iPod update.

While the video feature is neat, the iPod has mostly been used for lawn-mowing, snow-shoveling, or the occasional bike ride on the Monon.

I'm not the kind of person that listens to music a lot. While I like music, I don't much listen to it while doing other things. If I'm sitting on the porch or in front of my computer, I'm either reading or writing, and neither of those activities needs a soundtrack in Tamaraland.

The one place I do listen to music is in the car. I don't listen to radios, because I like to pick the music I want to hear, and there's no radio station around here called WTAM FM. Also, DeeJays and commercials both bug me. More accurately, bad DeeJays and commercials bug me, and amusing ones are few and far between.

Even after in-dash CD players made their appearance, I generally preferred cassettes, because I could make my own mix tapes tailored for my mood and the kind of driving I was planning on doing. Writeable CD's and multidisc changers fixed that.

And now comes the iPod...

I picked up a little Belkin cassette adaptor for mine last weekend. Sweet Shiva on a surfboard, this is what I've been looking for: put that little Nano on shuffle and it's like WTAM FM, with no commercials and no DeeJays and only songs from albums I liked enough to buy. And I can just hit the skip button if I'm not in the mood for the Sex Pistols or Cowboy Junkies or P.O.D. or whatever it's served up. I just have to ingrain the habit of taking the iPod with me when I get in and out.

So this is what all you people have been all excited about for all these years! I am liking your exotic world of the future.