Monthly Archives: July 2007

New Car Stereo

To celebrate (or mourn) the sale of the Jetta, I installed a new Sony head unit into the CRV.  The old Alpine 3 pack player was showing its age:  wouldn’t play writeable CDs, couldn’t play MP3s, the display was in Klingon.  It was and still is a great player though.  Very powerful especially when I had it matched with my amp and subwoofer.   Back in the early days (97-01) when I still had hair my Honda was a moving sound machine.  I remember the in-dash 3 pack at the time was state of the art.  As time moved on I realized how irrelevant it was to have the ability to load 3 CDs yet not be able to randomize over the 3 CDs.
The new Sony is not as powerful and although it has pre-outs, I opted not to run it through the amp.  I plan to take out the amp and bundle it with the sub-woofer that’s currently sitting in the garage.  Maybe I can sell the combo to a needy teenie.

Yet I love the Sony much much more than the old Alpine even though it is cheaper:  it has a USB port on the faceplate!  You cannot imagine how flexible this makes the device.  I have multiple memory sticks about 1GB each that I can load up and reload up whenever I want.  Since the majority of my music has been moved to my portable hard drive I can even plug that beast into the unit and have access to thousands of songs.  This is much better than the standard inputs that some models have that allow you to plug in your iPod.  What a crock:  the ‘iPod’ ready units cost more than the USB units!  I’m sure many idiots will pay the extra $$ for less flexibility which is why I give credit to Sony and other companies for their marketing genius.

20 Words for June

  • official promotion to development manager
  • hot hot spring
  • visiting mom at freeport
  • watching her improvements
  • father’s day at home with the family
  • brother luc coming up for some visits
  • nicole’s golf tournament at the fox
  • dinner at Einstein’s just for fun (no OG)
  • saw a movie in the theater (slim pickings:  Pirates of the Carribbean III)

Music invokes memories (redux)

In my profession, I have a lot of time to listen to music.  I have a large collection and varied mix of music that I have stored on my drive.  I’ve decided that I like pretty much any kind of music as long as it has that extra something.  It’s hard to define that extra something but it is clearly something that invokes some sort of emotional charge.  I’ve been able to find this in all types of music except trance.

This morning, as the random gods would have it, I was engaged in a mini-mix of folk music predominantly sung by Roger Whittaker.  I’m sure there are many of you who know who he is and was exposed to it by your parents when you were young.  In fact, he may be one of the first musicians I can recall.  My father had many vinyls full of Roger and would not only play it frequently on the turntable, but would often be singing or whistling (more often whistling) his tunes around the house.  He was a proficient guitar player and would strum many of his tunes in public and at home.

It has dawned on me that the ultimate pleasure I derive from recorded music (live music is a different story) are the vivid memories that they invoke.  Memories I didn’t realize I had but are recalled in detail by the listening of a song.  With Roger Whittaker this morning it brought up many memories all dealing with my father.  Honestly, quite a powerful experience.  Yeah, Roger is an old-fashioned, very plain folk singer but becomes much more than that when there’s a personal history attached to the songs.

So, I started to think about other songs that bring up other memories and once I started listing them I realized there’s going to be hundreds.  Some bring up very distinctive moments and others bring up general feelings like ‘this song reminds me of 1st year university’ which then peels back layers and layers of more memories.  Quite powerful stuff!  If somebody hasn’t done research on this phenomenon and possible medical usages like bringing people out of comas or through the cloud of amnesia….

Anyhow, for my personal enjoyment and interest sake, I’m going to start a living blog entry that lists songs/albums/band/singer and the memory invoked.

The Jetta Saga comes to an end

Finally, we are clear of the Jetta.  Today I received the $$$ from the deal and returned the plates for refund.  It has been a trying experience these last few months and I for one am glad to move on to the next car.  It was a responsive vehicle I must admit but unfortunately I became the primary user of the vehicle after its glory days.  Thus, the Volkswagon experience was tainted. 

Â