My Chicago Garden

Well it hasn’t lost it’s luster.  I posted 4 months ago about dropping $400 on a "toy" and wondering if it was going to be worth it or not. Well I can say that I think I have/will get my moneys worth.  I’ve effectively turned off my car radio. I never listen to it anymore…nor do I play any CD’s. I’ve imported *ALL* of my small collections of music CD’s, purchased a couple singles off iTunes and imported all of my Harry Potter audio books for roughly 1200 sound tracks (majority of those are the Harry Potter books).

Every morning I sync the iPod with iTunes and download the latest podcasts for that day.  I have a routine going that seems to serve me well.  My biggest complaint is that I don’t have enough time in the day to listen to all the great podcasts!! Believe it or not I wish my commute to work was longer…of course I’m going to get my wish now that we are moving to Chicago. I’ll probably learn to regret that wish.

The podcasts to which I am currently subscribed in order of preference/listening order:

Daily Podcasts 

• The Daily Word from George P Wood (Religion)
• Buzz Outloud from CNET (Technology/News)
• Marketplace from American Public Radio (Business/News)
• BBC Radio NewsPod (News)
• Penn Jillete Radio (Radio Talk Show)

Weekly Podcasts

• WhiskeyCast (Food/News)
• Back Yard Farmer (Agriculture)
• Earthwatch Radio (Science/News)
• David Maister’s Business Master class (Business/Education)
• Manager Tools (Business/Education)
• Real Life Real Estate Investing (Business/Education)
• Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott
• BusinessWeek - Cover Stories (Business/News)
• Diggnation (Video Talk Show)

Monthly/Occasional Podcasts 

• Ask A Ninja (Comedy)
• Comedy Central : Stand-Up Video
• Brain Food (Science/Education)

Luckily not all the podcasts are daily. Some are even seasonal and I don’t listen to every episode.  I’ve tried to find some podcasts in the Information Security space (my chosen profession) but I found all the ones I tried to be boring, retarded (topics or speaker) or both. The only one that was tolerable was Security Now with Steve Gibson, but I find Steve to have a voice and personality that just gets on my nerves after a few episodes. (No offense to Steve, I’ve never meet him.)

I’ve also found another user for the iPod. Since the device has 30G of storage I’m using it as a backup for the critical documents on my home computer.  I can zip up the files, encrypt and password protect the zip file and then store it on the iPod. Sweet!