My First Blog
Kerry Osborne
So I decided to finally join the 21st century. For the past several years I haven’t listened to any music to speak of. The radio went fuzzy in my car about three years ago and since I have a high tolerance for pain and was basically always busy doing things that were more important to me, I never got it fixed. Also, I moved a couple of years ago and still haven’t hooked up any sort of stereo at the new house. So this year I got a new car with a working radio. It’s one of those Toyota FJ cruisers that look like the old Land Cruisers.
Toyota FJ Cruiser
It was a demo unit that the dealership had put a fancy radio / GPS system in. I really only bought it for the radio. It was pretty expensive for a radio, but it has a nice blue paint job and doesn’t take up any space in the new house. But I digress, the fancy unit in the dash has AM/FM and satellite (XM) radio, a cd player, a DVD player, blue tooth phone integration, traffic information, and a griddle for making french toast while you’re driving. You know, basically everything the 21st century has to offer. It even has a hard disk recorder that can automatically record CD’s while you’re playing them so you can play the songs later in case you loose the CD I guess. Oh, and the ability to load up your own image files to display when you reach a favorite location (remember the GPS) or just for a pretty background while listening to the radio. The best part about it is the XM radio though. Of course I can’t hear it if I go in a parking garage or if it gets really cloudy, because it looses reception, but other than that it’s great. No commercials, except for XM’s own plugs for themselves, but that’s to be expected. No harm in a little self-promotion I guess. Although, you’d think the people hearing the ads would already be subscribers.
Anyway, after a few years of not listening to any music I found out that I really like listening to the stuff on the way to and from work. For several weeks I’d come busting into the office and grab the first person I’d see and tell them about the cool music I heard on the way to work. Usually they would take the ear buds out of their ears and then give me that look like I was from another planet. I imagine it’s the look Rip Van Winkle got after his 20 year nap. After a while I stopped telling people about it and just kept the joy to myself.
Here’s a picture of one of my co-workers who’s pissed because he had to take his ear buds out to listen to me drone on about music.
While I was at it I decided to buy an ipod. Wow! It’s a lot better than the Walkman I had back in the 80’s! My new car stereo let me hook it up so I could control it and play it through the system. So I basically keep it in the glove box all the time. I mostly listen to it when I’m in a garage, or it’s really cloudy, or when I can’t find anything good on the 170 or so stations provided by the satellite radio guys. Or when I just have a particular song or artist I want to listen to, but that doesn’t happen that often.
Anyway, now that I have joined the 21st century from a music stand point, I decided that maybe I should check out this blog thing. At first I didn’t see much that interested me, but lately I have started to see some value in it. I plan on mainly using it for work related stuff. I work for a small consulting company that focuses on Oracle databases (Enkitec) and I am fortunate to get to work on interesting things (for me anyway) on a fairly regular basis. I’m hoping this blog will provide a convenient way to share some of the stuff that I’ve learned and get some feedback as well. So, here’s to the 21st century.