Waffling

I hate it when I waffle. First I don't think I like listening to audiobooks, now I do. But at a big cost. Time is what it costs. The mp3 player (myPod) I have from Sansa works well enough for me, but I kept losing my place in the audiobook I was listening to. If I don't hit the UP button (pause is what this does), the audiobook starts over from The Very Beginning. There is no fast forward (well, not fast enough for me), nor is there a bookmark feature (You Stopped Here).

What I have to do is navigate into the audiobook and advance the run time to approximately where I stopped. The audiobook I have is about 11 hours long and at least 3 times I've had to re-find my place at about 4.5 hours. And this doesn't count the times I stopped incorrectly before I reached 4.5 hours!! Yesterday I showed the player to a friend who has iPod and yep, you guessed it! Back to zero. Now I got smart enough to know my finger hurts after holding down a button for 20+ minutes, so I discovered a pencil with an eraser placed on the button jumps this ahead with more comfort than my finger pressing down. Ever the automator, I will have to try getting a *really* wide rubber band and using some sort of clip on the button so I can set a timer to re-find my place. This is the clip I envision using: (don't tell me if they look familiar :-)

The wide rubber band will protect the case from getting scratched too. I'll let you know how it works later on.

To think - Perchance to change my mind

So in my last post I proclaimed I don't like audiobooks. Bah! I downloaded one of J.D. Robb's In Death books and started listening to it. It indicates on myPod that it's 10 hours long and before you know it, I'd listened to an hour already. Yikes. I've become my own worst enemy one minute proclaiming I don't care for a medium or format, and the next, changing my mind. Well, I am a girl -- haven't we always been allowed to change our minds? :-)

Sound, noise, downloading

Yes! I successfully downloaded an audiobook onto an mp3 player (myPod, not iPod) from the library's website. Techies always make things look so easy, but there are about a million steps I had to do to get this right. I've had my little refurbished myPod for about 3 weeks and accidentally downloaded all the music that DH had on my home computer so have had something to enjoy. Good thing it also has an FM tuner because before I accidentally downloaded the music, the only thing to listen to were the 20 preloaded songs, only one of which I enjoyed hearing. I listened to music stations from the FM radio. One day I'll figure out how to delete the pre-set stations and enter the local frequencies but for now, I know how to scroll to get to them.

I was feeling rather like a luddite when I couldn't get a downloadable audiobook downloaded to a place in my home computer that I could find. What? I failed. I was not a happy camper. Anyway, when I had my success I was at work using the Windows 2000 OS or whatever version comes before Vista. Research-lite showed Vista isn't happy with DRM permissions that allows a user to copy or re-download to another device (like iPods and myPods--mp3 players of some sort). A DRM acceptance screen flashed by at one point at home but disappeared quicker than I could see where I had to click to agree to abide by the law to not making bootleg copies. Who knows where it put the copy of "Hitched" that I think I downloaded. Maybe one day I'll find it even though by then it will have been returned on my library record. The goal now will be to find it and remove it (erase it?) to keep from loading up the computer with useless bits and bytes of illegible data. Regardless, I did get one book loaded on myPod and will have to figure out now how to delete it. Did I ever say how I don't listen to audiobooks? I just had to know how to really do it (for work's sake). :-)

I was rather driven to this goal of having a personal portable listening device by my last airplane trip. It was one where if it wasn't that I had a ton of stuff to do when I got home I would've purchased a few adult beverages to dull the pain of the annoying 6-to-8 y.o. child who was being ignored by his Dad THE WHOLE WAY HOME. If you've ever been trapped into a situation such as this ('dad' 'dad' 'dad' -- Dad Dad Dad -------- DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD [who never responded except with the occasional elbow jab to say "SHUT UP"]) and 'I need gum.' 'I need gum.' 'I need gum.' 'I need gum.' 'I need gum.' Dad: no you don't. Mom: no you don't, I just gave you gum. And annoying kid: I need gum -- this piece doesn't have any flavor left. I need gum -- it just fell on the floor!. And this was before we freakin' pushed away from the jetway. Lord help me! This kid was relentless and I wanted to pull my hair out -- every last strand -- exquisitely painfully, so I could enjoy the distraction away from him. It was at some point of this 3 hour torture I decided I will never again fly without earbuds (even earplugs would've worked) to allow me to drift off into some remote oblivion and never again hear a pesty child while trapped in an airplane. So worth the hassle of having to figure out the million steps to download a talking book I don't plan to ever listen to and will have to spend time equivalent to the worst flying experience I've ever had to find the file and delete it from my computer. I'm set now. Just have to remember to keep the device charged!