Dealing with iPods: Part 4: How Many?

These are not my iPods. If I had this many iPods, and didn’t give each away to a friend I think that I’d get into hell on gluttony alone.

Ben Stroud asked about how many iPods I’ve owned in a comment to the first entry I posted in this iPod series. The fact alone that I didn’t know this off hand means I should be in some iPod Obsessives Anonymous program instead of posting these blog entries. But I don’t got the time for that now that I have a new working iPod.

It adds up, that’s all I’m going to say about the price of being addicted to the iPod.

I’ve never bought the same iPod twice, and just to clarify, I’ve spent more money on repairing the car I crashed in Winter 2003 than I’ve spent on iPods.

The first iPod I got was the 2nd Generation (touch wheel), which I got as a present for graduating high school. I paid for the 3rd generation (with 4 light up buttons) and the 4th generation (click wheel, black and white display) out of my own pocket with money earned from summer jobs. And as a birthday present, I split the cost of the 4th generation (color screen, photos) with my parents.

Why did I have to keep getting new iPods? I lost the 4th generation (click wheel, black and white) when I was moving my stuff during the summer before senior year. I sold my 3rd generation to get money, because I needed money. And I believe the first iPod, the 2nd generation iPod, it broke and somehow the break wasn’t under warranty.

But I’ve owned more than 4 specific iPods, because whenever I’ve had a problem with one, when it was covered under warranty, which I believe has happened at least 6 or 7 times, Apple’s sent me, or handed me, a brand new replacement.

So Ben, to answer your question, I’ve owned about a dozen iPods, and paid for 4.

Dealing with a Sad* iPod Part 3: The Re-Up (No Shady)

*and then, inevitably, a New iPod.

I’m watching tonight’s Heroes off of the DVR box, so I’ve decided to christen the new iPod in the name of Masi Oka’s character Hiro.

And tonight, for the next few hours, Hiro’s going to be loading my tunes up. I did the math, and at about 2000 songs every 40 minutes, it should take a little under 4 hours to load my music library onto my iPod, and hopefully, I’ll be asleep by then.

This isn’t the way I’d prefer it to be done, and I thought it wouldn’t take so long, but you work with what you get. Since I’ll be asleep by the time it’s done loading (around 4 am), that means for at least three to four hours, the iPod will still be on, active, working. The damn thing won’t auto-eject once it’s done loading up.

This leads me to the next, and possibly obvious, point: I have too much music. That 11411 up there isn’t just a palindrome, it’s the number of songs that will be transferred to my iPod. I think before I get my next computer I need to sit down with iTunes and go over what I really need. I know the point of having a 60GB iPod is to have a crapload of music on it, but there should be more free space on the thing so it’s longevity will increase. Most hard drives are supposed to have at least 10% of free space in order to function to the best of their abilities.

Tomorrow, I plan on not over exerting Hiro: an album on the way to work, an album on the way home from work, and not much else. Don’t want to put too much early wear on it after dragging 50 some odd gb’s of music onto it.

Here’s the first photo of Hiro now that he has a name:

Dealing with a Sad iPod, Part 2: Being a Repeat Offender

So I got there, and even after making my reservation, I had to wait an additional half hour.

But once my name was called, and after I wrote my name, email, and phone # down, I was given a new iPod to replace the now dead McNulty.

Why did I have to write my info down, I wonder. I didn’t dare ask my genius, Gerald, because he seemed to be a little grumpy – going against exactly what my last post in this series had said – but that might have had more to do with the fact that it was 6pm, and everybody’s grumpy at 6pm. But back to the question, as to why I was grumpy.

As it says above on my reciept, this was a Repeat Repair. Which means, probably, that Apple Inc. is suspicious as hell of me. Am I just some dude who doesn’t take care for his iPod and expects these free replacements? Maybe. This has inspired me to keep track of all, if any, mistakes I make in the taking care of it, to see if it’s me or is it Apple that’s at fault.

And here’s a photo of the new one, looks just like the old one, and has yet to be named or filled with music, as I’m currently charging it up.

Reporting on Unrelated News

So I’m at the Apple Store in SoHo, and since I got here a little early, I’ve been able to use their wireless to find out about Chrome Children 2 (no Electric Boogaloo). Track Listing after the jump. I was going to have a photo of the huge lines for the Genius Bar, but my the photo hasn’t gotten from my cell phone to my iPod yet.

How To: Dealing with a Sad iPod, Part 1.

And no, the answer is not trying to fight the iPod’s depressed state by buying it new cases at the Apple store. That’s just unhealthy behavior that will make the iPod’s happiness dependant on you spoiling it.

The story is the same. I’m using my iPod. I’m happy with my iPod. But then, every so often, when I try and do a simple task, it bites me in the ass. 99% of the time, when I choose to change what album or song I’m listening to, nothing bad happens. But, for the last week or so, that simple task of changing what song I’m listening to has been freezing my iPod. So I’ve been going through the following steps each time this has happened, only to, each time, have the iPod fix itself before my Apple Store appointment.

For your own benefit, here are my simple instructions on how to schedule a repair with the Apple Store. Nowadays, scheduling a repair is often a must, because sometimes there are so many people at the Genius Bar, tat if you just go there after work without a reservation, you’re probably going to be told that the genius bar is full of appointments for the day, and to go home, make a reservation tomorrow (you can only make a reservation on the day of the appointment) and come back.

1. Make sure that your iPod still has it’s Apple Care warranty. If you’re living on the edge, without a warranty, and the complimentary 90 day warranty period has passed, then prepare for Apple charging you an arm and a leg for your repair. I had a small debate with Michael about buying warranties last night, and we ultimately decided that if you think you need a warranty, because you have frequent bad luck with technology, you should get the warranty. And when it comes to iPods, I have shitty luck. Does that mean I’m going to switch and get a Zune? Not likely. It means that I’m always going to pay for AppleCare for my iPod.

2. Go to http://www.apple.com/retail/ and find your nearest Apple Store. If there is no nearby Apple Store, then head on over to http://www.apple.com/support/ to file for a repair with them. I choose to try my luck with the Apple retail stores because it’s more pleasant to talk about technology with someone face to face, rather than filling out a form on-line or trying to find the tech support phone number.

3. After going to your local Apple Store’s specific page, click on “Make a reservation.”

From there on in, it’s pretty self explanatory. But something to note is that when you choose your appointment time, pick one slot later than when you expect to get to the store, for you will be told to arrive 5 minutes before your appointment begins

4. Breathe, and relax. It’s going to be all good. The geniuses are good, nice people and they’ll take care of you and your iPod. I’ve heard they get a lot of crap, though, so be nice!

Wish me luck today, I’ve got a 5:45 appointment for the same problem as usual.

James Brown, the hardest working man in Podcast Tribute Form

It’s been about a month since James Brown passed, and I’m surprised that I havn’t come across more mix tapes or best-ofs on the net. There are only two of note to my knowledge:

- The first being the one I’ve thought was the best so far, from Diplo’s Mad Decent Radio podcast, “#12 – the land of milk and honey with james brown” . And as is to be expected from Mr. Diplotocus, it’s good. The mix itself, according to the notes attached to the podcast (Will basic black text become the new liner notes?) was done by Cosmo Baker, and his website is here.

- The Stones Throw Podcast Tribute is also worth a listen by your ears, and it’s linked here.

That’s all for now,

Henry

This Funny Photo, and other blips of advice

I’d been working for weeks trying to lose this cold that’s been trailing me. 2 weeks ago, it took on flu/virus like symptoms. Now those symptoms are back again. Which probably means I’ll be staying home from work tomorrow. I don’t have much energy, but I gotta give back to you for reading this, so here are some interesting things I’ve found online recently. Something about how I expect to get healthy at the end of this. But first, the blips:

1. Apple seems to be poised to introduce new LED screens to it’s Macbook line, starting with the 15″ Macbook Pro. This is a welcome bit of rumor mill gossip for me, as I’m saving my dollars up for this summer, when I plan to purchase a Macbook Pro. If I can get a great product after a big form factor move, I’ll be happy. (Source: AppleInsider)

2. Coachella is going to be amazing this year. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE are reuniting, The JESUS AND MARY CHAIN are playing the festival, GHOSTFACE KILLAH’S is gonna WRECK THE HELL OUT OF FESTIVAL!, GIRL TALK IS PLAYING THE FESTIVAL!, PHARAOE FUCKING MONCH is gonna be there, The Smashing Pumpkins are rumored to be playing there too. Also attending: The Good The Bad And The Queen (more on them later), Hot Chip, El-P, Lupe Fiasco, The Arcade Fire, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, AND THIS MIGHT NOT EVEN BE THE FESTIVAL I GO TO BECAUSE …. (Source: PitchforkMedia)

3. Bob Dylan is playing Bonnaroo. This is a good sign for what’s to come regarding The ‘Roo. Also good signs, the following artists/bands are also rumored to play: Tom Waits, Willie Nelson, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Arcade Fire, Hot Chip, America, TV on the Radio, The Roots, The Decemberists, Ozomatli, Keiren Hedben (Four Tet) & Steve Reid, The Hold Steady, M. Ward, and Girl Talk. Superfly Productions plans to officially announce the lineup on January 31st. (Source: Stereogum)

4. Kanye West’s taking a page out of the Kingdom Come rulebook, and he’s going to work with Chris Martin for a track on the forthcoming Graduation. (Source: Pitchfork, again)

5. 24’s gonna do the whole 2-hours-in-one-night thing AGAIN, this time in February. Set your DVR’s and brains for the 12th. And can someone comment to talk about tonight’s shocking return of one of season 5’s big bads? (Source: TV Squad)

So what do I expect will save me from the dead beyond I find myself in? The Good, The Bad, and The Queen release their self titled album tomorrow. Who the hell are they? Damon Albarn is The King of All Side Projects, what with Blur, Gorillaz, his own album Mali Music, and now this group, which feature the following people:

- Paul Simonon, the freaking bass guitarist from The Clash.

- Tony Allen, drummer for Fela Kuti’s band, of whom Fela stated, “without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat”. (Source: Wikipedia)

- And Simon Tong, guitarist/keyboardist for The Verve.

A recording brought from all of them, produced by Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton, will be on shelves tomorrow. This is how the British do SuperGroup, and I’m starting to think it’s a hell of a lot better than we Americans do it.

Playlists of a Wayward Son

It’s snowing, or at least it was, today in New York. That means I’m headed north to learn how to snowboard. I’m bringing my camera, so maybe when I come back there will be some funny photos of me falling down. I think giving the camera to Jared should work out okay, he was almost a photography major.

Today’s post is actually a question for you, the readers:

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE ALBUM FOR A ROAD TRIP, AND WHY?

My current favorites, each for a particular part of the trip, are as follows:

• 1. Ratatat’s “Classics” starts the trip out of town, because it’s a nice instrumentals album that won’t get me distracted.
• 2. I don’t know if I’ll listen to all of “Classics,” but eventually I’ll move on to “Hell Hath No Fury,” by Clipse, especially if I’m enduring some New York traffic.  “Ride Around Shinin” is a great song when you’re in a slow paced situation, and the album’s dark mood matches the city as the sun goes away.
• 3. After that, it’s “Return to Cookie Mountain” by TV On The Radio, because songs like “Province” and “Wash The Day” have this great sense of hope about them, which you need after “I Was A Lover,” the track 1 that’s going to pull me back down to earth after Clipse pushes me up.
• Between most of those albums and a lot of songs also from Jared’s iPod, this will be the soundtrack going upstate. Last time, he got control of the stereo when we got to Kingston and I took over driving, and I think this won’t be much different.
• 4. Bob Dylan’s recent album “Modern Times,” is the start of the trip home, Bob’s really firey and instrospective on the album and he still manages to keep his head on through it, because well, he’s Bob Fracking Dylan.
• Again, Jared will be his music, for half of the time we’re driving so I’m only going to put one more item on this list:
• 5. Beck’s “The Information,” is  perfect for coming into the city in midafternoon. Literally, Beck’s weird little album with it’s variety of styles and paces, is a perfect match for the Sunday afternoon sun, they’re each about 10 times more effective when combined.

So, as I said above:

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE ALBUM FOR A ROAD TRIP, AND WHY?

Please, people, start your commenting!
This blog will be so much more fun if there’s ample support from the readers.

Was That Really Necessary?

A random table at the office, where the cup of media has runneth over.
A co-worker dubbed this workstation the “Staten Island” of the office.

The “That” in question could refer to a number of things, the very least of which being the absurd amount of self-obsessed tacky rhetoric I had to print at work today. Imagine 250 pages of Ralph Lauren’s greatest phrases. That sounds like something I made up, doesn’t it? It’s not. Also, imagine having to print that gospel, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RALPH, 4 times. That’s 1000 pages of Ralph Lauren. Imagine also having to print out another couple of thousand pages of transcribed Ralph Lauren, including “The Ralph Lauren Philosophy” video transcription. I almost printed another copy of the whole lot of it out for me to take home and podcast a preposterous reading for all of you.

But, in actuality, I’m also referring to the subject of the following headline, screen-capped from Wired’s website, for your enjoyment:

Hehe … Pirates. HA. If that’s too confusing, here’s a picture to clarify:

Yes, your hunch might have been right, an RIAA SWAT team was employed to take down DJ’s Drama and Cannon for pirating music. That’s right, the RIAA not only thinks they have to take down Mix Tape Kings, and that they need a SWAT team to do it. That’s how they do overkill in Atlanta, I guess. I’m quite exhausted from work, so if you want a better analysis of the story, click here for Oh Word’s take on things.

For more unneccessary stupidity, we go to the greatest source of superfluousness: Jessica Simpson. Jessica has now gone on record with the following statement:

The 26-year-old was asked not to sing solos in church, because men found her feminine assets too distracting. However, having found fame and success as both a pop singer and an actress career, Simpson now “wears” her breasts proudly.

She says, “I always felt they disabled me from what I wanted to do. Now, I own them. They’re like wearing a great necklace. You can’t pay for that sort of accessory – though I know people do. But they never look as good at the real ones.”

Now that’s what I call comic gold. For more on this story, and for photos of Jessica, go to Egotastic!, where I got this story from.

I’ll be back tomorrow to talk road trip playlist, from an undisclosed location in the Catskills.

The Backup, one Area of My Expertise

I have a lot of media to backup. Over the last few years, it became increasingly easy to download tv shows, movies, and albums, and to complicate matters, these means became increasingly illegal over the same period of time. That last part has little to do with the backup process, except that you might say it’s not the smartest thing to have all this ill-gotten media in an obvious location, like say, a big gray brick of data resting nearby my laptop.

Tonight, I am taking another step in the arduous process of backing up my library of stuff. That photo up top (which combined with the soon to follow photo, qualify as photos of the day, as I took them today), is a somewhat absurd stack of DVD-R discs that I have just picked up from the drug store across the street. For the record, it seems that blank, recordable media is one of the last things that Sony knows how to be good at anymore. I bought blank Maxell DVD-R’s and they wouldn’t even start the burning process on my relatively middle of the road iBook G4.

I’m doing this now, because some time in the next few months, I’ll be placing my savings into getting a sweet new setup soon, so I need to gear up. If I could be using the external hard drive, pictured below, for backing up the actually important data I don’t want to lose, and not the not-as-important tv shows I really don’t need to have on hand, it would be really nice.

I’m not sure exactly when I got this LaCie 160GB external hard drive, but ever since I did acquire it, my packrat tendencies have only been enabled, not quelled. Currently, it has 105 GB of TV shows on it that I need to burn to DVD-Rs. That’s over 20 DVD-Rs, easily. The obvious question to ask is WHY THE HELL DID I THINK IT WAS NECESSARY TO DO THIS? The first answer I came up with is as simple as the question is obvious (a benefit of drafting both the question one has to answer), the four alternative answers that follow the first answer are, sometimes, as ludicrous as that SNL skit where Luda played a male captain on a lesbian cruise who was trying to find some ladies to turn straight.

1. I did it because I could.

2. I want to have every single episode of LOST, and continue to have them until the series ends, and not have to buy over priced DVD box sets. This way, when the show ends in about 2-4 years, I can go back and watch from the start and figure out how many (if any) loopholes there are in the endpoint.

3. The 5th season of 24 is one of the top 10 best seasons of any TV series that has aired during my lifetime.

4. Premium Cable television shows are as overpriced as it gets, and I don’t think anyone should ever spend upwards of 30 dollars on 4 hours of Entourage, no matter how much brilliant either Jeremy Piven or Kevin Dillon are.

5. The current and final season of The Sopranos is so weird that it’s going to need a refresher course in itself before it starts again in April.

So, as I face the giant stack of DVD-R’s, and realize how much time this is going to take me, I ask that you think before you horde. Or at the very least don’t wait until the last bits of space remain on your backup hard drive before you decide that you should be using the external hard drive for regular backups of your hard drive, the reason you originally used to justify spending all that cash in the first place.

Check back tomorrow for my thoughts about either Keith Olbermann’s analysis of 24 that aired last night, or the last Bardian I expected to see on FOX News.