i finally did it.

i bought a little electronic device last year you may have heard of called an iPod. now, in my defense, i have lecherously coveted an mp3 player for years, long before you couldn't throw a rock without hitting someone with those annoying little white cords hanging out of their head. the main reason i wanted one was because i was enchanted by the idea of being able to carry my entire music collection around in my pocket, which is no small feat when you own somewhere in the neighborhood of 700-800 CDs.

what i was lacking was a computer on which to put all of said CDs. i have a laptop through my job, but clearly i wasn't going to use that, and it didn't have enough hard disk space anyway. in september, when i moved in with my girlfriend, i "inherited" an old dell desktop that she'd had since '01, but that had been sitting in a box collecting dust since '03. i got the bright idea to clean it up, upgrade it (i.e., add more hard disk space), and turn it into my very own "music server" (which is a glorified term for a digital dumping ground for my musical obsessions).

this idea percolated in the back of my head for several months; one can't rush these things. finally, i got up the gumption to visit a local CompUSA, where i purchased (A) an 80GB hard drive, (b) a wireless card, so i go could online and surf porn during the many mind-numbing hours of ripping CDs, and (c) something called a KVM switch, which allows you to hook up multiple computers to the same monitor, mouse, and keyboard, thus saving precious office real estate.

any old way, the installation of the new hard drive was my biggest concern; even though i make my living writing software, my job never requires me to delve into the guts of a computer. the salesman at CompUSA assured me that it would be a task roughly equivalent in complexity to eating a delicious slice of cake. well, on a purely physical level, he was correct; it was pretty easy. the problem was, ye olde desktop didn't allow for the presence of multiple hard drives, so i had to take out the original one before installing the new one. this left me in the position of needing to re-install Windows Me, which is what the desktop originally came with. unfortunately, the CD was nowhere to be found. what i did have was a Windows XP CD, but for some reason, when i tried to install it, the system just sat there with it's arms folded, shaking it's head and saying "no no no no no no NO!" in a bratty voice.

to say the least, i was unhappy. much pouting on my part ensued. i took some time to cool off, then e-mailed a good friend of mine who works in IT for advice. he informed me that you can take a Windows CD and create 3.5" floppy disks out of it (remember those things?) that the computer will recognize when booting up. so, to make long story longer, i did, and it worked. and now, i am sitting here eating my noah's bagel, sipping coffee and ripping CD after CD onto my new music server. just a few more weeks and i'll be done...