The Old Way Out Is Now The New Way In

I need another FireWire cable.

I came to this realization today, specifically at around 2pm, just as I was stepping outside the front door to my apartment building when the battery in my iPod died (was playing: "I Want to Help You Ann" by The Lyres). I was about to go for a walk around Central Park before maybe checking out Sonic Youth's free concert a bit after that, but without music? No can do.

Ordinarily, I'd plug in my iPod for maybe 30 minutes to give it just enough of a charge to revive it, but my one FireWire cable was busy shuttling about 11 gigabytes worth of MP3s from my computer to my friend's FireWire drive, and the "time remaining" indicator on my computer was telling me that there were, oh, only about another four hours to go.

So I sat on the couch and sulked for a few minutes... my goddamn iPod was outta gas, my portable CD player was in my car way the hell out in Queens... umm... did I still have my Walkman? I got up and walked into the computer room, over to my "basket of miscellaneous computer cables and audio crap," dug waaayyy into the back and -- yup! -- there it was, my old cassette-playing Walkman. With working batteries even, can you believe?

I didn't have any headphones for it, so I'm glad the iPod set plugged in just fine. Grabbed a couple of tapes -- a dB's mix with Stands For Decibels and some early Chris Stamey singles, one of my old radio shows circa 1995 -- and I was off! Okay, so the sound was kind of crappy, though I'm not sure if that was due to the tape or player (probably both), as I think both are around the same vintage (1989?). And actually, the wow and flutter didn't sound half bad on some of the Stamey songs ("I thought you wanted to knoooOOOOoooww...").

Up at the park I wandered over to the show area during what I assume was one of the opening acts, jazz sounds drifting over the fence and back towards the crowd of people who didn't get there early enough to be let through the gates. Ah well. Ever since the mob scene at the Siren Fest on Coney Island last month, I'd been trying to avoid anything else like that. So I just walked on by, through the enormous crowd of hipsters of vaying ages who were sitting on the grass, perched on the walkway railings and covering a giant rock directly behind the bleachers. You know those massive flocks of geese that touch down on the big, grassy expanses of office parks in central New Jersey? Yeah, like that. Geese pecking at water bottles and squawking into cell phones. Hmm, might as well head over to the duck pond... Sitting in the midst of that for the next god-knows-how-long-til-SY-comes-on, all the while can't-see-a-damn-thing-anyway... no thanks.

Back at the homestead, the music copying was complete, and I am now the proud owner of another 11 GB of MP3s! I've now more than halfway filled-up my new 60 GB hard drive. Did I say I need a FireWire cable? Looks like I may need to get a FireWire drive myself as well.

Posted by nstop at August 11, 2002 10:37 PM