Dagnab it. Somehow the content on my Zune hard drive seems to have gotten fouled up.

So, I renamed the two folders on my PC where I store my Zune music. Then I cleared the contents off the Zune (with the Zune software). Then I changed the two folders back to their original names, and I'm re-syncing everything.

It's taking a while, given the number of songs I had on there, but when I'm done I hope all will be as it should.

Wanna see what music I've been playing lately? Now you can. Scroll ALL the way to the bottom of this blog page, and you'll see that I've inserted my Zune Card.

I'd have put it near the top, but it's a little too large of a graphic and I thought it'd be a bit too visually obtrusive. So I inserted it at the bottom, and I'll decide on some way to point out to people, via text at the top of the page, that the card is down there at the bottom of the page. Give me time.

Happy happy joy joy, the Zune upgrade software became available today!

All first-gen Zunes can now upgrade their firmware and gain the new capabilities that are offered in the second-generation Zunes, which will go on sale today.

Three cheers for wireless synchronization of files and podcast handling. (Well, the Zunes could always play back podcasts, but now the Zune software will actually manage your subscriptions for you.

I'm posting this as the final stages of the upgrade proceed. When everything's done, I'll be Very Pleased.

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY!

My Frank Mills CD arrived today! I just finished ripping it and synching it to the Zune.

I'm sitting here listening to "Love Me, Love Me, Love", that old childhood favorite song that I haven't heard in years, even as I type.

I freakin' love the Internet. I'd never, ever have been able to find this song again without it. Heck, had it not been for the internet, I wouldn't even have heard the song since the early 1970s, when it was popular on the radio. As it is, as I posted before, I heard the song a grand total of one time since the 70s, and that was in 1998 when I was listening to a Canadian radio station on the internet.

BTW, as I discovered during my search for the song, Frank Mills is Canadian. This explains, at least in part, his appearance on that radio station at that particular time. Canadian stations have to air the work of at least a certain percentage of Canadian artists. So Frank Mills probably receives a bit more airtime in Canada than in the US. Of course, the freaking song is just good, IMO, which makes me wish it'd see some airplay once in a while down here, too.

But since most US radio stations seem to be locked into narrow formats these days, if you want to hear a song you really like, most of the time you have to play it yourself. Which I can do, now, since I OWN the song. :o)

I'm all happy now. :o)

Yesterday afternoon, I went with my friends Joe J. and Jean J. (his mom) to a doctor's apppointment Joe had. He's been suffering with "new daily persistent headaches" of unknown origin since May. It's really frustrating for him, and for everyone who loves him, to see him going through this. It's hard enough that he lost his sight and hearing, and ability to walk, to a nervous-system disorder that no specialists have ever been able to identify. The various bouts of chronic pain he's had over the years (ankle, back, abdomen, and now headaches) are actually worse than the other things he's gone through, because the pain impacts his quality of life in a way that the other things didn't.

Long story less long: his body acclimated to the pain med he was injected with in June, and several times thereafter. It went from keeping him headache-free for ten days (the first time he had the injections) to not even lasting one day before the pain returned. So today, a different treatment was tried. He got injections of botox in various places in the forehead, sides of the head, and back of the head, since his headaches have manifested in any or all of those places over time. This treatment is supposed to take full effect in one or two weeks, but it's also supposed to last for three months. Here's hoping that it lasts that long (given his body's tendency to build up a tolerance to other pain treatments he's tried in the past). The good news is, his headache was reduced significantly by the time he left the doctor's office. It wasn't entirely gone, but hey -- improvement is always a good thing. Here's praying that the improvement continues.

In the "we like geek toys" category, there's this offering: Microsoft will be releasing new versions of Zune in November: a larger 80GB model, and two flash models of sizes 4GB and 8GB. However, not only will the original 30GB model continue to exist, but there will be a firmware update that will give it all the capabilities of the soon-to-be-released models. Accessories currently listed on zune.net will fit all the models of the device.

So, I'm all happy -- in a month, I'll get the equivalent of an upgraded device, without having to actually BUY a new device. Everything the new devices will be able to do, the original devices will do, as well. Tech-toy fans can find out what the new capabilities are by heading over to this writeup.

And now that I've waited until past midnight, specifically because the news release regarding the device upgrade was supposed to be made public at 12 AM, I'm going to try and get some shuteye.

Update: EEEEEK... the drawback of the weather being nice enough to keep the windows open is that critters that belong Outside sometimes sneak Inside. A little while ago, Captain and Stanley were awfully interested in the region between the open computer-room-door and the wall. And when I say "interested", I mean they were EXTREMELY fixated on that area, staring, pawing, mrrrrping and meowing at it. I've had cats long enough to know what that behavior means: we probably had a guest with six or more legs. Sure enough, there was a cricket hiding behind the door. I took my sneaker and made it an ex-cricket, disposed of it in the toilet, then thanked the kitties for finding it for me.

Of course, now my bug-phobia is belatedly kicking in and I'm WIDE awake. So much for that shuteye. Who needs sleep anyway?

I just made my first purchase from the Amazonmp3.com. They're the first online mp3 store that offers exactly what I want -- DRM-free music that you can buy PER SONG or PER ALBUM. Unlike other online stores I've visited, you don't have to pay $10 or however much in advance, then gradually deplete your balance by using it to purchase songs. (I don't know if iTunes wants you to pay in advance, as I haven't got an iPod and I've I've never visited their store. I don't even have iTunes loaded on this PC.)

I feel almost compelled to visit Amazon's MP3 store for whatever music I want that they have, just to vote with my wallet for the kind of online music store I want to see thrive. So for good measure, I cast votes by way of Neil Diamond and Handel's Messiah. :o)

Besides offering some pretty neat items for sale at reasonable prices, Woot.com has a sense of humor.

Today, they're taking a poke at both Microsoft and Apple. They're offering a MS Zune player at $20 less than they sold it for last month (shades of the $200 price cut on the Apple iPhone ten weeks after the device was first released), and in a long-winded "open letter" offering a tongue-in-cheek apology, they're also offering a $10 coupon for a future Woot purchase to anyone who purchased a Zune at the higher price last month (shades of Apple's offer of $100 Apple Store credit to anyone who bought the full-priced iPhone).

So, why am I laughing? Because I get a kick out of anybody tweaking the big companies like that, and because I just received a $10 coupon out of the blue. What can I say in response but "Woot!"

Oh. My. Gosh. I am ready to do handsprings for joy.

I found a free site that converts files to Zune-compatible formats. Specifically, it can convert things like YouTube videos into Zune-Compatible formats, and then email a link to the converted file to me so I can download it. Check out http://zamzar.com.

I just tried this with one file, a Barry Manilow video from the 25th anniversary of Arista Records. It took some minutes, since the Zune software had to work with the file to do I-know-not-what conversion (I'm guessing it was making the image size displayable on the screen). But by heck, IT WORKS. Joy to the world, I'm going to run rampant on YouTube and pick up as many song videos as suits my fancy.



I'm psyched, can you tell?