Becoming an iPod Geek

For a long time, I resisted getting an iPod. There were several reasons for this. One was the expense… they’ve always hovered around the $300-500 mark depending on the model, what year you’re talking about since the first one was put out, and so forth. Also, until recently they really weren’t large enough to house an entire CD collection — though in the last few years they have become so. Finally, I just didn’t think I listened to music all that much to justify it. In the car I tend to listen to talk radio (plus I’d need some sort of attachment to play iPod songs in my car anyway, since it only has a tape deck). At home, I tend to only listen to music occasionally, because I am often either reading (in which case I want it quiet), or watching a DVD-movie on the television (and then I want to hear the movie, of course), or playing a computer game (which usually has its own, though often poor, sound track). And so, I avoided getting an iPod for a long time.

Finally, though, I got tired of carrying stacks of CDs to work to listen to while writing computer code — the one activity I undertake where really do prefer to have music playing in the background. I also grew weary of taking a couple of CDs with me, only to find myself in the mood to listen to something other than what I had brought. At first I bought an MP-3 CD player (you know, a disc player that can read MP3 files as well as regular CDs). I “ripped” (translated from CD format to MP-3 format on my computer) a few of my favorite CDs, and started making compilations of my favorite artists. For example, I am a huge fan of Deana Carter (though normally I don’t go for country music), and I was able to get almost all of her songs onto one MP-3 CD (at least, before her “Story of my Life” album came out). Still, if I wanted to listen to, say, multiple artists, I had to either continue carrying several CDs, or start burning MP-3 disks of different compilations. Trying to figure out what I might want to “shuffle play” ahead of time and burn it onto a disk just became too annoying. So finally, in January of this year, doing well enough financially that I could now realistically justify the (mild) extravagance, I caved, and bought myself an iPod.

I have to say that right away I found myself liking it. Often when I buy a “big ticket” item like an iPod (I bought the G5 30 GB version for $250 + tax), I can’t help but feel a bit of “buyer’s remorse” shortly after. I am still used to my “grad school” mentality, where spending even a few dollars was always gut-wrenching (they paid us just about $10K a year back then, which was not really enough to live on even in South Carolina), and so “splurging” on something that had a price tag with three digits before the decimal point was a rare event back then. Now, of course, a few hundred bucks is not that big of a deal — but I still often have that nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that it is “wasteful” to spend this much money on a luxury item.

Not this time, however. After spending the weekend ripping my CDs into iTunes/iPod format (which is called “MP-3″ but isn’t really technically MP-3 format, but some proprietary Apple format that is similar to MP-3), and getting them ported to the iPod itself, I found it to be one of the best things I’ve bought in quite a while. Now, all my (100 or so) CD music is on one small object, which I can carry around at will. I can mix any set of songs I want, or shuffle play them, however I want, without having to make a new CD every time, or carry around stacks of CDs. For long months this is about all I did with my iPod, and I was happy enough with it.

But all of that has changed in the last few days. As I posted some time ago, I am moving at the end of the month. In three days, the Salvation Army is coming to take some old furniture, including my computer desk (at which I am composing this post right now). That means two days from now, the computer will be removed from it and packed up… and I won’t see the computer again for about two weeks — until after the movers deliver it to my new home. Similarly, either that night or the next, the DVD player is being packed away, and already all my DVDs except a season of Seinfeld (which I am using to kill the time while preparing dinner, etc) are packed away, as are my VCR and all the video tapes. After the movers take everything, I will have a couple of days here to clean and re-set my apartment to (as best I can after 7 years) “move in” conditions, but during evenings and break times from doing that, I figured I would have nothing to do to entertain myself except a bit of reading (the latest Harry Potter book will come in handy here). And then when I get to the other end (North Carolina), there will be a week or so after I move in there waiting for my stuff to arrive, where, again, I will have little but reading to entertain myself.

Or so I thought. But then I remembered the iPod! And suddenly it went from being a convenience to something that will help me get through the next couple of weeks without a TV, DVD player, computer, VCR, etc. In addition to being able to take my entire music collection with me in my pocket on the airplane, I discovered a popular item that I had ignored until this weekend — the Podcast. These are radio-like broadcasts about any number of items you might care to listen to, all done with varying levels of quality by people around the world. And because they’re mostly just audio (though some have video), they don’t take up that much space, and they can be put onto an iPod (that is what they were originally designed for — hence the name “pod”cast). I found several interesting-looking science-based radio shows, and downloaded those to iTunes (for transfer to the iPod). But even more exciting, I stumbled upon a set of conversions of old radio shows (like “The Shadow”) and new ones (there are some new ones involving Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman that have good ratings). I haven’t listened to many (just a few of the shorter science update ones), but it struck me that this would be a great way to entertain myself while waiting for my TV, computer, and other stuff to arrive. And so I have downloaded probably about a GB and a half of Podcasts on all sorts of subjects, with the intention of listening to them while in my half-empty apartment, waiting for the rest of my furniture.

And so I have gone from, about 8 months ago, knowing little about iPods other than what they could do, to using my iPod regularly and now downloading and listening to Podcasts. I suppose this makes me an iPod geek… And that’s OK. I’ve been a geek in other ways for many years. Thanks to the iPod (and the external charger, which costs another $30), I will be able to listen to music and radio shows during those long hours when my stuff is stuck on the back of a moving truck.