One for Three

ONE - Failure
I spent the whole morning on the telephone, courtesy of systems that almost work the way they should.
We are going to Australia in a few weeks. Australia demands visas for visiting US citizens, and will kindly issue electronic visas via the airlines. Last week I called United, and after about 50 minutes, the transaction was completed. Why so long? The agent to whom I spoke seemed to have been trained on a non-QWERTY keyboard. Whatever information I gave him was entered one keystroke at a time. Rather than the usual clatter that that one hears when giving an agent information, I heard "click" ... pause ... "click"... pause ... "click" ... pause... "click"... pause... "click"... pause... . That would just get my first name entered. And so it went.
At the end of the conversation I was assured that all was well, and that I would be getting e-mail confirmations.
Sure enough, within minutes I got a confirmation. One confirmation. I was expecting two. My wife and I have separate PNRs for this flight (don't ask - its another long story), and different e-mail addresses, so two would be expected,
Being naturally skeptical I checked my credit card account the next day - only one charge from United (for $20) had come through. I had been told that the visa issuance charge would be $30. The weekend was busy, so today I checked again. This time three charges for $20 had come through from United, all dated the on the same day.
So, I called again. Interminable menu hell for a while. Music on hold for 45 minutes or so. Agent comes on line. I explain the story. He checks, puts me on hold. Agrees that I have been charged for two visas. Checks visa status. Only my visa had been issued. He puts Hilda's in again. Says its OK now. I get two confirms by email. Now I will wait to see the credit card charges.

TWO - Failure
I transferred stock from one brokerage account to another with an after-hours online transaction last week. Received an email confirmation. When I checked my accounts on Monday, neither account showed a pending transfer, and the stock was still in the first account. I left it for another couple of days - maybe it was settling, or something like that. Today, still no sign in either account. Called the brokerage - got through quickly. Was told that they had no record of the transaction. They said to try again, so I did another transfer online. This time, it shows as in progress in both accounts, so maybe it will happen.

THREE- Success
A few months ago I bought a Garmin Nuvi 660 GPS, with a sexy FM receiver that receives real time traffic reports. The receiver is built into the power adapter that plugs into what used to be the cigar lighter in the car.
An odd engineering decision, but I can see some sense in it. Within a couple of days, the power adapter started falling to pieces whenever we unplugged it from the car. The pragmatic solution was not to unplug it, simply to avoid the telephone hell that occurs when one tries to get a manufacturer to repair something under warranty. Today, I could put it off no longer, so I called the manufacturer. Wonder of wonders, the phone was answered after a couple of rings, I was given an RMA with no protest, and the adapter will soon be gong back for a new one.
This is the second time I have been given great service by Garmin. The first time I bought their stock, held it while it went up, and sold when Nokia bought a major map data provider and it became obvious that pretty soon all phones and cars will have GPS's embedded in them. Garmin's position of dependence on a large, competent competitor for its maps put them in a pretty awkward position. I made enough on that trade to keep me in GPS units for life.

Concerts and stuff

We have had a busy week, mostly related to Pesach and family. I will try to hit the highlights here.
Last week we went to the Chicago Symphony. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted and Bronfman played Esa-Pekka's own fiendishly difficult Piano Concerto. Salonen gave the pre-concert discussion, which gave us interesting insights into how he thinks about music. The CSO's pre-concert talks are always interesting. When the talk is given by the person who is both the composer and conductor, they are absolutely enthralling. In addition, the Concerto was written specifically for Bromson, so we had a triple whammy performance!
My reaction is cautious. It is always hard to know if a new piece of music will end up as a major classic in the repertoire, or disappear without a trace. I was not very taken by this piece, and I suspect not many pianists will want to try it. Bronfman looked terrified during several passages.

Salonen acknowledges the orchestra

On the way to the concert, we saw what happens when two articulated Chicago buses try to take the same corner in opposite directions. We left before they resolved the issue.


For the rest, we watched tke kids play soccer. Julia turned out to be an enthusiatic and effective goalie.


Abigail got a lot of excercise.


We managed to get outside for a quick shot of sunshine in this chilly spring.

Millenium Park Watercolor

My watercolor class started up today for the spring semester. The assigned topic was skin colors - but I was in a monochrome mood, so I did my first monochrome watercolor - all Payne's grey.

Watch this if you care about people

It takes 8 minutes. Hang in there until the end.

Google Docs does not upload titles to the Blog

For the techies (if any) reading this blog - this entry is the first that I have written using Google Docs. If you have not yet tried it - do so immediately. It is the latest incarnation of "cloud computing" which has been nearly ready for prime time for at least 10 years. It is becoming useful, at last.
Thursday we spent the day downtown, getting a dose of "culture". We woke up to a damp and dreary day, typical of what our Chicago spring has been so far. This was the view from our window.

Our first stop was at the Chicago Symphony to watch an open rehearsal of "The Planets" by Gustav Holst. Unfortunately, we could hear very little of the dialog between the conductor and orchestra members. The piece had been well rehearsed. It was to feature in Sunday's "Beyond the Score" performance (I always want to call the series "Beyond the Fringe" in memory of the British revue that brought Dudley Moore to the world's attention. If you have not heard the record, try to do so - or visit me, I have it).

We attended the live performance on Sunday. The "Beyond the Score" approach is to play extracts from the work accompanied by commentary and images that provide some background information. After intermission the work is played through at its normal pace. As a result we got to listen to the Planets three times in a a very short period. Unfortunately the rhythmic complexities proved beyond the capability of the conductor's and orchestra's communication skills, and the performance was often a tad ragged - unusual for the CSO, but becoming more common as they continue to drift without a permanent music director.
Anyway, back to Thursday. After the rehearsal I spent some time in the Art Institute. First I stopped at one of my all time favorite paintings - Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877 By Gustave Caillebotte.

This painting was doubly appropriate - it mirrored the weather outside the museum

and is painted in a style that foreshadows Edward Hopper - whose special exhibit we saw later in the day.
I next visited an exhibition of photographs by Ed Ruscha. His paintings were way better than his photographs.
Next we toured the parallel exhibits of the watercolors of Winslow Homer and the works of Edward Hopper. We were short on time, but a quick walk-around convinced us that we should return for a more leisurely look.
At 6pm we attended a lecture on "Winslow Homer:Artist and Angler". Interesting.

We walked back to the car and drove home suffering from sensory overload.

Now, if you are reading this it means that I successfully transferred this document to Blogger from Google docs - without it ever existing on my own computer. The wonders of cloud computing.