azurelunatic: Vuvuzela emitting sound waves in a black and yellow road sign style icon (noise)
Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 ([personal profile] azurelunatic) wrote2013-10-22 09:56 pm
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Again we have the grinding reality of an eight-hour bus commute.

Car is still in shop for Replacement 3 of the offending parts; this time they're using OEM parts, and the second part has yet to arrive as of 3:30-ish today. So bus again. At least the BART strike is over (for now) so the SamTrans stops are not fucked like they were during the strike. (For whatever reason, the SamTrans stops that were inside BART grounds rather than adjacent were moved to be adjacent, causing general chaos and confusion and also me standing around sockless in the cold fog for an hour last night.)

We've figured out how to shave a little time off the commute. By catching the other bus instead of the one bus, we can catch the long haul a good twenty minutes into its haul, instead of at the beginning. By repeating the process in the other direction, we can ditch an hour due to the flaky connection with the late-running bus. But beware, as the earliest departure time from work is just about the right amount of time to catch the last of that bus. (However, if we've missed it entirely, we can continue to the end of the line and get the late bus. Which is hourly. And a long wait.)

Tomorrow it happens again. Tomorrow there is also the chance that I get to meet some of the more interesting, if not affable, fellows from an adjacent department, due to scheduling hilarity. It's unlikely that I'll be gravely needed, but I'll be at work anyway. Robin Sparkles and I were chatting over lunch, and the topic came up; I got to tell the tale of my introduction to the guy that she thought I was talking about. I've honed the story, it's now down to: "And then I found out how poorly the following elements combined: [off-topic] list, the phrase "with all due respect", the phrase "bite me", and the reply-all feature."


The commute is made reasonable via podcasts, which I was going to describe to somebody but the comment is surely piled under several hundred others in my inbox now, and gods know when I'm going to dig out. So:

The Nerdist: Newly subscribed, yet to listen.
Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction: ditto
Today We Learned: ditto ditto
Nerdist Writers Panel: ditto ditto ditto


How I Met Your Mother: ditto again, and I'm really looking forward to a creator-side view.

KQED: This Week in Northern California: I'm not sure this is updating. I need a better local news type podcast. Also maybe some actual weather.

NPR Programs: Wait Wait Don't Tell Me: Mostly enjoyable with some cringeworthy moments.

NPR Programs: Fresh Air: I like that the format includes both long stories and little snippets. I'm not as charmed by the way the weekend one repeats stuff I've already heard, but that can sometimes get weeded out.

NPR Topics: World Story of the Day: Informative. Short, and can be used as buffer between long-format.

MSNBC Rachel Maddow: Yay Rachel Maddow! Politics news that doesn't make me want to get stabby (well, not at Rachel, and someone else saying WHAT THE FUCK NO I MEAN WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE makes me less stabby in general).

Fandomania: Fannish type stuff. Updates weekly. Decent but I'm not super enthused.

SF Squeecast: Seanan's on it and it's awesome. Various speculative fiction type writers talking about generally fannish related things that delight them, with bonus witty banter, hilarity, and occasionally cat-related incidents like Alice trying to eat Seanan's microphone.

Slashreport: Podcast of my heart. This is the podcast that convinced me that maybe I should listen to podcasts, and then it reminded me that hey, I grew up with radio, maybe audio format was a good thing for me.

Welcome to Night Vale: Speculative fiction radio show of my heart. Clicks hard with a lot of people; doesn't click hard with some. I'm one of the ones for whom it clicked. Hard. And I fell in love instantly.

The Hidden Almanac: So [livejournal.com profile] ursulav heard descriptions of Night Vale, and got a particular mental image of how it was. Then she listened and it wasn't. Now her husband narrates The Hidden Almanac. You know those updates from [livejournal.com profile] ursulav's garden? Now imagine that as filtered through the same blotter paper that Night Vale was licked off of, in compact 4-minute segments. (The updates about the historical points and especially the lives of saints requires no filtration, they just are that weird.) Includes amazing messages from the sponsors, which need listening to from the beginning. There are only sixteen episodes. That's just over an hour of listening. Start now, they're small.
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[identity profile] fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com 2013-10-23 07:49 am (UTC)(link)
I love The Hidden Almanac; if you pair it up with Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap you get a better understanding of and appreciation for Ursula's writing. I really appreciate The Nerdist's conversational tone. Before my accident I used to listen to Car Talk while on my bike rides; Tom and Ray have retired but they've got enough material that they're still putting out weekly "Best of" episodes for the next five years or so. I've also become an enormous fan of The Thrilling Adventure Hour. It captures a lot of the old-time radio vibe from my childhood so well and it was basically my gateway drug into the world of podcasts.
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[personal profile] majoline 2013-10-23 08:43 am (UTC)(link)
I was skeptical about the Hidden Almanac when it first started and I downloaded the first ep and finally got around to listening to it the other day and I LOVED IT. Oh, it's fantastic.

I love Slashreport and WtNV too :)

I might have to go download Rachel Maddow, but otherwise, I've got so much podfic to listen to, I don't manage that many podcasts, just because I have to fall in love.
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[personal profile] ofearthandstars 2013-10-23 04:52 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, thank you for these recs! I'm off to look, er, listen...

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[personal profile] mmegaera 2013-10-23 09:01 pm (UTC)(link)
I adore the Hidden Almanac, and I suspect there are many other podcasts out there that I would love, too, but I have no idea how to go about finding them.
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[personal profile] siderea 2013-10-24 06:31 am (UTC)(link)
You know about NPR's This American Life? I mean, I figure you do, but just in case I figured I'd mention, because if you didn't: it is like the most awesome thing ever.
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[personal profile] not_a_sniglet 2013-10-25 03:15 am (UTC)(link)
PLEASE TELL ME yOU CAN FIND NIGHTVALE ON iTUNES! OMFG!