A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Resolve to kill my (cable) television is rising, between several of you egging me on and my just now succeeding in getting my new iPod to output to my TV using a cable I already owned. (This took a little research. It tuns out that iPods switch around the three RCA plugs' duties, so if you plug them into the TV in the usual way, it doesn't work. I hadta read this article to learn the translation, which is basically: Insert the red RCA plug into the yellow TV input socket, the white into the red, and the yellow into the white. Doy.)

I actually called RCN but oddly their salesbots don't work on Sunday evenings. So, tomorrow. If I'm reading the website right I might be able to save more than $60/month, too. We'll see.

Overslept due to mechanical failure today. My phone crashed or something after I hit snooze the first time. I think maybe its battery indicator is on the fritz and it doesn't have as much charge as it thinks it does. I am using my backup phone now while the primary (which has since come around, ten minutes after I plugged it in) ponders upon its transgression at home.

What's interesting is that I overslept an hour and still woke up before 10. I have, for a week or two, been pretty good about cranking my usual daily routine back by a couple of hours. My rule of thumb is that I should get started on the work portion of my day (whether that's ITA or Volity) by 10am, as that's guaranteed to charge the solar cells that power my motivation for several hours before sunset - especially important during winter.

Today that's not gonna work, and though I try not to fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy trap, I bet that I won't get much done today. But I'm not mad, because I've actually been pretty productive otherwise. We'll see if I can stick to this and maybe even make a habit of it. The key change in my thinking about all this is that it's less a factor of how much I sleep than it is when I wake up, with earlier being better. (I'm still using the "sleep" tag for these posts, for lack of a better one.)

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Ended up buying a full-sized iPod yesterday, after a Tuesday conversation with mrmorse and others convinced me that the video capabilities would mesh well with the fact that I am, in fact, a video producer. I didn't know that all the big iPods did video now; Apple's streamlined the choices to Shuffle/Nano/iPod, and the latter can play all the MPEGs you care to stuff it with (minding whatever codecs it prefers; I haven't learned about this yet).

For half the price of the 20GB, monochrome-screen, audio-only iPod I bought four years ago (and lost three years ago), I got a 30GB, full-color, A/V one. It's maybe two-thirds as thick as the old one. And it's black. Crazy.

Walked to work listening to podcasts for the first time in weeks. Hurrah! I have to say that the flush controls irk me, though; I can't feel the buttons through my shirt pocket to quickly pause or skip tracks. The first iPod I bought came with a little "remote" that you could clip to your clothes for this purpose; do they still make them?

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I think my stomach has shrunk or something since I got sick. I get full pretty quickly. Though I haven't eaten since last night, I am stuffed after eating only three-quarters of a muffin just now.

Of course my first thought it oh no IT'S GOT TO BE CANCER but at any rate I am overdue for physical. I need to build up some more money first. And then find another doctor, again, since the Harvard doctors are only for active Harvard people. Meh.

I just grabbed some MP3s from a cool band I helped film for the Rock Candy Show last night. They play in iTunes just fine, but I can't drag them onto my iPod; the iPod icon within iTunes simply and silently refuses to act as a drop target with these tracks, and these tracks alone.

Wha? Is this some kinda wacko DRM I haven't encountered before?