Tapes

Today I was going through a long-forgotten box that came out here to Arizona when I moved from Florida. In the box were cassette tapes that I used to listen to (back when I had a cassette deck at home and one in the car). Of course, nowadays, it's all CDs or digital media (I started ripping MP3s in '96).

I haven't always been what you'd call an "early adopter". Back in the early 80's I had 8-tracks (I provide the link for those of you fortunate enough to never have to hear that clunk in the middle of your favorite song). My first car was a '76 LTD with a Motorola AM radio. Early in the 80's, I replaced it with an 8-track, so I could listen to my collection while on the road. At some point in '82, I [finally] saw the handwriting on the wall, and started buying cassettes. With my highly-paid position as a busboy ($2.01/hour plus tips), I couldn't afford to replace the 8-track player, and all of the 8-tracks I had, so I did the next best thing: I bought a cassette to 8-track adapter. Yeah, old school. I didn't eradicate all of my 8-tracks (and replace the deck) until '88 when I bought a new car (well, new to me, but already 4 years old).

Although I stopped buying cassettes a while ago, I didn't get a CD player in my car until late 2004. The car had a crummy factory AM/FM/cassette, and the cassette didn't get used at all. The cassette deck I had in the house broke back in '96, and I never bothered to replace it. My collection of cassettes slowly eroded as they were replaced by CDs or digital music, and I thought I got rid of the last of them in the late 90's. The ones you see above (Hey! Stop laughing! Lots of people listened to Night Ranger in the 80s!) will go to Bookman's where I'll get trade-in credit for some books (and maybe more CDs).

The CDs that I do have fit nicely on a double layer DVD when encoded as MP3s. I listen to that at work. We're not supposed to have music on our computers at work, so I figure having it on a nice removable piece of media is a decent work-around. One of the managers where I work (let's call it "Electric General") used to troll around on computers deleting any MP3 he came across.

I don't really have a media player yet. Well, I guess I do, but at 64MB, it hardly counts. I picked it up at REI at one of their sidewalk sales where they get rid of returned items. For $15, I couldn't say no. I got it home, got it working (replaced the bettery, cleaned the contacts, etc.) and listened to it once. At some point, I'll get one with a bit more memory (!), but I'm not sure when. I haven't drunk the iPod Kool-Aid yet (actually, the People's Temple drank Flavor Aid, but somehow I always hear people say Kool-Aid), and Microsoft's "Zune" will probably use 3/4 of it's battery power running DRM software. If Apple makes an iPod with a replaceable battery, I'm there.