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Monday, January 27, 2020

"I'm Smarter Than Saran Wrap."

That's what my daughter said one day when she was having trouble getting a new roll started.  She's the one who dragged me, kicking and screaming, into the computer age.  The ones I used in the paper mill weren't PCs, they were computerized control systems for our machines.  I didn't get into PCs until 2000, when my daughter gave me her old laptop and suggested I could use it to write my stories.  I went online about a year later so that I could self publish my stories.  I set up my own website with the help of a software program that I downloaded from a CD.  Of course nobody visited my site because nobody knew it existed, so I got into social networking to advertise my site.  It was still a struggle to get people to visit my site because they would rather stay where they were and let the world come to them, so then I started writing directly onto those sites, which was more fun anyway because it was interactive.

I decided early on that there was no way I could keep up with all the new advances in digital technology.  The best I could do was learn the things for which I had a use as I needed to.  It took me a long time to learn what I needed to play CDs in my new truck, but I think I've finally got it figured out.  The salesman told me that I could plug a portable player into my radio's USB port, which was only partly true.  The players I found on Amazon do indeed plug into a USB, but only as a power source, you still need to use an auxiliary cable and an auxiliary input jack to get the sound to the speakers.  These players are based on the old Sony Walkman technology, they don't have their own speakers, but you can plug them into earphones or any other type of speaker that has an auxiliary input jack.  The reason I want one of those is because they are compact and resistant to jostling.  I could just put a boombox on the seat next to me, but I think it might skip when I hit a bump or go sliding away when I turned a corner.  Also, by plugging into my radio speakers, I should be able to adjust the volume while driving.

My owners manual says there are lots of devices that work through my USB, but a portable CD player is not one of them.  If I was a young kid just starting out, I might put all my music on an MP3 or something like that, but I already have a bunch of CDs that I have accumulated over the years.  I've also got some cassette tapes and vinyl records.  I've heard that vinyl is making a comeback, and I still have a cassette player, but I don't have a lot of time to sit around the house listening to music.  By playing music while driving I get to do two things at once.  How cool is that?

I like folk and classical music, which I can sometimes get on PBN radio when they're not playing modern crap or talking.  With CDs I can play what I want when I want with no commercials, no pledging, and no other stuff that I don't want to hear.  I'm not one of those people who plays the radio or TV all day for background noise, if I'm not listening to it, I turn it off.

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