I have an iPod

A number of years ago, I’m thinking around 8, I had a bad experience with my roommate’s iPod. I was trying to load music onto it from my PC and for some reason the usb cable didn’t provide power to the device. There was no other way to get power to the device so it would run out in the middle of the night in the middle of the download. This completely bolloxed up the songs on the iPod. I tried to remove the songs, but it only removed the file structure while leaving all the data with no way to access it. It was a complete mess.

I mention this so you understand just how surprising it is that I now have an iPod. Around 2 years ago my financee Emily wanted one, so we got one for us to share, an iPod Classic 160 gig. We got the biggest one because then we could both load it with music and put podcasts on it and such. She used it much more than I did and it gradually became her iPod. She loved it and had no problems with it. We used it together in the car for long trips and it worked great. We have a Prius with an aux jack in the center console, so it was simple to run it through the car stereo and it sounded great. It was easier to use than the in-dash 6 cd changer!

This year, we got iPhones. Many friends of ours have them and love them and there are apps for it that I want that aren’t out for any other phone, so we decided to get the iPhone 4 when it came out. I’m going to be putting databases on mine for my music, book and comic collections so I don’t really have room on there for music. As a result, I got an iPod for myself as well. Again, we went with the iPod Classic 160 gig. I’d researched mp3 players and there really aren’t any others out there with the same capacity for a similar price. I figured I’d put the bad experience behind me and give it a try. I was still a little apprehensive because my bad experience was using an iPod with a PC and Emily’s good experience was with her Mac.

Turns out, it is wonderful. It is a good thing I got the 160 gig because I’m already over 48 gig of music on the machine and have a ton to go. No other iProduct could hold as much as I already have on the iPod. I have no idea why I was so resistant to getting some kind of mp3 player all this time. I love music and this is a way to have all of my music with me all of the time. I’d been starting to feel like I didn’t get to listen to music much any more. I don’t listen to it as often when driving with Emily, because we’re talking and that’s great, but it is time I used to listen to music. And I don’t tend to listen to music during my commute because I tend to listen to NPR to find out what’s been happening in the world. One other large amount of time I used to listen to music went away when I moved to Boston: I used to drive up here from NJ around once a month and I’d listen to music on the drive to and from. Now I live here and that drive is gone.

But now I have an iPod! I bring it to work with me and can listen to music on the walk from the parking garage to my office (also the walk back). I’m in computing so when I need to block out the noise around me in the office, I can listen to my iPod and it is considered an ok thing to do. I take it to the gym and get an hour to an hour and a half listening in with each visit. My next step is to replace my old, mostly broken radio in the Pathfinder so I can listen in the truck when I don’t want to listen to NPR. I won’t have a cassette player in the truck any more, but I don’t think that’ll be a problem as I’ll have the aux jack. Of course I’m going to try replacing it myself so who knows how that’ll turn out.