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I’ve spent the last few days listening to random “muxtapes”. What is a muxtape?

A muxtape is a compilation of 12 songs or less put together by real people. A user signs up for an account on the website (http://muxtape.com), gets a subdomain (i.e. http://elroy.muxtape.com) uploads up to 12 songs to the playlist, and it is shared for all the intermaweb to see.

The front page is a color table of links to different muxtapes. It can be a bit daunting and changes every time you refresh the screen. I basically picked the top left corner to sample different “tapes”.

I heard a very interesting remake of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Toxic” (by Britney Spears) here:
http://mozza.muxtape.com/

Muxtape also has a tumblr blog to let folks know about updates, improvements and to highlight different muxtapes:
http://muxtape.tumblr.com/

For more info on the general disorder of muxtape, you can read this quick Wired article.

My two cents?
While I was listening, I wondered why there were very few hip-hop muxtapes. Naturally, I asked twitter and received this clever response from engtech:

That’s an easy one. There’s no hiphop on muxtape because hiphop never gave up mixtapes in the first place.

I did find hiphop.muxtape.com, which has some good songs and been “favorited” by 307 people.

Which brings up another point…most of the muxtapes I listened to or checked out had been favorited by less than 10 people. What is the common theme?
People are trying to impress you with their knowledge of off the wall songs you’ve never heard of and probably never will again.

Not like that is a bad thing, but just a warning if you decide to frequent the site.

I rather enjoyed my time in muxtape land as a welcome alternative to last.fm or Pandora and would recommend it to folks looking for some different music.
If you already have a muxtape you want to brag about or make one you think is the new hotness, drop us the link in the comments and I will gladly listen to it.

(That link to my muxtape actually works, but I haven’t actually made it yet. Sorry.)

UPDATE: Almost forget to mention how to use muxtape with coverflow. Pretty cool looking, but would have to do it on my wife’s computer since it seems to require a Mac…

Last night, we dined at the Marguerita Grill in Homosassa, FL.

The food was good and the margaritas are huge to gigantic.

But, the highlight of the night was the tribute to America that the Greek-American owner holds EVERY FRIDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT.

Not only does he play a video with “graphic” content featuring pictures of the twin towers after the planes crashed into them, but he is extremely outspoken about haters. During his speech, he mentions that if you don’t like America, you can head straight to the exit. Then, after the video, he again lets people know that if they have a problem with the tribute, they can “Hit the Road, Jack” as he plays that song made famous by Ray Charles.

Then, he hits the zenith by passing out American flags and playing “Proud to Be An American“. I took a short (very dark) video of the restuarant singing and waving their flags. Although you can’t see much, it gives you the idea.

I was amazed and touched that the owner, a stow away to get to America, still does a tribute to this country and 9/11 almost seven years later. It is important to remember 9/11, don’t get me wrong, but I was just surprised that he remembers it twice a week, every week.
His patriotism is greater than almost everyone I know, combined, and I live outside of Washington, D.C. So, good for him.

As a side note, I met a retired rodeo clown who said the best rodeo he had ever been to was in Pendleton, OR. Electronic Vagrant should be really pumped up.

Anyway, the point is, good for the owner of the Marguerita Grill and his abundance of patriotism. It was a heart felt experience I will never forget.

I have to lodge a complaint and perhaps others will learn from my mistakes.

I recently ordered a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx as a birthday present for my brother-in-law (from both myself and my wife aka his sister). He is an avid hiker and after doing some research and reading some reviews, I decided he might enjoy using this little toy out on the trail.

So, I did a search on Froogle (The Jewish Google) for the unit. The first store charged $15 for shipping, but the next store had free shipping and the price was quite a bit under what a bricks and mortar retailer would charge you ($88 dollars less than REI and without tax).

I went it ahead and ordered it (Saturday night) from www.preferredphoto.com. Today (3 business days later), I received an e-mail that they want me to call and confirm my order. I called and the extension hung up on me. I guess I should have seen the writing on the wall. They called me later (6PM) to confirm my order.

The conversation went something like this (abbreviated version):

Website Dude (WD) - Do you want to order this?
Me - Yes.
WD - It doesn’t come with memory. You should buy some.
Me - This is a gift. He knows it needs memory. (Thinking - I can’t believe this guy is trying to up-sell me over the phone)
WD - You should buy some.
Me - No.
WD - The batteries on this unit can die. Would you like to buy some?
Me - No.
WD - Just confirming your shipping and billing address…
(here it comes)
WD - Also, this product is the international version and comes with manuals written in Japanese.
Me - How much does the US version cost?
WD - $50 dollars more.
Me - Amazon sells it for $8 more than your original online price. Cancel my order.

Seriously? I couldn’t believe this dude called to “confirm”, which really meant up-sell accessories and then reveal the lie of their online prices. I didn’t see anything on the website about the product being the international version. Up-selling usually annoys me and this was not an exception to that rule.

Scam artists….

What’s the lesson to be learned here?
When ordering something online, go for the larger e-retailers if their price is close ($8 isn’t bad on a $200 GPS unit). If it isn’t close, it is up to you to risk ordering from some “photo” site that sells everything from cameras to flat screen TV’s (where I bought my LCD TV).

I recently married the wonderful woman I used to refer to as my future wife. The Villagers and many others were there to celebrate. A good time was had by all.

We did a lot of gift opening this past weekend and had a few thoughts on the whole process.

That being said, this post is not meant to offend anyone or call them out. It is just a few casual observations. This is part X of the series (I don’t know how many parts I will do…it could be just one) on wedding lessons.

Let’s go with a list:

1. Some people won’t know what to do if there little or nothing left on your registry.
   • Some people are afraid to give cash, which possibly leads to stuff you don’t want.
   • Take away - Have more stuff on your registry than people can buy. Then you will at least get things you want.
2. Some people give gift cards as presents.
   • Why is this more useful then cash?
   • Especially if the gift card is to a store with nothing left on your registry. What’s the thought here, maybe they forgot to add something?
   • On the other hand, credit card gift cards are completely acceptable.
   • Take away - Don’t give gift cards to specific stores as wedding gifts.
3. Not everyone who comes to your wedding will give you a gift. (This one surprised me.) *
   • But, conversely, some people who don’t come to your wedding will give you something.
   • Some of those people might not have received an invitation. (BONUS!)
   • Take away - It is what it is. Be thankful for what you received.
4. If you receive china or everyday china prior to the wedding, it might be a good idea to open it up and check it for cracks or breaks.
   • We had to order our everyday china ourselves, due to it being discontinued right after we put it on the registry.
   • When we opened up one of the many boxes this past weekend, we found out one of the bowls was broken.
   • Take away - Big props to Crate and Barrel for finding us a bowl that has been discontinued for 8 months. They made the process of replacing it extremely easy and for that we are grateful.

Perhaps there will be a part two when I think of more things….

For an “outsiders” perspective on our wedding (and a bonus pic), check out this link from my tumblr blog:
earthlings live & love large; invite aliens to wedding

That tumblr post was originally taken from:
thealientruth.com (you have to scroll down to see the entry I tumbled)

* I have to admit that I went to a wedding a couple years ago and did not give a gift. But, I did “DJ” the wedding…that is, I provided the music (requested by the bride and groom), all of the stereo equipment, and did announcements. I still feel bad about not giving at least a modest bit of cash, due to the fact that it was my college roommate. I’m sorry for that, Ed.

We’ve “completed” the conversion from Blogger to Wordpress(.org).

You may notice a few issues:

1. Images at the bottom of posts run through the to the next post (in Firefox and Safari).

Perhaps the Villagers will have to avoid this until I figure it out.

2. Comments from after 11/06/07 have gone missing. That is when we converted to Intense Debate.

Exporting comments from Blogger is currently broken and Intense Debate is working on it. I exported an XML file of the missing comments, but Disqus doesn’t support importing comments yet.

But, I doubt this will stop us from continuing to blog.

UPDATE: I reposted this entry due to a mistake I made with our Main RSS Feed. Sorry for the delay.

The Villagers are moving to a self-hosted Wordpress blog.

If you subscribe to our RSS Feed, you may need to change our address in your feed reader. Our feed should be:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/VillagerWithWheel

We’ve always had this feed, but it wasn’t well advertised on our Blogger based blog.

We are also changing to a Disqus based comment system.

Our new comment/thread feeds (this will be on the new site as well):

• All Comments RSS Feed
• New Comments RSS Feed
• New Threads RSS Feed

So, our blog may be down for a few hours as everything migrates to our new host.

All the old content will be on the new site, but if you want to look at the old format and remember our roots, our Blogger site should remain unchanged at:
http://villagerwithwheel.blogspot.com

If you’ve just stumbled across this site via Blogger, our blog is located at:
http://villagerwithwheel.com

Feel free to let us know what you think of the new site (when it goes live) in the comments…

A few things have been on my mind recently regarding the gym. The first involves the place of an elliptical machine in a males workout.

I do use the machine from time to time and recently learned from my friends down in Hampton Roads (Newport News is only a segment of Hampton roads. They are not the same thing) that using this machine will eventually lead me to purchase a pink iPOD and begin doing Pilates.

I disagree. One basic concept of working out is that it is good to mix things up. Sure the eliptigay is not the same as running but it is a great alternative. You may be able to get an even greater workout from this machine than running if you find it as hard as i do to focus and not get bored running on treadmill.

The last thought I had involved the place of the Baltimore, Maryland based Under Armour in the gym. These form-fitting, moisture-wicking performance shirts are worn by well….in order not to create controversy…a lot of interesting individuals. Elroy and I had a discussion about this before in which we created groups that most gym-going, under armour wearing person could be placed. I believe there were 2 groups that I don’t want to mention. At the end of the day i’m not going to wear under armour for three main reasons: I’m not jacked; If I was jacked I’d probably still not wear this because i’d feel like a girl wearing an extra short skirt trying to get attention; Finally, I’ll always prefer wearing random t-shirts like the blue one I got at ElectronicVagrant’s wedding.

THIS FITNESS COLUMN IS SPONSORED BY:

ACOM ENDORSED: “This gave me that extra push i’ve always been looking for” - ACOM, 2008