God Doesn't Want Brian to Have iTunes

i believe i'm cursed when it comes to iTunes.

since 2003, my iTunes library - my sole source of jams (excluding my records) since most of my CDs were stolen in a heist back in november of that same year - has consistently been plagued with organizational and logistical problems. first, there was the Great File Corruption Scare of 2004, that led to a solid 1/3 of my songs starting half-way through the song that preceded it. following this, and a massive overhaul and re-importation of all my old music, came the epic Song Duplication Disaster of 2006, which massacred countless hours that could've been spent doing something far less nerdical and many times more productive. it didn't help that i was operating my library with a desktop that had the computing power of a cardboard box... but let's not get off topic, here.

it wasn't until 2008, when yours truly put on his daddy pants, destroyed the troublesome library all together, and rebuilt it from the ground up - jam by jam - that i was finally able to restore order to my iTunes.

...or at least i thought.

as you all know (and i'm sure deeply, deeply care about), i bought a flashy, new macbook pro the first week of august. at the time, i realized that i'd need to buy a new chord in order to utilize my external harddrive (where my trusty iTunes - polished upand ready to rock and roll - was waiting patiently.) a couple days after buying my new computer, i ordered an adapter to convert my 400 firewire cable to an 800 firewire port, which is standard with the macbook pro.

well, the adapter showed up, sure enough, about a week later... and something didn't work. my computer wasn't registering the external HD at all (of course).

that sucks, says brian, hopefully its not the laptop. a quick venture to the apple store (which i've already told you about) proved that it was, in fact, the adapter... which was about the best, possible outcome i could've hoped for in the situation. so, after obtaining a refund from amazon, i ordered a cable instead... and my iTunes library patiently waited for jam optimization in my unused, neglected HD.

three weeks later. USPS and my apartment complex have, collectively, lost the package. no one knows where it is. God, recognizing my devotion to the sacrilegious idol that is iTunes, intervened and smote the package while it was in transit to my house. that's the only thing that could've possibly happened to it. He realized, in his infinite wisdom, that i was straying from my duties as a christian, and that i was placing mp3 playlists before Him... or something. i don't know. its been three weeks and i still can't access my music.

i hate so many things right now i don't even know where to begin...

... and i just now realized that this is probably the nerdiest, f***ing entry i've ever posted. holy crap.

- iHough

Gadgetry and Finance: Brian Saves the Day

howdy.

as i've stated before, readers, on occasion, bein' a teacher does have its perks. summers off, weekends and holidays off, and quasi-adorable license plates to name a few.

another perk for educators, as it would seem, is $100 off a computer for the upcoming school year... along with a free iPod of your choice.

my old laptop is an iBook G3, folks (for those of you who have absolutely no idea what that means, its comparable to yours truly puttin' around in a 1993 plymouth voyager made up of three or four different body frame parts). kris' computer, while still operable, is getting up there in age as well, and is beginning to run slow with age. taking all of this into consideration, i decided that with my part of our 2010 tax refund, we were going to buy ourselves a new, fancy MacBook Pro laptop... thereby bringing us back into the 21st century.

you see, kris and i came up with a system a couple years ago in regards to tax season. generally, i keep about one-third of the tax money and blow it on new toys for around the house, where as kris keeps the remaining two-thirds of our refund money and puts it to more responsible ends - paying off debt, adding to savings, blah blah blah. last year, for example, we got ourselves new cell phones, a big ol' HDTV, and an iPod classic (for yours truly)... and kris put the rest into various accounts and other such boring nonsense. so the plan was to be for the 2010 tax season.

that was before i devised a most ingenious plan towards the purchasing of a new computer.

as you already know, i'm not only a teacher, but i'm also a student (and not a bad one at that either, surprisingly enough). as a student, i had to take out ass-loads of student loans in order to fund my master's degree, and all that money had been sitting dormant in one of our random savings accounts all these long months. and so, i decided that since that money wasn't going anywhere, and the time for obtaining my educational discount on a new computer (and free iPod) was running out, that i'd just go ahead and buy the damn thing now and use my third of the tax money to refund the savings account.

and so, dear readers, i got myself a new MacBook Pro, and i gave the Mrs. an iPod Touch for her birthday. not a shabby bit of financin', if i do say so myself.

Jesus, i should write a book on this crap...

- brian