One thing I will not be doing again is buying any Hy-Vee branded CFLs, at least not for in the office. When we switched away from incandescent to CFL, the office was switched first thing as its lights were the ones we used the most. All four were Hy-Vee branded. In the last few months, all four have failed. The last one started failing this morning. I've pulled a Sylvania from a little-used lamp to replace it. Now I have four dud CFLs to deal with.

This just happened quietly. The ceiling fan was not on and it's an open fixture. It's no "7 years" or whatever the life was advertised as. It has been almost three years, which while an improvement over filament lifespan, it's still disappointing. So far this is the only place where the bulbs are failing regularly, so it might be that they just don't last as long as said or that we have them on much more than the ratings figure.

I don't know for sure it's mainly the CFLs that the chain got their name put on, or if it's CFLs in general, but so far aside from immediate failures, all the burnouts seem to have been those. I think I'll be looking for other brands, nationally known ones, until and unless there is reason to suspect it's a more general issue.

For reasons that can all be traced back to the current economy or lack thereof, I did not go to MFF this year. I did keep a bit busy anyway.

Friday night Fairmont had a parade that supposedly kicks off the Christmas shopping season, as if that hadn't really started a few hours after Halloween if even that late. In years past, the city kept the decorative lights off until the night of the parade. This year the light were on a few days early. Not sure if that was lack of caring about the setup or a ploy to say "start spending already."

I met up with Gerry Busse and his team of Belgian horses (Connie and Lynne were pulling that night) in the Harsco Track Technology (formerly Fairmont Tamper, formerly Fairmont Railway Motors) parking lot rather than the usual lot. He was about set up by the time I got there so I really don't do much of anything there other than supply his always-forgotten throat drops. The trolley had a couple changes. The brake is now a nice lever with a catch, the sound system has a wireless mic., there are lights that indicate the remote-operated steps are down, and the front string of Christmas lights is LED. There are also "ground effects" LEDs under the trolley, casting a reddish glow that reminded me of the looks of some college kids cars in the early 1990s.

The weather was decent, for the time of year in Minnesota, for once. No single digits and strong winds, but high twenties and an almost calm night. Gerry had position 20 in the parade and we found it without any real trouble for the setup. The girls on whatever float was ahead of us all stayed at the rear of the float to watch the team.

If I had gone to MFF, I'd have missed Gerry and the team completely this year. He won't be giving rides in Fairmont the first Friday of December this year. Instead whoever makes that decision had him stay after the parade and go until about 9 PM giving rides. I suspect it's again a matter of economy. It's going to seem quite strange that Friday without him around.

Gerry has a bit of a shtick worked up when things are ready to go. Instead of just going, he introduces the team (sometimes letting people see the names on the front posts... which are for Connie and Buttercup, so they aren't always right), says a bit about them ("They weigh about 2,000 pounds each, and when the trolley is fully loaded with adults, they're pulling about 14,000 pounds.") He then asks how to get the horses to get going and people suggest things.. one of which almost works ("Well, they thought about it.") and since I was up front I could see the gimmick. Before he rings the bell (rather than saying, "Team!" which also works) he quietly releases the brake - no wonder the team only "thought about it" earlier.

The shorter route he was using last year was continued. It lets people wait inside a building rather than out on the street. It also means Gerry has time for two Christmas carols and another short shtick, "How do you suppose we make the horses go faster?" A few suggestions are tried and then Gerry explain, "Horses are like kids... if you really want them to do something for you, you just give them a little kiss..."

I wound up leaving when the last ride was over but didn't stick around for anything else. jmaynard had been putting off supper long enough and we both we hungry. I had expected to be home much earlier, but that was before I knew about the after parade rides going so long. In other years Gerry would give a couple rides if folks were interested and then pack up.

I spent most of the time either up front on the trolley with Gerry, or standing in front of the team when stopped giving them some attention and generally just showing that they were approachable despite their intimidating size.

My previous post was about the early pushing of bad Christmas/Winter music. A couple days ago I got in the car and found that XM's "40s on 4" had been replaced by "Holiday Traditions" until after Christmas. The 40s channel was not moved. This is irritating. This is the crap sort of thing that drove people AWAY from broadcast radio in the first place! And it's not as if there aren't other channels that could be used. It's after the baseball season, even I know that. And XM has a scad of baseball (MLB) channels that could have been used.

Right now I'm settling for the 50s channel and occasionally others, but I'm not bothering with 4 for a few weeks. Sure, if it had stayed 40s, I'd have expected some holiday music - but that's it, just some. They DID use dormant channels in previous years. Why did they decide to screw over to 40s this year? Is it that Sirius pulls that crap and this is merger fallout? Is it that this forces an audience for a moment, ala spammers? If I want that sort of abuse, I'll go to a damn mall.

Great going XM/Sirius, you make going to an mp3 player look all that much better: no subscription and no bogus channel-format change crap. Hey, I know it's now considered rather Old School, but I still have a tape deck and I'm not afraid to use it.

I hope XM manages to learn not to do that as they managed to learn a bit with the Radio Classics channel. For a few years they'd have a week (only a week!) of all Christmas themed radio shows. Until last year when they had a week with only some Christmas themed shows, and some regular shows - listeners had had enough.

Nope, no MFF for this ox this year. What reservations there were have been cancelled. Oddly, I will have the extended weekend (Friday-Monday) off but it doesn't help enough as I just can't go on my own. I suppose it's meant as a consolation and I don't mind the time off, but it feels a bit like rubbing it in.

At least I have heard things might be picking up and not just for the holiday rush. It looks like I might make Penguicon again next year, though RCFM might be a bit dubious.

Some places are already playing Christmas music and nothing but Christmas music. This is rather early, I think, for that. The inclusion of the occasional winter tune might be acceptable, but full-on Christmas music shouldn't happen until after Thanksgiving if it happens at all. My problem with Christmas music isn't that I don't like it. It's not even necessarily the repetition, though by now there ought to be enough tunes that repeats shouldn't need to happen frequently, and that's counting by title rather than by performance. It's the poor quality of every b-list,c-list, d-list... z-list quasi-celebrity cover of tunes that have been better by better. While White Christmas might not require Bing Crosby and Here Comes Santa Claus might not require Gene Autry, they are destroyed by various wannabes and also-rans put their undesired mark on them. One thing I will agree with the bletcherous Beavis and Butthead on: "Micheal Bolton can make anything suck."

I know there are some radio stations with an all-Christmas format, but the places where one encounters this most are stores that have Muzak or such (no commercials save what the store adds) and those seem to be sanitized of the more interesting Christmas and Winter tunes, such as Christmas At Ground Zero.

Now I'm pondering the interesting not-so-standard Christmas and Winter tunes. I know of a few:

Christmas At Ground Zero - Weird Al Yankovic
Happy Hairy Hippie Santa Claus ("You bet your sweet bippy Santa Claus is a hippie...")
Rusty Chevrolet - Da Yoopers
My Car Won't Go - Da Yoopers
I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas - Yogi Yorgesson
A Christmas Carol - Tom Lehrer
I'm Spending Hanukkah In Santa Monica - Tom Lehrer

Any others that wouldn't be all that likely to played in a store, but might provide some welcome relief if they were?