Bottleneck Bytes: This weekend I experienced two depressing technological foes: lack of bandwidth and lack of CPU power. I guess that I was really pushing things to their limits. For the bandwidth problem I was sucking down some great files (and huge) and couldn’t get a web page to load because of the downloads. I thought about killing the download but I had some great connection speeds. Reminded me of the surfers who are looking for the perfect wave. Once a series of waves comes along there is nothing to get these guys off their boards. So I decided that since my humble connection was maxing out that I would just let it flow and try to remember to hit the web site tomorrow night (CNET’s iPod Central).

The second problem was a lack of CPU power. I was using Videora and they have a little feature that tells the computer how important the program is. I left it on default which basically says that it is the most important program and everything else is insignificant. Can’t even play a good game of Cribbage!

I have been asked again about how to rip DVDs to iPod. I have looked at a bunch of programs but there doesn’t seem to be a cheap and easy way to do it. Sure, I could go out to a P2P site and grab them, but what’s the fun in that? What I really want on my iPod aren’t movies that are out there anyway. I want every Hitchcock movie, or at least those with Jimmy Stewart.

e-Books: Several years ago I read an e-book and fell in love with the concept. I collected some 1000 e-books, most of which I confess that I never read. I remember one particular trip that I read an entire book, all from my old Casiopeia (which is now in the possession of my youngest son and I don’t think that he has ever turned it on). I found that the Pocket PC fit perfection between the top of the steering wheel and the center airbag of my Cadillac. Sure, probably one of the stupidest things that I have done, but it was cool none the less. Then I discovered audiobooks. They are tons larger files sizes, but at least I can keep my eyes on the road. I am not sure that this is something that I will collect because I don’t see myself listening to the same one more than once, with a few rare exceptions. But, I am rather excited about one series – Orson Scott Card’s “Ender Saga”. I read the first three of these books (in eBook form) and will be excited to listen to the whole set. I listened to the first one from the local public library and was eager to hear the second. Someone has checked it out and hasn’t returned it. Grrr! They have the third, but that kind of ruins things when they are in a series. Our local library has several books now available in the MP3 format. So cool to see that this is becoming a much more popular format. If I ever get published I think I will negotiate for the audiobook to come out in the MP3 format only. Yeah, right, like that is going to happen!

Kudos to my eldest daughter for working so hard on her latest novella. She has been published a couple of times and is working on a rather lengthy work now.

Downloads complete, now back to work!!