December 3, 2008
Dear Everyone:
A few
Christmases ago, “Santa” gave me an
MP3
player that could hold four
gigabytes worth of music and videos.
It didn’t take me too long to discover that four gigabytes is
nowhere near enough space.
So I bought myself a new player that can hold up to eight gigabytes.
And I gave “Jeannie” the “hand-me-down”.
In each case, I got the players at the Big, Blue Electronics
Warehouse Store. The players
come with software that you use to install a program that allows you to
connect to a site where you can download music, etc.
The way it works is, you give them your credit card number and,
for a mere $14.95 per month, you can “subscribe” to most of the music.
(Some albums you can only buy, I found out; but most are
downloadable.)
So you search on an artist like
Petula Clark, or
The Kingston Trio, and find all kinds of recordings that you can
download to your computer.
Then you transfer them to the player.
There’s only one catch.
The player knows how long it’s been since it connected to the
computer. After about 30
days, if you don’t connect to the computer to confirm that you are still
subscribing to the service, the player won’t play any subscribed music.
(If you transferred music from a purchased CD, it’s OK.)
So once a month, you have to connect the player to
the computer. Not a problem
for me, but maybe a snag for “Jeannie”.
The software program is on my computer, not hers.
So she has to come to my place, or give me the player and wait
for me to update it and return it to her.
Since we only see each other on the weekends, it could mean she’d
be “player-less” for a week or more.
Not good.
So imagine my delight last night when, while
searching for something else entirely (of course), I found the original
installation CD. This means
I can install the program on her PC (the company doesn’t care about how
many installations there are, they make their money from the
subscriptions.) Then all I
have to do is point it at my already existing account and “Jeannie” will
be able to update her player whenever she needs to, as well as download
any “free” music she wants.
Soon everyone will be happy.
In other news…
We saw
Quantum of Solace the weekend before
Thanksgiving.
If you saw the last movie,
Casino Royale, you know that
Bond lost his love,
Vesper, when she
betrayed him to the Bad Guys.
Never mind that Vesper was forced to do so by the Bad Guys.
She’s gone. If you
didn’t see the last film, all you need to know is that Vesper is dead.
This is the “Solace” part of the title.
The Bad Guys belong to some kind of club that they
call “Quantum”. That’s the
other part of the title. The
rest is much like any Bond movie.
Lots of action sequences, a beautiful girl, “M” complaining about
Bond, something about an evil ex-dictator trying to regain his lost
power, lots of explosions, and no real clue about what’s going on and
why. Doesn’t matter.
Bond is Bond. And
Daniel Craig is Bond with a soul.
Only two more weeks left to this year and I’m
taking this Friday and next Friday as vacation days to burn through
what’s left before the end of December.
Everybody please pray for rain and lots of snow in the mountains.
Love, as always,
Pete
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