Byron's Android

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I have heard my savvy wife A------ say to some supposed expert on the phone or in a retail store, "I am not a Luddite, but..."  And so I have learned what a Luddite was and that in some ways I could be mistaken for one.  Moving to St. Louis brought this to light once again.

1

In our home in central New York I had developed the firm habit of listening to a local FM station playing classical music all night long.  The only problem was that at 5 a.m. this particular station stopped the music and started the morning news show.  I coped by having an appropriate CD available in the boombox through which I listened to the FM station.  That worked out fine.  When the news came on an hour before I wanted to get up, I switched on my CD for a while.  I was looking forward to re-establishing a similar system in my new home.

But, guess what, in St. Louis there are no regular FM stations that play classical music all night long!  Even my best CDs playing on Random tend to get old after two or three hours; I can't be changing CDs three or four times a night...  My well-established sleep pattern was in jeopardy.

A glimmer of hope was the fact that a small FM high definition station plays classical music 24/7.  The least expensive HD radio I could find, however, cost $120 or so, and it didn't play CDs.  I didn't want to give up ever listening to any of my great CDs, and I certainly wasn't going to spend over $100 when I already had everything I should need...  Besides my bedside boombox is an old, tried and true friend.

2

In the run-up to Black Friday last fall, we saw a new device, marked down to under $50 that showed promise.  On that Wednesday, A----- pushed and pulled me into Radio Shack to find out more about it.  The store manager seemed to think we old ignorami were a worthy project.  He didn't know anything about streaming classical music live through the night and was interested in my checking out I-Tunes and Pandora and something else for kids; but I knew enough about that side of it.

He was able to show us generally how to work this little thing.  It's a 7" android tablet.  It comes with a little transformer that is used to recharge the battery.  It's easy and cheap to get ear buds to use listening to it.

In other words, we could tell that it would fit on by bedside table (next to the standard boombox), and I could listen to it with the ear piece without disturbing A-----.  We went home planning to return at 8:30 a.m. Friday to get one of the three this store right around the corner from our house had in stock.

3

Late Wednesday, I thought I'd check it out one last time on the Radio Shack website.  There it was, and whatever last-minute thing I'd wanted to look up was good...  And by golly, it was already available for the Black Friday sale price.  Sorry, Mr. Sales Manager.  I ordered it: Trio, Stealth Pro, 7".  I could lay it flat on my bedside table, plugged into the wall outlet saving the battery, and not disturbing my boombox which I can use for CDs or the AM broadcast of Cardinals games.

Naturally, although I'm not a Luddite (did I mention that?), it did take me a few days putzing around with my new device before I could be sure how to call up a Google search, where I could enter the call letters of an appropriate station so that a page would appear where I could punch "Listen Live" or "Live Stream" before the music would begin.  Yes, it took a few days, but I did it.

4

It felt pretty good when I first punched in to the St. Louis H-D FM station that plays classical music all day and all night long.  It's just what the doctor ordered.

But that's not quite the end of the little story.  First, I noticed right away that this "new" station (to me, new to me) played a wide range of classical recordings but - unlike WSKG in Central New York - did not give a national news summary at the beginning of every hour.  I hadn't quite realized that I liked that: usually, its 4 minutes or so didn't wake me up but if I were between dozes, I enjoyed getting a sense of what was going on.  I took a wait-and-see stance on that issue, preferring to be glad just to have an opportunity to hear classical music through the night.

Also, though, I ran into something else.  I have always plugged in to my ear piece a little after midnight, after a first round or two of sleep.  I did that with WKMU-HD3 and went happily off to Wynken and Blynken land (Eugene Field's house is right downtown near Cardinal Stadium).  Sometime around 2:30 or 3, though, I awoke to find that my android's screen had gone dark and the music had stopped.  I was able after a few minutes to turn it off entirely, restart it, Google WKMU, and punch in again... but this shut-off or shut-down thing continued to occur.

...Which, of course, ruins the whole thing.  I can't be spending a couple of minutes three or four times every night rebooting my music system.

5

Batting around some more, I found the setting for my machine going to sleep.  The online manual says one can set Trio to go to sleep "NEVER," which sounds attractive.  Only, on my machine, the longest period visible is 30 minutes.  (It's never shut down that soon, in fact.  Maybe the screen goes dark after 30 minutes, while the music continues; I don't know about that... because I don't care.)

I emailed Trio support.  They said my query was too complex for email.  So I telephoned MachSupport.  The young guy was nice... Reminded me of the Radio Shack store manager.  But he was stumped and said he was sorry but I would probably have to live with it.

I emailed the Webmaster of WKMU to whine about their throwing me off after 1 hour, or sometimes after 2 1/2...  She said they wouldn't do that...

6

While banging around on my laptop trying to figure out how to get to the WKMU live stream in the first place, I had become familiar with several other stations who stream classical music through the night.  In fact, there are apparently two nationally available services with which local stations can contract to have "Music Through the Night" (American Public Media) or "Classical 24/7."

Guess what? Although once in a while one or another of these others throws me off after two or three hours, sometimes they don't.  They also play good music... In fact, the station in my New York home contracts with "Music Through the Night"  just as WKMU does! 

7

Now, I have at my disposal several different stations.  One of them runs their own music show, and another uses "Classical 24/7."  There's even one I have found that gives a national news summary on the hour.  For a week now, this station has not thrown me off during the night, no matter when I first tune in.  When they start their morning news show at 5 a.m., I can quickly punch in WKMU - which has the advantage of giving me the current weather report for right here in St. Louis.

Oh, and that other station I plug into when I want, the one which only rarely, if ever, has thrown me off, and who gives a news summary every hour....

Yes, it's WSKG from central NY!

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