From Vatican Information Service:

"In this oasis of quiet," said the Pope, "amidst the marvelous spectacle of nature, one easily senses the value of silence, today an increasingly rare good. The many opportunities for relationships and for information that modern society offers risk sometimes eliminating room for recollection, to the point of making people incapable of reflecting and praying. In reality, only in silence can man succeed in listening, in the intimacy of his conscience, to the voice of God which truly makes him free. And vacations can help us rediscover and cultivate this indispensable inner dimension of human existence."

So I guess that urge to get away is not always a bad thing. Vacations have always given me a huge boost spiritually and the more serene and quiet the vacation, the more likely I come back refreshed in every aspect of life.

For those that do not know what LAUNCH is, please visit LAUNCH to find out.

For starters, a little background might help. I am a LAUNCHCast PLUS subscriber. That means that I get to create moods which allow me to filter the music on my station through genres. I have an Electronic mood, a Classical mood and one that I call Electro Pop Jazzic. About 3 weeks ago, I could play any of my moods and partake of an endless stream of pure joy. Nearly every song that played was a song that I rated highly. On the off chance that a song was not one I rated highly, it was at least one I could tolerate. Then two Sundays ago, disaster struck. I was playing LAUNCH through wireless speakers in the yard and I kept having to come inside to advance the song. After about 20 minutes of this, I decided to sit down and catalog the rate at which rated songs were playing. The final tally was 12%, which was significantly below what I consider to be acceptable. Immediately following that, I contacted Yahoo and they assured me that changes were coming. A week later, a change did occur and rated songs now make up about 50% of the usual playlist on a customized LAUNCHCast station filtered through a mood. This is STILL worse than before the first change took effect but it is a drastic improvement over the first horror of a change.

Since then, the number of hours I listen to LAUNCH has dropped considerably. Tomorrow I will begin a week of listening in order to see if there is anything I can do with the new algorithm they use to rate music. I have determined that it plays rated songs about 50% of the time now. It also plays a very high percentage of unrated songs on albums I have rated and another decent percentage of unrated songs from artists and genres that I have rated. This might sound like a good way to do it but have you heard the number of one hit wonders out there? Trust me, there are TONS of albums with one or two blips of genius and 70 minutes of mind numbing filler. Even worse are the artists making a living off of ONE song who have 5 or 6 albums of total junk produced after the success of their ONE good song. Unfortunately the recent algorithm change at LAUNCH is doing a very good job at exposing me to the hordes of bad album filler out there in pop music land. It is not pretty folks.

Note to LAUNCH: You are not going to keep many customers playing songs they DON'T like. Also, making such drastic changes to the algorithm is not the best way to earn friends in cyberspace. When masses of human beings are used to something working one way, it takes time and patience to convert them to a new way.

Note to me: Stop rating albums and artists when you hear one brilliant tune.

If I cannot correct the errant ways of my once fabled LAUNCHCast station, I will have to find a new way to discover music. It would be a tragedy to abandon something that at one point showed so much promise. Can LAUNCH be great again? Only time will tell.

OK, this is my first entry into the blogging world. Honestly, it serves the single purpose of allowing me to get the colors on my blog lined up with the rest of the things I write on this site. FWIW, I like the simplicity of this blog. Maybe one day I will write something truly special here. My general interests lean towards Catholicism, music, sports and other odds and ends. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: OK, I did add one thing of note to the blog tonight that I have been told I should "get published". My Easter Vigil experience is now available for all to see. Check the links on the right.