The Fredösphere

I!  Am!  iPod!  Compliant!

I've got the thing loaded and I'm shuffling through my 5.7 days of music.  My first surprise:  that two out of the first five songs made me say, "what the heck is this?"  (Answers:  a bit from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and the American Boy Choir singing Softly and Tenderly, Jesus is Calling.)  My second surprise:  I keep thinking, ooh, this is one of my favorites.  There's something about the shuffle mode that really freshens my stale old CD collection.  (I know that's not news to most of you.)

One disappointment I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere:  the repeated need to adjust the volume.  Obviously, pop music fans don't have this problem, since that music is always COMPRESSED/LIMITED FOR CONSTANT MAXIMUM VOLUME.  I suppose what I need is a tool to normalize my entire library.

I gotta go; I feel the ear plugs probing my ears for hospitable places to implant spores of an alien life form, so I think I really should figure out how to turn this dang thing off.  While I'm away, read this and see if you agree that TV's long record of excellence in this kind of programming means we should be optimistic they will get it right.  (And I bet the sound track will feature lots of spooky choirs singing Latin.  Backwards.  Latin, sung backwards and run through a ring modulator.  Latin, sung backwards while drinking a glass of water -- no, while drinking a glass of holy water, and run through a ring modulator while a pack of computer graphics-enhanced jackals lip-sync the music.  I'll stop now, but let me assure you, I could keep going.  I'm that good.)