I’ve been busier working on things related to www.touchthesource.com and so I’ve definitely been slacking big time here. I’ve started to get into the technical realities of trying to record some meditations and then publish the recordings in a way that it can be easily listened regardless whether you’re on Windows, Mac or an iPhone. I recently got familiar with familiar with the company soundcloud.com, which is a really slick website for anyone trying to share audio recordings but in a way that allows you to limit who can listen to it, who can download it and even handling the sale of a recording. So I’ve been really fond of this website. The only problem I’ve recently discovered is that soundcloud.com can get really expensive.
As long as you limit the total amount of recordings to under 2 hours it’s all free. If you need 12 hours of audio storage then it jumps to about $107 a year. For unlimited storage it skyrockets to $680 a year! So this forces me to look for less expensive solutions to distribute recordings, but I still want it to be as fast and easy to use as soundcloud. So now I’m investigating things like YouTube and iTunes. But this is once again just all more work for me to do.
I clearly have too many things I want to do. I can’t keep juggling things and fool myself into thinking I’m not already dropping so many things on the floor. This past Friday I definitely was having “Twighlight Zone” experience.
It all started last Thursday when I noticed a big dent in the left fender of our Toyota Prius. I was not happy. I had no idea how it got there. It was a very noticeable dent that I at first thought came from another car hitting our car while it was parked. But it was odd though that this dent was smooth, no scratches, no sharp creases, more like it was hit hard with something like a basketball. But who plays basketball in the middle of a parking lot with no basket net within a mile radius and when everything is covered with snow and ice? So after I saw this I thought of the headache of trying to get this repaired. It was already the end of the day so I planned to call it in on Friday.
Come Friday morning I drove my Honda Accord. As I was passing by the Prius I could not see the dent. I did a double take and drove by and looked again. No dent? Obviously this was another Toyota Prius. I drove by again taking a look at the license plate. It was our Prius, yes it was. I strained my neck at all angles to see the reflection coming across the left fender. No dent? Perfectly smooth? I didn’t have time to stop driving and walk up to the Prius. I just drove off and concluded that my eyes must be bad, because surely the dent was there even though I couldn’t see it. So I held off calling my insurance company to report the damage until I was sure it was there.
While at work my boss asked me to contact someone named Stewart who works out of California. I looked him up and called his number and a female voice answered. She initially said I had the right company but no one named “Stewart” works at this branch. That kind of puzzled me. As far as I knew Stewart ran a company that was pretty much a one man company. Why would he want to hire someone to answer the phone to make it appear he had multiple branches? So I thought maybe I dialed the wrong number. I looked at my phone and I saw that the last number I dialed was the right number. I went thru my recent email to see if there was another phone number. The email showed the same as what I had dialed. “Strange,” I thought to myself.
So after an hour, I dialed the number again. The same woman answered. I asked if this was a software company, I was dialing. She replied “No, this is Artisan Bank”. So now that made a bit more sense. She was just saying I reached a branch of a bank and not a software company so obviously Stewart doesn’t work at Artisan Bank.
But wait just a day ago I dialed Stewart’s number and it worked?! Stewart was there. Maybe Stewart went out of business and his line was disconnected. But I don’t think you can get a number disconnected and have it reassigned to a new customer in just 1 day. “Strange indeed”
My boss stopped by later in the day and asked if I reached Stewart. I told my boss that it seems his phone number is wrong or doesn’t work anymore. My boss looked at me strangely. I showed him the number I dialed and he confirmed it was the right number. My boss then asked me to pull up a recent email which definitely had the right number. I did so and it was the same phone number. So then my boss told me that he’d leave me alone and suggested that I take a break, and try the number again. He gave me a “are you sure you’re OK” look and closed my office door to leave me time to gather myself.
So I dialed that very same number and Stewart answered!
So all I can say is I swear, I swear there was a big dent in my Toyota Prius. I even showed the dent to my wife. And it’s now gone, poof! I swear, I swear I called Stewart at his phone number and I kept reaching the receptionist at Artisan Bank. And now his number works.
Clearly I had entered “THE TWILIGHT ZONE” Maybe I need some rest.
Oh Geez why’s it so dark here. Wait there’s a bright light in the distance. Should I walk towards the light?
SNAP OUT OF IT WILSON!