Wish List

I'm writing this to myself two months from now. That's all the warning that you're gonna get that this will be a long boring-ass post and not worth reading.

I enjoy wanting things, electronic gadgets and the like. In fact, I may enjoy wanting things as much as having them, since most things that I do actually get wind up either lost, broken, or never used. So, now that Cybil and I have begun the year long process of paying off our share of this vacation club, I have the perfect opportunity to want stuff without the possibility of having the cash to actually buy anything.

This post is about the various things on my wish list (which no longer resides in the Links menu above) that I want to buy, but will have to wait until my birthday or Christmas to acquire. In a couple of months when I do have the opportunity to get anything I will check back here and see if my reasons and intended uses for the following are sill valid.

Here's one I've been considering off and on for a while: a bike. Yes, the most immediate motivation is that Doug has been riding on the trails around his new home, and jfred also recently picked up a bike as well. Last time I rode was about 4 years ago. It was just a test drive of a low-end mountain bike. Let me tell you, a cheap bike these days is above and beyond what I rode as a kid. Light aluminum frames, suspension, it was a blast. But the problem has always been, where the hell am I gonna store the thing? Not in the apartment (it's a 1 bedroom with a ping pong table already squeezed in), not in front of my parking space (theft / freaky management). But I finally did come up with a solution: stash it in the back of my hatchback. The seats are always down, it's already being used as hiking gear storage, why not?

My only remaining questions for myself are, will I use it often enough to justify hauling it around at all time, will I have any luck getting the guys to ride between golf appointments, and how will I decide whether to hike or to bike a trail? When the days get shorter nature will take care of the last question, probably not a good idea to go biking in the mountains after dark.

Next item up on my wish list is a GPS, one with WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) for geocaching precision. I'm excited by all the forays technology is taking into the real world. Since this is new technology to me (I was a map and compass guy growing up) I've got a number of questions I'll have to look up. How many geocaches are there around this area? How can I make my own geocaches, and how brutal am I allowed to be (is miles from any road access fair game)? What are the possibilities combining google maps/earth with a GPS? Anyway, much potential geeking out in the out-of-doors, and if I continue hiking after work 2 days a week (after this heat wave passes, or in October, whichever comes first) it will certainly see plenty of use.

Lastly, I've been looking at portable MP3 players. Just a little bit of research shows that Apple, while obviously having the best designed player, has some serious competition when it comes to features. Creative Labs has a nifty little flash drive player that as well as playing MP3s also has an FM tuner and a built in mic for audio recording (as well a line-in for direct dubbing).

With these three major features it could have so many uses. The speakers in my car have been acting up (not to mention the CD player broke 2 years ago) and it would probably cost as much to fix as it would be to buy one of these. That, and I'm never in my car Sunday afternoon for the chamber music concerts they've been playing on KUSC, or Saturday morning for the Met.

I'd also like to get back into listening to books on tape/CD. With a portable player I could borrow CDs (from anywhere in LA through the online library exchange system), rip them to MP3, and play them whenever. With the line-in I could even dub old cassette books.

It would be nice to just be able to listen to the small handful of CDs I've gotten over the last couple years. I can't listen to music while working on the computer (too distracting), so I haven't listened to much music outside of the weekday commute for some time.

For several years now I've been planning on making digital recordings of those various poems and speeches that I used to have memorized back in the days of frequent campfires. With odeo.com finally launched (and presumably their "create" feature will be launched someday soon as well) I'll have ready means of publishing audio recorded on this device. It will also be an excellent source of audio content to listen too. In fact, I'm going to bring this post to an abrupt end so that I can install OdeoSyncer and try it out.