iRule

I got a smattering of lovely gifts for my birthday. But the most preoccupying one , the BIG TICKET item..is an 80 gb iPod Classic.

Don't get me wrong...I do love it. But I am having the damnedest time getting my music onto it. See I have a BUTTLOAD of music on my sister's PC. Some of the songs I've ripped off of CDs when making mixes. Those (165 songs) I've been able to sync to the iPod. HOWEVER, there are lots and LOTS and LOTS of tracks that I've downloaded via Puretracks.com that are giving me trouble. The simplest (and PRICIEST) solution would be to re-buy all these tracks from iTunes but uhhhh..no fucking way am I doing that! There's gotta be another way!! The weird thing is...none of these download tracks show up in my iPod..and yet when I connected the iPod to my work PC and right clicked on the device, selected "Explore" ALL THOSE TRACKS SHOWED UP !! I wasn't able to play any of them...they simply aren't there when I navigate around on the iPod, and when I tried to play them on the PC it gave me an error message....some twaddle about licenses (whatev!!). But the confounding fact remains: they ARE fucking in there somewhere!! Right?? Ugggh!! The whole deal is frustrating me big time. And I find Windows Help & iPod/Apple Help to be...anything but helpful. I need LIVE assistance. I need . . .I need THE NERD HERD.

I've really been dwelling on the negative side o' things--namely these 300+ kick ass songs that I can't play on my new iPod. Why does the iGestappo have to make this so g.d. hard for me, huh? But what I **should** be doing is saying-- Hooooraay, I have this shiny new toy. It has cool games on it and 165 very fine songs.

At present, I am thankful that I was able to get some Beastie Boys up in this thang. I have 4 Beastie tracks on the iPod:
1.Brass Monkey
2.Triple Trouble
3.That's It That's All
4.The Brouhaha

I am right now rocking out to #4 on this list. Never really got any Top 40 Radio airplay but believe you me, clown, it is a DAMNED enjoyable 2minutes and 13 seconds.
Y'know when discussing the Beastie's canon, music nerds are usually all "blah blah blah..Paul's Boutique..yadda yadda.." I guess that's their most pioneering & most critically acclaimed album, but for me "License to Ill" & "To the 5 Burroughs" are the must-haves. And I do have them. Those 2 along with "Hello Nasty" (but strangely, I never listen to that one) Before long, I will never handle any of those CDs ...they will all just be tracks on my iPod. I'm suddenly very sentimental about my ol' mountain of CDs. Sentimental about CDs in general, really. It seems a foregone conclusion that they WILL go the way of the Dodo, but it seems strange to think on a whole type of store being wiped out, nationwide. I wonder if it would work if CD stores evolved instead...they could become a place where you came in with your iPod or equivalent device, hand it over to the staff after choosing songs off a sort of menu and then the employees would do all the tiresome techno-grunt work for you. This type of establishment would be handy for folks who either: a) possess outmoded equipment not in keeping with the high tech times OR b) possess outmoded skills not in keeping with the high tech times. I know it's hard to believe (in light of this post) but I do fall more into category a than b.

OK so I've beaucoup download frustrations, and glum reveries on the eventual demise of the music store, but aside from all that, I'm quite happy with the new iPod. I'm sure I'll rally and become truly assimilated into the iPod nation before long, right? I am pretty smitten with the whole clickwheel dealie. That's good fun. Y'know, owning this is apt to bump me up into a whole new technological caste. And that means that I MUST now obtain that laptop that I've been passively pining for forever. But first, all the must-have i-Pod accoutrements....