My Stomach Hates Me

I'm already sick of fast food. That's all there is around here at the NSLS. And it's shitty fast food too. I mean, it's the same old places--Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy's, etc.--but the crappiest versions of them I've ever tasted. I'm serious. I used to think that at least with a fast food chain, you know what you're gonna get, but that myth was busted as soon as I started coming out to Long Island. I have no idea what it is about this place.

Yesterday I found out that the Creative Zen now has a 32GB version. For a while now I've been thinking about upgrading to a new mp3 player, but one that can hold my entire music library. I still like having my iAudio for walking the dog and things like that, but I want more listening choices when I'm out of town. Since my music library is currently 19GB, that means I need something 30GB or more. That means my options were limited to hard drive based players like the iPod or Zune. But the problem with hard drive based players is that they're slow (gaps between songs), they use up more power, and if you drop them they can skip or even break because they have moving parts. I prefer the solid state players that use flash memory with no moving parts and low power consumption. But up until now, they've only come in small sizes, commonly 2, 4, or 8 GB. A few offered 16GB, and now the Zen has one with 32GB. I really like the size (credit card sized), screen, and user interface, and now that linux has good MTP support, I can use it to transfer songs from my music library on my Ubuntu PC. The only problem is price. I'm not paying $300. Maybe I'll wait a year. I think I'd be willing to pay $200 for something like that, and it's only a matter of time before it hits that price point. Besides, my next big purchase is probably going to be a wii... if I can find one, that is.