Classical music ringtones

I'd like to get some suggestions for a few new classical music ringtones.

Since I got my first Android a year and a half ago, I've made a minor hobby of cutting music clips together into new MP3's that make good ringtones. My all-purpose ringtone up till now has been Vivaldi's Concerto for 2 trumpets in C. (Click the link for a recording on YouTube.) Now that I've replaced my phone, and I'm a bit sick of hearing that all the time, I'm looking for more suggestions.

My dad's got his own personal ringtone: "Jupiter" from Holst's The Planets.

My sister, being a muppets geek, gets some theme music from Labyrinth.

Lynnea's ringtone revolves around a fact about her: Every girl's crazy about a sharp dressed man.

So anyway, I'm looking for more suggestions about music to cut into other ringtones. The clip in question needs to be loud and attention getting, and preferably upbeat so I'll be in a good mood to get the call. It also should be only instrumental. Classical is preferred but obviously some rock fits the bill.

The adventures of nerd dad

So I've got an Android Evo 4G from Sprint, which has now replaced my crappy old DumbPhone™, my iPod Nano, the GPS that I might have eventually bought otherwise, and the Palm Pilot of which I haven't owned a working model in probably five years or more.

Since the Nano is now obsolete in my eyes, I gifted it to Ben, who is eight. It is loaded up with pretty much Weird Al's entire discography and not much else. We had a conversation which is fairly typical of us, although probably not typical of many other father/son duos, as Ben pointed out.

Dad: "Here's the charger I forgot to give you the last time you visited. You will have to connect it up to a computer."
Son: "How do I do that?"
Dad: "It's easy, see this thing here? Just plug it into a USB slot."
Son: "Oh, okay."
Dad: "...That stands for Universal Serial Bus, you know."
Son: "What does THAT mean?"
Dad: "Well, serial is like..."
Son: "A serial killer?" (Ben's entertainment tastes, like those of many boys, are diverse.)
Dad: "Um... kind of. Let me see... you know your electronics set?"
Son: "Yeah..."
Dad: "You know how you can make a circuit with two different switches?"
Son: "Yeah..."
Dad: "Okay, if you plug one switch straight into the other one, and put those in a line with a wire back to the battery, how will you turn the circuit on?"
Son: "Both switches have to be on."
Dad: "Right. But what if you put the two switches NEXT TO each other, so that the wire splits and goes through each of them separately before coming back to the battery?"
Son: "I dunno."
Dad: "Will it turn on if one is on but not the other?"
Son: "I don't think so."
Dad: "Actually it will. If either switch is closed, then the electricity can get back to the battery, so either one makes a complete circuit."
Son: "Okay, I guess I see."
Dad: "So when the switches are next to each other, that's called being in 'parallel.' And when they are in a row, they are 'serial', which means they come one after the other."
Son: "Okay." (thinks) "So a serial killer kills people in a row?"
Dad: "Yeah, pretty much. If he kills just one person, he's just a killer, not a serial killer."
Son: "Does it have to be one person every day?"
Dad: "Nah. It's like, if the switches in your serial circuit were separated by ten miles of wires, they'd still make a circuit, and they'd still be serial as long as they follow each other. So someone would probably be a serial killer even if he only killed one person a year."
Son: "I get it." (pause) "Um, why are we talking about this again?"
Dad: "Well uh... oh right! Because your iPod charger works with a universal serial bus connection."
Son: "Okay." (pause) "You're not like a normal dad."
Dad: (laughs) "What? Why?"
Son: "I don't know, I don't think other dads talk about science and stuff. They probably like..."
Dad: "Watching sports and drinking beer?"
Son: "Yeah!"
Dad: "Well, do you wish you had a normal dad?"
Son: "No way!"

Odds and ends 1: Job situation and techie goodness

Haven't posted anything in a few weeks, and that always makes me uneasy, so here come a few of those "whatever springs to mind" posts in case some people I haven't spoken to need to be filled in.

I have a new job. In San Antonio. The commute is long and dreary. Lots of quality time spent with podcasts, however. The job itself is for a simply massive behemoth of a company which is involved with providing banking and insurance services for military veterans. The money is solid and I have full benefits again, although when you price out weekly gas mileage, wear and tear costs on the car, and eating out more often than I'd like, the value of the salary drops considerably.

Also, my official title is "senior developer," and the hiring manager specifically said that this job is training me up to be lead developer on some new projects after six months. So, as much as I hate commuting, I think this was an important move that will give me some more exposure to leading web technologies, while also giving me leadership experience that my career needs.

Lynnea and I are considering getting a place slightly south of Austin, which would work well for her also since she works downtown. This step would not only shorten both of our daily drives, but also mark the "moving in together" rite of passage. Needless to say, we would not take such a step if our relationship status was not fabulous.

I bought a new laptop. The laptop I bought for school in late 2006 gave up the ghost long ago, and I haven't had a working one since I worked at McLane and was allowed to take home my work PC. My desktop is about four years old, which qualifies it not as a dinosaur but more of a trilobite. Sure, it's been tricked out with more RAM and extra hard disk space, but it still creaks with age.

The new laptop arrived on Monday, and... well, DROOL. It was actually a budget item, only running $800. However, the specs (see this item) are still a massive jump forward from what I've had before. It has a dedicated graphics card with 1 GB of dedicated RAM, 4 GB of conventional RAM, 320 GB of hard disk, and Windows 7, about which I currently have no complaints.

Of course I can ramble about how important it will be for getting Serious Work done, but you'd know I'm lying, right? Web surfing and games, baby! World of Warcraft runs smoothly in every environment with the graphics settings cranked up to "high" (though I have not been brave enough to try it on "ultra" yet). Left 4 Dead runs smoothly at full res. The box warmed up a bit after a couple hours of gaming, but it wasn't even uncomfortable enough to remove from my lap while sitting on the comfy couch.

I haven't installed Eclipse yet, but I plan to do some recreational programming with it as well, I swear.

Basically the reason I decided I need this NOW is because I'm planning to save myself some hours of driving time and rent a hotel room once or twice a week. I get home very late and go to bed as soon as I can, while Lynnea works odd hours that bring her home at 11. So frankly, we'd "see" more of each other online if I could stay up a bit later due to not getting up so awfully early.

More to follow...

This is not the Bush Administration

The White House has a blog.

With a guy who's a technology expert.

They're using it to, like, communicate stuff.

About policy.

It's been updated several times already in the few days it's been up.

And they're encouraging feedback.

Happy.

Google makes yet another bid to run your life

So Google is now competing with Explorer and Firefox with their newest application, Chrome.  And I said, "Sure, just go ahead and take control of more of my online information and habits."  I mean, besides being my search engine, they already own this blog, my email, and a lot of my documents; keep track of my feed reading habits and my addresses, and maintain some of the code I've written; as well as being providing a desktop search application and a fun geographical visualization toy.  Did I leave anything out?

I can't say I'm not worried about them either turning evil or just disappearing someday.  But damn it, I can't help myself... I really LIKE having all the stuff I need online where I can access it from home, work, and any other computer in the world.  I suppose if Google does become an evil power, this is probably what it will look like.  It wouldn't be the first time that "The Onion" printed something that turned out to predict reality.

In the meantime... yes, I'm typing this from Google Chrome.  I am weak.  It doesn't even support any plugins, and yet for the moment I'm willing to use it even without themes, mouse gestures, ad blockers, or even getting my bookmarks updated automatically by del.icio.us.

A few points in Chrome's favor so far:

1. It starts up VERY FAST compared to the other browsers... although this might have something to do with the lack of plugins.
2. It has a very compact interface, and does a lot of creative things to keep the screen space clean, like sticking the "search page" bar in one place.
3. As you're typing an address, it automatically searches for likely completions and shows you the name of the page where you'd wind up.  (To be fair, Firefox 3 also appears to do something like this.)
4. Searches and URLs are entered in the same box.  Usually it makes the correct choice, but you can pick from a menu to clarify what you want.
5. When you open a tab, it shows you your favorite web destinations, along with thumbnail images of what they look like right now.
6. You can drag tabs outside the window to create a new window, or drag a tab from one window to another.

All pretty cool.  Firefox (my primary browser) might imitate some of the new hotness, but for now I'm keeping Chrome Beta as my default browser, and I'll look forward to seeing what they release in the next few patches.