I think my iPod is on the long, slow march to death, as it keeps randomly resetting.
But the interesting this is that it resets when playing the same song. And while that could just be a corrupted file, the choice of song is kinda…interesting.
The song? “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”
I’ve resisted e-books for a long time.
At first it was because the formatting frankly sucked (and still does for the most part) and because I couldn’t quite swallow the idea of reading an entire novel on my computer – never mind that, as an avid reader of fanfiction, I read extremely long stories on a regular basis on my computer screen. I used them in grad school a couple of times and once tried to read one of Cory Doctorow’s books that way, but didn’t get past the first 20 pages. In hindsight though, it may have been the book. 
What’s gotten me into e-books, finally, is category romance novels. I’ve mentioned my addiction before but what I haven’t mentioned is the severe lack of book storage I have in my apartment. In short, I have one bookcase. And four boxes full of books, and several small piles sitting on the floor. We’re approaching crisis period, so clearly I needed to come up with a solution that would allow me to have my romance novels and not trip over them every morning when I got out of bed.
Clearly, I needed to try e-books again.
As with all things related to the computer, getting the software to work was the major hurdle. I don’t have a reader, so I was buying in pdf format. Which is fine, except that Adobe hasn’t updated their e-book software to work with the latest version of Mac OS X (abbreviated rant: Leopard has been out for six months and isn’t THAT serious a departure from the last version. Get with it.) so I had to pretend to be using 10.2, download an older version of Acrobat Reader, and use it with that one. Then I was in business, although its still wonky: it takes three times to successfully download a book. The first time I get a server error, the second time it crashes Acrobat, and the third time it finally works.
In any case, I currently have a collection of books on Acrobat Reader that include Australian diamond tycoons, six or seven sheiks, and overbearing Italians, and I’m not tripping over the books or providing any more of a hiding place for the cat then I already had.
I’m not a big gaming person, and by that I mean that I have never, ever owned any kind of console and my gaming experience tops out with the hours I spent watching boys play Goldeneye in college. I played computer games as a kid on the Mac, but mostly either the educational type or Summer Olympics (which was mostly awesome for the contortions you could make the high divers do if you hit the right keys). One of the neighbors had old school Mario when I was growing up, and to say I sucked at it would be an understatement.
Having said that, I really want a cobalt blue Nintendo DS Lite. Part of it is undoubtedly because it’s pretty. I mean, look at it. It’s SHINY. (This is probably why it’s sold out, too)
Shiny aside, I think I’d actually use it. I have an almost two hour commute each way to work (thank you, Westchester Bus System), and the DS Lite would give me something to do other than read romance novels on the train. In the long run, it’d probably be cheaper. I could play Big Brain Academy (learned that on the Wii at Christmas) and Brain Age.
So that’s what I’ll be asking for as a birthday present this year.