So I’m slowly getting back to normal after X-mas. Jamie still doesn’t have to be back to work until the 3rd and we’re already climbing the walls wondering what to do with ourselves.
In hindsight, it was big, but forgettable holiday. We swore we’d keep it simple, but spent WAY too much and WAY more than we intended. This year seemed more about quantity than quality in terms of everything. (and yes, this is mostly materialistic gift talk – we all know we should appreciate each other and what we have and all that schmaltz)
On Christmas Eve we opened gifts sent from various family members (a yeary tradition) to make room for Santa to leave his stash for us. I think everyone had the same quantity over quality approach this year. It might have a lot to do with that fact that none of us had anything we really wanted or needed. (yeah, that’s a horrible place to be, huh?)
Tons of stuff, a lot of nice things.
Got the kids to bed and finished wrapping and putting stuff under the tree late on Monday night. o further illustrate my point – we didn’t keep an exact count but there ended up being over 100 gifts under the tree for X-mas morning. It was stupid how high I had to stack stuff. I have pictures, but haven’t taken them off of the camera yet.
This year it took a full 3 hours and 36 minutes from the time gift opening started until one of kids whined about being bored. (gotta love kids!)
So what did Daddy get? The biggie this year was a iPod. I scored a black 160GB classic.
Before someone comments about the Touch and all of that – I don’t care. I wrestled with the decision for a while, but in the end decided that I was mostly wanting it for in the car and that it made more sense to be able to hold all of my music and stuff rather than swapping out songs all the time. I’m the type of person that loves having thousands and thousands of songs and just hitting shuffle and taking them as they come (just look at my last.fm lists).
I currently have almost 70GB of music. The 16GB touch just wasn’t going to cut it. Hell, at the rate I’m going the 80GB classic didn’t seem like enough. The 160GB classic was the smart choice. I needed storage more than anything. In a couple of years when the touch actually adds some substantial storage, I’ll upgrade. I like the ‘flash’ of the Touch, but this time I took substance over style.
My daughter’s biggie was a 26″ LCD TV. She’s had an old 20″ Magnavox forevrer. The thing is 16 years old and showing its age – the time to upgrade was now.
Little Man scored a ton of litle things he’s into – Wii games, Star Wars lego sets, Star Wars Transformers, Transformers in general – all the good little boy stuff that amuses Dad too. (although the 575pc Lego Jedi Starfighter was not a fun build)
Jamie got the copout Jewelry (she does like shiny things though) and a certifcate for a local salon/spa she’s been wanting to go to but never found the time. Maybe this will kick her ass into gear?
Lots of good stuff. Typical american consumerism holiday. I’m part of the problem and I’m ok with that.
I’ll probably do a post about the Wii games after I’ve had more time to play with them…which I’m about to do right now.
Hope everyone had either a good material holiday or a good spiritual one…or both! :)
#1 by joe on December 28th, 2007
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I’ve heard the “new classic” ipods (read: not 5G) have a bad line out, where the tone has the treble boosted considerably. They changed the chipset, and the audiophiles are not pleased. (Geauga Lake to a plethora of enthusiasts seems to be a good analogy.)
I’d be interesting in hearing what you think, if you end up using the line out.
#2 by Lord Gonchar on December 28th, 2007
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I think audiophiles shouldn’t be listening to an iPod in the first place. ;)
I dunno. I haven’t really had a chance to play much (at all) with it yet. I doubt I’ll ever use the headphone out, but I did score a cable that goes from the dock connector (on the bottom) to the car stereo. I went out to the garage and played a song. My initial impression was that the mids were too much (the upside down “V” eq setting)
Might just be me. I’m a rock guy and usually set my EQ on my various devices to the “V” (boosting highs and lows) – even when I did that on the aux input on the car stereo the iPod sounded ‘flat’ – just very unlively.
Could be the source though. All I had were a couple of tunes I downloaded from iTunes (my first from them) – not MP3′s I ripped on my own. Once I get around to sticking my collection on the iPod, I’ll have a better idea of what is responsible for the ‘dead’ sound from the iPod through the car.
In summary, not enough time spent yet to really make a call, but my initial impression is not of boosted highs, but an almost ‘dead’ (certainly not lively), mid-heavy sound.
That, of course, could be the songs I bought, the cable I got or the car stereo making things seem that way…or it could be the iPod.
#3 by Tekno on December 28th, 2007
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I don’t celebrate X-mas so we put new floor down in my room :-).
As far as iPods go, I’m determined to get an iPhone now that the cell phone service turned to AT&T and they support it, but I also REALLY want a 160gig classic. I want something I can take with me for my newest and most faddish music, and then something that I can store anything and everything on for long trips (which, as I’m sure you know, happen often with coaster nuts).
#4 by jeffyjones on December 29th, 2007
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I think that having an iPod with capacity that mammoth is awesome. I have a 5G 60 gig (or maybe it’s 40) and haven’t filled it yet. I have nearly every digital photo in there I’ve ever taken as well.
If you do get flat sound from the lineout, you can use the built-in EQ to compensate, which is no problem if you weren’t planning to use the headphones much anyway. The EQ uses more battery, but if you’ve got it plugged in, it doesn’t matter.
#5 by Lord Gonchar on December 31st, 2007
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Every digital photo I’ve ever taken comes to a little over 50 gigs. My music collection is around 70 gigs. I suppose I could put it all on there and still have 40 gigs for movies, videos and whatnot.
Although the actual storage on the iPod is 148 gigs – so I guess that’s 28 gigs, not 40, for movies and videos. (read: pr0n)