Ah, my blog, the place where I can expound more than 140 characters!

I haven’t been sleeping enough lately. Last night I stayed up late working on my (other) blog and writing up a contract proposal. So today, I fueled myself with significant amounts of Coca Cola and Dr. Pepper. I felt pretty good until 3:30 PM and then I more or less glazed over while staring at my computer and typing fast during the brief flashes of time where I remembered what I was supposed to be doing.

By the time 5:10 rolled around and I climbed aboard the bus, I was sleepy. I powered on my iPod and fell asleep to The Weakerthans.

I got home, checked the mail, and thought all was good. I had a letter waiting from a company that I recently sent an application and resume. I got inside and also had a package from Amazon I’d been waiting a week for.

I opened the letter, read it, and found out I’d been denied in deference to other more qualified/appropriate candidates.

Then I opened the package from Amazon. The book was fine, but the Cowboy Bebop - The Movie DVD sounded bad before even opening the case. I could hear the DVD sliding around in the case before I even opened it. Once I opened it, I saw the case was broken and didn’t properly hold the DVD in place. It was scratched badly and had a small crack as well.

This is where I’m glad Amazon has a good return policy, but that’s not enough to save my day. I’m pissed.

Thanks for reading.

Categories: Life
Tags: Amazon, frustration

DRM-Free 256kbps Led Zeppelin MP3s on Amazon. I bought IV and I’m liking it. I picked this album due to the universally adored Stairway to Heaven, but also hope to enjoy some of the other tunes.

So I don’t know about you, but Amazon MP3 is totally pwning the iTunes Store right now. The songs are cheaper and without any ridiculous copyright restrictions so it’s easy as heck to back up songs, burn them, and even use them on the iPod.

On the same topic, I like these lyrics:
“To find a queen without a king,
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings… la la la la
Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Tryin’ to find a woman who’s never, never, never been born.”

Categories: Music
Tags: Amazon, Apple, iTunes, mp3

If you purchase digital music at all (oh, I know some of you are pirates, don’t try to hide it from me), let me point out the newly born Amazon MP3 (beta). All of the songs are straight MP3s (no DRM) so they’ll work just fine on iPods or any MP3 player or can be burned to CD without any difficulty. The site doesn’t have as much selection as iTunes (at least not yet), but they’ve snagged content from major labels Universal and EMI. So you can enjoy artists such as Kanye West, Coldplay, and David Bowie.

You don’t listen to Bowie? Ok, that’s fair, neither do I.

Another advantage over iTunes: price. The top 100 songs are $.89/each and the top $100 albums are $8.99. In general though, song costs start at $.89 and depend on length.

via Daring Fireball:

Amazon’s single pricing is based on track length. Songs that are more than seven minutes long cost $1.94, songs more than 14 minutes cost even more. This isn’t necessarily a bad deal compared to iTunes — Apple makes many of these tracks album-only.

Oh, and for a sweet taste of irony… have you seen the new Apple nano advertisement? You know, this one:

iPod nano featuring Feist - 1234

The irony is that this song is the #1 (album version) and #4 (single) most purchased song on Amazon MP3, it costs 10 cents less than on iTunes, and there’s no copy restrictions.

Categories: Music, Tech, The Sphere
Tags: Amazon, iTunes, mp3