something I am grateful for today

[johncomic]

My new MP3 player.

A while back I inherited Paisley's old player [when she upgraded to an iPod], and once I realized how much easier it is to stick to my exercise routine when I have music, I considered a player to be an investment in my health. So when the old player gave up recently, I had to get a new one.

What I have is very small, simple and cheap. I don't need an iPod or anything with a video screen or all that: I just want to play music and have a screen so I can pick what I want to hear. What I got, does that and only that -- which is fine with me.

So what I have now, stores 4 gigs of music [at my preferred MP3 rate of 320, that's about 29 hours of tunes], and has a screen which is clearly legible to these tired old eyes, in something which is literally the size of a disposable butane lighter. And it cost me $40.

I realize that all this is commonplace and barely noticeable to most folx nowadays, but I can't help remembering: when we got our first desktop PC [1995], it didn't even hold one gig, let alone four. It was a lot bigger than a lighter. And it cost a lot more than $40.

From where I sit, this little MP3 thingie is magic.

Comments

[rdcf.livejournal.com]

It is mind boggling when you think about how much has changed in such a short period of time. Of course I'm now at the point where ten or twenty years is a short period of time :-).

[johncomic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I keep remembering the day in late 1994 when our office was introduced to some inexplicable new computer thing called The World Wide Web, which we looked at thru some new program called Netscape 1.0. It was a bunch of gray screens full of black text with the occasional word underlined. And when you clicked on an underline, somehow you got a new gray screen full of new black text.

I had no idea that this thing was going to complete revolutionize how we did our jobs, how I shop, how I entertain and inform myself, and how I communicate with everyone else. No idea.

[theanswer42.livejournal.com]

You sound so old right now. :P

[johncomic.livejournal.com]

Yeah and there's a real shocker...