I was up all night importing music. I’m having a manic episode. whoo-hoo!!!
It’s actually fun to go thru all my old CDs and pick and choose – I have so many CDs that I have kept only because of one damn song. Now I can clear up the space in my CD rack by importing the ONE song I like … and throw out the damn CD.
I have a LONG ways to go … Also – has anyone else experienced this? My laptop has to work so hard to import the music that the fan starts blowing – and then it suddenly spontaneously turns off. It’s like it gets overheated or something. It’s definitely slowed me down in my import progress.
But … so far I’ve imported all of my Green Day, all of my Tracy Bonham, all of my Queen, all of my Queens of the Stone Age, all of my Bare Naked Ladies, and Beck’s one song “Sexx Laws”. I know Beck is a Co$er, and it bums me out … I love that song. Not wacky about the rest of that album – so I just lifted “Sexx Laws” up off it … I’ve imported most of my Tori Amos, and my Ben Folds Five.
I can’t wait to work out today. It’s going to transform my whole work-out experience. No more READING on the treadmill. Screw THAT!!!
Yeah, my laptop does the same thing when I import songs. Haven’t noticed any long term effects though so I wouldn’t worry much… But its a bummer that it slows you down. Pace yourself!! You don’t need to download all of your CDs within 24 hours of owning your ipod. :-)
Congrats on getting the ipod. It sounds like you are still in stage 1 of ipod ownership: downloading songs from current cds. Pretty soon you will be finding all the old songs that you love but don’t own on itunes. And after a couple more months you will be downloading free random mp3s from local bands. I love my ipod!!!
I am so unbelievably jealous of you Sheila. I don’t have an iPod. I want one. I WANT one. I can’t justify the expense at the moment…but after reading your post from yesterday and then this one this morning, it is hard to keep myself planted in my seat here at work, because I want to go somewhere and buy one NOW. No matter that it’s not even 8:30 and the stores aren’t opened yet. I WILL WAIT.
Oh…some day…some day…I was reading what you were writing and I was just about as excitited as if it was really ME doing all that importing and MY computer shutting off with exhaustion.
Oh how cool for you!!!!
I need to calm down now. Bye…
And yes…I have the impulse control of a three year old.
Yay for you! I can’t live without my iPod…I now have a player for mine in my car, and stereo-like thing in kitchen.
I’m with you, clears out the CD abyss. However, don’t throw the old CDs away–sell them as slightly used! Even if you only get $1 for each CD you sell that will pay for one song downloaded from iTunes!!!
Congratulations on your new IPod, Sheila!
However, as a longtime IPod user who has been burned in this way, please allow me to offer the following advice intended respectfully but most seriously.
Do *NOT* throw out your CDs!
I know; it’s tempting. Oh, how I know. One has this great new IPod and can think about nothing else other than how much shelf space one can reclaim once all those space-consuming CD cases are in the dumpster.
Don’t do it!
What if you no longer have your CDs, and, God forbid a million times, you drop your IPod on the floor and break it? What if you lose it? What if, and this is actually a much more likely scenario, you run out of hard disk space on your computer and decide, “Well, I’ve already put all that music on my IPod, so I’ll just delete it from my computer,” but then one day you plug your IPod into your computer while the auto-sync function of ITunes is still turned on, and before you know it, ITunes has deleted everything on your IPod to get it “in sync” with ITunes.
Aaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!!!!
If you still had your CDs, this would not be a castrophe. It would be very incovenient because you’d have to import all the music again, but at least you’d still have the music.
But if you don’t have the CDs, all that music will be gone, gone, gone…
Take it from one who has suffered and wants to spare you such suffering. Put the CDs in storage in the attic. Rent storage space from U-Haul. Do anything, but please don’t get rid of them.
For the same reason, I highly recommend burning CDs of any MP3s you buy online. Oh, if only I had.
Bryan –
That is excellent advice – and … has a sense of future perspective that I, in my manic state, lack right now. I already threw out Beck … but that’s okay. I will hang on to the other ones.
definitely don’t throw out the CDs. at the very least sell them at a store that sells used CDs and make a buck off ’em.
otherwise, i’m still just so happy for you! i know what you mean about importing like a maniac. it took me two weeks of obsessive importing before i had all my cds on there.
is it a video ipod? that’s an entirely new dimension. imagine watching a movie on it!
Beth – yes – a video ipod.
There are entire worlds to discover here.
Congratulations, but I’m with Kristen—don’t throw away the CD’s, sell them. That’s what we did with our music collection and while what we received was just a fraction of the money spent on the discs originally, it was amusing to see what the record store would pay for what. In my neighborhood don’t bother bringing in that “rare” import—they’ve got a hundred copies already, but by all means do bring in that Garth Brooks disc, because they’ll pay top dollar ($4) for it! ;)
Also, there are tons of cheap storage options, like separate hard drives or whatnot where you can store music.
Sigh…as always, someone beat me to it. Don’t throw away your old CDs. Take them to a record store, (Hello, did I just age myself?), and if they are in good condition and at least relatively desired, they will buy them from you. Most CDs I sold I got $3 for.
I just sold the iPod I won. Already have a cool Sony Walkman MP3 player and like you, spent a good portion of the first month I got it loading songs on to it. Had I known you wanted one so badly, I would have emailed you to sell it. I took $40 off the price. Oh well, you got one for free.
Do you have a DVD burner on your laptop, Sheila? I have been burning all my CDs to MP3 and then archiving them to DVD for those just-in-case moments that Bryan so sagely brought up. I haven’t dumped all my CDs yet. Everyone else seems to have great advice on the selling them to used record stores though.
Sheila, the fact that it’s a video iPod makes things very interesting. On iTunes, there are a lot of TV shows you can now catch up on at your own pace. And it’s not just the new stuff. NBC even has original Adam-12 episodes up there (I just discovered this seconds ago)!
And for when you need the Hoff, Knight Rider eps are available…
Enjoy!
Yes and if you get one of those iCable things, you can plug your iPod into your stereo which is GREAT! They are around 10/15$ I think. Not too expensive. I am not sure but with the video iPod if you can’t plug it into your TV you should be able to shortly given the way techy people work.
You can buy a cable with a headphone jack on one end and red/white RCA jacks on the other end for about $3 from Radio Shack.
Sheila, it sounds like your laptop is overheating. Make sure you’re not blocking any of those little vents anywhere on it, so the refreshing, cooling air can flow freely. Also, if it has those little legs on the bottom, flip ’em down so some of the heat can escape from below too.
Unfortunately, many laptops have piss-poor cooling systems and yours might be one of them. You might have to just slow down your CD ripping frenzy. Ooo, I just had another idea: dig out the good ol’ summertime fan and let it blow on the laptop as it chugs away.
Mark … thanks for the tips. I will definitely prop the laptop up on its little legs while it is chugging away.
I have witnessed no better communication from this mysterious force, some call God, than the ‘shuffle songs’ feature on my ipod.
//There are entire worlds to discover here.//
sometimes i think you’re the coolest person i’ve ever even heard of.
*/sappiness.
David – the whole shuffle thing is blowing my mind.
To go from “King of Bedside Manor” (Bare Naked Ladies) to “I’m going slightly mad” (Queen)? Never would have thought of it. But what an AWESOME song transition. Perfect.
You may also want to make sure you’ve imported a good quality mp3 from the CDs before getting rid of them. Because there may come a day when you wished you had a better quality version, and blank CDs are cheap.
(Edit->Preferences hit the Advanced tab then the Importing tab. The MP3 encoder with Custom 320kbps is excellent. I use Apple lossless only for classical music and my absolute favorites because they are huge files. I only use lower than 320 MP3 encoding to keep free space on my iPod. But that shouldn’t be much of an issue for you since video iPods can store a lot.)
Hey Red – so how long until you start podcasting? Not that I’m trying to make any demands of you or anything, but I think you’d be a natural.
George – this is how much of a Luddite I am … I am not even sure what that means. I mean, I’ve HEARD of it … but … beyond that? Nada.
I am sure I will learn!!
I’m not trying to be one of those “I don’t even OWN a television” jagoffs – I mean, I truly am ignorant about what podcasts even ARE.
hahahaha
Red – they’re basically radio shows that can be shared with other people via itunes. Like I said, you seem like a natural for it – and I mean that seriously. Between your acting experience, your writing, and your devoted fanbase, I think you’d be perfect for the medium – even moreso than your blog.
By the way: time for a True iPod Story.
I went to Poland last summer for a friend’s wedding. In order to avoid a major international catastrophe, I decided to prepare for my trip by purchasing one of those Berlitz CDs, put in on a playlist, and spent my 8-hour flight studying Polish on my iPod. It worked out great – I spent over a week in Poland without accidentally insulting anybody’s mother. (On the downside, I was also thoroughly unable to seduce any of the bridesmaids. Alas.)
Anyway, to make a long story short, I was too lazy to remove the Polish audio tracks from either my computer or my iPod after returning to the states. So for the last year, my music listening has been periodically punctuated by instructions on how to check into a hotel in Polish.
To tell the truth, I’ve actually grown quite fond of these sporadic language lessons.
I got one of the video ipods for Christmas and it has already changed my life! I love it!
David is absolutely right about the shuffle feature – it completely changed the way I listen to music, I’m now obsessed with the random selections that the ipod comes up with and I can no longer listen to a single CD all the way through.
Itunes has made organizing and searching my music so much easier and now I am learning about the on-the-go playlist and subscribing to playlists – lots of fun!
You should check out this article:
http://pitchforkmedia.com/columns/puritan-blister/06-02-10.shtml
It is a really funny description of the way ipod gets under your skin and rearranges your mind!