7:15 pm
Getting first signs of thunder now in Springfield, MO. Watching the radar and weather coverage makes me wonder about my safety. The lower thunderstorms are just about over us now, but don't appear to pose the threat of those passing through Polk county. No torndao warnings yet. I told my wife, “Nothing in this house is as important as you.” I meant it, but didn't know why I spit it out right now. Might be a little scared now.
7:10 pm
Watching KOLR10 radar coverage. They are wall to wall with radar and weather staff. Mostly they are repeating National Weather Service warnings and reports of tornados. Interestingly, they can switch their Doppler radar to show wind direction and speed to get an idea of tornado activity. Hopefully this will save someone's life.
Blogging the storms in my area:
iPod!
I purchased an iPod yesterday from Best Buy. A “clearance” model with touch-sensitive scroll wheel, it was a 10GB model for $299. That's the same price as the new model but includes the belt clip and earphone/remote combo. I took some time last night to get my iPod set with my current music selection and experimented with some new AAC tracks from the iTunes music store. Here's some details:
The packaging is exquisite. My PC-owning co-workers remarked that it seemed appropriate for the level of equipment (expensive toy-first class packaging). The user experience was great from the first moment I opened the box: the side that is marked iPod actually contained the iPod unit. It didn't have to, it just did. Elegant.
The ease of use is well documented, so I'll skip it here. I let it charge for about 4 hours, then plugged it into my TiBook. It immediately launched iTunes and update it's firmware to 1.2.6 automatically. In the meantime, Software Update allowed me to download 1.3 and, after the iPod's requisite reboots, I applied it and was off and running. Did I mention it also copied my music collection? It's about 3GB of music, mostly MP3, and it copied in about 15 minutes. Nice.
Next, I set iSync to work with the iPod. Wait, I didn't do that, the Mac did! I fired up iSync and it had already realized I had an iPod so it was set to go. A (long) iSync later and my calendar, contacts and now AAC content was on the iPod.
Finally, a name. When I first setup the iPod, it requested a name. My machine is “getz”. I named the iPod “gilberto”. It seemed appropriate.
A special thank you to my wife of seven years, Tammy. Without her, my dreams would stay just that–dreams.
-srk@mac.com-
Steve Kirks 