Friday, January 02, 2009

Well, (don't) blow me down, while ringing in the new!

BIG windstorm last night. About 2:30 am, the wind started blowing rain (and small detritus, like branches), into our bedroom window. Not exactly a gentle start to the morning. Since we'd gone to bed late, this also made this fat Cat a very groggy, vaguely unpleasant person. The power blinked two or three times, but never died on us, just made our clocks go into "blink" mode, which made the house look like a cross between a cheap hotel and a discotheque. (We have lots of things that blink in the house, I have found.) Husband went out and checked on Buzz the kitten's doings while checking that nothing had been wrecked. He was roused from his dozing in the hay, and seemed less than excited to be up at that hour, said Husband. We lost several branches, but nothing went through the windows (one DID come closer than I would have liked, but it didn't hit, just slid down), and nothing seemed to have been crunched, fallen over, or generally messed up, so I guess I am happy with that, except we had a LOT of branches to clean up. So I cleaned a lot this morning.

But yesterday, Husband and I both were happy to say we learned new computer skills in the new year. Husband was learning to program an industrial robot. He had seen me use the cut and paste function, but didn't know how to do it himself. I showed him, and it took immediately, he was able to decrease the time he had to do repetitive tasks on the program considerably.

I got a task into my head finally, as well. I was wanting to use my MP3 player to play some of the music from my CD's, and of course, play the podcasts, (the reason I have the thing in the first place), so I had to figure out how to 'sync' the computer and the MP3 player. For computer geeks like some of my relative-in-laws, this would be so much child's play. For ME, not so much. Why didn't the CD go on? Why didn't I get the tracks on the device? So, I stared at the media player on my computer. Hm. What is rip? It puts tracks from the CD on the computer? Does it keep them there? I tried it. It DID! (Does this show how abysmally slow I am on the uptake, folks? And with no one around to ask, and unsure even what to ask if I do have some one around, it gets interesting. Husband has been trying to teach me how to do this, but so far it never clicked. Until yesterday.) I finally managed to 'rip' a CD onto my computer, and 'sync' it to the MP3 player. Which I have a feeling would take my niece about 2 minutes... BUT, it's do-able by ME now, I understand what and how to do it. And that makes me feel good. I also put 2 other CD's on the MP3 player, and so I have been outside, listening to music as I pick up a never ending supply of branches. So much listening, the player died. I am very glad it has a rechargeable battery, I am afraid I might have a battery hog on my hands, now that I know how to use it!

Hm. I still have about half the memory left on my player, wonder how many more CD's I can fit on there? Lessee. Ya think that "The Who" album will fit?

Excuse me, I need to go rip things...

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