Technology: Bad Experience. Jim Levitt: Good Experience

It would accomplish nothing to detail the struggles of the past week and a half that have kept the Rifftides staff occupied. It is enough to report that I spoke with perhaps every technical expert, supervisor and engineer of a major printer manufacturer— several of them many times. What started as the simple warranty replacement of a defective printer morphed into full-scale frustration when the replacement model also failed. Frustration did not escalate to the degree illustrated at the left, except in my interior. Two days apart, I express-shipped back to the manufacturer the original printer and the replacement. Finally, after days, a second replacement arrived. It worked perfectly.

There was no way to wage the technology battle and maintain the blog. Total working hours lost: at least 12, with no way for Rifftides to control the times of incoming intercontinental calls. I spent countless additional hours sitting around, waiting. Evidently, tech companies no longer employ experts who live in the U.S., and they provide no callback numbers. Communication is strictly one way. I don’t suppose any Rifftides reader has had a similar wrestling match. It’s good to be back. Tomorrow, Saturday, is a loved one’s birthday. I may post. I may not.

Here’s the unrelated good news. As noted in the most recent post, while we were dancing the printer fandango, Jim Levitt, the photographer of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, offered his superb shots from three recent concerts of Bill Holman conducting the SRJO. Go here, and you will see some of his superior pictures replacing the amateur stuff originally posted. Above you see Mr. Holman conducting. Visible left to right are Michael Brockman, alto sax; Mark Taylor, tenor sax; Bill Ramsay, baritone sax; Phil Sparks, bass. I wish that there were video of those performances, but from Holman’s Hommage album on Jazzed Media, here is the Bill Holman Band’s superb 2007 version of Thelonious Monk’s “Bemsha Swing.”