Bye bye, iPod

In an effort to experiment with the Yahoo! Music subscription service, I purchased the iRiver H10 20 GB to replace my iPod. For $60/year, or the price of 4 CDs, I will be able to fill my digital music player with the latest releases from trendy female singer/songwriters.

I'm sick of iTunes. What a piece of crap. Since the iRiver device is compatible with Windows Media Player 10, I won't have to install yet another music application. Microsoft may be monopolistic, but they do make my life easier. So here' s raising my middle finger to the iPod, iTunes, and their i-relatives. Enjoy your temporary market dominance. You will be Netscaped in due time.

How To Save $1,500

1. Have your trusty laptop display a catastrophic failure message upon boot.
   
2. Panic.
   
3. On your other computer, spend 3 hours researching the best replacement laptop.
   
4. Ignore your research because Dell has a big coupon with free shipping. Moreover, Dell will double your memory at no charge.
   
5. Order your $1,500 laptop from Dell.
   
6. Curse at the fact that it will be a week before they ship it.
   
7. Awake the next morning with a calmer head. Write down the error message and ask your good buddy, Mr. Google, for possible fixes.
   
8. Mr. Google proves his worth by offering up a solution that remedies the catastrophic failure.
   
9. Call Dell. Hope you get a representative who speaks a dialect of English you understand.
   
10. Cancel your order from the previous night.
    
11. Savor the $1,500 you just saved.

Saturday with Sophie

Next to my niece, this is the cutest little girl. I was fortunate enough to be invited to her first birthday celebration.

Dumbass

I'm a dumbass. After avoiding this label for 29 years, the time has come to admit defeat. Years of priding myself on never losing a key or wallet will soon be replaced by the rapid onset of senility. But I'll probably forget about it, so it won't be that bad.

A few weeks ago I found myself downtown for a night of debauchery without identification. Today, the good folks at BlockBuster Video called to inform me that I forgot to put the DVD back in the case before returning it. And my favorite blunder of the week: I put my boxers on backwards this morning and didn't realize it until bedtime.

I should have done something productive with my life while I had the chance.

What I Wear

An advantage of aging is caring less about what others think of me. At night, I'm comfortable going to the grocery store in my pajamas. I also have no problem answering the door for deliveries in nothing but my boxers. Now if I can be comfortable showing up in public with my morning hair, I will truly surpass the point of giving a shit.

New Project

After purchasing a new receiver and speakers, I've realized that my mp3s encoded at 128 kb/s are the weak link in my music reproduction system. About a year ago, I ripped my collection of 250 CDs to mp3s. Now I use this Creative device, connected with an optical audio cable, to stream mp3s over my wireless network to my stereo system.

After some research, I've learned that I can rip my CDs to wma lossless using Windows Media Player. This will provide me with a mathematically lossless storage of my CDs onto my hard drive with a 2:1 - 3:1 compression ratio. Thus, the average CD will require about 300 MB of storage. The upside is that I can then use any number of available programs to convert this format to a lossy format (mp3, wma lossy, ogg, etc.) suitable for portable devices. The wma lossless files will also allow me to burn audio CDs. The best part is that my Creative device allows for the playback of wma files. Thus, playback of music through this wirelss device will not suffer from any degradation. Not that I could tell anyway, but at least I will know that my digital music isn't below par.

I've calculated that it will require about 75 GB of hard drive space and over 20 hours of rip time. Something has to keep me out of trouble. This should be the final time that I will have to rip my CDs.