Ohhhhh.... Shiny

I am a Geek... No really, you don't need to try to deny it, I know it... In fact, I kind of like it. But, in all of my Geekiness, I am also a little bit of a tightwad. I have been looking at MP3 players now for almost a year. G even tried to buy me one for my birthday in June, but I hadn't found exactly what I wanted yet, so I waited... I looked... I waited... I looked. Finally this week we were in town and I spotted this cute little number. 

It had most of what I was looking for. It is almost exactly the size of a shuffle (which I find adorable), but had the things that I wanted that the shuffle didn't. It has 2GB of storage, a clip (like the shuffle), an FM tuner, and a screen so that you can see what is playing and choose something else. That (and the no FM tuner) was the biggest drawback to the shuffle. With the Shuffle, you load it up, and then you listen to it. Your only option being to skip to the next song. Uh No! I have eclectic tastes. Today I want to listen to Country, tomorrow Rock, and the next day some Mannheim Steamroller! But, this little Cutie had a screen, AND the price was right ($20 less than a 1GB Shuffle)... AND it had a screen... AND it had an FM tuner...... AND I wasn't tied to buying my music from ITunes! Not that I have anything against ITunes, I just like options!

The minute I said, "I think this is the one I am going to get" G had it in his hands and headed for the cashier LOL! He even got me the armband and silicone case to go with it so I could walk/jog/exercise while wearing it (Yeah, THAT's going to happen). His only thing was that it only had a small screen that shows the options/what's playing. He wanted me to get one of the players that had the color screen that you could show people pictures with and you could see album art, etc. But, I don't plan to waste any of my song room with picture files, and the biggest draw to thisplayer was the size. It is actually smaller than the picture on the website! A display big enough to show a picture decently would defeat the whole "Look how tiny it is" thing! It is almost exactly the size of a Shuffle if you have seen one of those.

I got it on Tuesday, and I spent the next 2 days ripping all of our CDs to the laptop so I would have music to put on it. I was actually dreading ripping the CDs because I hadn't ripped any music in a couple of years, but I was really pleased with the Windows Media Player. It's come a loooong way since the last time I used it. What you say, the ultimate Geek didn't have all of her music ripped to her laptop?!? Nope, I have a really nice 5 CD player that we've always used to play music with, so I don't usually play music off of the laptop, and if I did I just played it straight from the CD, so I just had no reason to rip any of the CD's. And, I am lazy.... If I don't need to do something... well, you know, I'm lazy!

I'm really happy with my little player, can you tell?? Now I'll have a reason to go out and buy some new music ;p

Let's see if I can dig up a picture to end this entry with. I took this picture during the trip to the zoo that was new to me. I thought he was really handsome. The only touch up work I did was tiny bit of gaussian blur because the background wasn't quite as out of focus as I had planned when I took the picture, a tweek to the levels, and then a quick unsharp mask.

Someone asked how I do the frames, and the answer is... several different ways LOL! This particular frame was done by selecting the edge of the picture and doing a stroke command in black, then making my selection smaller, again doing the stroke command, this time using the eyedropper to choose a little bit of green from the background. One more time of making the selection smaller and one more time with the stroke command, this time with black again. If anyone is really interested, I could do a tutorial here one day on how to do it. I use Photoshop Elements usually, but I find that most of the different programs have similar things, you just sometimes have to look for them.

O.K.... Here he is, Enjoy!