...if you're not into that whole brevity thing.

Happy birthday, Chilly!

Sorry your birthday/Oscar party got snowed out. Looking forward to celebrating with you soon.

Oh yeah, to update my earlier post, after a few hours and a lot of digging, look what Cooolshoooes and I found:



No, it isn't your birthday present. You've got a much newer car anyway.

WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!

It's a snow day, I won't have to go to...

Oh, wait.

It's Sunday?

Aw, CRAP!

Over the weekend, I was talking with Nomad and AAP about a favorite geek topic of mine.

When I buy a new computer, part of the whole making-it-my-own ritual is to choose a name for the hard drive. Because this is not 'Nam, this is computing, there are rules:

1. I will not give a hard drive a person's name (exceptions given for mythological figures and whatnot). There are two reasons for this: One is that I don't like to anthropomorphize computers; the other is silly paranoia that if I lost a laptop, having someone else's name on the hard drive would make it even more unlikely that I would ever get it back.
2. No do-overs. Once the name is chosen, I will never change it. So I must get it right the first time.

With those limitations in place, these are the names I've chosen for hard drives:

• Disgraceland (Power Computing Mac clone, 1996 or so)
• Lumpy Gravy (Same computer, replaced drive with a larger one, ca. 1999)
• Zesty Enterprise (PowerBook G3 Series "Wallstreet", 2000)
• Unexplained Bacon (eMac, 2002)
• All Shook Down (iBook G4, 2003)
• Fetchez la Vache (Fantom External FireWire drive, 2005)
  
• Crazy Delicious (Replacement drive for iBook after original failed, 2006, name chosen by Cooolshoooes per my request)
• Lo Boob Oscillator (iMac Core Duo, 2006)
  

In addition, somewhere along the way, I forgot the name of one of the drives my PowerBook had (I outgrew the original 2-gig in a hurry!), and I had a Dell PC on which I never named the drive (no slight intended against Windows users, I just didn't make an effort to find out the volume naming limitations).

What are the silly things you do when you buy a new computer? Let your geek flag fly!

Having recently seen another of his movies, John Cusack's film High Fidelity has been on my mind lately. It reminds me of how much I used to like shopping for CDs, and how I used to aspire to having nice stereo equipment (but could never quite afford it), and how I briefly got into playing my old LPs after my wife bought me a $2 turntable at a yard sale. (Which I accidentally destroyed while breaking into my own house - but that's another story.)

That whole line of thinking led me to kind of a sad realization:

I don't listen to music anymore.

There's always music playing around me, but it's just as background noise. I have music playing on my computer right now. I was strapped into my iPod when I went for a walk over my lunch hour. My car stereo's almost always on a music station.

The music is always there, but I don't listen to it.

There used to be something almost ritualistic about taking our a CD or an LP, putting it on, lying on the living room floor, and just soaking up the sound.

Now I hook up an AirPort Express to my living room receiver and stream music to it from my computer when we host a party. I download a song from iTunes every now and then, but it's less like browing the racks at a record store, than like playing the jukebox in a bar.

Has all of the technology that has changed the way we acquire, store and transport our music, had the unexpected result of making it less special to us?

I didn't think I could be the only person who had this thought, so I did a Google search on the phrase "i don't listen to music anymore."

Sure enough, it turned up almost 1,400 pages. Guess I really am behind the curve.

But it did make me resolve to spend a couple hours this weekend listening - really listening - to music. Regardless of the technology used to get it to my ears.

What... have I neglected this blog for awhile?

Sorry.