Well, I guess my ears are just shaped weird, or something. They are at least two different sizes, I can tell that much. I went to the drugstore at lunch and bought the Philips SHS3201 earhook earphones for $10, and the right one sits pretty comfortably on my ear but the left one feels like it is a little too low. Neither of them falls out even when I shake my head hard, but I am still wondering if I should have just gotten the lightweight folding $7 over-the-head headphones instead. I got the earhook kind because I wanted something low-profile, but apparently my ears are just more bizarre than the rest of humanity’s, and perfect headphones simply don’t exist for me.

To my great disappointment, the Logitech wireless headphones I ordered don’t fit. They work fine - the Bluetooth is great - but they are too big and heavy for me. They don’t seem to sit properly behind my head, and they’re squashing one ear and hurting it. So I think I am going to have to sell them, or something. They were $32 on Amazon plus $11 shipping, and I want to get as much back as I can. I’m really unhappy about this because I am enjoying the freedom of no wires, and there aren’t many good alternatives. The next generation is called Free Pulse but they are very expensive, and I have no idea how they’d feel on my ears either. There aren’t many affordable alternatives; I was considering the Creative CB2530 which looks much more comfortable, but Cnet really didn’t like them so I’m not sure what to do. I may just have to use wired earphones for the foreseeable future, unfortunately.

My 80GB Snazzy McSnazzersons Video iPod is waiting at home for me! They had said it would be there on the 19th, but I was kind of hoping it would turn up today. I wasn’t able to print the official “shipment release authorization” form due to a lack of a functioning printer, so I handwrote a page that had similar information (I authorize FedEx to blah blah…for this tracking number..please leave…this page is equivalent to your actual form…[signature]) and taped it up on the door, hoping that would be good enough.

I just printed out the official form (at work) in case I needed to use it for tomorrow, but then I checked the FedEx tracking number:

Dec 18, 2006 - 11:27 AM - Delivered - Left at front door. Package delivered to recipient address, release authorized

And then I squealed in my head a lot! I am very excited about trying it out when I get home. I already used the Videora iPod Converter to make the CSI:NY episode Silent Night iPod-compatible, and last night I downloaded SG-1’s episode 200 and Atlantis’s The Real World via BitTorrent (thanks clayfoot!) because I’d never seen them. So I plan to convert those to iPod format too, whee!

Did I mention that I’m excited? Did I mention that the iPod’s hard drive is twice the size of my laptop’s hard drive? Did I mention that I can’t wait to get home? Wheeeeeeee!

I think I’ve decided what to do with my PPP money: I want to buy a 80GB video iPod, which is the latest and greatest version. I don’t know that I need quite that much space, but it has the best battery life - 6.5hrs while playing video, so it’s enough for a couple of movies while on the bus or traveling or whatever. So bear with me while I earn a little more money for that; I have about $70 worth of posts to make. After that I will probably quit for a while.

Added: I bought it. Yikes. I am going to sell my 3G on eBay.

I am officially so jealous. One of A’s friends got her an 8gb black iPod Nano for Xmas. Unfortunately this friend’s father died this past weekend, and she can’t fly to Peru until tomorrow, so she’s going through a lot right now and I can’t even hate her. I’ve tried to convince A that my 15gb 3rd Generation iPod would be much better, but she doesn’t believe me! I think it’s mostly the color screen that’s so attractive…I don’t need her Nano, but it’s so pretty and I want it! Damn.

I just satisfied all of my auto technology needs in one fell swoop. I got a car charger for my Sidekick, a car charger for my 3G iPod, and an audio-cassette adapter for the iPod so I can play it through my car’s cassette player. Plus I got a spare home charger for my Sidekick, which is handy. All for $14.88 shipped. This definitely beats the $30 Sidekick charger they wanted to sell me at Radio Shack on Friday, and the $25 FM transmitter I bought there that doesn’t even charge my iPod. So I can return that transmitter and wait to get my stuff in the mail - all from the same eBay seller! - and then I will be one very happy camper. Or driver, as the case may be.

Oh my god! I got ePSXe to run on my laptop and I can play Playstation games on my laptop! I haven’t quite got the configuration right…sound effects play but music does not, which means Bust-A-Groove is much harder to play than on the PSX. But it handles import games (it’s the Japanese version of Bust-A-Groove, which was called Bust-A-Move) beautifully! I might have to look into getting a controller thing so I can use the regular controller rather than trying to play off the computer keyboard.

Oh my god IT WORKS!

I missed a woot for a combination VHS player/DVD recorder, and that got me thinking about transferring my old VHS tapes to DVD. The one I’m most concerned about is my tape from the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea - it has been watched a few hundred times and the tape is probably near broken through in some places. I know the whole thing practically by heart, but I really want to preserve the tape…it’s mostly gymnastics and diving.

Anyway, in the comments for that woot, I saw that you can’t use such a device to copy commercial tapes. We have a bunch of movies on VHS that we never watch anymore, and it would be nice to copy them onto DVD so we could put them in our collection and maybe actually watch them someday instead of having them gather dust. To copy commercial tapes, you need something called a “video enhancer” or “video stabilizer” inserted between the VCR and the DVD recorder. Since I already have the VCR, all I would need is a DVD recorder and the video enhancer.

So I did some Googling and some Froogling, and I ended up buying a Panasonic DMR-ES10S DVD recorder on eBay for $75 including shipping. Next I needed the video stabilizer. The Sima CT-2 had been recommended to me in the woot thread, so I got that on eBay for $55 including shipping. So hopefully I will be able to record my tapes to DVD soon, provided I can get it all hooked up properly - and if there’s enough space in my entertainment center for everything!

I was noodling around a bit on eBay as a result of a conversation with firesign3000 and I was looking at Sidekick prices. I originally bought a color Sidekick, used from eBay, in January 2005 for about $130. That same phone is currently selling for about $50 on eBay; I still have my old one but the scroll wheel doesn’t work so I’m keeping it as a backup rather than selling it for cash. In February 2006 I went back under contract with T-Mobile (I’d been out of contract since Sept 2003) and upgraded to a Sidekick II for about $130. Now I find they are on eBay for about that price…because the Sidekick 3 has just come out. So if I’d waited, I could have scored the same phone for the same price without going back under contract - but estimates for when the SK3 would be released ranged from Thanksgiving 2005 to Holiday 2006 so there was no telling, really. The SK3 is on eBay too, of course, for between $300-400. That might work out for a friend of mine who has Pay-As-You-Go for his Sidekick II…he could buy the SK3 on eBay and then sell his SK2 there and only end up spending about $200-250 for the new device. I don’t think he will, but he could.

• Today I am down to 161 pounds. I started 2006 at 187.5 pounds. That’s progress, but I still have a while to go.
• I now know three people who have the Sidekick 3. I am not one of them, and I only ever see one in person but he doesn’t usually have his with him then. I don’t think I’ll be wanting one anytime soon.
• I decided to put away my iPod until the new battery and/or the AC adapter arrive. I was going to try updating the firmware because that sometimes helps with battery life, but I didn’t remember that you have to plug it into the wall to complete the firmware update. So it’s a brick till I get the AC adapter, I guess…argh!
• It is so frustrating not to pick at my new tattoo. I want to poke it and move it around and play with it. I think if I got another design on me I would want an ILY handshape.
• I decided to revamp the way skins are presented on my site. Instead of having a skin listing in the sidebar, I now have a skin selection page complete with screenshots. I also put up a single AdBrite ad; so far I have earned 53 cents from it but that’s just from network ads - I don’t think anybody will actually buy an ad on my site. But hey, 53 cents is more than I ever got from AdSense. I don’t like advertising in general, so I may get rid of it eventually, but we’ll see.
• My car was reluctant to start Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, so I took it in last night. It had also been balky about changing gears (it’s an automatic) but that apparently isn’t the transmission or anything else - they said it was just running the A/C that changes the load on the engine. They said the starter might be going bad but it would have been $350 so I said I would wait, and the guy admitted that was actually fine. Turns out I was overdue for my inspection (oops) and in order to pass I needed two new tires. Tires plus inspection plus oil change (that was overdue too) totaled about $215, not bad.