Lord, take me downtown — I’m just lookin’ for some tush…
So I’ve got this MP3 player, and I ripped about 350 songs and dumped them all in there. It’s not an iPod – it’s better than that. 20 gigabyte hard drive (that’s 5,000 MP3 songs, yee-ha!), 14 hours between charges, plays like five different formats, has an FM tuner, creates MP3 files on the fly, has a built-in voice recorder (Note to self: Figure out some way to pay for this.), gen-you-wine leather case, comes with a remote control and about fifty little gizmos, adapters and attachments, hooks up to my USB2 port (is the cable included? Yes!), requires no special software – just drag and drop the music. It’s so fancy that it has a New York style belt clip: You have to unbuckle and thread your belt through it, so if anyone wants to snatch it and run they will have to take my pants off first.
I knew I was going to be doing solitary work today — stuff that must be done alone, mind-numbing stuff that I dread, so I took my player to work with me, got myself all hooked up, stuck the little buds in my ears, set the thing to play every song at random, and I was partyin’!! I was takin’ care of business, I was shakin’ it like a Polaroid picture, I was watchin’ the detectives, I was born in the U.S.A.!
The hours flew by, the work got done as if by someone else, while I rocked out in my own private stadium. And where else would you hear “The Israelites” by Desmond Dekker and the Aces back to back with The Heartbreakers’ “Room at the Top” followed by the classic Tom Waits “Filipino Box Spring Hog?” Sweeet.
Until I was 20 minutes late for the staff meeting because I couldn’t hear them paging me. I couldn’t hear anything, because I was rockin’. Someone finally came and got me, and I was busted taking the earbuds out — oh, that meeting. But in the immortal words of Keith Richard — or was it Pete Townsend? — “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
Oooh, oooh, I want one of those! What’s the name of that device?
It’s the iRiver ihp-120, discontinued now, of course. I’ll email more specifics.
ah, a way to build the sound track for one’s own life, carry it around with you, playing the songs that make sense…
do you drop the songs off of cds and into the player?
i’ve got to get up on this too.
and can you plug it in your car and have it come out the speakers?
Eric,
Yeah, you can record from a CD player or tape deck right into the thing, and it converts to MP3 format on the fly. Also, if you plug it into a USB port on a computer, it appears as a removable drive, allowing you to drag files directly to it. So whatever way you get music into your PC, and whatever music you may already have there, you can transfer it easily into the player. About a year ago, Apple did a commercial showing this entire procedure taking place in 60 seconds, ending with a first person POV boogying out the door of his home into the world, happy music playing. This is not an iPod, but it does the same things, and more. The current model is the iRiver H320, but there are a lot of these on the market now, with various capabilities.
Feel free to email me if you want any help with this.
> and can you plug it in your car and have it come out the speakers?
Rock on, Larry! *devil horns*