| The radio when driving by myself, preferably news to stay up to date or bring in new information rather than having my private listening material isolate me from the outside world. When I commute, there are a number of venues along the way which offer live music 7 nights a week, I have my favorite and a couple preferred backups, with no to low cover charge except for weekends, when I'm not commuting anyway. A mixture of familiar and new musicians usually more than one night a week. I tip the bands who I appreciate and if no one is dancing then I get out there and boogie which brings more people out front and the musicians love it. Also only drink alcohol in this environment, never at home or anywhere else, and always in very limited amounts just to socialize and support the venue, since I want it to wear off before driving afterward. Tip the bartenders too at least 30 percent. I don't make time for this, more like happy hours after working late so I can keep up a 50 to 60 hour week (to accomplish twice as many scientific breakthroughs compared to 40 hours). The alternative would be fewer breakthroughs and almost as many hours in traffic when leaving the lab at 5. I am now acquainted with hundreds of musicians and other music lovers, many of them engineers or amazingly brilliant in many different ways. A while back one of the visiting bass players turned out to be the chairman of the math department for a major university a few hours from here. Turns out I could start a new company as easily as my own band with like-minded exceptional individuals whom I have much deeper insight into than most founders. Yes it is costly, about as much as a few CD's a week, more if I eat at the venues having excellent kitchens. Musicians still often just give me a CD even though I tell them I only listen to it once before passing it on to some one else. |