I sometimes rather hate how thinking about one thing leads to thinking about another.
My dad was talking about getting me an iPod, which is pretty awesome. But then I looked up iPods and thought, well, first of all, that the Apple site sucks: “Which iPod are you? Are you the 1 GB one or the 80 GB one? Are you the 2″ screen or the 3″ screen? Are you $199 or $249?”
Why do you have four different types of iPods? It’s not called the “iPod shuffle” because it’s 1 GB. It’s not called the “iPod touch” because it has a 3″ screen. It’s called shuffle because, presumably, it shuffles. But the Apple site doesn’t tell me this. It just gives me the numbers. Which are nice to have. But I also want to know what FEATURES make the damn thing different from the iPod classic!
And I got to thinking, you know? There’s not going to be one iPod that’s right for me. I have 10 GB of music. So, obviously, I should get the $399 16 GB iPod touch. But why the fuck would I do that when I could get a 80 GB iPod classic for only $249?
The so-called “features” of each iPod are incredibly lame. “I’m tiny and I don’t have a screen!” “I’m tiny and I have a screen!” “I’m huge and I have a screen………. that you can TOUCH!”
I don’t want an iPod. I want an MP3 player that will hold at least 10 GB and plays MP3s. I want it to have a screen to tell me what’s playing, a play and pause and next and back and shuffle button. That’s fucking all.
I don’t need video, I don’t need photo, and I don’t need no stinkin’ web browsing. I just want a music player. One that does what *I* want it to do.
And how do you get something to do what you want it to do?
You make it yourself.
“What, you mean, Google ‘how to make an mp3 player’? Come on now, Jenny. No one will have a site like that!”
Surprisingly, there are quite a few sites like that. I found one on (shudder) Digg, where the comments basically consisted of people calling it ghetto.
Excuse me? Wasn’t Digg supposed to be the all techy news community? I thought this thing was fucking awesome. “What’s that circuit board with wires hanging out of it you’re holding?” “Oh, it’s an MP3 player… that I built myself.”
How is that not cool?
I did a bit more reading about these various DIY mp3 players, and as long as there’s one of them that lets me modify the coding for it, then I’m fine with that. That’s all I want. Unfortunately, more reading tells me that this is an “advanced project” for someone who’s been soldering for years. Well, I’ve soldered about two or three times two years ago… does that count?
So then — this is where I finally start thinking about that other thing that I mentioned that I didn’t want to think about — I think, “well, why can’t I take some more engineering courses in university as electives?”.
Oh yeah. Because Brock doesn’t have computer engineering.
Why did I pick Brock? Because it was the only school around here that would accept me into the CS program without taking the advanced calculus (or science) course.
That makes me feel real good about the quality of education I’m going to get.
What was the other reason? Oh yeah, it was cheap. And I get to do co-op.
I don’t really want to do co-op. I’m just doing it to pay for university. I’d rather be at school all year ’round, in class, doing useless assignments rather than working. I’m hoping I get to work at some place that is actually fun to work at and where I’ll actually be programming and not really feeling like I’m doing any work, but I’m fairly certain that ain’t gonna happen.
I’m just feeling less and less sure about choosing Brock lately. I’ve always known it’s had a reputation as the “stupid” school, and with that comes the partiers and all that kind of stuff I’m not too fond of.
How many Brock students does it take to change a light bulb?
Seven. One to change the bulb and six to throw a party because he didn’t screw it in upside down this time.
I’m even more grateful now that I don’t have a double room after seeing this wall post on the Facebook group for my residence:
msg me if yo are a rommate i’m sorry im hammreed.