Archive for October, 2005
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
Dear [Lynn],
Yes. No one was more disappointed with his re-election than me. What I couldn’t get was how he won. After all, Carey beat him hands-down in all three of the debates. Plus, Bush had a well-established reputation of lying and fudging the facts (those false claims of nuclear material being traded in Africa by terrorist nations, the claims of WMDs in Iraq, and on and on). Yet he still won. I truly believe the election was fixed, or at least, some ballot boxes were stuffed somewhere.
Tom
Posted in Letters, Lynn, People | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
Dear [Lynn],
Just try going to
http://www.consumerreports.org
and then once there, run a search for “MP3 Players”, and it will give you two pages of articles from which I took the ones cited below.
CD technology is older but due to that, also more reliable. Plus it’s cheap enough that if she really would rather have the no-moving-parts flash-memory based players, you wouldn’t be out too much money.
Sony makes some good portable CD MP3 players for $64 or less.
Yes, I woke up at around 6:00. I get my best writing done between now and 11:00. Even if I sleep until 8:00 for example, my creative energies seem to leave me at 11:00 or so. So I try to get up early to have the most time with the muses each day.
Tom
Posted in Journal, Letters, Lynn, MP3 Players, People, Portable Players, Writing Business | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
Dear [Lynn],
I own a Philips CD MP3 player and it’s good — easy on batteries, nice anti-skip feature, and is not heavy.
Today, I saw some Sony CD MP3 players for $40 at Wal Mart.
Tom Hesley
Posted in Letters, Lynn, People, Reviews | No Comments »
Monday, October 24th, 2005
Dear [Lynn],
Yes, if your MP3s are at 128 kbps, that would be about right. All my files are at 256 kbps (they take twice the space but the better sound is worth it). However, since [your daughter] is probably not an audiophile, 128 kbps figures would no doubt work well for her.
Hmmm, just think: If they had a portable CD player that could read DVD-Rs, she could get almost 100 hours of 128 kbps music PER DISC! But alas, I know of no portable yet that understands DVD-R.
Tom
Posted in Audio, Letters, Lynn, People | No Comments »
Monday, October 24th, 2005
Dear [Lynn],
CD-reading MP3 players look just like a portable CD player like the Sony Discman, but have the added capability that in addition to playing the standard audio CDs that you commonly find in music stores, they can also play computer data CDs with MP3 files on them.
Good choices are:
The Sony D-NE10
Has a charging stand, although at $159.95 (Crutchfield), this might be a bit pricy.
The Sony D-NE319 BLUE
This is a cheaper one at $49.95, although it has no charging stand. But it only takes a single AA battery. Even if she can’t charge the battery, a one of those packs of sixteen AA batters you can get at Sam’s Club should last her six months easily.
The Philips EXP103
This one goes for $129.95, has good anti-skip protection, although it has a car kit that El may not need.
[These] are three I could think of. [...] [Hope this helps.]
Tom
Posted in Letters, Lynn, MP3 Players, People, Portable Players | No Comments »
Friday, October 21st, 2005
Dear [Tad],
Yes, it’s unfortunate that Amtrak is so poorly run. However, that’s been a hold-over since the Penn Central days, prior to when the government took over many rail services (ConRail). It’s hard to justifiably ask for a continuation of such a poor example of a viable business. 
Tom
Posted in Journal, Letters, People, Platonic, Relationships, Tad | No Comments »
Thursday, October 20th, 2005
Dear [Emmy],
Shopping went well. We’re all stocked up now for the next week or two.
The blanket turned out as white as can be. The yellow stains came out of it pretty well this time.
I went to the bank to deposit some checks Joann had written me, as well as a cellphone rebate. I got $50 back from buying the 6100 phone in August.
Email is cool and having a buddy is even better. 
On the early morning phone calls: You said, “…less than too days…” Did you mean _two_? *smile*
Take care, and I’ll catch you later,
Tom Hesley
Posted in Emmy, Journal, Letters, People, Shopping | No Comments »
Thursday, October 20th, 2005
Hi [Emmy].
Just responding to the rest of your message.
Yes, we do get along much better these days than we did in ’03. I think the dog was a big sticking point between us. I hope, if you do get another dog, that we’ll still get along as well as we have been. Bob also troubled me, but since he’s not around anymore, well, things seem better for us. You seem to care a great deal.
I bought some Cheerios and Mini Wheats for when you come. There’ll be plenty of good stuff to eat.
Talk to you later,
Tom
Posted in Emmy, Food, Journal, Letters, People, Platonic, Relationships, Shopping | No Comments »
Thursday, October 20th, 2005
Dear [Emmy],
Good morning. I’m going shopping here in a little while with Joann, and washing this big quilt at the Laundromat. It didn’t come out as clean as I [...] like the last time.
Yes, you mentioned the stabbing. Be careful.
Yes, I value deeply [Mentat's] friendship. He really helps clarify things, and the emails we do give me a great way to hone my writing skills. It’s been wonderful.
Well, gotta go. She’s outside waiting for me. I’ll write more later.
Tom Hesley
Posted in Emmy, Journal, Letters, Mentat, People, Platonic, Relationships, Shopping | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 19th, 2005
Dear [Lynn],
I’m currently not a consumer of these no-moving-parts technologies. However, I do use MP3 CDs. Perhaps [your daughter] doesn’t need a large variety of music, and if that’s so, these players seem great. Which YEPP are you considering? There seem to be several. The smaller YEPPs don’t hold lots of music. Have you considered their 20 GB media center? That could store over a thousand hours, although it’s probably harder on batteries since it has a hard disk drive in it.
Alternatively, consider a portable MP3 CD player. They’re cheaper (less than $60), almost always use standard AA batteries, last for 30 – 50 hours per battery set, and she’d have as much music available as she’d be willing to carry on the discs.
CDs with hi-fi MP3 files (256 kbps) hold almost seven hours per disc. You could fit almost fourteen hours of commonly-available 128 kbps MP3s. On twenty full discs, almost 300 hours of tunes would fit. Of course, the catch of these players is that you have to carry CDs, and they aren’t as rugged as the YEPPs. Good luck choosing.
Tom
Posted in Journal, Letters, Lynn, MP3 Players, People, Portable Players | No Comments »