Nextplease

Ok - this post will solve a few nagging issues. For one it will satisfy my “at least one post a month” rule…and two, it will give me an excuse to note a bunch of stuff without multiple posts. Onward!

I got one of the new iPod Shuffles for Christmas from Melissa. It’s great, I love it!…Thanks! But I had a few issues getting it up and running. Apple product first user experiences are not infallible as some folks may seem to think (this is my first Apple product).

• The little case it came in was very tightly fitted. I opened up the top and pulled the shuffle out and marveled at the packaging but made the mistake of fitting the plastic panel back in before getting the ear buds and charging base out. It took a screwdriver to pry the top panel out again!
• The minimal instructions are not explicitly clear in telling you if the unit comes charged or not. I decided that like most other rechargeable battery products that I’d better let it juice up for a few hours.
• The Apple support pages on the web were down Christmas day! I can imagine a few folks with new Apple products Christmas morning were as frustrated as I was. This also included the automatic update downloads feature in iTunes. I was told upon hooking up the shuffle to my computer that a new version of the shuffle software was available and the connection kept telling me it was unable to connect. All was fixed later in the afternoon.

In the end - it’s a great music player - I love it.

Some great music was purchased this year. I’ll spare the long winded reviews and quickly list them here (in no particular order):

• Beck’s “The Information”. The is the first Beck disc I’ve liked since “Mutations”.
• The Decemberists “The Crane Wife”. We also saw them live at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia. Great show except for the horrendously awful opener Lavender Diamond.
• Neko Case’s “Fox Confessor Brings The Flood”. The song “Dirty Knife” gives me chills.
• Lefty Frizzell - “Look What Thoughts Will Do”. This is a two CD set of material from the “father of modern country music”. Yes - I have a liking for old country music (think Patsy Cline, Hank Sr., Texas swing, and bluegrass…)
• The Kinks “Are The Village Green Preservation Society”. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to have this in my collection.
• Robyn Hitchcock “Olé! Tarantula”. Robyn’s most rocking disc in a long while. (I’d grown tired of his recent acoustic material).
• Belle & Sebastian “The Life Pursuit”. This one’s OK. Didn’t knock my socks off.

Here’s a list of popular websites that I have found to be of no interest or use to me:

• Digg
• Technorati
• Newsvine
• Cork’d
• Yahoo

To contrast, here are some sites that get my daily attention:

• The National Weather Service
• Flickr
• Tape Op Message Board
• Drawn!
• Philebrity

OK. That’s all for now. Here’s hoping you had a good 2006 and that 2007 will be even better. Happy New Year!

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