Blog Title

So long, WordPress!

2026-02-27T00:00:00Z

tl;dr: I’ve moved my last site off WordPress, and also off AWS! Yay! I'm using 11ty! 11ty is great! Yay! Also using Pagefind for search, and authoring blog posts using Obsidian.

Ancient History

I've had a version of this web site since 1994, at which point, it was just some hand-written html pages hanging off blues.epas.utoronto.ca\~jankowsk. That site ran on an SGI Indigo, so IRIX was the first *nix I got to know. For a while, the main page was called “Chester's emusic page,” and I thought about purchasing the domain emusic.com, which was available at the time–that would have been smart! Interestingly, a friend of mine from undergrad days later went on to be the CEO of emusic.com (“Hi, Chris!”).

After I finished my doctorate in 1997, we moved to nyc and I had to find a new service provider. Those were the days of little mom & pop ISPs, and I went with one called OnePine. Around 2002, I had a Linux server at home and started self-hosting. It was still a static site. In the fall of 2004, I started this blog, running on–of all things!–slashcode, the server for slashdot. (Which, by the way, kudos to them for having a web site that still looks the same thirty years later!)

The announcement for running slash became this site’s first blog post. Things chugged along for quite some time, but slash was kind of a pain to admin. So, like pretty much everyone, at the end of 2006, I migrated the site to WordPress, as announced here: What's up with the blog, anyway?. At that point, there was no auto-importer, so I had to dump all the slashcode posts from mysql and create new posts in WordPress. Fun!

The AWS era

At some point in the teens, everything had to run on AWS, so I migrated everything over there. By this point, I had a few sites, including cyberkrunk, my home site, Nora’s home site, and, later, culturednyc. AWS was a good skill to have for work, and I got certified in it. All fine. The ec2 instances would freeze fairly often, so everything took a fair bit of hand-holding. When everything just had to run on Docker, I ran everything on Docker. Again, fine, but not really worth the hassle for this use-case. After a while, I went back to just using LAMP stacks.

SSGs, or “Falling in love with the web again”

Plotting Intervals on the Number Line

2026-01-22T00:00:00Z

I’m doing a review of algebra using this nice video which is originally from the UNC Chapel Hill Math 110 course. I'm doing this in a Jupyter notebook, with the plan of adding Python code where needed. On the section on intervals, I was looking for some code to plot intervals on the number line, but, surprisingly, a search didn't turn anything up, so I wrote the code listed below.

(This may be yet another example of how search is now broken. Search used to give you various options for what your search term might mean; now it just decides it knows precisely what you mean, and gives you 100 variations on the one answer, with SEO and slop sites listed first.)

So far, the code works with ints and floats. It properly plots open and closed intervals. It would be nice to add support later for rationals, radicals, and the like.

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# plot_interval is a Python function to plot an interval, e.g., [-4, 2.5)
# on the number line
# 2026-01-22
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

def plot_interval(input_interval: str):
    """
    Plots an interval on the number line using Matplotlib

    Args:
        input_interval (str): an interval, e.g., '[-4, 2.5)'.
    """

    # Parse the input into 4 elements
    parsed_interval = ["(", "1", "2", ")"]
    parsed_interval[0] = input_interval[0]
    parsed_interval[1] = input_interval.split(",")[0][1:]
    parsed_interval[2] = input_interval.split(",")[1][:-1].strip()
    parsed_interval[3] = input_interval.split(",")[1][-1]

    # Convert the numbers to either floats or ints
    for i in range(1, 3):
        if "." in parsed_interval[i]:
            parsed_interval[i] = float(parsed_interval[i])
        else:
            parsed_interval[i] = int(parsed_interval[i])

    # Set up the number line
    x_range = [int(parsed_interval[1]) - 1, int(parsed_interval[2]) + 1]
    y_pos = 0
    fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 2))

    # Draw the horizontal number line
    ax.hlines(
        y_pos,
        x_range[0],
        x_range[1],
        color="gray",
        linestyles="solid",
        linewidth=0.5
    )

    # Draw the ticks and label them
    for tick in range(x_range[0], x_range[1] + 1):
        ax.vlines(tick, y_pos - 0.2, y_pos + 0.2, color="black", linewidth=1)
        ax.text(
            tick,
            y_pos - 0.8,
            str(tick),
            horizontalalignment="center",
            verticalalignment="bottom",
        )

    # Draw the line between the interval numbers
    ax.hlines(
        y_pos,
        parsed_interval[1],
        parsed_interval[2],
        color="black",
        linestyles="solid",
        linewidth=2,
    )

    # Plot the left number
    if parsed_interval[0] == "(":
        ax.plot(parsed_interval[1], y_pos, "ko", ms=10, mfc="w")
    else:
        ax.plot(parsed_interval[1], y_pos, "ko", ms=10, mfc="k")

    # Plot the right number
    if parsed_interval[-1] == ")":
        ax.plot(parsed_interval[2], y_pos, "ko", ms=10, mfc="w")
    else:
        ax.plot(parsed_interval[2], y_pos, "ko", ms=10, mfc="k")

    # Add the numbers as text above the points
    for number in parsed_interval[1:3]:
        ax.text(
            number,
            y_pos + 0.3,
            str(number),
            horizontalalignment="center",
            verticalalignment="bottom",
        )

    # Set axis limits and hide the y-axis
    ax.set_xlim(x_range[0], x_range[1])
    ax.set_ylim(-1, 1)
    ax.axis("off")  # Hide all axes and labels
    plt.title(f"Interval: {input_interval}")
    plt.show()

The time Iggy Pop was On Top of Us, or Why Blogging is Better Than Social Media

2026-01-04T00:00:00Z

I’m doing a New Year data cleanup, which involves, among other things, removing the last of my files from OneDrive so that I don’t have to renew O365 ever again. I am generally hyper-organized and keep all my things in a sensible folder structure, but of course, even I have a few stray docs with no descriptive file names lurking about.

One of the files I just found looks like a Twitter thread from 2020. Reading it now just makes me a bid sad. While the voice is more-or-less mine, I really don’t like that I had to trim each of the paragraphs down to meet a character count that some tech dude imposed. The thoughts are there, but they are constrained, fake-a-fied, and homogenized. I’ve decided that I’m done for good with VC social media; I'm going to stick to my own platform, where I can express my own voice. I still like my Mastodon group, though—a lot of very good, fun people there. But no more threads; anything that won’t fit in a post belongs on my blog.

Anyway, here’s the thread:

Just saw a clip of someone or other doing a very cautious dive off a stage to do some crowd surfing. And that reminded me of the first time we saw Iggy Pop play with the reunited Stooges.

It was the early aughts. Walking home from work in Midtown, I saw a poster at a construction site: Iggy and the Stooges, Roseland Ballroom. Wait, Iggy and THE STOOGES? Holy crap! As soon as I got home, I called and ordered tickets.

Day of the show, we get to Roseland really, really early. We are second in line. The two young guys ahead of us were, believe it or not, were there to see one of the opening acts: Godsmack.

The hall opens, and everyone makes a mad dash to the stage. We are front and center, directly behind the Godsmack guys. We’re chatting a bit. They do not know from Iggy Pop, and are only mildly interested.

The first band plays. They do not connect with the audience at all. A lot of boos, which they ignore. Singer is wearing a T-Shirt that has “Art Fag” scrawled on it, which is admittedly pretty cool.

Godsmack comes on. They are so cool about the event: “Listen, we know you are all here to see the Stooges, so we are going to do a short acoustic set.” Crowd goes wild!

The Stooges come on. Ron Asheton plays a couple of chords into a big Marshall stack. Like a hoof to the chest. Boom! They launch into the first tune: Loose. Hard to put into words the energy that Iggy puts out. For me, one of the purest expressions of Rock and Roll.

With no warning whatsoever, barely enough time to react, Iggy Pop is on top of us, writhing on our heads. We’re grabbing his body, his chest, his crotch—you have no other choice, there is a person riding on you! A few seconds later and he’s back on the stage. Holy fuck!

Rest of the set is amazing. Godsmack guys leave after a few songs. We’re front & center. Eventually we move back, it’s probably 120 degrees. One of the best rock shows ever. You can’t see the Stooges anymore, but if you’ve never caught an Iggy Pop show, do yourself a favor!

A Nice Python Documentary

2025-12-27T00:00:00Z

I’ve been doing more and more work in Python this year, and plan to continue doing still more in 2026. I'm developing a library for my own work in composing and music theory.

Today, I did a search on Youtube for videos about the origins and history of Python. In late 2025, Youtube now seems to have more LLM slop than anything else, or at least, that’s what its recommendation algorithm would have us think. To combat this, I wrote a little script, in Python, to automate the generation of a uBlock Origin filter for Youtube; once I find a channel that does slop videos, I don’t want to ever see them again.

A few hits down, however, I did manage to find Python: The Documentary, which is worth a watch if you would like to learn more about the history of the language.

Banff International String Quartet Competition 2025

2025-12-21T00:00:00Z

For the 2025 edition of the BISQC, the following quartets participated:

Name	From	Place	Web
Arete Quartet	Seoul, South Korea	2	aretequartet/home
Cong Quartet	Hong Kong, China		www.congquartet.com
Quatuor Elmire	Paris, France		www.quatuor-elmire.com
Quartett HANA	Munich, Germany		hanaquartet.com
Quartet KAIRI	Salzburg, Austria	3
Quatuor Magenta	Paris, France		www.quatuormagenta.com
Myriade Quartet	Montreal, Canada	Withdrew	myriadequartet.com
Nerida Quartet	Bremen, Germany		www.neridaquartet.com
Poiesis Quartet	Cincinnati, USA	1	poiesisquartet.com
Viatores Quartet	Berlin, Germany		www.viatoresquartet.com

Round 1: 21st Century Haydn

Name	Haydn	Video	21st C	Video
Arete Quartet	op. 20 no. 2	Vimeo	Widmann SQ no. 3	Vimeo
Cong Quartet	op. 33 no. 3	Vimeo	Dillon SQ no. 7	Vimeo
Quatuor Elmire	op. 76 no. 5	Vimeo	Dusapin SQ no. 5	Vimeo
Quartett HANA	op. 74 no. 1	Vimeo	Dusapin SQ no. 5	Vimeo
Quartet KAIRI	op. 74 no. 1	Vimeo	Hosokawa Floral Fairy	Vimeo
Quatuor Magenta	op. 76 no. 3	Vimeo	Dusapin SQ no. 5	Vimeo
Nerida Quartet	op. 54 no. 2	Vimeo	Shaw Entr'acte	Vimeo
Poiesis Quartet	op. 71 no. 2	Vimeo	Macklay Many Many Cadences	Vimeo
Viatores Quartet	op. 33 no. 1	Vimeo	Widmann SQ no. 3	Vimeo

Round 2: Romantic

Name	Work	Video
Arete Quartet	Schumann op. 41 no. 1	Youtube
Cong Quartet	Debussy op. 10	Youtube
Quatuor Elmire	Mendelssohn op. 44 no. 2	Youtube
Quartett HANA	Mendelssohn op. 80	Youtube
Quartet KAIRI	Mendelssohn op. 13	Youtube
Quatuor Magenta	Schumann op. 41 no. 1	Youtube
Nerida Quartet	Mendelssohn op. 44 no. 3	Youtube
Poiesis Quartet	Brahms op. 67	Youtube
Viatores Quartet	Debussy op. 10	Youtube

Round 3: Kati Agócs World Premiere

Name	Video
Arete Quartet	Vimeo
Cong Quartet	Vimeo
Quatuor Elmire	Vimeo
Quartett HANA	Vimeo
Quartet KAIRI	Vimeo
Quatuor Magenta	Vimeo
Nerida Quartet	Vimeo
Poiesis Quartet	Vimeo
Viatores Quartet	Vimeo

Round 4: Beethoven/Schubert + 20th Century

Name	Beethoven/Schubert	Video	20th C	Video
Arete Quartet	Sch. SQ 15 D. 887	Youtube	Berg Lyric Suite	Youtube
Cong Quartet	Sch. SQ 13 D. 880	Youtube	Janáček SQ no. 1	Youtube
Quatuor Elmire	Bthvn. op. 59 no. 3	Youtube	Bartók SQ no. 2 Sz. 67	Youtube
Quartett HANA	Bthvn. op. 59 no. 1	Youtube	Bartók SQ no. 3 Sz. 85	Youtbe
Quartet KAIRI	Sch. SQ 14 D. 810	Youtube	Janáček SQ no. 1	Youtube
Quatuor Magenta	Bthvn. op. 59 no. 1	Youtube	Ligeti SQ no. 1	Youtube
Nerida Quartet	Sch. SQ 15 D. 887	Youtube	Britten SQ no. 1	Youtube
Poiesis Quartet	Bthvn. op. 59 no. 3	Youtube	Bartók SQ no. 5, Sz. 102	Youtube
Viatores Quartet	Bthvn. op. 59 no. 2	Youtube	Hindemith SQ no. 5, op. 32	Youtube

Round 5: Finals

Poiesis Quartet - 1st place

Work	Video
Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate: Pisachi (Reveal) for String Quartet	Youtube
Brian Raphael Nabors: String Quartet	Youtube
Joe Hisaishi: String Quartet No. 1	Youtube
Kevin Lau: String Quartet No. 7, Surfacing	Youtube

Arete Quartet - 2nd place

Work	Video
Britten: Three Divertimenti for String Quartet	Youtube
Mozart: SQ no. 19, K. 465	Youtube
Janáček: String Quartet No. 1, “Kreutzer Sonata”	Youtube

Quartet KAIRI - 3rd place

Work	Video
Mozart: String Quartet No. 21 in D Major, K. 575	Youtube
Takemitsu: Landscape	Youtube
Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110	Youtube

Awards Ceremony

Youtube

Rob Reiner

2025-12-15T00:00:00Z

This was a terrible weekend. On Saturday, a gunman—who is still at large—murdered two people at Brown University. And then on Sunday in Australia two gunman, a father and a son, murdered 15 people in an attack on Jews celebrating Hanukkah. Sunday night, after re-watching Zero Dark Thirty, I glanced at the news and saw a story about two people found dead at Rob Reiner’s house in Brentwood. Moments later, I saw in Variety that it was in fact Rob and Michele Reiner who had been murdered—stabbed to death. Not long after that, People was reporting that the couple had been murdered by their son Jake.

This has shaken me. All in the Family was one of a handful of tv shows that my entire family would watch together. Mike Stivic was an important character for us, because his background was Polish—even though “Stivic” isn't a Polish name. During my childhood in the 1970s, I had always felt somewhat othered because of my family’s background. My mother had been in Canada for just under seven years when I was born, my father had been there a few years longer. It was comforting to see a Polish character on tv, even if he was a meathead. The other Polish character on tv in the 70s was also a meathead: Leonard “Lenny” Kosnowski, played by Michael McKean.

When I was in my late teens, Rob Reiner started his second career, as a film director. His first film, This is Spinal Tap has been a favorite since I first saw it. And there’s more to it. In the late ’80s, I had friends over to watch Tap, along with Easy Rider, and also to drink some bad American beer and bad American whisky. After the movies and drinks, everyone had to crash out at my parents’ place. Two of my friends became a couple, and eventually they got married and raised a beautiful son. We lost one of them to cancer a few years ago. That's why I’m more likely to get misty during Tap than during When Harry Met Sally.

Another reason, I think, Reiner was important to me was his place among the great comedy cohort of his father, Carl, and Mel Brooks. Early on, Rob himself worked in a writer’s room with Steve Martin, who then went on to make hilarious films with Carl. And, of course, with Spinal Tap, Reiner, along with Guest, Shearer, and McKean (it has always been my pet theory that the song ‘Gimme Some Money,’ aka, GSM is a nod to this trio) created a new genre of improvisational comedy that Guest has continued so brilliantly.

There are others of Reiner’s films that I like very much; one that I don’t hear mentioned all that often is The Sure Thing. I’m glad that Reiner was able to complete the Tap sequel, and I’m glad that there’s a Tap concert film on the way. I’m glad that I once bumped into him in a restaurant, even if his facial expression as we passed one another made it clear that I shouldn’t say a word. It probably would have been just a quick, “Huge fan!” and a little bow.

But hey... enough of my yakkin’

Requiescat in pace

The acoustics of musical instruments

2025-12-13T00:00:00Z

I’m doing a re-read of Hindemith's Craft of Musical Composition, which I didn’t find terribly useful the first time I read it. He opens with a discussion of acoustics and the overtone series. That made me want to do a deeper dive on acoustics, and remind myself of cones vs. cylinders and all of that. Doing a search, I came across a very nice resource on music acoustics from the University of New South Wales. Lots to explore there.

Calculating MIDI note numbers in your head

2025-11-23T00:00:00Z

I can think of a few reasons why you might want to be able to translate between scientific pitch notation, or SPN, staff notation, and MIDI note numbers quickly, in your head, without looking at a table. Maybe you’re a composer doing algorithmic composition, maybe you’re working with a MIDI roll in a DAW, maybe you’re a computational musicologist, or maybe you just want to impress your students (:eyeroll:). To do this, two things are required: 1) know the multiples of 12 (either by rote memorization, or with a quick mental calculation); 2) instant recall of pitch class numbers.

Scientific pitch notation vs MIDI

The key thing to note is that SPN and MIDI note numbers both work on assigning the different octaves of pitch class $C$ to multiples of $12 .$ The hitch is that they are off by $12$ with respect to each other. Middle $C$ in SPN is designated as $C_{4},$ while in MIDI, middle $C$ is note number $60,$ or $5 \times 12,$ or the $5 t h$ octave.

$C_{- 1}$	$C_{0}$	$C_{1}$	$C_{2}$	$C_{3}$	$C_{4}$	$C_{5}$	$C_{6}$	$C_{7}$	$C_{8}$	$C_{9}$
$0$	$12$	$24$	$36$	$48$	$60$	$72$	$84$	$96$	$108$	$120$

So, to translate a $C$ from SPN to MIDI, just add $1$ to the octave. $C_{2}$ becomes $12 \times 3,$ or MIDI note 36. Now, to translate any note name in SPN to MIDI, we just need to add the pitch class number of the note to the number for $C$ in the correct octave, and we are done.

Some examples:

To find the MIDI note for $G_{3},$ we need to know that the pitch class number for $G$ is $7,$ which we add to the next higher multiple of $12$ :

G_{3} = (12 \times 4) + 7 = 55

To find $E ♭_{9},$ we need to add $3,$ the pitch class number for $E ♭,$ to the $10 t h$ multiple of $12$ :

E ♭_{9} = (12 \times 10) + 3 = 123

Now, let’s do the reverse. For MIDI note number $89,$ we see that it is between $84$ and $96,$ so that it is the $7 t h$ MIDI octave. That means it will be in the $C_{6}$ octave in SPN. $89 = 84 + 5$ , so the pitch class is $5$ , which is the pitch class $F$ . So the SPN name for this note is $F_{6}$ :

89 = (12 \times 7) + 5 = F_{6}

Memorizing, or quickly calculating, multiples of 12

OK, that is straightforward, but what if you don’t have pitch class numbers or multiples of $12$ memorized? In the case of pitch class numbers, there’s no way around it. These need to be memorized in order to work effectively with music theory past, say, the 1960s. As for multiples of $12 ?$ I did a quick poll on Mastodon, and over half the respondents indeed had their “12 times tables” memorized since school days. So where does that leave the rest of us?

Let’s take a look:

$0$	$1$	$2$	$3$	$4$	$5$	$6$	$7$	$8$	$9$	$10$
$0$	$12$	$24$	$36$	$48$	$60$	$72$	$84$	$96$	$108$	$120$

The first thing we might notice is that the last digit follows a repeating sequence: $0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 0, 2, \dots$ . This on its own is a fact worth remembering, and it may even be enough of a hint for you to easily remember this whole list!

Now, let’s look at the sequence $12, 24, 36, 48 .$ Notice that the second digit is always twice the first digit. And in fact, that pattern keeps going, but, while we have the numbers twenty-four, thirty-six, forty-eight, we don’t have the numbers fifty-ten, sixty-12, seventy-fourteen, etc., so at that point, we need to perform addition, like so:

\begin{aligned} 12 & = (1 \times 10) + (1 \times 2) \\ 24 & = (2 \times 10) + (2 \times 2) \\ 36 & = (3 \times 10) + (3 \times 2) \\ \dots \\ 12 m & = (m \times 10) + (m \times 2) \end{aligned}

So now, even if you don’t have the table memorized, you can quickly do the math in your head.

Nobuyuki Tsujii at Carnegie Hall

2025-11-06T00:00:00Z

A friend who was under the weather gifted us a pair of tickets to see Nobuyuki Tsujii at Carnegie Hall last night. We were unfamiliar with the Japanese pianist, although he had played a sold-out show at Carnegie Hall last March. He was the winner of the Van Cliburn Competition in 2009, and has been blind since birth. Tonight’s show was not sold out, but it was evident that there were many ‘Nobu’ superfans in the audience.

Tsujii opened with Franz Liszt’s transcription for piano solo of Beethoven’s only song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte, op. 98. Liszt wrote over 400 piano transcriptions, some of which expound upon, and take liberties with the original music, and some of which are more ‘strict’—this one falls under the latter category. And because of this, we have and interesting combination: late period Beethoven, but (for the period) comparatively simple, tender, and nostalgic music. A pleasant way to open the evening.

The centerpiece of the first half was Beethoven’s Appassionata, which Tsujii played forcefully. I was a little taken aback in the first movement, when the pianist let the left hand overpower the right hand melody in the second theme group, in ab minor (the parallel minor of the relative major!), which is otherwise a favorite little tune in this work. I think that was maybe my only quibble in the entire concert. (I did have a quibble with the guy sitting across the aisle from me letting his phone go off right at the end of the first movement of the Appassionata, but that’s another story.)

Whenever Tsujii sits down to play a piece, the first thing he does is reach out with both hands to feel the keys and calibrate his position. After that, his playing is not much different from any other player at his level. Nora and I both note at the time that there is something beautiful and moving about a blind musician playing the work of a deaf composer.

After the intermission, another transcription, this time Mikhail Pletnev’s take on The Nutcracker Suite. A delightful crowd pleaser, moving some in the audience to take surreptitious videos.

I was unfamiliar with Prokofiev’s 7th piano sonata, and I’m not generally a huge fan of Soviet-era music, but I was quite struck with the third movement of this piece. It’s a toccata in a relentless 7/8 metre, with an insistent minor 3rd motive in the left hand. Tsujii played the hell out of this piece, and the audience was very much caught up in all the excitement.

First encore: a beaming Tsujii takes his first bows, and then sits down and starts to play the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. An apt choice, as we are at that moment experiencing an impressive “beaver” supermoon.

Second encore: Tsujii comes back and plays a jazzy, exciting piece that I’m unfamiliar with. Today I learned that it is the first of the 8 Concert Etudes by Nikolai Kapustin, another Soviet composer, although this work is from 1984, close to the end of that era. I was quite taken with this piece, and today listened to the rest of the etudes, as performed by the great Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin, who has been a champion of Kapustin’s work.

Third encore: Tsujii is still taking bows, and the crowd is not letting him go, so now he plays another Liszt piece, “La Campanella” from his Grandes Études de Paganini. A virtuoso piece; a few people have now left Carnegie Hall, but the mood is electric for everyone who is sticking it out.

Fourth encore: More bows, and Tsujii is beaming at the response from the crowd. He sits down again and now plays a lovely rendition of Stephen Foster’s Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, in what I assume is the pianist’s own arrangement. As Tsujii takes more bows, he grins and leans back to close the lid on the piano. We all take the hint. Tsujii waves back at us all graciously as he leaves the stage.

So long, OneDrive!

2025-04-18T00:00:00Z

tl;dr MSFT made a change to 365 Classic, stranding users with over 1 TB of OneDrive space, and they did this without telling anyone.

I've been using Microsoft Office 365 at home pretty much since it was first available, and always found it to be a good value. In particular, OneDrive has long been a key part of my workflow, allowing me to sync files between my workstation, laptop and mobile devices.

Since I work with a lot of large media files, I eventually exceeded the 1TB of drive space that comes with a 365 subscription; no problem, for a monthly fee, you can add up to another TB. I was using an additional 600 GB. All good.

Earlier this year, MS announced that it would be bundling Copilot with 365 subscriptions go forward, and also upping the subscription price by 30%. A bit of an uproar ensued, and MS wisely announced a new "classic" 365 subscription without Copilot, and with the same yearly price as before. I was one of the people that opted for "classic," just like most of us did way back in the Cola Wars.

When my subscription renewed, early in April, I was officially moved to the classic tier. I didn't notice anything different at first. But I did see that I was nearing capacity of my 1.6 TB OneDrive space. When I went to try to add more, the option was there, but it was greyed out, I couldn't click on anything.

Hmm...

After a few days, I opened a support ticket. A friendly person emailed me back, around midnight my time, and sent me a link to try. I emailed back, "yes, that's where I'm trying to add it, but it won't let me."

The next night, He emailed me again. Hmm, maybe try this link? It was another link leading back to the same page. I sent him some screenshots of what I was seeing. He emailed me back the next night, hey, maybe try this link? Another link to the same page.

Thursday morning I see that now my OneDrive is out of space. I am using 1.6 TB out of 1 TB. I go to the OneDrive page where my 600 GB was listed, and now it's gone entirely. I email the support person, but I can't use my Outlook account. Because I am over my limit, it won't let me send email. It tells me that soon I won't be able to receive email either.

I get on a support chat. 70 people ahead of me, wait time about an hour. I wait. The person at the other end of the chat seems competent and helpful. They try various things to add my storage back. An hour passes, they're still trying. I ask, "Is it possible that MS removed the ability to add more storage to 365 classic?" (This has been my suspicion all along.) The support person confidently replies, "No, there were no changes to storage quotas with classic." Phew, I'm now hopeful this person can actually help me.

After another hour or so, and no doubt with some internal chats on his end, my support person tells me in fact, I'm right, MS removed the ability to add more storage to classic. If I wanted more storage, I would need to upgrade to 365 Copilot. I just paid $100 for classic, would the $130 for Copilot be prorated? Nope! So now, my only option is to pay for Copilot, which I don't want, or just pull my data off. Support person asks how I feel. I'm not good with this, I tell him. This feels a bit like ransomware.

I went out to BestBuy, picked up a 2 TB SSD, and now I'm in the process of pulling off my 1.6 TB of data and coming up with a new, MS-free, sync and backup solution. It's fine, I'm no stranger to data migration, although the timing is pretty bad, as I'm already busy with a number of projects.

As a customer, though, I have to say this has been a pretty terrible experience. MS made this major change, and they didn't tell me, and they didn't even tell their support people. I'm not in the habit of cutting off my nose to spite my face, but I will take this as my cue to de-Microsoft my workflow where it makes sense.