I finally burned the CD of the Indigo Girls bootlegs and interviews I wrote about months ago. Because of the way they broke up the MP3s of the German interview, there were separate files for him asking the Girls a question and then his retranslation in German of the question and answer. This allowed me to create an .m3u file that was just the English interview segments while still burning the whole thing. If I wanted to I could listen as it actually occurred or listen to just the logical view of it that is the English. Obviously, I could do the opposite with the German if I so desired. Cool, no?

I wanted to listen to the interview in English during the car trip to Augusta but I plain forgot how to play an .m3u on my iRiver SlimX. I really enjoy this device but its biggest drawback is the complexity of use. There are plenty of things that I know I want to do that I can't figure out the combination of short or long clicks and button presses to make it happen. I don't have a whole lot of gee-whiz gadgets nor do I typically buy them. I'm not an early adopter, I'm more of a "buy it used when the early adopters sell it for the next thing" kind of guy. The Handspring Prism is my only other real gadget, and that's getting ever farther from the cutting edge. I really like everything about it other than the fairly sad battery life. You can tell you are an apologist for the shortcomings of a device when you begin to buy accessories to bolt around its weaknesses. Thus I have three, count them three, chargers for this. One desktop charger/cradle for hotsyncing, and two travel chargers - one AC one and one cigarette lighter one.