talk minus action = zero

I've disabled comments... Not like I've posted anything new here in years anyway.

To whom it may concern,

My 6 year-old son and I went to They Might be Giants at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia on Saturday Nov. 21. For the most part, we had a great time. We both love live music and we both love They Might be Giants. However I have one complaint, the unavoidable $5 charge for each ticket.

I considered buying tickets online, but saw there was a $5 charge for credit card purchases so I opted to buy tickets at the door. Signs posted at the box office confirmed the $5 charge. I ordered two tickets – one for me, one for my son (by the way, making a 6 year-old pay full price for show where the stage is above his head is outrageous, but that’s another issue) – and was shocked when the cashier said the price was $10 more than I expected. I asked if there was a way to avoid the fees, and was told there was not – even if I paid in cash.

Had I been alone, I would have left on principle.

Demanding an extra $5 per ticket is not a “fee.” It’s misleading and infuriating. You might as well say the tickets are $30 instead of $25. I’ll never pay for a LiveNation event again until that policy changes.

Sincerely,
mattack

———-
edit: Shortly after sending the above letter via LiveNation’s customer service form, I got a response. The emphasis is mine.

———-

Response (Christy) 11/23/2009 11:41 PM
Hello Fan,

Thank you for contacting the Live Nation Customer Care Team.

The entire face value of the ticket as it appears before fees goes directly to the artist that is performing. The ticket fees are then distributed between Live Nation, the venue, and the promoters of the event. These fees are used for technical assistance, printing and shipping costs, website maintenance, and overall costs of putting on a large scale event. This also includes a processing charge for using a credit card online without a signature.

I apologize if you found these fees to be excessive. The purpose of these fees is to offset the costs of concert production, promotion, and ticketing. If you wish to purchase tickets at a reduced rate, I would recommend that you visit www.LiveNation.com to check for discounted promotion or purchase tickets at the venue box office.

We are always looking for new ways to improve on the fan experience. If you need more help with this or any other question you can reply to this email, contact us by phone at 877.LYV.TIXS (877.598.8497), or find us online at www.LiveNation.com.

Please tell us how we’re doing:

http://survey2.livenation.com/mrIWeb/mrIWeb.dll?I.Project=CUSTOMERCARE09

Shop your favorite artist music & merch at www.livenation.com/fanStore

Regards,
Christy
Live Nation Ticketing Customer Care Representative

———-

My response:

Wow… You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you? “The entire face value of the ticket as it appears before fees goes directly to the artist that is performing.”

That’s simply not true.

I’ve been in bands. I’ve played concerts all over the world, in venues ranging from basements to arenas. That’s just not the way it works. You know it. I know it.

I just wanted to file a complaint and let you know you lost a customer.

Sincerely,
mattack

———-

A little math is in order here… Suppose it’s true “the entire face value of the ticket as it appears before fees goes directly to the artist that is performing.” I estimate there were around 800 people attending. At $25 a person, LiveNation wants me to believe they paid They Might be Giants $20,000 just for playing? I don’t believe it.

Originally published at (auto) mattack. Please leave any comments there.

It seems that every time I upgrade the Wordpress installation that runs this blog, I have to fix a small detail in my theme. It seems to add the character — next to the Previous link on every page but the first. Well, now I know exactly what to do.

Comment out line 1445 of wp-inludes/link-template.php:
# 'sep' => ' — ',

This is mainly for my benefit, but if anyone else finds it useful, great!

Originally published at (auto) mattack. Please leave any comments there.

I'm going to abandon this blog, in favor of moving all of my blogging to my new site, automattack.net. Not that I'm the most prolific blogger in the world, I'm not. But I want to consolidate. I don't plan on closing this account, too many people I know are here. If you have a paid LJ account, you can actually syndicate my new blog to your friends page at the bottom of this page. Just put http://automattack.net/feed/ into the Feed URL field and click Add Feed. Other folks who want to keep up on my exciting life can subscribe with your favorite feed reader...

Photos of CBGB In Transition

The closing of CBGB made me sad. It was the birthplace of punk, a movement, culture, and musical style that has meant so much in my life.

I recently got a Squeezebox Duet and have been getting my large MP3 collection into shape. It turns out that SqueezeCenter prefers different tags than Amarok. So getting my music to appear the same in both places has been quite a task. What I figured out is that I had to remove extra junk from the files, convert any tags to ID3v2.4, and then for good measure I strip the ID3v1 tags.
I found three linux programs that do this well, mp3check, eyeD3, and id3convert (part of the id3lib project), but running them manually and remembering which one does what was too hard... So I wrote a Perl script to simplify the process. It takes paths as command line arguments, and will process the MP3s the way I like 'em. It even sets the permissions correctly!

( Here it is. )

Never mind, I got one.

Hi Philly folks,
I need to borrow a car this Saturday to pick up Meridian from summer camp. My usual channels aren't available so I'm posting this call for help.
It's an hour drive and I have to be there by 12 noon, and stay for an end-of-camp presentation. So I'd need to leave by 11am, and could return the car by 4pm. I'm more than happy to return the car with a full tank.
Please contact me If you can help me out.
Thanks.

This is a follow up to the email I sent a week ago regarding Critical
Path. It seems snail mail is the best way to support the continued
existence of this important Philadelphia ISP.

( more behind the cut )

I got this in the mail today. For those that don't know, Critical Path is run by Philadelphia FIGHT and provides free internet services to the larger AIDS community and allied groups.

Recently Critical Path had a drastic funding cut. Without adequate funding, thousands of Philadelphia families will loose internet access and many nationwide non-profits and organizations will loose websites, mailing lists, and email.

For more information on Critical Path, look here: http://critpath.org/isp/info.php

Please sign on to the attached letter that will be forwarded to Mayor Nutter if appropriate. Please distribute this widely.
( original letter behind cut )

To go along with this post, I finished the first working version of my pidgin-identica-status plugin today. It pulls an RSS feed from identi.ca, and sets the latest entry as your status in Pidgin.
It feels like a hack to me; the Perl API for Pidgin is poorly documented. I set up a Google Code project for it, and would welcome contributors to clean up the code, ad functionality, etc...
http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-identica-status/