William Reardon’s Blog

With the Cubs coming into town for Memorial Day weekend, I asked CraigM if it was possible to get the TM box suite for one of the games. Clean leaving must pay off, as Sunday many of us spent our afternoon relaxing, enjoying the game & taking in one too many hot dogs.

We had great seats, just slightly to the left of the press box.

The other Craig, CraigT, is a bit more aware when it comes to photography and thought to capture a pic of the inside too:

(If you’d like, the rest of my pics.)

As proof of how nothing in my life can be simple, I offer you a summary the days leading up the game.

1) Craig tells me we can get the box. I just need to tell him how many people & what specific day.

2) I email a bunch of people. Some respond, some don’t. I double-check the tally & ask for 13 tickets for us.

3) We get the tickets! +13 tickets!

4) I realize we have an extra ticket. 13 total, yes, but one of the tickets was for Aurelia. Being one year of age, she doesn’t need one. +1 ticket.

So far all good. Weeks go by. About a week before the game…

5) I realize the time I told everyone was wrong. I thought the game was 7:10. It’s at 1:10. +1 ticket.

6) I let everyone know about the time mixup. +1 ticket.

7) Craig & Anita have to backout as 1:10 now conflicts with a birthday party. Crap. +3 tickets

8) Feeling bad about the time mixup & now *three* tickets are going to waste, I ask Brandon if he & Erika want to go. Due to having a 3 month old baby, they pass. Maybe Brandon will come. +2.5 tickets.

9) I ping Sang. Maybe with the actual weekend closer, he & Carrie will be interested in going to the game. Told they might have plans. My interpretation: code for “No.” +2.5 tickets.

10) Next day, early afternoon, Sang pings me back. He & Carrie are in! No update on Brandon’s maybe. +.5 tickets

11) Late afternoon, walking to coffee with Brandon. “Hey, good news, both Erika and I are in.” FUCK. -1 tickets.

12) Ask Craig if we can get just one more tickets. -1 tickets.

13) Craig asks if we can; finds out all tickets are gone. FUCK. -1 tickets.

14) I tell Brandon bad news. +1 ticket.

15) I give Rick tickets for he & Jill. “Oh, I thought I told you I can’t go — we’re going to the OC.” Slackers. Sucks, but… +3 tickets!

16) Tell Brandon we have tickets for both he & Erika. +1 ticket.

17) I relay my story of ticket drama to Craig, who is amused by my pain. +1 ticket.

18) Morning, day of game, only Brandon can come after all. +2 tickets.

19) The conflicting birthday party canceled, Craig & Anita consider coming. Anita tells Craig to call me. Craig tells Anita of my ticket woes, thinking it ends with me up only 1 ticket, not knowing I now have 2. Out of sympathy, no call.

So, dear reader, when reading the stories of Greek tragedies, and wondering could all of that really have happened?

Could Greeks really have lived such lives of complicated misfortune?

You can see from my tale, that yes, yes they did.

(Only I’m half-Greek, so my misfortune limits itself to baseball tickets, instead of, say, self-fulling prophesies involving killing one’s father & marrying one’s mother.)

According to iTunes, I have 7,526 items. I’m sure a lot of people have more, but with that many items, you make heavy use of the browser — the ability to narrow lists of music by genre, artist and/or album. It makes it easy to play any groups of songs I have in any of those categories.

I can even select multiple items. So, while I have 8 different albums from the Beastie Boys currently on my machine, I can say I just want to listen to a mix of “Hello Nasty” and “Check Your Head.”

The inability to filter on one particular field has always puzzled me. Why can’t I filter on “My Rating” in the same way can filter genre, etc? That would enable me to easily say “play any music 3 stars or more by the Beastie Boys” or “any song rated 5 stars in Rock”, etc.

The closest you can come today is creating “Smart Playlists.” And, in fact, I do do that for a few artists. But creating one for any particular slice of my collection I might want to listen to on a whim is tedious and arduous at best.

So how about it Apple?