I just saved thousands of dollars on a new computer by doing something I should have done a long time ago. I deactivated Norton 360, the bloated antivirus software that appears to have been randomly causing this PC to grind to a fucking halt for months now. I knew about Norton, of course. It is no secret that Norton is a glutton for system resources, churning away in the background performing tasks and diagnostics that only Norton knows of. But I didn’t think it was really this bad, and I actually appreciate some of the stuff it does, such as its “File Insight” widget, which tells you how many people who use Norton have downloaded a particular program. It’s nice to know that thousands of people use a certain program, and I consider it a warning to know that virtually no one does. But if using Norton makes the PC useless then I’ll take the alleged “vulnerability” to threats over that shit any time.

So with that potential financial outlay lifted, at least for now, I can once again think about getting a new piano, this on a payment plan. I don’t know how long I’ve had this Roland, which is still in perfectly decent shape, but last I heard the latest Yamaha digitals are way ahead of the older Rolands. The NU1X looks possible, but only with financing. I’ve been at the piano a lot the last few weeks, since discovering a certain Facebook group. People post excerpts from printed music scores, mostly classical, and everyone tries to guess what it is. It’s amazingly engrossing, even if I don’t know a good portion of what is posted. I don’t expect to know anything but the piano music, and even at that there tends to be a tendency to post very obscure stuff.

It’s cool for me because I have known anybody who would be impressed by my sheet music collection, particularly its relative obscurities such as Sorabji and Alkan, with more recent rarities including Lubomyr Melnyck and Andrew Violette. I have never longed to show off my collection, but now that I can it feels like something I actually did want to do over these years. The piano in my life is one of those things I’m so comfortable with and which is so established in my years that I might never mention it even to people I’ve known for a long time. A lot of people find the mere subject of classical music to be pretentious as hell, and me talking about it seems to be a conversation-ender. So I mostly just keep it to myself.

…

I spent longer hours than I might have expected sorting through a magicJack playlist, something I feel I should do to cleanse or at least justify the quantity of content hoarded on my PCs and hard drives. It’s a strange thing to listen to, though, mostly in a good way. Going to post it soon.