Kojubatania

Friday, July 29, 2005

In the same vein

I never thought I'd blog, mostly because I'm a fairly private person when you get down to it. I suspect there will be a whole mess of things I won't post here because I won't know who stumbles across it. Likewise, I never thought I'd get a portable media player beyond a decent CD player for mowing the lawn. Never saw a need for it, and even the cheapest one would have been pretty pricey considering I'd rarely use it.

Well, I guess it doesn't get much cheaper than free.

The new company decided to kick off the start of the contract and to ease the transition, they would supply a pretty nice breakfast spread on Monday (it was rather tasty with fruit, hot beverages, juice and other various continental items - I expected a few boxes of donuts) and cookies in the afternoon. Free food is always appreciated. They also mentioned something about giving away three iPods, which my Swiss-cheese brain promptly forgot by the time Monday rolled around.

At lunch the previous week, my friends and I joked that there would be three categories of winners: People who already have one and will just eBay it, people who are completely useless and don't deserve it, and against all odds, someone who wouldn't have one and would appreciate it. The general consensus would be that the first two categories would be sufficiently represented in the results.

Wavy lines, wavy lines, it's now Monday morning. Into my inbox, what should appear? "Congratulations, {my name here}!"

Now, those who know me really well know how my mind generally works. I'm very optimistic about people and society in general. Unless you give me a reason not to, I will always hope for the best for you. I'm generally optimistic when it comes to the things I know I'm good at, so if someone disparages something I know I did well, I have no problem jumping in and defending my work. However, I'm generally pessimistic when it comes to me, personally. I don't have a very positive self image, and it's easy for me to spin into depression when things aren't going well.

Apparently, I'm also kind of long-winded.

So anyway, my first thought on seeing the email was a sense of dread. I have job applications out with the previous employer which have been generally unsuccessful (though a good friend probably holds the record with something like 20 rejections in the past month or so), but the source of the email was in the new company. Hesitant to open it, I did anyway.

Unless you're the core of Jupiter, you've gathered that the email was telling me I won an iPod. Specifically, a silver 6 gig iPod mini with an extra firewire adapter and an AC charger. Pretty spiffy. Made my day, even.

Monday night, I had too much going on, though, and by the time I had a chance to do anything, it was 2300 and I was beat. So I popped in Lego Star Wars, did the Kamino level and went to bed. Tuesday, I installed the software, charged the battery, and burned some Celtic music from my CD collection. Wednesday I listened to all that while at work, then started poking around iTunes that night. Downloaded the freebie song, which wasn't so hot. Couldn't see much point in buying individual songs - that's not how I roll, G - I like the whole CD in physical form. But something caught my eye - the Podcast section. Oh yeah, I've listened to those here and there, but never really bothered unless someone pointed on out to me.

A short time after that, I had over 24 hours of podcasts loaded up, and they make great work entertainment while I'm coding like a fool. I downloaded some more last night. I'm mostly testing the waters, but a few of them are pretty good. I might try and swing by an accessories store and see what sort of nonsense I can buy for this thing. I'm pondering an FM transmitter because I can't find my old one (purchased from SkyMall about a dozen years ago), and my new car doesn't have an input for the radio, and some kind of space-age protector thingy to prevent scratches and such.

Look at me breakin' all the rules.

I'm so street.




Link of the moment: The Lego game is great - Voltroning three childhood passions is probably more than I deserve to experience. But maybe you dig something other than Star Wars or video games. Instead, combine Lego with some of your other interests using the Mini-Mizer.

1 Comments:

  • Very cool on the iPod win!

    And Lego Star Wars... we think too alike at times, bud. I've snuck in at least two sessions of LSW this week. Forget the kiddie appeal, this is just a darn fun game.

    By Blogger Cold Justice, at 17:03  

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