My Kingdom for a Rock Station

Something is up with my XM.  I suspect I need a new antenna.  For some reason, it won't tune in and it's been on the fritz for about a week and a half.  A cursory look at the wiring turned up precisely nothing.  Now I'll have to go trace the antenna wire from the roof down the weatherstripping, through the firewall, under the dash, etc. On Long Island, The Bone is no more.  It was one of those cool rock stations that regularly played Guns 'N Roses and knew that The Who recorded songs other than "Baba O'Riley" and "Pinball Wizard."  The old standby, 103.9 WRCN, has stopped doing anything cool whatsoever.  No more shows featuring local bands, no DJs with personality.  Just "Get the Led Out" segments consisting of the most overplayed Zep tunes of all time.

Rock is not dead.  But radio stations are certainly acting that way.  Whoever is in charge of formats seems to think it's better to have a station that a million people listen to for background noise than to have a station where 500,000 people listen passionately.  I find myself listening to WRCN and sighing at what seems like the millionth play of "Tom Sawyer" because the alternative is silence.

I tried listening to some of the other stations around the island, too.  WBLI, which used to be a pop station when I was a kid, is now a death-dealer.  No, it doesn't play satanic metal.  "Death-dealer" is the term I use for stations that latch onto anything popular and play it to death until you can't stand it anymore.  In this case, they play "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse, "Beautiful Girls" by Sean Kingston and Fergie's "Big Girls Don't Cry" in endless rotation until you hear Kingston crooning "sooooo-i-sy-dull, sooooo-i-sy-dull..." in your sleep.

I got XM a while back because of terrestrial radio's suckitude, thinking that terrestrial radio couldn't slide further into the maw of suckiness.  Listening to XM pretty much constantly kept me from noticing that yes, it was possible for terrestrial radio to suck more.  Now that I've been forced to go back, it's like I would rather puncture both ear drums with a meat thermometer than let my XM Radio go unrepaired for another week.

There's a special level of Hades reserved for Clear Channel executives.  I just know it.

Treasure Hunting Find

Yesterday, I had the day mostly to myself, so after running some errands, I went down to the beach and took my truck out on the dunes. It was a crowded beach day and a lot of 4x4 enthusiasts packed the area where the county lets trucks and jeeps park. Lots of people were swimming and fishing. For kicks, I brought one of my metal detectors with me, and I spent about an hour looking for treasure. Unlike other excursions, where I had left my detector settings focused on coins, I decided to crank the detector's sensitivity settings up and look for all types of metals. I did end up finding quite a bit of foil, bottlecaps and trash, but I did manage to get a few nickels, pennies and quarters.

A little over an hour into it, I headed a bit closer to the water and I heard a tone. The piece of metal clearly wasn't a coin, and it was pretty close to the end of the detector's range - about a foot down. I didn't want to dig a foot down just to find a bit of tinfoil from someone's old peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I resolved to dig everything yesterday, so I had at it with the hand trowel.

The object was so small that I almost missed it, and I almost moved on before I spotted a glint of light as I was pawing through the sand. I found a small fragment of tarnished metal, and into it was set a diamond.

I'm not even sure it's real, but that find ended my treasure hunt for the day. Upon arriving home, I pried the diamond loose from its setting with a couple pairs of needle-nose pliers. Above is a picture of the diamond and its setting. Sorry that it's so blurry. The batteries on my regular digital camera are worn down and the camera in my Blackberry Pearl doesn't have a macro mode.

So now, I'm not sure what I should do. I'd like to take it to a jeweler to see if it's not just a piece of glass. It looks like it might be in the .75 - 1 carat range. (I do think it's probably real. It didn't scratch when I nicked it with the pliers.) Any advice? Anyone know a NYC-based jeweler who could take a look at this for me?

If it's real, I might want to buy a setting for it.

UPDATE:

I visited two jewelers on 47th Street at lunch.  Both said it's a cubic zirconium.  Nuts...

Happy Birthday to Me

As of today, I am officially closer to 40 than I am to 30.  Depressing, no?

Consumption BS

I've dismissed just about every report I've ever seen on media consumption that tries to put an average number of hours to media consumption. As I'm fond of saying in my columns, in order for the average American to watch as much television as media research companies say they do, one would have to come home after work/school every day Monday through Friday and watch two hours of television. Then they would have to spend both days of the weekend watching 8 hours per day. Obviously, there's some inflation going on here. Talk all you want about averages. I refuse to believe that the average American watches that much television. Similarly, check out this article in AdAge. Amazingly, one media research company has actually stated that media consumption declined from 2005 to 2006. It's the whole thing about what it declined to that's amusing. The average yearly figure for Americans for 2006? 3,530 hours.

To put things in perspective, there are only 8,760 hours in a year. Am I to take it that people actually believe the average American spends over 40 percent of their year consuming media?

More perspective... If you got a healthy 8 hours of sleep per night, which most people don't, you would sleep for 2,920 hours a year. The average is under 7 hours. Let's call it 7 to make the math easy. That's 2,555 hours a year. Am I to take it that the average American spends 38 percent more time consuming media than sleeping? I doubt it.

Assuming no multitasking (which is a huge jump, I know...) and 7 hours of sleep per day, that would leave 2,675 hours left over for things like working and, you know, LIVING. With a 40-hour work week, you've got only 595 hours left during the course of the year for doing stuff that isn't working, sleeping or consuming media.

I can't believe people actually think these numbers represent anything in the realm of reality. On a side note, I can't wait for the first media research person who pops in here and attempts to justify numbers like this. Excuse me, sir, but your agenda is showing...