While I was on my way to the fitness club, I realized that I was coming down with something. It's not surprising given how stressful the past few days have been. I managed a reasonable workout anyway, but over the course of the morning, I felt worse and worse. Somehow, I plowed through the rest of my grading, got ready for class, and managed to run the class meeting without just collapsing. I hate getting sick.
I finally got an iPod last week. I have been resisting because the prices always made me feel like no matter which I one got, I was being stupid (and I probably am). It always seemed like if you were going to spend X, you were stupid to not spend X+30% and get twice as much disk capacity, but that always led me to conclude that I needed to spend $300, which I can't afford. I finally just got the cheapest one: the 512MB iPod Shuffle. It's about perfect for my needs. It holds about 120 songs and I don't have more than 100 songs in my collection that I really like anyway. It looks at my ratings and grabs a bunch of song each time I sync it. It picks my highest rated songs more often, but grabs a mix of other stuff too, so it's not always just the same. I could construct a smart playlist to select music, but so far it's doing a pretty good job without any additional effort. And, I figure that at 1/3 the cost of the expensive one, I can replace it three times if I lose it or wreck it and still come out ahead.
StevenBrewer