Alone on New Year’s Again

Well another year has passed. Lots of things have transpired this year for me. Some good some bad. Exactly a year ago today I posted about being cooped up in this stupid office on New Year’s Eve thus forcing me to be away from my girl and my friends. Well this time around I’m not bound by such restraints. I don’t work nights any more so I’m free to spend New Year’s with my friends. Sadly Mariah and I aren’t together any more so yet again we’ll be separated on New Year’s. I guess Alone On New Year’s is a misnomer. I’ll be with friends and people who care about me but that’s not the same as being with the one you love. I’ll persevere as I always do and who knows maybe next year we’ll be together. That would be nice.

Interesting Stuff

The Shadow Internet : So that’s how all that works. I’m not big on pirated movies but this an interesting article on where they come from and how they’re distributed.

I love movies but what’s the point in downloading them and watching them on your computer? Who wants to watch a movie on a 17 inch monitor? Not me. Movies are made to be watched on the big screen. That’s why I own very few DVDs. If I want to watch a movie I’ll go to the theater and watch it. I enjoy the entire movie watching experience from buying the ticket to getting the overpriced snacks to watching the flick on that enormous screen. I get a kick out of it I guess. But to each his own I suppose. I feel a bit differently about music. I will say that my “habits” are changing now that I’ve discovered iTunes and my iPod. It’s nice not breaking the law though it lacks the thrill feeling like you’re doing something rebellious.

Be Proud of Your iPod

IPod Users Go Into the Closet : Why would anyone want to disguise the fact that they own an iPod? It’s a great product. Plus the cool factor on these things is a 20 on a scale of 1 to 10. I love my iPod. That being said, much like the users in the story I don’t wear the white earphones either. My reason for this is very practical though. The darn things don’t fit my ears. They’re too big to fit snugly which means they fall out when I move my head. Pluse they don’t sound very good in my opinion. I’m ordering some white Sony earphones so that I can get the I’ve got an iPod cool factor without the crappy sound. That’s the best of both worlds I think.

New Music

I love discovering new music. Tonight my musical journey brought me to the latest release from Zero 7, When It Falls. That in turn lead me to the discovery of Fragile State. I bought both Fragile State albums after listening to samples of the tracks and coming across rave review after rave review. One of the main guys from Zero 7 is in Fragile State so I was halfway sold from the start. That in turn pointed me in the direction of Bent. What do all of these bands have in common? 1) They’re all British. 2) They can all be filed under the heading of Electronica/Downtempo/Chillout.

I fell in love with Zero 7 when their major label debut, Simple Things, came out back in 2001. When It Falls is more of the same laid back, smoothed out goodness. It’s nice, relaxing background music great for chilling out to after a long day at work or other stressful endeavors. To show how out of it I’ve been this year, When It Falls came out back in March. March! And I’m just now finding it. I wouldn’t have found it at all if it weren’t for iTunes. I just happened across it while perusing their Best Electronic Albums of 2004 feature. Needless to say I bought it immediately. I thought about driving to Best Buy and purchasing an actual hard copy but after reading about some nasty copy protection built into the CD I opted to just download the wholly digital version from iTunes and burn a copy. After one complete listen through I must say When It Falls does not dissappoint. I’m looking forward to the arrival of both Fragile State albums and both of the Bent albums I ordered. I’ll write more about them once I receive them. Now it’s time for a quick shower and shave followed by a much anticipated hitting of the sack. The is all of course after I synch up all my new music with my iPod. Good Night all.

Enjoying iPod and iTunes

My little iPod is so cool. It’s an older 20 Gig G2 model but I’m loving it just the same. I’m having a blast getting to know the ends and outs this tiny thing. It’s a lot smaller in person that it appears in pictures and on TV. I find it unbelievable that this miniscule device contains a hard drive bigger than the one in my desktop computer. How cool is that? I’m enjoying my music collection again which is nice. My tiny 12 gig hard drive is feeling the burn though. It’s nearly full and I haven’t even ripped a third of my music collection yet. Payday is this coming Friday and one of my first purchases is going to be a 120 Gig external hard drive. That will be plenty for my current music collection and then some. Most of my Internet time the last couple of days has been spent at iPodlounge. It’s a great place for iPod newbies like myself (as well as veterans).

Like I said in an earlier post iTunes is great. It’s been a great tool for whipping my music collection into shape. Currently I have 1112 songs in my music library. That equals 7.04 GB of data or 4.3 days of music. I’m going to have to refrain from ripping any more of my music until I get a bigger hard drive. That’s going to be hard considering the ripping frenzy I’ve been on the last few days but I think I can restrain myself. Once I get the bigger drive I’ll be able to rip until my heart is content. It’s been fun just setting iTunes to shuffle and letting it play random song after random song. I’m enjoying doing the same thing with my iPod.

As usual I’m late to the party (in this case the iPod/iTunes party) late but I’m having a blast playing catch-up. I’m already thinking about splurging on a newer bigger iPod sometime in the not too distant future.

White Christmas

Memphis had a White Christmas this year. The storm that produced said rarity occurred a few days early but the unusually cold temperatures allowed the white stuff to stick around. The snow has been cool but the ice has been terrible. I’ve had several close calls in my beautiful new car the last couple of days. Last night I nearly slid into the back of a parked 18 Wheeler trailer on my way to K-Mart. Then on the way back home I almost slammed into the back of a car crossing a small bridge. (Note to Self: Slamming on brakes on an icey bridge is a bad idea.) Fortunately I had just enough traction to swirve into the slushy snow that had collected in the middle of the bridge. Both times my beautiful car’s short life flashed before my eyes. I’ve had a couple of other close calls but those two were the worst. I thought the car was a goner for sure but she thankfully escaped unscathed.

Merry Christmas

I know I’m late but Merry Christmas everybody. Hope everyone had a wonderful day.

It’s Here!!!!!!

My iPod arrived today. Hooray!!!!!! I’m so happy.

Soccer In December

My Men’s soccer team is on a roll. After almost a month off due to bad weather we finally started our post season tournament on Monday. We won our first match 1-0 against the last place team in Division 3. Tonight we beat the 2nd place Division 4 team 2-0. It was a fun game. It’s always fun when you win. The other team didn’t have much fun. For some reason they came out playing dirty and their dirty play just escalated as the game went on. Perhaps they came in thinking we would be an easy win. They beat us handily the two times we played them in the regular season this year. 2 of their guys got red cards which is an automatic ejection. They literally self destructed before our eyes. It was bizarre. So what is our reward for winning our first two games? We get to play the #1 one team in Division 3 on Saturday. They haven’t lost a game all season. They’re going to be tough. We’re the only Division 4 team left in the tourney so we’ve got to represent. I just hope we can keep the game respectable.

The problem with playing soccer in December is it’s cold as all get out. The average temperature at our two games this week so far has been around 34 degrees. With the wind chill on Monday it was below freezing. Tonight there was no wind so the cold wasn’t quite as bad but it was still freezing. You know it’s cold when you can not only see your breath but it hangs there in front of you for several seconds without dissipating. I’m complaining about the cold but I think it’s actually helped us play better. You can run for days without getting tired. There’s no sweating to speak of. Playing in the heat saps your strength. In the cold you feel like you can go forever. We’re like the Bret Favre’s of Memphis soccer. Unstoppable in games where the temperature is below 40 degrees. Maybe we should petition to play all of our regular season games in late November and December. Anyway it should be a little warmer on Saturday. Our game is at 1:30 in the afternoon. I have a sneaking feeling our winning streak may come to an end that day but it will be fun to get out there and compete against the best that D3 has to offer.

A Camera Shy Japanese Person? I Never Heard Of Such A Thing

Timid Tokyoites Delay IPod Frenzy : A pretty amusing story from the IPOD Mini debut in Tokyo this past summer. In my experience Japanese folks, especially the younger generation, are not camera shy. The story doesn’t mention the guys age. Maybe they were older. Who knows. I’m a shy person by nature but I’d jump at the chance to be on TV. I was a Broadcasting major in college for that very reason. (Well one of several.)