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I think one of the little known things about the Cleveland area to outsiders is how incredibly rich this area is in the arts.  It all starts in University Circle, where the Case nerds still outnumber the artists, but the arts are what really shine.  The Cleveland Museum of Art is consistently one of the top ranked art museums in the country, Severance Hall plays home to one of the nation's most respected orchestras, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the equally excellent Cleveland Orchestra Chorus.

What's probably more impressive is the number of young people involved in music and the arts.  From local high schools (Medina High School had 420 kids in seven choirs, 250 in three bands, and another 100+ in orchestra when I went there, out of a student body of about 1,700) to the local colleges and universities, Cleveland's music has made up for where the city's sports have lacked.

A new addition to the city's repertoire is the Baldwin-Wallace College Men's Chorus, a group in its first year of existence.  What's unique about this chorus is it not only draws upon the talented student body of Baldwin-Wallace College (located in Berea, in Cleveland's Southwest side), but has allowed local community members to join.  This includes me, participating in my first musical endeavor since I was in Microsoft's Theater Troupe a couple of years ago.

This coming Monday, April 21st, we are going to be holding an open rehearsal for people who may be interested in singing this coming Fall.  If you're interested, send me a message through the blog or leave your email address in a comment and I'll get you all the appropriate information.

To finish it off, here's a YouTube video of their most recent performance at St. John's Cathedral in Cleveland, singing Biehl's arrangement of "Ave Maria":

Whenever I have trouble finding something on the Internet, I try to blog about it, hoping to add one more place where people can find the information that they are looking for.

Today's hard-piece-of-information-to-find is the channel number of Sportstime Ohio HD on Armstrong Cable (Medina, Ohio.)

I was watching the blurry, lousy, 20th-century quality SD feed of the Tribe game.  Yuck.  Then I saw an advertisement that said that Sportstime Ohio was in HD.  Great!  I looked through the HD channels in my guide and didn't find one for Sportstime Ohio.  Some internet scouring, and I find that channel 177 is Sportstime Ohio.  Apparently they haven't actually listed the channel yet (it's labeled "To be Announced").  But tune in, and you'll be watching some Progressive Field action in 1080i.  Enjoy.

Even though there was no way I was going to get up at 6 AM in the morning to watch the games, I was excited to see the baseball season officially start with Boston's split "series" with the A's in Japan.  No matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to enjoy sports from the time that the NFL is over in February until baseball starts in April.  March Madness--well, let's just say that I really don't care about basketball, outside of a reason to go out to the bar and pretend to get excited with friends.

Now, I'm not trying to slight the National League here, but I'm going to just focus my predictions on the ultra-competitive, interesting, and DH-lovin' American League.  Without further ado...

American League East:

1. Boston Red Sox - With that pitching staff and that offense, Boston will definitely repeat as the AL East champion.
2. New York Yankees - With the deep pockets of the Steinbrenners and the need to have a respectable final season at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees will be a competitive team all year, but I do believe that this is the year that New York misses the Wild Card and the playoffs.
3. Toronto Blue Jays - A surprisingly strong dark-horse team, I could see the Blue Jays winning over 80 games this year, but in a division with New York and Boston, they are doomed to be an also-ran.
4. Tampa Bay Rays - The Rays have some good young talent but not nearly enough to compete in this division (couldn't that just have been copied-and-pasted from the past decade?)
5. Baltimore Orioles - The once-proud franchise will remain the laughingstock of the American League.  Peter Angelos continues to drive the franchise in the ground and Baltimore continues to be more known for smack than "whack".

American League Central

1. Cleveland Indians - Yes, I'm a homer, but the Tribe has one of the most impressive and deep starting rotations in baseball.  Follow that up with a balanced offense headed by Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner, and you have a team that will easily win 95 games.
2. Detroit Tigers - Detroit has gone for broke this off-season, spending money that's usually reserved for New York teams.  Unfortunately, they did very little to shore up an iffy rotation, and if I learned anything by watching Jon Hart build teams in Cleveland in the 90s, it's that pitching beats offense every time.  Detroit will have enough wins to make it to the post-season though as the AL Wild Card winners.
3. Minnesota Twins - No longer the tough team they were the first half of the decade, Minnesota will fall to below .500 this year.
4. Kansas City Royals - Will somebody please help the poor citizens of Kansas City?  They truly deserve better baseball than they've watched for the past 15 years.
5. Chicago White Sox - 2005 is becoming a distant memory on the Southside of Chicago.

American League West

1. Seattle Mariners - This is a long-shot, but I'm going to take it anyway.  After an extremely competitive season that fell short, Seattle is hungry and ready to rock Safeco Field again.  Ichiro, JJ Putz, and a balanced offense make Seattle competitve through the All-Star break and ownership will pull the trigger to make a trade for a stretch run.
2. Los Angeles Angels - The Angels will be neck and neck all season with Seattle, but will far short.
3. Oakland A's - It's just not happening this year.  Moneyball is great, but having a payroll 1/3 of that of the other teams in your division just doesn't hold up down the stretch.
4. Texas Rangers - When were the Rangers last good?

ALDS:

• Cleveland over Seattle - It's the pitching, stupid.
• Boston over Detroit - It's the pitching, stupid.

ALCS:

• Cleveland over Boston - A complete home-team call here.  I want Cleveland to win.  But there are reasons to think they will be able to pull it off.  Cleveland's younger team will hold up to injuries better than Boston.  Rotations and bullpens are fairly even between the two teams, but the Indians are hurt and hungry from last year and will parlay that into their first World Series appearance since 1997.

Well, it's not like I didn't see this coming, but no sooner do I get off of the plane and start my move in to Cleveland than it starts to snow.  And snow.  And snow.  And ice.  And snow again (tomorrow I think they are calling for more snow.)  This means that in the past two weeks I've seen more snow than in the three years preceding it.  Wow.

So, yes, I'm finally moved in, and yes, that's the reason that I really haven't blogged in quite a while.  Now that the internet connection and the cable is turned on, my new apartment is setup, furniture has arrived, my car and possessions have been delivered by the moving company, I'm finally ready to do more simple things--like write a blog post about the experience.

First I will teach a lesson to all of my readers.  Be very, very careful what kind of quote you get from movers.  I wasn't and I was nickel, dimed, quartered, and hundred-dollared to the tune of a $4,000 moving bill (up from an original quote of $1,700.)  It was amazing how efficiently and quickly they piled the charges on.  First they couldn't get an 18-wheeler down my street in Seattle, so they charged me $300 for "shuttle service".   When I mentioned the fact that the very first thing they asked on the phone while making the quote for the move was my address and they should know that "Seattle, WA 98102" isn't exactly 18-wheeler territory, the guy just shrugged.  I was then charged "crating fees" for my piano, my DLP TV, and various pieces of furniture.  And two bags for my mattress and box springs.  And packing materials for my kitchen supplies.  And extra cubic footage fees to hold all of that newly-purchased packaging.  When it was all done, my plans for buying a secondary "snow" car in Ohio were looking more and more unappealing.  I did not want to spend anymore money.

Thank god the car moving was much easier.  In true Medina fashion, I was walking into the grocery store and while I was talking to a friend I knew in the parking lot, I happened to glance over and noticed a giant auto-moving truck parked in the back of the parking lot--with my car on the back of it.  (It's bright red and hard to miss.)  I walked up to the truck, talked to the driver, and I was driving my own car home 15 minutes later.  No extra charges with the auto shipping.

So enough with the moving stories, because they are giving me ulcers just thinking about it more.  The move back has been smooth--it's been great to see the Ohio readers of this blog (shout-outs to the Staley crew from CWRU that is still hanging out and partying strong and Amanda, who is a welcome addition to any social occasion.)  Scott has introduced me to Stevenson's, a tavern in Euclid that truly deserves its own blog entry.  To make it short--this is a place that serves excellent burgers and Great Lakes Brewery Dortmunders for $2.  Seattle people--this is a beer that is better (yes, better) than Mac & Jack's, and it's $2 a pint!

I'm also glad to be getting involved in music again.  Another organization worth its own blog post, I've joined the Baldwin-Wallace Men's Chorus which was recently started and directed by Medina's very own Frank Bianchi.  Quite a few Medina alums are there, so it was great to get back involved in music with them.  The big difference from the last rehearsal I had with these guys--we went out for beers afterwards.  Amen for that.

Besides for a short business trip to Atlanta, it's been great settling in and reconnecting with people--even though I definitely need some sleep and a day or two to finish unpacking!

A couple of weeks ago, as part of getting through my "bucket list" before I leave the Evergreen State for, um, snowier pastures, a couple of friends and I traveled to Orcas Island for the weekend and rented a cabin.  Given that the whales aren't actually around in the winter, we got a cheap rate, and, well, we decided to rename the island "No-Orcas Island".

(I'd like to point out that in the following pictures, we've had to Photoshop my friend Peter in after fact, as he showed up a day later than the rest of us for the trip.)  I used the best Photoshopping skills I could do in the 15 seconds I spent on photo editing for this blog post.  My apologies to Peter.)

The first of these photos is the four, err, five of us on the ferry ride in at Lopez Island.  Although we did not get off the ferry, we can officially check off Lopez as a place that we've all been.  No, it wasn't raining--we all just thought we looked more Washingtonian with hoods on.

The second picture is the four, err, five of us hiking on Mt. Constitution.  We did not make it up to the top, because it was big, and there was a ton of snow on the ground.  Please note in this picture that Diane is quite proud of the fact that she went to UVA, as shown with her bright orange sweatshirt.  What you don't know is that she was also trying to scare away bears.  Thanks Diane!

The final picture in this incredibly short photo album is the four of us looking into an icy lake.  And Peter's head Photoshopped in on top of the rest of that.  I believe that everyone was very amazed at the fact that yes, there are places in the world where it gets cold enough for water to freeze.

Quite a fun trip, and another surprising place in Washington that you really have never heard of before but are amazed with how amazingly beautiful it is.  Good weekend in all.

For the second time in two years, I've been talked into going to a weekly dancing "instruction".  I say "instruction" because when I think of dance classes, I think of serious people in purple spandex jumping around with "The Nutcrucker" playing in the background.  No, no, no.  I do weekly dance instruction, just so there's no confusion.

And it's hardly been weekly.  Tonight will be week two of Salsa dance instruction.  Over a year ago, I did a West Coast swing course.  And I'll admit.  Both times were more for company and making other people happy than they were for myself.  I'm just trying to remember if it was the same person both times that organized it.  I think it was.

Although the swing course was good, it was a very small class.  So good in fact that Diane confirmed that I was indeed the "second-best guy there."  This was out of three guys.  For salsa, I'm sticking true to my Capitol Hill location and going to the Century Ballroom, which apparently is the place for dance, em, instructions in Seattle.  The turnout definitely looked like it.  There were somewhere between 40 and 100 people for the last lesson I went to.  (Sorry, I didn't actually count.)  To my pleasure, very few of them knew what they were doing.

My previous experiences with anything coordinated prior to these courses were not overly positive.  In high school, I was involved in music.  By extension, this meant if I wanted to be in theater performances, I was going to have to learn how to move in time.  I stumbled my way through, tried to keep out of the limelight for any dance-intensive numbers, but still grimace when I see a video of myself back in high school.  It's not that I wasn't moving at the right times.  It's just that I had the grace, well, of a Midwestern teenage boy with little interest in sports or coordinated activity.  At Microsoft when I was in a theater group show for Christmas, they thought it'd be cool if I sang "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" with a lady and had a dance break in the middle of the song.  This resulted in hours of listening to "Santa Claus" and flailing the poor coworker around in the lobby of the cafeteria.  Thank God for the free soda.

All of this experience has resulted in a few observations:

1. I'm better than the guy who has never danced before.
2. I know right and left, I know not to stomp my feet, and I know how to lead when dancing.
3. Salsa music really is what they play at Mexican restaurants, and it makes me immediately hungry whenever I hear it.
4. Because we're rotating among about 30 girls, I can use that joke above 30 times.
5. People have a serious eye-contact problem in this class.  I mean, you're really not supposed to look at your feet.  Even I know that.
6. This is such a highly obviously excellent way to meet people that I'm upset that I never did it before.  It's like speed-dating!  Over the course of an hour, I probably danced and talked to 15 different girls.  Some even laughed at the Salsa joke!  I'm in!
7. In case any girl who is in the class is reading this, no, I'm not checking you out when I'm dancing with you.
8. Well, maybe I am, but not in a creepy way.
9. Although it's a decent walk over and the weather has been cold (*gasp* 45 degrees!), short sleeves are a must.  The ballroom is hot.
10. Bookending the instruction session with drinks (stiff ones up front) is a great way of staying both nimble and social.
11. GOAL:  Become the 2nd-best guy in the class again.  Diane:  you'll have to let me know.
12. Diane:  your lack of rhythm is not as apparent when you dance as when you sing.

Hasta luego amigos!

Well, I can't claim to remember many presidential primary seasons--this is really only the third one I've followed with any interest--but if the media is to be trusted, both parties are running closer contests than they have in a long time.  I'll refrain from commenting about any of the individual candidates here on the blog, but there was one thing that really stood out for me, which was the inaccuracy of the polls in both states.  The pollsters had conducted near-daily polls in the states, but were not close to the actual results.

Why?  Well, I think that polls are getting increasingly inaccurate because of the way they are taken--typically over landline telephones.  Let's face it, the days of the average person both having a landline telephone and not being on the "Do Not Call" list are lower everyday.  It is also something that is going to skew polls increasingly towards an older and less technology-savvy demographic.  For a great example of this, most of my friends are planning on voting, are well-educated, well-read, and extremely interested in this year's primary season.  Not a single one of us pays Qwest, SBC, or Verizon for a landline--we all use cell phones.  There's no exception to this rule.  I do not know a single person under the age of 30 that has a true landline for personal use.

With that thinking, it's not all that surprisingly that the polls have become increasingly unreliable, because they are polling an increasingly smaller percentage of the general electorate.  Add that to the fact that there is no clear front-runner in either the Republican or Democratic races and it's not surprising that they polls are often wrong.

Balancing the phone polls with online polls might help balance these polls out again and increase their accuracy.  Although none of my friends are using 1950s-style telephones anymore, we certainly are using Gmail and Facebook.  Facebook not only has the infrastructure to run detailed polls, but they also have incredibly accurate demographic information.  By finding out that Senator Obama is more popular than Senator Clinton in Facebook polls 4 to 1 (I'm making this figure up for argument's sake) you could find out that the 18-30 demographic is going to vote heavily for Obama.  Using the historical data about what percentage of those voters should up for primaries (my demographic doesn't vote in huge numbers), you could help balance out the polling information conducted in person and on landline telephones (both demographics that hit more solidly with the 35+ demographic.)

Of course, maybe they don't need correcting.  They did correctly predict that Hillary Clinton would win Michigan last night.  Unfortunately for them, Mrs. Clinton ran against "Uncommitted" and Dennis Kucinich, so I'm not sure that's a tough call...

I was never a big John Cusack fan until I saw the movie High Fidelity.  It's a simple movie about a guy that works at a record shop going through a breakup with his long-time girlfriend.  (It's also the first time I remember seeing Jack Black in a major Hollywood picture.)  Now, the plot itself was a bit swallow, but the memorable part of the movie is how John's character, Rob, uses Top 5 lists constantly in his narration of the story--uses the playlist style to describe the memorable moments of his life, with the entire plotline being a recap of the top 5 breakups in his life.

Having a close friend going through a recent breakup, this movie came to mind immediately, and so did an idea.  As somebody who works in a record shop, Rob wouldn't necessarily need help creating his top 5 breakup songs ever, but the average person does.  Or their top 5 workout songs.  Or the absolute best 5 songs of the psychedelic rock era.  I have an opinion on all three of the categories above, but unfortunately, I already need to know about the music in order to put them in these playlists that provide the soundtrack of my life.  So I'm stuck with Ben Folds' "Selfless, Cold, and Composed" at the end of a relationship or "Eye of the Tiger" for the end of a workout every time.

There have been multiple playlist sharing services setup on the internet, including the rather boring "iMixes" in the iTunes Music Store, but none really gives you more than a single person's opinion.  What would be great is the collaboratively voted top songs for a mood, situation, genre, year, or whatever, chosen by the people.  What you want is a VH-1 "Top 100"-style list for nearly every genre or situation out there.

The way this could work is by having site moderators in charge of the overall playlists that are being created.  They create and moderate suggestions for new playlists.  The playlists could be based on anything.  Breakups.  Workouts.  Halloween.  Hendrix.  Ducks.  A user on the site could sign in and view any of these playlists.  Using a set amount of points, they could add songs to a playlist or choose to vote currently existing songs "up the charts".  If they choose to justify their decisions with a description of the song and why it belongs on a list, they might be able to vote more.

The killer feature would be to have something like this built into a pre-existing music store (*clearing throat and looking at Microsoft and Apple*).  Click one button and download the top 20 Thanksgiving songs ever written, as voted by the community.  Pick and choose from the "It's raining outside" community playlist.  Come back to the page and comment on the songs after you've had a chance to listen to them.  Just my two cents.

And of course, the best breakup playlist ever is:

5.  "Gone" - Ben Folds, Rockin' the Suburbs.  Everything he writes is a bit tongue-and-cheek, and this song is no different.  Also pretty easy to play on the piano as a crowd-pleaser at parties.

4.  "Don't Look Back in Anger" - Oasis, (What's the Story) Morning Glory.  Maybe I'm more into melody than lyrics, because without looking up the lyrics on the net, I'm really not sure what's been sung in this song, but the hook is based on Canon in D, making it instantly catchy.

3.  "I'll Follow the Sun" - The Beatles, Beatles for Sale.  This song sounds much happier than the lyrics and I appreciate that.  A bit like flipping the bird with the Sesame Street theme song in the background.

2.  "Already Gone" - The Eagles, On the Border.  Maybe I like this for the same reason as above.  Maybe it's just a bit corny.  I like it though.

1.  "Selfless, Cold, and Composed" - Ben Folds Five, Whatever and Ever, Amen.  The lyrics are actually from a letter his former girlfriend wrote to him after a breakup, but they really are good.  I'm a sucker for a string section as well, and this song really builds to a nice payoff towards the middle.  Best breakup song ever, bar none.

It's another year, which means it's time for another set of goals and resolutions to achieve (or not).  Here are my five New Years Resolutions, in no particular order:

1.  Get Better at Layout/Front-End Web Design - I've always been comfortable with back-end programming, but whenever I work on layout or markup, I'm working with knowledge that's as fresh as the Y2K crisis.  Even though I'm not often doing any of the markup on sites that I'm working on, a good program manager should be able to do fill in in a pinch.

2.  Early Morning Workouts - It's so easy to get out of this, but if you can get into the habit of waking up early enough to get a workout in before work, I've found that I'm more awake and energetic the entire day.  Easy to do in July.  Hard to do in January.

3.  Moving to Medina - Well, this is a bit easier than waking up every morning to go workout.  I've found a great townhouse that I'll be renting in Medina, and I'm looking forward to getting a little bit more square footage, especially now that I work from my house.  This also involves getting rid of the lousy furniture I've been using and getting something decent.  I've been out of college long enough.  :)  (I already started on this--a couch with a recliner built in.  Multi-function!  Woo!)

4.  Getting Involved in the Community - Just like I did in Seattle, it's time to continue volunteering and doing things that get me out of the house.  In addition, to keep myself out of the house whenever possible, I'm going to make sure I find some office space somewhere that allows me to have a nice place to work.

5.  Less Email, More Phone - Email is a monster.  The more you type, the more you get.  And many, many times, it's faster to just pick up the phone.  The heavy-email usage is something that's convenient for a remote worker like me, but there's something about the phone that just gets things done.  Hook me up with more minutes AT&T--I'm gonna need 'em.

Over the past week, I've had the distinct, um, pleasure, to be working up in Cleveland in a deserted office fairly close to my mother.  This is generally too close for comfort, with too much mixing of personal and work lives ("Joe!  Do you want to eat mashed potatoes or rice with the chicken tonight?!"), it's generally better than the alternative, which is sitting at my parents' extremely poorly heated house with limited internet connectivity all day.

Being so close to Mom, I'm able to see how the other half interacts with their computers (yet again), and I just loved an exchange I overheard between Mom and her computer today (Mom talks to the computer and usually reads the dialog boxes aloud.)  Outlook, like Outlook often does, froze on her, and the solution was obviously to pull the plug on the computer and start it up again.  The computer doesn't like this, but Mom cares not.  Miraculously, the computer boots directly back into Windows, automatically opens Outlook again, and tells Mom that something was up before with the program.  Would she like to open the program in Safe Mode?

Mom responds with, "Of course I want to be in Safe mode.  I always want to be safe.  I always want Safe Mode.  Joe--what's Safe Mode and how can I make sure that I'm always safe?"

Oh interface designers of the world, please think long and hard before you name something.  "Safe Mode" is a bad name.  So is "Windows" (overloaded term anyone).  Illegal operations scared the crap out of Mom.  Firefox is another horrible one.  Mom has no idea what a program called "Mozilla Firefox" could possibly be for.  "Internet Explorer" makes more sense to her, but I stopped getting questions when I renamed the icon "INTERNET WEBPAGES".  Word is "WORD PROCESSOR" and Excel is hidden from sight.  I can't wait until she gets Vista in about six years and never, ever clicks on the Start menu again because there are no words there.