[Pan-users] Re: [Off-topic] Re: Re: Advice on other lists

[Duncan]

Steven D'Aprano posted on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:30:55 +1000 as excerpted:

> On Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:43:22 am Ron Johnson wrote:
>> On 2009-08-25 10:01, Duncan wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>> > But if it's all there on the MP3 player, there's no need to worry
>> > about trying to decide just /what/ to copy over, and then finding
>> > you're in a totally different mood, and it's the /wrong/ thing for
>> > your new mood, when you're on your trip and don't have access to just
>> > go grab something else.
>>
>> However did we survive in the eras of CDs, cassette tapes, 8-track
>> tapes, transistor radios, or before?
> 
> It's the magpie urge to collect "stuff". Some people collect music, some
> people collect stamps, some people collect those Russian nested dolls,
> and some people collect computer games that they never play.

Hmm... I believe you're right! =:^)

Here, I collect reading material, second-hand books, magazines I used to 
subscribe to before I realized I'd never read them all, etc.  I inherited 
the tendency from my mom.  Both she and I tend to make sure we have 
several books with us when we go on a trip, tho most of the time we never 
open a one, or only read half a chapter.  But, I've come to realize, it's 
an important "security blanket" for us.  Should disaster happen, another 
9/11 maybe, snowed in somewhere, the car break down and leave us stranded 
in some no-name town for a couple days while the local auto-parts store 
orders a part from half way around the world... whatever... It's 
important for us to have that "security blanket" just in case... so we 
know we'll always have something to read for a length of time at least 
3-5 times the length of the originally planned trip, if it came to it and 
we were stuck somewhere.

Extending that to the far more books we collect at home, I've often 
thought, with subconscious and mental stability implications that I 
didn't realize until maybe three years ago, that if worse came to worse 
and say the Internet died, or they suddenly outlawed Linux since I'm not 
going back to slaveryware, or something, that at least I'd have books to 
read for several years.

The same has been true, to a lessor extent due to the cost, for music.  
I've at least played all my CDs a few times, while I've not read all my 
books even once.  And I'm really not buying much of either, these days.  
But for some time after I switched to primarily Internet streaming, I 
used streamripper to save off several gigs of MP3 streams.  Then I quit 
doing that too, as I realized I was accumulating far more than I'd ever 
sort thru, at the rate I was going.  Now I just stream, most of the time, 
and very seldom listen to my CDs /or/ accumlated MP3 streams.  But, it's 
a security blanket for me now, in the event that the budget gets tight 
enough I drop Internet (tho that would now mean dropping phone, since I'm 
VoIP, and of course all the newsgroups/lists I participate in, and Gentoo 
updates, and... so it's not likely to happen).  I now have /both/ years 
worth of books to read /and/ years worth of music to listen to.

Some day... 30-40 years from now (which would put me at 72-82), when I no 
longer keep up with modern computers, no longer have Internet, and am 
stuck in a care home with little but a few changes of cloths and that 
ancient decade-plus old computer, plus maybe a few cases of books, I'll 
still have something to do with my time...  And when that computer dies, 
I'll still at least have the books, even tho I may have to have someone 
else read them to me...

And if I can have that hundred gigs or so of music on perhaps a two-
decade-old MP3 player, I'll have music to listen to as well... again, 
even if the computer dies.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman