I would like to trade my iPod for a day with different people I know. It would be great way to get exposed to knew music, flirt (if you are trading with a potential hottie) and spice up your day.

Maybe there should be a “Trade Your iPod Day”?

p>I’d say we had a pretty unique Valentine’s Day:

First I gave her my gifts:

• Put the wedding CD I created on her iPod Nano and changed the Artist to the wedding day, the album to “Scott Loves Samantha”, and changed each song album cover to a picture of us.
• Compiled another wedding CD from all the songs I decided not to include or couldn’t because of space limitations.  Named the artist the same as above, and change the album to something else fun.
• Bought a bunch of her favorite treats that she enjoys.

The one gift I got this Christmas/Channuka was a new iPod. Technically, I got several gifts that I didn't like and took them back to get it, but whatev's…I got it.

I have had an iPod since the day they came out for Windows. I mean, this thing looks vintage. It's big, its scratched up, and it is dirty. But my biggest problem is that I have WAY too much stuff to fit on its 20 gigs. I would of replaced it years ago but I knew the iPod with video was coming and decided to wait.

I have mentioned System's newest album Mezmerize before, but I was listening to it in the car and had some revelations. If you haven't heard System before, the best way I can describe them is “frantic bitch slaps”. I say this seriously, because their music will go from a more soothing, normal melody to a verbal shock of dissonant screaming (which I call the “slap”). I say “frantic” because it isn't that predictable. Just when you think you know where a song is going, he goes and screams and slaps you once again.

A rule I devised (yeah, I’m real smart…) that I continue to apply every day is the “Three CD Rule”. Simply put, (like there is anything hard to understand here) you must listen to a CD 3 times before you can really render an opinion. This is not to invalidate you if you hate an album right away, but you wouldn’t believe the change in your thinking if you give it more time.

I have been really enjoying the Yahoo Music Engine, along with the Y! Unlimited access. With it, you can download an unlimited number of tracks and abuse them until you stop paying the monthly fee. It is exactly what Napster offers, but at 1/3 the price. You can pay $4.99 per month if you sign up for a year, or $6.99 per month.

I am an avid iTunes and CD guy, as prior posts have shown, but for only 7 bucks a month, I can discover and listen to whole albums before having to commit to buying them. You just can't fully tell if you like an album going off of 30 second clips. Now, I will only buy those albums I really love and want to take with me wherever I go.

Pretty nifty…

I added this to my Reinstall Windows Todo List, but felt I should devote one blog on it because of its importance.

To put it simply, iTunes allows you to play or “authorize” your music on up to 5 computers. If you reformat your machine before “deauthorizing” it, you waste one of those licenses.

As a developer that wipes his two machines every 6 - 15 months, you can eat up licenses quick. On this last install, I happened to stumble on this while looking at my account in iTunes and seeing that I had 5 computers authorized. Being as I should only have two I knew something was up. I sent apple a support request at 11 AM on a Saturday stating: