B-52’s

6060-842

The B-52s – 6060-842

I bought myself a new phone on the way home from work today. Very uncharacteristically, I only spent an hour or so of research time before buying this phone. Usually I spend way too much time agonizing over the various options and then I just find the result kind of mediocre anyway.

Partly this is because I have always had an Android phone. I got my first smartphone (it sounds so weird to call them that now) when we were building a mobile site at work (another dated relic) and I didn’t have a phone to test it out on. My coworker had an iPhone so I figured it would be good to be able to cover both platforms, and work would pay for it. In all of these years, I think I had two phones that I really liked, the others have all been fine but nothing to get excited about.

Starting next year, though, I am porting my number out of the work account so I need a new phone, and for once I am not bound by the options that the corporate account deems acceptable. This means I am also going to be paying for it, which I haven’t had to do, so I am sticking with Android.

My current phone is a Samsung, some recent but not top of the line model, and it’s fine. The thing I like best about it is that it still has a headphone jack. I don’t have airpods, I don’t want airpods, and I want to be able to use the aux cord in my car and charge my phone at the same time. Finding phones that still have headphone jacks really limits your choices.

To cut to the chase, I bought a OnePlus Nord N30. A bunch of my friends in Sweden adore their OnePlus phones and work would only let me choose between the big flagships. It’s unlocked so I can use it with any carrier, and it was on a big Black Friday sale. I won’t have it function as a phone yet but I went ahead and transferred over all the apps and have been playing around with it. So far, it seems pretty nice. I haven’t tested out the camera yet, which used to be the thing I cared most about, but it does have a headphone jack! I decided that I am never really going to get great pictures at shows and I do use the headphone jack all the time so I may be sacrificing on photo quality a little but I will still be able to play music in the car and talk with my headphones.

I got so wrapped up in going through all the apps that I totally lost track of time and almost didn’t remember, the last day of NaBloPoMo! I did it! All 30 days! Thank you all for following along. Perhaps in my empty nest life, I will be able to make a post now and then outside of this November marathon. Here’s hoping!

Dance This Mess Around

The B-52’s – Dance This Mess Around

I just learned that today is Cindy Wilson’s birthday so in honor of that, some vintage B-52’s from 1978. I think seeing them like this, especially if you are not old enough to have known them in anything pre-Cosmic Thing, you get a different sense of the band.

They were always a campy band out for fun but I think the whole Love Shack era had a weird effect. I’m having a hard time putting my finger on it but it’s almost like the difference between laughing with someone and laughing at someone. In the early days, dancing around with your friends to the first (yellow) album or Wild Planet, especially as a newly minted junior high student, meant you were cool. I had the good fortune of having older siblings who brought home all kinds of music I might otherwise never have been exposed to at that age. By the time Cosmic Thing came out and large-scale fame had found them, it was no longer cool.

The other great thing about this video is that you now know how to do the Aqua-velva and the Escalator.