Since it looks like new iPods won’t be available until January 2007, I started thinking about getting a Palm that would act as a PDA (currently I have a Palm m515), but could also store some songs and have wifi access to the internet. The Palm TX fits the bill pretty nicely with 128 MB of RAM and a SD card slot. I could get a 1 GB SD card for $29 which would hold 250 songs or about 20 CD’s. I still think the ideal device would be a wifi PDA with a big hard drive that could play movies on a screen larger than an iPod’s. I started putting together a timeline like I did with the iPod to get a picture of the upgrade schedule. The TX was introduced last October, so it is already kind of old. I started thinking that maybe Palm would introduce an upgraded model this October. So I still may end up waiting (not a big deal since both my iPod and Palm work fine right now). I thought briefly about a Blackberry which combines a phone and PDA, but I don’t mind carrying a phone and PDA (though the TX is larger than the m515).
Jeb’s 45’s
Here is a mix that I made for Jeb for his birthday extravaganza at the new house in Athens. I put Aimee Mann’s two songs from the movie Magnolia because they are so pretty but largely overlooked and Rusted Root’s two songs because Jeb likes some of their other songs, and those two stand alone well (most Rusted Root tracks are long jams). But neither of those two artists mixed well with the mostly country and acoustic music on the rest of the CD, so they are by themselves at the beginning. The country part centers around Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss who both appeared on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. Gillian Welch also sings on the song by the Chieftains (I admit that I got “Katie, Dear” from iTunes largely based on the title which seemed to be an ode to my dog, but is in fact a really depressing song about suicide). M. Ward’s “You Still Believe in Me” is an acoustic instrumental version of a Beach Boys song that was on Pet Sounds, but on the two songs where he sings, his raspy voice sounds kind of like Tom Waits.
- Rusted Root – Magenta Radio (4:27)
- Rusted Root – Heaven (4:02)
- Aimee Mann – One (2:51)
- Aimee Mann – Save Me (4:36)
- Johnny and Ruth Carter Cash – Jackson (2:47)
- Lucinda Williams – Can’t Let Go (3:29)
- M. Ward – Vincent O’Brien (2:39)
- Alison Krauss & Union Station – When You Say Nothing at All (4:22)
- Gillian Welch – One More Dollar (4:35)
- M. Ward – Color of Water (3:24)
- Alison Krauss & Union Station – Restless (2:52)
- Gillian Welch – Red Clay Halo (3:15)
- The Chieftains – Katie Dear (4:28)
- M. Ward – You Still Believe In Me (2:25)
- Gillian Welch – Revelator (6:22)
Clio’s illness
Yesterday Katie got a clean bill of health and a green light to resume full activies, 16 weeks after her knee surgery. Ironically, I was at the same specialist today taking Clio in for an “abdominal mass” that had been detected by her regular vet last week. 
They did an ultrasound and found she has a large growth of some kind on her intestine and several lymph nodes have swelled to a couple of inches in size. They took tissue samples of the lymph nodes to run tests, but it will be Friday or Monday before I hear anything conclusive.
It is possible that they could operate on her intestine and the lymph nodes will just be non-cancerous swelling, but they said if she has cancer in her lymphatic system that they couldn’t operate, but might try chemotherapy. I’ve been reading about dogs with lymphoma (or lymphosarcoma), which is what they think she may have, and usually, even with chemotherapy, a dog’s lifetime after diagnosis is measured in months, not years.
Despite intestinal problems, she has been feeling pretty good lately. I’ve got her on a combination of salmon and rice dry food (for “sensitive systems”) with canned food mixed in. I think she thinks she’s getting cat food, so at least she is eating and not losing weight like she was in the last few weeks. Also she isn’t itching nearly as much, so she has to be more comfortable. She was awfully glad to see me when I picked her up yesterday afternoon and stayed even closer to me than usual when we got home. She drank a ton of water and promptly went to sleep. We went on a walk later on, so for the most part, she is doing pretty well physically.
Amazon Q2 Results
Despite the lower commission structure this quarter, I still did surprisingly well, making a commission of $192.21 on 133 items worth $4,238 (the average commission was 4.54% vs. 5.98% last quarter). There were 73 iPod battery packs sold, mostly the Belkin with 45. The inexpensive Griffin Tunejuice sold 13 units and the EZ Gear Powerstick sold 7. I think I could have sold a lot more Belkins (and other stuff incidentally) if it hadn’t been for Amazon having higher prices than Best Buy on that model. I have a link on the web page to Best Buy for $20 and Amazon for $24 and some people still choose Amazon, but I see a lot of out clicks to Best Buy. It would be very helpful if Best Buy would raise their price or Amazon would lower theirs.
It’s Alive!
I thought up a project where I could turn the Powerbook 5300c that Jeb gave me for Christmas a few years ago into a digital picture frame. The first problem was the Powerbook didn’t actually work. As you will recall, I found out that if I replaced the power tip on the AC adapter that I could get it to work. But there was no modem and the splice came undone, so I lost interest.
However, the 5300c has a 10-inch active matrix screen that supports thousands of colors and I have nothing to lose. So last night I took it completely apart down to the motherboard and various components. So today I rebuilt the splice (using butt connectors) reattached most of the pieces I thought it would need (not the IR port, floppy drive, video card, battery, battery power supply). That didn’t work. So I reconnected the power supply and it started up!