Well I hit two milestones this week:

First, I finished ripping all my CDs to my iPod. I have about 5,000 songs and about 40-50 hours of video. And I still have nearly 20 GB left out of the original 40. Pretty incredible. 

I also installed the grille on the 71 Cutlass. There is a pic attached. It looks pretty good and once I get the thing painted it should look really sweet.

I also did a lot of work on the Monte recently, but I left my camera in Fresno so you'll have to wait on the pics. By the time I move next month the thing should be looking SHARP!

When I came to Bakersfield in the summer of 2000 I had just two days to find an apartment. After trying all the big complexes in town (too expensive for my taste) I got desperate and tried the newspaper. Well, not really the paper, but the online classifieds.

I lucked out and found a place late the second day. Rent was a paltry $425 and the place was huge. Like a small house. The laundry room was free. I thought I had really lucked out.

When I moved in however, I discovered that I was in a very different type of rental. There were no blinds or curtains,  just a few sheets left by the past tenants. There were no screens on any of the windows. There were no closet doors. No lenses on the ceiling fixtures. No functioning bathroom ventilation fans. No refrigerator. Only two of the burners on the stove worked. And the place had roaches.

But it was cheap. So I stayed. I got them to install blinds. I spent a few bucks to by lenses for the fixtures. I got a cheap fridge. I pressured them to put in a new stove. And I waged a brutal war against the roaches that reduced their numbers to near zero.

I stuck it out for the next six years. The size of the place and the rent were really the main incentives. In six years the rent has increased by less than $100. And each of the two bedrooms are larger than most people's living rooms.

So I dealt with the neighbor who was in a rock band that practiced from midnight to 5 a.m. I put up with the fact that I could not open my windows to enjoy a breeze without having tons of bugs fly in. I shrugged it off when my neighbors revealed to me that not only were they getting on Section 8, but that our building wasn't up to Section 8 standards.

I am about a month away from moving out of this place and into a much nicer place in the northwest. The impetus for the move was really to find a place with a garage (so I can bring down my Monte Carlo.) But I find myself really more excited -- day to day -- about the prospect of living in a well-maintained place.

I like the idea of being able to take showers and have the water in the tub actually drain quickly so I'm not standing in a foot of water by the end. Or having a vent in the bathroom that keeps mold from forming all over the place.

Is it just me or does anyone else feel like this week of 90 degree weather we've had has felt more like a week of 70 degrees? It's been a little TOO refreshing.

After that heat wave I don't know if I'm going to be able to complain about the heat until it goes at least a couple degrees past 100. 

Have I been permanently damaged? Has my tolerance for heat been bumped up ten degrees? 

How am I going to blame my laziness on the weather? I don't feel justified in procrastinating on working on my car when it is a balmy 93 degrees outside.

Well, as I have been listening to my new iPod I am finding a disturbing number of songs that have glitches or cut off midway through the track.

Anyone else seen these kind of probs?

I am in need of a mechanic's stethoscope.

I tightened up the belt on my AC compressor on the Cutlass the other day and now I'm hearing some intermittent noise from the front of the engine. I think the tight belt may be damaging the AC compressor and/or the water pump. But I can't tell where the noise is coming from. I need to get in there and pinpoint that noise.

I wonder if you can rent one from a parts shop. Hmm.

So I've had my new iPod for just a few days and I'm already seeing what a different world we're in for in the future. So far I've uploaded about 2,000 songs from my CD collection and I'm less than halfway done.

 

I'm starting to think it's way too much content to choose from. On my drive home and when I have a quiet moment at work to listen to some music, I'm finding myself almost overwhelmed by the choices of music. Should I listen to a Steppenwolf song or a Sondheim musical or the soundtrack to King Kong? I end up just randomly picking stuff most of the time. I'm not exactly disappointed with the result, as all of it is stuff I like.

 

But how do you navigate when the choices are so deep?

 

I think we're going to face that kind of choice more and more. (Six months ago iTunes had only a few TV shows for download, now they must have hundreds)

 

I imagine a day when I can turn on my TV or computer and choose from an almost limitless choice of content. And when that happens I'm going to need help choosing. I mean how to pick between an new episode of Lost or an old episode of Lost in Space -- or the movies Lost in Translation, The Lost World or even the Lost in Space movie?

 

I am thinking we're going to need some advanced technology that help direct you to content similar to your existing favorites. Something like Amazon.com does with "customers who bought this also bought..." but with much better performance.

 

If I was going to start my own business it would be something like that. Cause I bet there is going to be big demand.