...it smells like... victory. ;)

So Saturday we ripped all the carpet out of the office and bought enough new laminate flooring to replace all the carpet left in the house. Unfortunately the laminate needs to acclimatize to its new environment (you know, sniff around, set up its den, mark the perimeter... oh wait) for 48 hours before installation, which meant that the office was empty all weekend but for stacks of laminate--which meant that the front hall was full of office furniture, and the living room was full of stacks of books. (We have a lot of books. It doesn't seem like nearly so many when they're on the shelves, but we could build fairly substantial forts out of these stacks of books, and still have paperbacks left over for ammunition...)

So last night while Jen was at a New Works (er, sorry, The University Co-op Presents the Cohen New Works Festival) meeting, I spent 3 hours putting the new floor down in the office. I think I've gotten the hang of this flooring, since that was all it took. Tonight I'll do the closet and the bedroom hall, put in the mouldings, and then we can reassemble the office.

I'm really digging my Creative Zen Touch. My first impressions were that it is a bit more substantial than Jenny's iPod, specifically slightly heavier and slightly wider. I'm okay with that; it's still pretty small, and the extra size is due to a larger battery. So far it seems as if the claims of ~24 hours continuous play life are more or less true (it's hard to say because I'm not using 96Kbps WMA or whatever the claim is based on; I have both high bitrate MP3s and some WMAs that were automatically converted). I am a little disappointed with the software integration. The Touch isn't yet 100% compatible with Windows Media Player; you can copy over all the songs on a playlist (or all songs in your library), but you can't copy over the playlist(s) themselves. Supposedly a firmware update due in March will bring it up to full MTP compatibility, after which AutoSync should make life wonderful, but until then I have to use Windows Explorer to create playlists. I didn't bother to install any of the Creative software (except the required drivers), since I've never had a good experience with Creative software. :)

As far as sound quality, I'm very happy. I'm not sure I can hear any difference over Jen's iPod, but it might be the default earbuds; the sound is very clear, though. The player's interface is interesting; it does a very good job of not ripping off the iPod without sucking. It has a touch-sensitive strip used for scrolling; I've read a lot of complaints that scrolling through long lists is painful since you have to repeatedly stroke the strip. Apparently none of these people discovered that if you stop at the end of the strip and hold your finger there, the player will keep scrolling. :-P Anyway, so far I'm really happy with the player itself. The carrying case is annoying, though. It's very protective, but once the player is inside the case the only control you can actually access is the power button; you can kind of get at the volume buttons through the elastic sides, but the play controls are all covered by a stiff protective guard. It's really a shoddy design. The worst part is that nobody makes MP3 accessories for anything but the damned iPod; there's no such thing as a third-party Zen Touch case. Sigh. I'll probably post an update to this once the new firmware comes out.

Things for which I am grateful today:

1. Windows XP's System Restore: Instead of spending 3 hours reinstalling Windows and a bunch of applications on Jen's laptop, I spent 15 minutes booting into Safe Mode and rolling back to a restore point. What a great idea.
2. 802.11b: Better yet, I was able to do the above while sitting on the couch watching The Apprentice, rather than sitting in the office staring at a progress bar, thanks to our lovely wireless network.
3. There was a third thing which I have quite forgotten. Sadly, technology has not yet figured out a way to make my memory foolproof.
4. Edit: I have remembered what the third thing was: Microsoft's Automatic Crash Analysis, you know, that window that pops up when Windows or an application crashes and asks if you want to Send/Don't Send the crash to Microsoft. Jen's laptop bluescreened while I was trying to restore it, I hit Send when it came back up, and MS came back with a web page saying that it was a bad version of the Synaptics touch pad driver -- and best of all it gave me a link to download the fixed one. Much nicer than trying to troubleshoot a bluescreen and locate updated drivers myself.

So tonight I spent about 2 hours doing a focus group for a product under development. I can't say what product it was, or even who's developing it, because they made me sign an NDA. Still, it was fun, we got to see something new and non-public, got to give actual feedback that I know will at least be heard, and I got paid $75 for chatting about music and the Internet for two hours. (Yes, I can say that much--the product has to do with music and the internet. :-P)

I found the focus group by checking Craig's List for the local area, under "et cetera jobs". It seemed like an easy and reasonably fun way to make a little extra pocket change.

A couple of incidentals about the group: There were eight of us, and I was the only one who didn't have an iPod. Of course, as far as I could tell there was only one (maybe two) other person(s) who even downloaded music before buying said iPod; when I mentioned having downloaded the first version of Napster people seemed oddly impressed. Sometimes I forget I'm such an early adopter. :)

As for the product, it seems like a decent idea, something I would actually use, if the company pulls it off well--which I am not completely confident of, but then that's why the focus groups. :)

Some exciting news out of E3 (the big video game conference)... I haven't been watching the XBox or PS2 information, but I noticed some very cool news re: the Gamecube.

• I must have this. It looks like the greatest Zelda game ever. (If you get an error, just keep trying, it's hammered right now.)
• And Jen will be very happy to hear about this... (2-player coop? Cool!)

So I'm here at DevDays 2004 in Austin. I probably would be enjoying myself more if I weren't sick, but oh well.

The rest of this post is in the Extended portion, so those of you who don't care can skip it. :)