This week has been a tangle of cables and equipment. It all began last weekend when I had the bright idea of buying a little television for my den, so I could watch TV when we have guests in our guest room. The idea morphed into a maze of components and connections. Sometimes it has felt like Christmas; other times like techno hell. I am close to getting all the pieces talking with each other, but I have to leave this morning for a quick trip to Reno for a WESTAF meeting. I picture the Tivo, the XBox, the LG monitor, the Dell desktop, and the Comcast HD box scampering around my desk like mice while I’m gone, eating each other’s cables.
In the frenzy of buying and connecting, I finally tumbled to the iPOD craze. I was in Radio Shack on 16th Street buying a composite cable. There, in the window, was a sleek little black box with an iPOD Nano. And yes, they had it in black. I mainly wanted the white ear buds cord, the mark of the connected human these days. But the Nano itself is hypnotically elegant and right. When I figured out you can move through the menus by touching your finger in a curve around the controller wheel, I was hooked. I can’t wait to get on the Skyride bus this morning to Denver International, so I can plug in the white buds and cruise to Reno with Francis Cabrel, Neil Young, Stevie Wonder, and Herbie Hancock. Which leaves about 950 songs left to load into this credit-card-size slice of magic.
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