|
| Monday, October 28, 2002 |
 |
Tri-coastal travel 
| | Just arrived home. Watched the Sun come up over the Atlantic as we took off from Ft. Lauderdale this morning, and watched it set in the Pacific as we pulled into our driveway at 5:04pm. I'll tell ya, it's no fun driving for two hours in traffic with a hyper-anway six year old who's been cooped up in in two packed planes from East to West Coast by way of the Central. What a marathon day. We even had to haul major ass to make it from Gate B22 to C17 at O'Hare in the middle of this thing. Not even time to stop for a Starbucks or a bag of popcorn for the kid. |
| | The low point: our breakfast "snack" on the plane from Ft. Lauderdale to Chicago was a pretty box containing: a bananna. No kidding. Guess what's the only food our family can't (or won't) eat? For about an hour the plane smelled like the primate house at the zoo. |
| | After we arrived at LAX, we went down to El Sagundo to chow a late lunch at P.F. Chang's (a big box chain, but not bad). Then I went to Fry's to buy my third MiniDisc Recorder. I lost the first one a couple years ago. Or it got stolen, I have no idea. The next one I bought a few months ago. Used it to record a lot of interviews and talks, including a bunch on the cruise. Then I left it in the Card Room on the boat at the end of a talk, when we were hustled out of the place so it could be set up for a religious service. Lost & Found reported nothing, so I guess it was lost & found by somebody other than me. |
| | Anyway, we stopped at Fry's in El Segundo to pick up another one. I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out the difference between the $150 unit and the $230 one (the one just departed). Both are Sonys, and packaged in those hard plastic bubbles you need a sharp knife to open. The $150 one came in a choice of gold or silver, while the $230 one was blue. Except for accessories (car power adapter and a some kind of a control thingie with a worse newbie UI than the left end of an accordion) they didn't seem any different, so I got the cheaper one. I still have most of the accessories from the first two, anyway. Hope they work with the thing. |
| | Gotta finish unpacking. Hopefully things will be back to normal tomorrow. |
| | [Later...] Well, after spending 20 minutes carving open the coconut-tough shell of the MiniDisk's package, I discovered that the unit is pretty much identical to the ones I lost, with one exception: no microphone input. What the fuck is that about? Shit. This thing is fucking useless except for playing back what I've already recorded. I looked at the packaging and all the specs seemed the same. |
| | The pitch on the packaging was "record from the Net." Well, so was the pitch on the package of the more expensive unit that came with a microphone input. |
| | [Later still...] A reader tells me the units in question are the mz-r505 and mz-r707. I lost the 707, and replaced it with a 505. The 505 lacks a mike input. There's more about all this, I'm told at minidisc.org. Here too. |
| | Okay, I just arranged to buy a used 707 on eBay. That's enuf for today. I'm going to bed. |
discuss
Copyright 2009 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
