RIP: Tom Petty

*sigh*

I've always liked Tom Petty, even if his vocal range was well above mine. He was hitting it big when I was first in the position of having my own income and buying my own music and audio equipment. I was just telling my wife that I was working my first job, selling camera and audio equipment, when his first big album, Damn The Torpedoes, was released. One of the girls that I worked with asked me if he was a castrato.

I read earlier today that he was hospitalized and reported dead, but the report was withdrawn as inaccurate. Then my wife told me that he was found unresponsive and with no brain activity, he was then taken off life-support. It apparently took a few hours for his body to succumb.

For me, he was probably low in my top 10 or in the middle of my top 20, though the two Traveling Wilbury albums are definitely favorites of mine.

I'll definitely miss him. I know the other woman on my wife's telescope is going to be devastated: she's a huge fan and has seen him in concert multiple times.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/03/555157788/rock-star-tom-petty-dead-at-66

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-petty-rock-iconoclast-who-led-the-heartbreakers-dead-at-66-w506651

The Orville and Star Trek Discovery

We watched eps 3 & 4 of Orville last night and we're really enjoying it. I feel like they're getting in to some real Classic Trek social commentary ground, especially with 3, and 4 felt like a Classic Trek ep with The Computer Controlling The Society that was played over and over again.

Discovery, sadly, we did not get to see. I spent last week in Phoenix and I didn't program it in to the DVR before I left. I tried to program it in remotely via an iPhone app, but it didn't take. And even though it was free on broadcast, CBS in their infinite (idiotic) wisdom no longer has it available. Even their Apple TV app only has it available if you subscribe to their streaming service, and I'm really not inclined to pay for it right now. So I guess we won't see it for now. We'll either wait until the half-season or full-season is over and subscribe for a month, binge it and drop it, or we'll buy the DVD set when it comes out.

Personally, I can't see the CBS streaming service succeeding long-term. Netflix and Amazon succeed because THEY AREN'T THE ONLY ONES MAKING CONTENT FOR THEIR SERVICES. If CBS were buying content from other sources, previewing it online so we could see what it looked like before committing to paying for it, then it would make their service a lot more attractive. I have a feeling that there's very little chance of that happening and their service won't last more than a couple of years before it gets bought out by someone else.

In other news, it looks like my Onkyo popped another something while I was in Phoenix and the HDCP is now completely fried, so it will no longer work as an HDMI switch. I can plug in two HDMI cables in to my TV, so Apple TV and my DVD/BR player. But I really hope to lay my hands on a Nintendo, which will require its own HDMI connector, which will require a switch. And I don't want to spend $300+ for a new receiver right now. So we'll have to live with lousy sound for a while. Had I known it was fried, I could have looked for a used receiver in Phoenix that would have worked as a HDMI switch. Oh, well.