"M-----, if I wanted someone to get pissy at me for violating the unwritten rules, and tell me I "shouldn't have to be told what the rules are" when I ask, I'd get in touch with some of my old ex-girlfriends."

My Dearest Karen,

I Arriv'd in Braden Town late the Night of the 8th Instant without Mishapp, & along the Way found Occasion to Dine with your Cousin Lisabetta, & our Friends Brian & Rebecca joined us, which was quite a Nice Surprize. They were Kind enough to Fill me in on many Happenings since We mov'd Northwards & are Loth to see us go Further, a Sentiment I found Touching.

After Dinner I continued on my Way, & Found myself at my Destination some Time between Ten and Eleven at Night. I had some Trouble finding the Hotel, as Mister Gates's Mapp was Not quite Accurate, but soon it was Found, & I past into a Fitfull Sleep, as I fear'd I would not awaken Punctually after the long Journey Southwards. It may Amuse you to know, that the Hotel was but a short Distance from where our dear Friends Angela & Michelle & their Husbands used to Live before they left for the Frontier.

I met Early with Mister R----- P-------, a Government man who was to Oversee the Project, & we shared a rather Disappointing Breakfast at the Hotel, though the Dough-nuts were not too Stale. We then made a rather short Trip to the Licensing Office, where I Unloaded the Goods from my Waggon, & set to Work bolting them down.

The Engineers whose Task it was to Set Up the Net-Work had not done their Tasks adequately, & we were Forc'd to Wait some severall Hours while R----- got them Straitened out. As Mid-Night aproached, some of the Young Women who Work at the Licensing Office began to Complain that they had not taken Care of their Men-folk, & so we left Off after only fifteen and a half Hours & Resolv'd to commence again the next Morning.

I slept somewhat Better that night, yet the Breakfast was no better the next Day. After many Telegraphs to the State Capital, we had Resolv'd the problems caused by the Engineers, & manag'd to get our Apparatus working Proper after only a couple more Hours.

I have hopes that I shall return Home & see You once again before this Letter arrives, for with a nearly empty Waggon I should make Good Time, but should I be Delay'd please give my Love & Respects to our Friends & Family.

In Friendship
Love & Truth
I am Truly Yours,
Jeff

When I'm listening to music, I can concentrate better on onerous tasks like packing and cleaning the apartment. Both my Palm PDA and my Nokia 770 can play MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files, but I can't put a headphone in the Palm, or it'll shut off the internal speaker for about two weeks, thanks to a nifty short in the jack. And the jack on the 770 is perfectly placed to be as inconvenient as possible in a shirt pocket.

So I went looking for a cheap, small MP3 player. I'd been hoping to pick up another iRiver player, as I like their user interface, but Best Buy no longer carries them (the salesdroid said she thinks they've gone out of business). It looked like SanDisk was making a similar item — roughly equivalent in size and shape — and their 1GB model was $30 cheaper than the 1GB iPod Nano. The only apparent downside was that it took AA batteries. Since I buy AA and AAA batteries in 64-packs, I figured it would be a while before the batteries ate up the price difference.

The interface was truly horrible. While it would let you create a hierarchical file system in its memory, it ignored this entirely when it came time to play the files; you could have them all lumped together in one giant list, or arranged by artist, album or genre. And if the artist name was different in the ID3 tags (for example, "The Calais Consort" vs. "Calais Consort"), it created two different Artist folders. And it would support one solitary playlist, so if you wanted one collection of Renaissance music, regardless of artist or album name, another for humorous Canadian bands, and another for big band swing, well, you were just out of luck. And the font was excessively large for the tiny screen, showing just three files at a time.

Back it went.

I bit the bullet and got me an iPod Nano, marking my first purchase of Apple hardware since my first computer, an Apple ][ (no bloody plus, e, c or lc). And the first thing I did with it was to stick Rockbox on it so it'd play Ogg Vorbis files as well. (I'll admit, I was tempted to put iPodLinux on there instead, but no — it's not stable yet for the Nano. Plus even I think that might be going a little overboard.)

While it's a snazzy little device, I'm sort of regretting that I got the black one; it looks beautiful right up until you touch it and leave fingerprints all over the glassy and mirrored surfaces. That and the fact that there's no anchor point for a lanyard are the only drawbacks I've noticed so far. Oh, there's a third one: if you put the foam covers on the earbuds, they hide the "R" and "L" symbols — but a little red enamel paint on the right one will remedy that easily enough if I decide to stick with the "Mug-Me White" earbuds.

I also got an iPod charger/FM transmitter for the car. Luckily I have an understanding (and pretty) wife who won't begrudge me my last purchase before the move. :-)

I guess I'm lucky I got my iPod when I did: Apple faces ban on iPod sales in the US.