Sanuk D

I don't know what I'm doing here, I should be someplace else.

For a present, on a cold and grey December morn another little iPod child was born. It was a Nano.

And my Sweet Lady sighed, ’cause if there’s one thing that she don’t need it’s another gadget blog for me to read. It’s a Nano.

People don’t you understand, my runnin’ needs a helpin’ hand. I like to have some music with me some days. Take a look at Fleet Feet, they’ve got accessories! So we can run a marathon and listen all the way.

And my CDs burned. So I ripped them all and made a list and synced it all. It was a jif. On my Nano.

I’d do long runs with tons of fun and listen to the Cure or the Rising Sons. On my Nano.

Then one day such great frustration my Nano died away. I tried to boot. I tried to charge. I tried the wheel but it’s bricked so hard.

And my Sweet Lady sighs. As I make a plan to see a man about my Nano.

As our credit dies on a cool and grey Holly Springs morn another little iPod child is born. It’s a Nano.

It’s a Nano.

It’s a Nano.

When you first think about it, a song about visiting a person who is dying of tuberculosis doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would make a good running song.  “Eye of the Tiger,” that is what you think of.  Or maybe something more recent like “Pump It” by the Black Eyed Peas — although that one samples heavily from Dick Dale, so you might credit him too.  But “T.B. Sheets” just doesn’t seem like the right thing to get you moving down the street or trail somehow.  Still it works.

Here is the thing, a great song for running has to have passion.  Prince’s version of “Nothing compares 2 U” has passion.  Great song to run to.  Dig deep, Shorty, dig deep.  Meatloaf (the singer, not the food) is not, to the best of my knowledge, knocking down 8 minute mile splits, but I defy you to let “I would do anything for love (but I won’t do that)” come on the iPod during a run on an easy day.  These are songs sung with conviction, whether or not the artist truly feels it, they make you feel it.  And your quads.  Your quads will definitely feel it.

So “T.B. Sheets” then.  It does have a strong rhythm, as strong as anything from “Elvis, Live at Madison Square Garden.”  From the opening organ riff and the very first harmonica wail, you know he’s in it with everything he’s got.  That’s the way a run should be too.  The putrid smell of my own laziness is as sickening as the stench of a decaying man’s death bed.  “I gotta go, gotta go, gotta go.”  You’re goddamn right about that, Van.

Back in the early days of this decade, I got my first PDA.  Well, actually, I got four hours for pda plus being in the girl’s lounge from Dr. Eason in 1987.  But sometime in the 00’s I got a Palm Tungsten E, and I loved it.  It was somewhat novel because of it’s color screen.  I put tunes on there, and watched some short videos.  There was some sort of device that downloaded RSS feeds, and that was cool.  All in all, it did everything I hoped it would when I bought it.  Then I started to see potential for more.

Somewhere along the line, I got a Gmail account.  I wanted that on there.  And I wanted the inboxes to sync.  I also wanted to be able to add appointments and such from more than one computer.  The RSS feeds were fine, but I wanted to do more real surfing.  The Palm platform was pretty good, so I was not ready to leave that.  So, around 2007 I got a Palm Treo 700p.  It worked fine, I reckon, and did everything the Tungsten did a little bit better.  Plus it was a phone.  But it did not really sync well.  I had to use the browser to go to Gmail and that interface was sloppy. My calendar was still tied to a desktop, and the whole thing was just very difficult to get working together.  The added stress of knowing that my boss knew that I could read his email on Saturday was not so hot either.

When my life changed and the data plan got to be an expense worth reviewing, it was not too hard to decide giving it up.  I was relieved in some ways not to be trying to keep up on the gadget train.  I went back to a paper calendar, kept the contacts in gmail, and generally went on my way.  But I did miss the days of the trusty Tungsten, and even considered getting a T/X at one point.  Little did I know that Apple makes a killer PDA: the iPod Touch.

Having been hooked up through a contest held by the good folks at Botany Buddy, I started my iPod experience this weekend.  Can I just say that, for all of it’s positive design attributes (which are many), the most remarkable thing about the Touch — and I’m assuming the iPhone — is that it simply works.  It works.   My Gmail is synced.  My Google calendar is synced.  (It just reminded me of a meeting in 15 minutes.) My contacts are synced.  My tasks are synced.  On top of all of this, my iPod tells me I am T-Pain, or will be soon anyway.

All of this was accomplished with plenty of good ole goofing off with the new toy as well as numerous other obligations this weekend.  The thing about technology is that it is only as good as the end user.  Yes, it looks good.  Yes, it is hipster approved.  But the thing about my iPod Touch is that it simply works.  Because its software is as well designed as its hardware, I will use this device much more than its predecessors.  I might also get a boat.

A long early morning training run plus a night at Le Opera equals a dragging, somewhat crabby Sanuk D.  No matter, the forecast calls for rain which justifies sitting on my butt surfing the web.  Alas, the weather did not cooperate and we were given one of those stunning fall days with crisp air and turning leaves, bright sun and puffy clouds on a backdrop of Carolina blue.  Thank God for Levolor and the example of Elvis Presley in his later years.

“What did you learn as you drove your cash-for-clunkers-eligible Dell down the information superhighway,” you say?  Why, thanks for asking.

A) John Mayer is a guitar player, comedian, designer, and serial monogamist who I can continue to safely ignore.

B) The only car companies which have produced diesel station wagons (convertible to veggie power) during a time when such features as anti-lock brakes and air bags have been standard are Audi and Volkswagen.  The Audi A3 is actually a small wagon like the Matrix I used to own and never should have gotten rid of.  But the A3 might be too small as space is diminished in order to run on spent fryer oil.  More study is needed here.

C) The iPod Touch really and truly does not have a camera — still or video.  There is no rational explanation for this.  I predict the situation will be remedied on November 27th, 2009.  I am the love-child-descendant of Nostradamus and this is how I know.

D) American Dreamz was a movie produced in 2006 starring Hugh Grant, Dennis Quaid, Mandy More, Marcia Gay-Harden, and … wait for it … Willem DeFoe.  Like, “I was a badass symbolic character of American idealism in Platoon” Willem DeFoe.  To be honest, the picture of Hugh Grant on the revolting cover of the DVD in the cut-out bin at Swingles is what caught my eye, but then I came home and looked it up.  Apparently this movie was in wide release.  Apparently I do not pay close attention to what movies are in wide release.

I am working on a spreadsheet which will list all of the things you can learn on the World Wide Web.  I am trying to decide whether to name this for the astronically large number of things one might learn or for the shout of joy one might produce on learning such things.  The first person to accurately predict which of these monikers I will choose will receive a 64 gig iPod Touch video on November 28th.