Misra, Thirsty Ear… a bunch of indies releasing some great music. (Many of these are available on iTMS as well; more on that in a minute.) Second, new releases are now being made available through eMusic on or very close to the street date. Take a look at my purchase of Spoon’s Gimme Fiction. On the old eMusic it might have taken several months to make it there; not any more.

eMusic also, I reluctantly conclude, has a substantial navigability advantage over the iTMS. The iTunes store sometimes feels shoehorned into the iTunes interface: no browsing options other than big column lists and search; live hyperlinks for artist browsing, but not label or year; no user reviews; and so on. I’ve found more good music by browsing at eMusic in the last month than I had for the previous few on the iTMS, primarily by browsing by label, then the artist list.

Other advantages of eMusic: high bit rate MP3s (no DRM); ability to re-download purchased tracks; and price. Yeah, did I mention price? Sure, buying by the track is sometimes no bargain, but when the price is 50 tracks for $14.95, I almost don’t care, since buying the equivalent 50 tracks in the iTMS might cost me $50. If the iTMS had the songs, the convenience of buying a la carte instead of in a monthly subscription or booster pack might make it likely for me to buy there, but it’s not a lock any more, not by a long shot.

I’m not giving up on the iTMS. It’s still the only place for me to find music from most of the majors, for instance. But more often than not, I’m looking for the minors instead.

One final thought: eMusic is even gaining the edge in the “delight” factor for me. This is the technical marketing term for what happens when a business not only fulfills a customer’s expectations and requirements but surpasses them in a big way. I was trying to find a song by the Ukrainians that I had gotten on a mix tape (from Fury, as it turns out) about twelve years ago. I knew a transliteration of the title (“O Sweet Girl”) but not the original Ukrainian title, so Googling it seemed difficult. Eventually I gave up, deciding that while I might be able to find it on a peer-to-peer network, it probably wasn’t worth it. I then Googled another artist, 3 Mustaphas 3, and found a hit to them on eMusic. While it wasn’t the album I was looking for, the description of the album talked about … the Ukrainians. Sure enough, eMusic had the band, and amazingly had the exact song (“Oi Divchino”) I was looking for, which I verified by listening to the sound clip. I purchased it there, of course.

The odds that I could find the Ukrainians at the iTMS? Slim.

Hey, Apple: there’s Long Tail style profit to be made in increasing your depth in some of these indie labels. Why are they listing digital content on eMusic and not on you? And why don’t you make it easier for me to experience serendipity on the store? Is it really helpful for me to know that “Hollaback Girl” is still #1 in Today’s Top Songs? eMusic gives me tailored recommendations, not a top 10 list. Guess which one I’m more likely to buy from?