Monday, February 15, 2010

Old Man, in which Holdinator blogs about ...

Mix tapes.

Do you remember mix tapes? Like when you would spent an entire afternoon making a mix tape for your friend of your favorite songs? Or when you would make a mix tape for driving, and you would listen to it every time you drove your car for the next six months?

This was a very involved process. You had to sort through your CD collection, and pick out which CD's you wanted to use, then you would have to put them in your stereo individually, go to the song you want to record, and press play on the CD and record on the tape deck at the same time. Getting the right amount of time in between songs was crucial.

You would develop this very intimate connection to the mix tape, because you listened to every song all the way through as you were recording it. And that was awesome. You were experiencing, for the first time, the feel and the personality of that tape. Whether for you or someone else, that tape meant a lot.

I think the last mix tape I made was one for Jess, when we were dating, in 2002.

Now we make playlists on iTunes. Very cool technology, but you don't know how it's going to sound until it's playing on your iPod and then you can skip through songs, or have them play randomly. And playlists can be hours long with nearly unlimited songs.

With mix tapes, you had 60, maybe 90, minutes of music, and you listened to every song all the way through, because if you tried to fast forward through a song, you might miss some of the next song, which was one that you really liked, and you'd have to rewind then.

And you loved every song on those tapes. And life was good.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Representation, in which we do our taxes

Tonight is my annual spend-more-time-on-the-computer-than-any-other-time-during-the-year night.

Turbo Tax is a wonderful product.