About a week ago, my girlfriend (who's not terribly technological at the best of times) and I went shopping to pick up an iPod and associated stuff that goes with it so she could have a music station in her living room - which would allow her to download her record collection into the ubiquitous "deck o'cards" and free up space on her shelves. I, of course, being her pocket geek, went along with her to work out the technology bits here and there.
We wound up spending less than ten minutes shopping for the items themselves, and spending more time driving around to get the different components. And when I went to her house a few days later, I was almost horrified to see the stuff we'd bought still lying about, not converted or changed, not packaged and sorted out. Even the little speaker set we'd gotten still lies on her floor, unopened and untested.
See, T isn't the type of girl who has a huge set of speakers in the living room. One of the first things I noticed when we started dating was the fact that she has the television (usually turned to a reality show regarding cooking or crime dramas) on and running in the background. Being a writer and someone whose friends work in public radio (KUOW.org and KEXP.org - best stations in Seattle), I tend less towards having television on and more towards having either electronica, celtic Americana, or public radio running either in the car or at home.
I find it interesting - mainly because I follow the geek stereotype of getting to play and sort out the technology and toys you just got when you get home. If I get a new GPS or a new cell phone, I'm spending six hours getting the thing to do what I want to do within minutes of unpackaging it. I'm reading the manuals. I'm doing the research I couldn't do before. I'm even wondering how I could void the warranty on it within minutes of purchasing it. When I bought my first Xbox, I cracked the case and soldered a chip into the board, replacing the original hard drive not two hours after the ink was dry on the receipt.
Whereas T loves spending time riding her horse, I keep eying ATVs that I could convert to a biodiesel ride. I geek out on the idea that I could use methane to power a system, that I could put up microfine solar panels to power my house of dreams, or that I could use a windmill to create power on a farm. The financial cost of these dreams are secondary to the concepts.
So when my significant other hasn't opened the new, neat technology toy we got, my inner geek begins to twitch a little bit. And with the idea of new music just waiting around on her computer to be listened to, even more so. Partially because when I moved to Seattle and got involved in the music scene, I spent a lot of time hanging around with guys (and girls) for whom the Ikea Expedit bookcases were a neccessity for their vinyl collections. Hard drives full of music running into the terabytes, and standard living room equipment that wouldn't be out of place at a nightclub are partially the reasons I can't spend much time in a club in downtown Seattle listening to a trainwreck set by a "paid" DJ - I've been horribly spoiled. I have listened to people make music from Garth Brooks and Depeche Mode mixes. The unfortunate part is that my music eclecticsm means I also have nearly two terabytes of legal music I own sitting around on my hard drives - and I have at least two backups of that music elsewhere.
You know how nobody thinks they'd fill a 120GB iPod of music? My old PC had over nine hundred gigabytes of music on it in a playlist. iTunes simply couldn't hold all of it without crashing. My collection shattered iTunes and reduced what should be a robust player into quivering bits of code. It didn't help much that I was also usually following at least six or seven podcasts (my addiction to NPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me notwithstanding, Marc Gunn's Celtic Podcast and the Splendid Table keep me more entertained on the treadmill at the gym than, say, the spandex-clad behinds of my fellow gym-goers. At least the Splendid Table can use the word "lard" as a positive noun instead of a description one's thighs).
So when I migrated to a Macbook, I found myself severely limited by the volume of data I could parse, and realized that my collections really didn't have much use. I have copies of Barbara Streisand, for the love of pink triangles - a musician I not only can't stand but have spent much time and effort purging from my collection - and yet, like ants in the Pacific Northwest, can't seem to quite get rid of entirely.
And I came to that realization - being able to sort through information and music to find new bands and new realms of music is fun for me. I'm still contemplating putting together music podcasts and commentary and running it through this blog as a downloadable for the people that might find me here - though truth be told, my audience is not terribly large to begin with. I have a slew of videobloggers I listen to and download. I like hearing opinions. I like listening to political speeches (though the past eight years of having small conniption fits in the car when Dick Cheney opened his mouth on radio may point to the contrary), and I can listen to television instead of watching it without being distracted.
But it's not the thing of everyone out there.
In point of fact, the drive to find new things and discover new methods of getting data, information, or even taking a new hike isn't neccessarily the cup of tea of everyone out there. I like to think that I have the ability to move beyond that personally, but realistically, each of us have vaguely different focus points in our lives.
As for T's iPod - she'll either pick it up and scruffle through the playlists of music she likes, or she won't. My collection - gigantic, confused and organized in a system of my own devising that has a quantum relationship to both music choice, when I first heard the song and whether or not I could play it through my balcony's outdoor speakers to annoy the Fremont Street drunkards at 1:55 AM (Bach, Mozart, and sometimes Beethoven work best for this) isn't the same.
I find it funny, because I know my innate reaction to someone driving a $45,000 SUV one mile to work or play classes every day is, "Why would you buy THAT, when you could get a Scion for around $15K and...you know, not be piloting a M1 Tank?" But, some people buy 52 inch plasma screen TVs to watch poker tournaments on television - I cringe at the knowledge my 32" Sony gets used for the guilty pleasure of Doctor Who episodes and bad sci-fi on cheap Chinese food and B-movie dates with the girl.
So I'm going to wind up quietly and happily sneaking over some music to T's iPod and finding new ways to load her up on some stuff I think she might like. I may even burn some CDs for her on my own computer and transfer them to her. I might even put together a few playlists of music I think she'd like of some artists that I know I do. Because my level of adoption of the technology isn't everyone else's.
But I am going to make her put The Paperboys' full discography on there. A pocket nerd has SOME standards.
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