The problem with being a smartypants...

Well, its that sometimes you don't think things all the way through. To wit, last night I was anxious to finish up renaming my music files so I could get to the tagging and wrap this project up. So I had done a big batch of removing leading track numbers: 01, 02, 08, etc.... Upon what I thought was final examination, I saw there were a pile of tracks with leading single digit track numbers so I just whipped up a 0 - 9 delete statement and voila--- 3493 .m4a files were changed to .ma's so now my computer doesn't recognize them as music files...

good job, dumbass (I've been trying to find an audio clip of Red Forman saying that but no luck...). So now I'm trying to figure out if my software is smart enough to let me replace .ma extensions with .m4a's---I hope so. So here's to better thinking next time.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate iTunes?---I've undertaken this whole project to keep control of my original uncompressed music files and encode/tag the compressed file formats outside of iTunes and only allow it access to those files, not my "good" stuff (which I use to produce audio cd's for friends, family and against which I run my SlimDevices Squeezebox). If Apple weren't so proprietary I wouldn't have to go to these lengths. I dislike them nearly as much as I dislike Microsoft. I love my iPod, however. Despite the availability of 3rd-party solutions for managing it, iTunes still offers the cleanest interface but you pay for it with control of your library unless you go to the kinds of lengths I've had to to circumvent it...



"You're No Good" -- Linda Ronstadt (Heart Like a Wheel, 1974)

Musical musing
You know what I like best about music with vocals? The way they allow a listener (or singer) to "try on" a particular attitude. Sometimes I find that listening to something (or singing along) helps to manage how I'm feeling. So while I might not have ever been bold enough to tell anyone how really rotten they were, I can still feel a bit of vindication singing with Linda Rondstadt.

BTW
I've worked on Mom and Dad's blog a bit more, broken the daily journals into individual posts to facilitate commenting and get a little more white space and began to move photos into the days to which they correspond. Have fun. Tell me what you think.