Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

I’ve never owned an iPod. I was around when the first Walkman came out, and I have to look back in amazement at how far portable music has come. Comparing the size and weight of the original Walkman to the current iPod offerings, maybe part of our workouts back then was carrying around the Walkman!

When I bought my first BlackBerry this past November, a major goal was to eliminate the need to carry a PDA and MP3 player in addition to a cell phone. That goal has been accomplished in most satisfactory style. I often still opt to bring a small point-and-shoot digital camera and Flip Mino, even though the BlackBerry Curve has a camera and video built in, but that is another post for another day.

The music player on the BlackBerry Curve is pretty basic, but meets my needs pretty well. I didn’t have any issues transferring my music from my laptop to my Curve’s SD card, since almost all of it was already in MP3 format. I had been converting my iTunes music to DRM-free MP3 format as I purchased it, since I had a non-iPod MP3 player. When Apple broke iTunes to prevent the conversion utilities from working, I switched to Amazon for all digital music purchases. Not too long after that, Apple brought out their iTunes + DRM-free versions. May I say that I still purchase from Amazon and only when a song is available nowhere else will I ever purchase from iTunes.

I am not enough of a psycho audio freak to bemoan any sound quality inadequacies or shortcomings of the music player. At my age, and with my lack of musical skills, the difference between “real” sound quality and that of my Curve is not even a factor.

I’ve currently got three different Internet radio clients installed on my Curve. They all have different strengths and weaknesses, so I’ve kept them all rather than choosing just one.

iHeartRadio is a little different from the other two, so I’ll mention it first. The BlackBerry version has about 150 stations to choose from, including major-market and medium-sized market “real” stations as well as Internet radio stations. If you are living far away from your hometown, this is great. That is, if your hometown stations are included. Currently there is just one station from Honolulu, which would not be my first choice to listen to when there, but it’s ok and nice to be able to get it in the car here in Chicago. My old van did not have an AUX jack for music players, but my new one of course does, and one of my first purchases was the cable to connect music players to the car stereo.

Slacker and Pandora are similar in many ways. Each one allows you to create your own custom stations by choosing artists or songs that you want to listen to. For legal/licensing reasons, neither one is available outside North America nor do you have 100% on-demand choice of music. With Slacker, you choose up to 15 artists for your custom station, and most of the music selected will be by those artists or by artists very similar in style. With Pandora, you choose one artist or song and Pandora takes it from there to create your station using the Music Genome Project to choose artists and songs that you should enjoy based on your original input. Both allow you to ban artists or songs that you do not want to hear again, and favorite those that you do.

I have been a fan of Pandora for a while and often have it running on my desktop computer at work. Their BlackBerry client came out just this week, so I don’t have a lot of time with it yet. One feature that the BlackBerry version of Slacker has that I have found invaluable is the ability to cache stations. This means that I can listen to these stations even in areas where I don’t have a good signal.

The free version of Slacker has audio advertisements (about 1 an hour); the free version of Pandora has visual advertisements (so far, all for Docker that I’ve seen). I haven’t yet felt the need to upgrade to the paid versions of either service. The free versions are that good (sorry, Slacker and Pandora).

Any other BlackBerry users out there? Would love to hear your thoughts on these, and anything else I haven’t tried yet!

Ever since I outgrew the obligatory “glued to the phone” phase of teenage girlhood about a million years ago, I’ve avoided telephones as much as possible. Voicemail and Caller ID are two of my favorite things.

I also avoided getting a cell phone for longer than many people. When I did get one, it was the one that came cheap or free with the calling plan. I didn’t bother with a cool or trendy or whiz-bang phone until my last one, a Fire Red Motorola KRZR. That color has since become my choice for all of my personal electronics and I have actually traded off other selling points just to get that color. Sad, I know.

I do like gadgets, though, and a Palm PDA was one of my most indispensible items for almost 10 years. I’ve also had an MP3 player, though never an iPod, for just about as long.

When our cell phone contract was up in November, I decided it was finally time to consolidate all my devices and buy a smartphone. After looking at all of the whiz-bang touchscreen phones, I ended up buying neither an iPhone nor a BlackBerry Storm, but a non-touchscreen BlackBerry Curve. Oh, and a red case for it, of course.

In the past two months, I have grown very attached to it. I am not sure how I got along without it. It usually knows what I’m doing, even if I don’t.

All of the data from my Palm transferred over without much pain, and most of my music library has also been transferred over so the BlackBerry can also serve as a music player. Yeah, I know, the sound quality is not quite good enough for a true connoisseur, but it is fine for a regular person.

All this leads up to tonight’s addition of a Slacker internet radio client. I no longer have iPhone envy. Well, not much anyway. It’s a big change for me to like a phone, even a smart one, this much.

I still don’t like talking on the phone though. Some things don’t change!

This month’s NaBloPoMo theme is change. Take a look over to the right under the NaBloPoMo Blogs list and say “hi” to the friends who are also blogging every day in January along with me.

It’s probably a good guess that this theme was inspired by Barack Obama’s campaign slogans “Change we can believe in” and “Change we need.” Whether or not that’s the case, it’s still a good theme for the first month of the year.

My own favorite quote regarding change is a lot older than the Obama campaign slogans. I grew up in Hawaii, and Hawaiian music remains a big part of my life and my personal soundtrack. It’s from a song by Olomana that was released in 1976 and has remained a favorite throughout the years, “Ku’u Home O Kahalu’u.”

I remember days when we were younger
We used to catch ‘o’opu in the mountain stream
‘Round the Ko’olau hills we’d ride on horseback
So long ago it seems it was a dream

It was so long ago for me, too. I grew up in Honolulu, so I grew up city, not country. It was still a beautiful place to grow up. Even if I didn’t have horses, I still had a mountain stream nearby.

Last night I dreamt I was returning
and my heart called out to you
But I fear you won’t be like I left you
Me kealoha ku’u home o Kahaluu

The family and friends I left behind in Hawaii did stay as I left them, in a lot of ways. I was the one who changed, and not always in ways that they, or I, expected.

I remember days when we were wiser
When our world was small enough for dreams
And you have lingered there my sister
And I no longer can it seems

Most of my family did stay there, or returned after a relatively short time away. I still hope to be able to return one day sooner rather than later. But there were many years that I, too, felt I could no longer linger in that small world. Honolulu is a pretty large city, but it’s really the second biggest small town in the country.

Here’s that part about change:

Change is a strange thing
it cannot be denied
It can help you find yourself
or make you lose your pride
Move with it slowly
as on the road we go
Please do not hold on to me
we all must go alone

The year this song came out is also the year I went far away from home. Those words came to my mind often that year, and many times over the years to follow. I don’t believe I’ve truly found myself even at this late stage, but I can say that I don’t feel I’ve ever lost my pride. I love my family and friends and I can always count on their support, but in the end, yes – “we all must go alone.”

I remember days when we were smiling
When we laughed and sang the whole night long
And I will greet you as I find you
With the sharing of a brand new song
Last night I dreamt I was returning
and my heart called out to you
To please accept me as you’ll find me
Me kealoha ku’u home o Kahaluu

“Please accept me as you’ll find me” – that’s all I can ask of anyone.

Take a listen to the song if you have a moment: