It is an absolutely beautiful day today - somewhat humid after all the rain. The frogs are out in force. To tell the truth I would like to have more rain and more interesting stormy weather. The week of rain was nowhere near enough to break the drought. The constant sunshine becomes relentless after a while. I never dreamed I would ever make such a statement - sunshine lover that I am!
I have just bought a new stereo system for my car as the old one was no longer working properly and as I said in my previous posts I also wanted to jump on the whole ipod bandwagon and take it on hook line and sinker. You can plug an ipod directly into this stereo. I have been umming and ahhing for years over which portable music solution I should adopt given the huge array of choices. I finally decided, given the ubiquity of ipod, and connectivity available to go for itunes and ipod.
I got the system into the car and then found that the sound was terrible -like a bad transistor radio. The speakers I had carefully chosen for my previous system 7 years ago were just not up to the job. The very expert salesman, Tom in the car stereo specialist shop where I have bought both my latest and my last stereo, after a long chat and a demonstration of some Pioneer speakers recommended some Boston 4 inch and coaxial speakers, gave me some specs and instructed me to do some research on the net. Reviews on the net are very positive. As I will be up for $500 worth of speakers the speakers had better be good.
I worked out in conjunction with Tom that I prefer the American sound system - bass and mid tones, the European style is mid tones to high tones and the Japanese is all in the high tones. I have known for some time that I detest the Sony bang a cymbal in your ear and scratch your fingernails on the board sound and I find the European sound (eg Bang and Olufsen) a bit light on the bass end . Why I didn't conclude from there that the American sound preferences were for me is probably due to my resistance to American cultural imperialism in general - but there it is.
The same day I put a new stereo in my car, in a mad buying spree I also bought one of the new core duo intel minimacs. What a nice little machine. Very portable, reasonably priced for a computer and you can hook it up to any old monitor, keyboard and mouse (which is precisely what I have done) and it just goes. I am using it to house my new itunes library. Importing CDs onto my ancient laptop was putting a lot of strain on the machine and it only has a 20 gig hard drive. There was also the added issue of the USB 1 port which although it appears to work with the ipod I tried at an Apple store, could be somewhat dicey.
New Apple machines no longer include an internal modem for dialup, so I had to buy an external USB modem, but they are only very small so it is not a big inconvenience. the modem is also a lot faster than the modems on my other ancient machines. The other really nifty thing is that I can dial up on the minimac and then by using airport I can connect to the net on my laptop. I am seriously impressed by this feature!
I still haven't found an ipod as yet. They are scarce as hen's teeth at present. Rumours are rife that Apple are bringing out a new model given this glitch in supply. They never announce these things - no doubt as a strategy to keep people buying the old stuff and not holding out for the new.
So what does this computer and sound buying frenzy have to do with house sitting you may ask? Well, I need portable music solutions for housesitting and have been deliberating on what to do for literally years. Housesitting also helps me save a serious amount of money and I have actually been able to afford to make these purchases. When I bought the minidisk/CD car stereo back in 2000 I had to take out a loan which took me a year to pay off. This time I can buy the equipment outright. This will have to be it for a while however - funds are not unlimited by any means!
I have just noticed that not only are the frogs out in force but so are the insects! I hope the frogs get hold of the insects. The dog just rushed out the door frantically barking - I don't know why- I couldn't see anything. She is a very good watch dog. Last night the neighbours let off some rather spectacular fireworks which of course drove her wild. She has now come back inside and is lying on her inside mat under a very large and beautifully minimalist aboriginal dot painting.
I have to say that at the moment I am living my idea of the perfect holiday! I will admit I have been racing around frantically getting things done as there is so much I want to get done - things I have been putting off for years due to the pressure of urgent work.
