Love love love my iPod

It all started three months ago, when my favorite brother in law brought his iPod with him to my parents' house. At that point, I had read many reviews of the various MP3 players out there and thought it would be neat to be able to tote our entire CD collection around with me, but I couldn't quite justify the cost. When I was finally confronted with how small the 40GB iPod really is and with how cool the click wheel is in practice, however... the true lusting began. I told everyone that what I really wanted for Christmas was cash towards purchasing one of my own. Add to that a very generous birthday advance from my parents, and I was finally able to lay out the necessary $400. I did have a moment of hesitation over the price tag (am I really going to spend $400 on a music player?) but my technopile id won out and soon the little white & chrome gadget was mine.

I've had my iPod for about two weeks now and I can definitely say that it is the best extravagance I have ever fallen for. Thanks to the Monster iCarPlay adapter my sis and her hubby got me for Christmas, I can enjoy my purchase during my 1¼ hour commutes to & from work. Once I get to work, I put on my headphones and can listen to music all day on a single charge. Several small scratches have started to appear on my iPod, so I'm thinking about getting a case for it, probably an iSkin evo², 'though I can't quite decide on the color.

The iPod has a very bright backlight, so I could still select albums during my (dark) commute home. Instead, I have been putting the iPod in Shuffle mode, where it randomly selects from the 1800+ songs currently loaded on it. Some interesting observations:

• I'm much better at identifying the artist than the song title – largely a symptom of having traditionally listened to entire albums rather than individual songs.
  
• You can actually listen to Billy Joel followed by Kittie followed by Garth Brooks followed by Bif Naked without having your brain explode.
• Songs stand out much more when they're not played in the context of an album. It seems fairly evenly split between whether this is a good thing vs. pointing out that the song was really just cr@p filler.