Irene's Weblog

Since we like to travel a lot, Paul and I often keep some good tunes in the car to listen to. Attempting to find a decent radio station is futile, so taking our own choices with us is the more logical solution. We normally take one burned CD with us, which gets played over and over, for about six months, until we can’t stand it anymore and have to make a new one. Each time I burn a CD, I tell Paul that he needs to pick the songs. He never does and I get stuck making all the choices. This time, however, was different.

I fired up our old, 120GB external drive of music and waited for the desktop to recognize it. It’s woefully inadequate. It’s only got 1.98GB free, which is not good in many respects. I need to have more room just so the drive can work properly, but also for the music I’ve collected that won’t fit onto the drive. I’ve started to keep music on the C drive because I can’t afford to buy another external drive. I’ve even had to delete some stuff there because I just don’t have the room for all the music.

As I click on the folder to open up the “Full Albums,” Paul leans in closer to pick the music he has now decided he wants to help with. As the folders appear, I think to myself, “Not Billy Ocean. For the love of God, please don’t pick Billy Ocean.” I say this to myself over and over, hoping that, somehow, I might have just magically gained the ability of mental telepathy and I can force Paul not pick any Billy Ocean music.

“Ooo, Billy Ocean,” Paul says. My heart stops. I want to swear. I want to scream and tell him what crap Billy Ocean is, but I refrain.

“Okay,” is all I mutter as I double click the “Billy Ocean” folder, revealing his music. I already know what song he’s going to pick before he says it.

My hand starts to move the mouse towards the song and I hear, “When the Going Gets Tough. That’s a good one.” No it isn’t, but I click it and drag it over to Nero, adding it to the list of music. We agree on a couple of more songs, including the theme song from Casino Royale, You Know My Name. I like the song so much that it’s the first song on my old 128MB Creative Nomad Muvo MP3 player. I listen to it every morning when I ride my bike. We go through some Prefab Sprout and Paul picks a couple of their songs.

“What about that song by your Led Zeppelin guy?” Paul asks. “You know, the one Imus likes too.” Yeah, I know what song you’re talking about, however, I don’t like that too much either.

“You mean Robert Plant?” I ask, knowing that the song is not by Robert Plant, but Mark Knopfler.

“Yeah, that one, and he sings it with that hippy chick.”

That hippy chick? He is so off base, it’s not even funny. I want to play dumb, but I don’t want to take forever burning this CD, so I ask, “You mean Emmylou Harris?”

“Yep.”

“Yeah, well she doesn’t sing with Robert Plant. It’s Mark Knopfler. And the song is ‘This is Us.’”

“Whatever, do we have it?”

“Of course we do,” I say, slightly aggravated that he doesn’t always know the names of musicians. I drag that mp3 over to Nero and prepare it for burning.

All the songs that Paul picks aren’t totally bad. His taste in music is just different than mine. Okay, some of his musical choices are crap, but I did promise he could make the CD. I burn the CD and we stick it in the car. Unfortunately, Paul keeps taking the CD out of the car so he can listen to it when he’s exercising. After having the CD for one month, we’re going to have to burn another copy or make a new one because he keeps forgetting to put it back in the car, forcing me to listen to horrible pop music on the radio.

For those interested, the track listing is as follows:

01 When the Going Gets Tough – Billy Ocean
02 True Faith (Morning Sun) – New Order
03 Life on Mars – David Bowie
04 I Did It – Dave Matthews Band
05 The King of Rock and Roll – Prefab Sprout
06 Hey Manhattan! – Prefab Sprout
07 Salisbury Hill – Peter Gabriel
08 Mr. Blue Sky – ELO
09 True – Spandau Ballet
10 You Know My Name – Chris Cornell
11 This is Us – Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler
12 All The Things She Said – Simple Minds
13 Alive and Kicking – Simple Minds
14 If You Leave – OMD
15 Sowing the Seeds – Tears for Fears
16 Ordinary World – Duran Duran
17 Chains of Love – Erasure

There are some decent songs on here. I just really, truly hate Billy Ocean. I love “If You Leave” and “Ordinary World.” It’s a decent enough mix and Paul finally gets a CD with his music instead of always being stuck with the choices I make.

“Holy crap!”  Paul exclaimed from his chair at the computer.  “I love this cut and paste stuff.  Whomever created it needs to be kissed.  He’s a genius.”

Yes, after many years of using the mouse to copy and paste, Paul has learned the magic of ctrl+c and ctrl+v.

Paul has also informed me today that a cup of hot tea is as necessary to human life as ketracel white is to the Jem’Hadar.

After about five days of constant work, I now have 9 different sections of photos for you to look at. The biggest task was going through the photos that Paul and I took at Bas and Elvira’s wedding. I had over 1GB of photos that I whittled down to 932MB. Then, I searched through those to find the good stuff and share with you my all-too-short trip to Holland last February.  That alone took me five hours.

You can access them from the main photo page. I’ve changed some of the categories to make it more intuitive and easier to navigate. I hope that everyone likes them too. Drop me a line if you notice anything that I screwed up so I can fix it quickly.

For the past two weeks, I have spent a considerable amount of time completely overhauling the site.  We hadn’t made any major changes in at least 4 years and I wanted to make the site brighter than the old site.  I also wanted to make it easier to navigate, especially the main photo page.  Everything is now more uniform and it should be more of a pleasure than a pain to surf around the site.

Photo updates are coming in the next day or two.  They are taking longer than I thought.  Please be patient.

Every now and then, I look through my spam just to see what’s there.  Here’s a taste of what was in there:

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