Tone Parsons

I just want to wish a happy valentine’s day to my love, my life, my wife.

Thank you for being who you are.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Tuesday!

Well, the “wonderful” part has yet to be verified, but it is most definately Tuesday…. the aftermath of Monday.

My old department is bugging me again (it’s about server backups this time), my back is a cranky beast, and my mind is full of fuzz from the medication. So… I guess it’s business as usual.

I spent most of last night fighting with Apple’s iTunes. I have never before been so frustrated with a program. I’m sure that the issues are totally with me (ie. I’m trying to do things the way I’ve done them with other applications), but moving music from my machine to my iPod is rather counter-intuitive.

One would think you can just drag the music you want onto the iPod icon and drop it (like every other piece of removable media in the world), but no… that’s not how it works. You have to mess with it, change all the default settings, tweak some more, and then maybe, just maybe… you can copy your files over.

Also… if you sync your iPod on one computer and attempt to add files from another, iTunes gives you the cyber version of the middle finger (I had to let it delete all my music I had synced from my laptop before I could copy files over from my PC).

grrrrrrrrrr….

I’ll figure it out… I know I will, it’s just a little frustrating at the moment (and I’m just venting… I haven’t read the help files yet, so I really shouldn’t bitch).

One nice thing about it… I moved over 1,000 songs to my little 30GB iPod and still have about 20GB left. Nice!! I guess I’ll need to keep ripping my CD’s to fill it up. I’m going to toy with using Apple’s ACC format instead of the usual mp3. I’ve been told that you get smaller file size with the same audio qualities as the 192kb rips I currently do.

This weekend was musical in nature.

My son drove me around on Saturday (it’s good to have a boy with a learner’s permit when you’re not able to drive yourself… damn drugs!). He wanted a copy of Half-Life 2 and I wanted some music.

4 stores and 2 hours later, I had most of what I was looking for: (you can click on any thumbnail to open that cd at amazon and then listen to some samples)

This is the first time I’ve purchased music from any of these artits. After giving them a listen, here’s my take (each link below goes to the artists web site):

Tracy Bonham: (Blink the Brightest, Down Here) Hands down, she’s now my new most favorite female vocalist! For the longest time, Poe had that distinction (sorry baby but you’re now #2). With intelegent lyrics and powerful vocals, Tracy won my heart… fo’ sho’!

Venus Hum: (Big Beautiful Sky, The Colors in the Wheel) First and foremost…. this band was damn hard to find! I found one album at Hastings (Big Beautiful Sky), and had to order the other one from Barnes & Noble (it’ll be here on the 15th). The music is stimulating, and the lead singers voice and quirky sing style stuck a cord with me. These are must have albums.

Gorillaz: (Demon Days – Special Edition) What can I say… they’re the Grolliaz. My son really wanted this, and I’ve been pondering this band for a bit. The special edition version I got also came with a DVD (extra tracks and their one of a kind videos). I haven’t had much chance to listen to this yet, as my son stole it from me.

So… there you go. Give each link a try and listen to some music (they all open in a new window, so you can close it and come back here for another one). Who knows…. you might find something you really like!