av8rmike

So, I got a new car on Saturday. It only took about 5-6 hours at the dealership, with all the wheeling and dealing and "I've got to go check with the manager." But in the end, I got a 2010 VW Jetta TDI, which are pretty highly in demand now. It seems VW's marketing plan of raising interest and demand while keeping supply low worked out pretty well for them.

Jamie took this picture yesterday afternoon. It was pretty late in the day, so you can't get a good sense of the color:

Now I've gone and done it. I've installed Ubuntu 8.1 on the laptop, and I'm trying to clone one of the Dreamwidth repositories.

Where did I leave my SSH key?

...And by "everyone", I mean "at least two people other than myself".

I want a laptop, for some reason. It's not because I'm a grad student and need to spend all my waking hours in a Panera or Starbucks (Hi helenseidolon!) Everyone has one these days, even my dad. He uses it while sitting in front of the TV, but that's because his desktop computer is 30 feet away in another corner of the house. And have you seen these widescreen HP models? They are beautiful.

Problem is, I really don't need one. It would serve more as a desktop replacement, but my existing desktop still works reasonably well, and is right next to my TV. Even with the discounts, it's still not an insignificant chunk of change. I guess I'll have to stick to spending my money on smaller things like CDs and concert tickets.

So, yes, I went with the safe choice of the 80GB iPod Classic. I did like the look of the 80GB Zunes, but the fact that nobody seemed to be carrying them (except Circuit City, eww) was something of a red flag. Also off-putting was the limitation in many MP3 players to only allow browsing by song title, artist, playlist, and album. To a pedantic classical music enthusiast like me, who would actually want to tag files properly, or see everything I have by Carl Nielsen, that would get irritating.

I'm about 50-60% through my collection, taking up a measly 5GB. The iPod is telling me there is about 70GB free, so there must be firmware or something making up the rest. Dark matter, perhaps?

I also used the downtime while ripping to install the new set of Eudoxas that I'd been pre-stretching on the old violin. I'm writing that here so I don't have to wonder how old the strings are and the last time I changed them.