Best since spliced bread
Jan. 14th, 2008 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
constanceMy big-ticket Christmas present, the one I actively campaigned for, is turning out to be as big a hit for everyone I know as it has been for me, and incidentally will be lots more work for me than I ever quite bargained for.
The backstory: I spent my high school and college years listening to music that along with my oddities of dress and attitude made me a total freak in every school I went to (though at least my university was enormous enough that I found plenty of fellow freaks to hang out with), and thus I ended up with quite a bit of music far too obscure ever to make it onto CD, or else that I never quite loved enough to want to buy a second time on CD. Stubbornly through the years I've held on to my albums and cassettes, and insisted that I have one working turntable and one working cassette player in my house at any given moment; in case I am stricken with the urge to listen to, say, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions or The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, I want to be able to sit down and listen to them, you know? Right away. Because who knows when I'll next have that urge, and I know you know that when "Rattlesnakes" is what you want, nothing else will do.
The story proper: Anyway, I've been wanting a converter for my albums and cassettes, so that I can turn them into MP3s and listen to them anywhere and not just sitting in my living room, and so for Christmas this year, I requested and got one. It is amazing! It is so amazing that I feel compelled to mention it to people like the starry-eyed technophile I am, and I never suspected when I first started talking it up that this is one piece of technology that even die-hard technophobes can get behind, but it's true: I mention it to the guy who didn't start buying CDs until the year 2000 because he was convinced CDs were just a passing fad, and he gets as starry-eyed as I am. And then he says, "You know, I've got three/six/seventeen boxes of old albums just getting dusty in my guest room closet. Do you think maybe you could...?"
And what can I say to a request like that? I know the pain of dwindling supply, I know that sooner or later those of us with record collections we don't want to get rid of aren't going to be able to play our records any more without an investment in a piece of expensive antique equipment; and a more hardhearted person might be able to say, "sorry, Dude, convert your own records if you want them converted so much," but I totally can't. It's hard enough for me to say no when I don't empathize.
So I figure I'll be finishing the backlog of conversions in about two years. If you have anything you'd like to add to the list, now's the time to say so.
The backstory: I spent my high school and college years listening to music that along with my oddities of dress and attitude made me a total freak in every school I went to (though at least my university was enormous enough that I found plenty of fellow freaks to hang out with), and thus I ended up with quite a bit of music far too obscure ever to make it onto CD, or else that I never quite loved enough to want to buy a second time on CD. Stubbornly through the years I've held on to my albums and cassettes, and insisted that I have one working turntable and one working cassette player in my house at any given moment; in case I am stricken with the urge to listen to, say, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions or The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, I want to be able to sit down and listen to them, you know? Right away. Because who knows when I'll next have that urge, and I know you know that when "Rattlesnakes" is what you want, nothing else will do.
The story proper: Anyway, I've been wanting a converter for my albums and cassettes, so that I can turn them into MP3s and listen to them anywhere and not just sitting in my living room, and so for Christmas this year, I requested and got one. It is amazing! It is so amazing that I feel compelled to mention it to people like the starry-eyed technophile I am, and I never suspected when I first started talking it up that this is one piece of technology that even die-hard technophobes can get behind, but it's true: I mention it to the guy who didn't start buying CDs until the year 2000 because he was convinced CDs were just a passing fad, and he gets as starry-eyed as I am. And then he says, "You know, I've got three/six/seventeen boxes of old albums just getting dusty in my guest room closet. Do you think maybe you could...?"
And what can I say to a request like that? I know the pain of dwindling supply, I know that sooner or later those of us with record collections we don't want to get rid of aren't going to be able to play our records any more without an investment in a piece of expensive antique equipment; and a more hardhearted person might be able to say, "sorry, Dude, convert your own records if you want them converted so much," but I totally can't. It's hard enough for me to say no when I don't empathize.
So I figure I'll be finishing the backlog of conversions in about two years. If you have anything you'd like to add to the list, now's the time to say so.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 07:18 pm (UTC)