YMCA - Last night I went to one of Michelle's step classes at the Y. She was substituting for a friend. This same friend will later teach her classes when we go on vacation. Both of us were a bit exhausted afterwards because it was not the normal time we work out. Michelle usually works out at 9AM and I at noon. By 5:30 our energy levels are running low.
As we're driving back home I mention to Michelle that perhaps I'll stop quickly at the McDonalds to get a large lemonade because I was rather thirsty. It dawned on me, though, that the other passengers, notably Timothy, would not be too content with me just getting something for myself.
As an alternative she mentioned something I was unaware of. Dunkin Donuts, that scourge of Nashua sprawl, sells kiddie sized coolattas. I drove to the DD that was formerly a Quikava. I placed an order for five kiddie sized Vanilla Bean Coolattas and one medium Tropicana Orange Coolatta (for me and Michelle). At the very end the attendant apologized and said their machine was offline for cleaning. I thanked them and pulled out. At this point Timothy started up the cranky machine. If he could talk, he'd say, "hey, we just went to a drive through… where's my treat?!".
We drove about a half mile to another DD (see earlier comment about sprawl) and I placed the order again. They asked their usual "is there anything else?". I said, "no, that should be enough sugar to keep them awake for the rest of the trip," and could almost overhear the chuckling in the background.
It took them a couple of minutes to prepare that many drinks. We had to keep reassuring Timothy to relax. Once I paid and we got our tray of drinks, we sent the first one back to Timothy before his head burst. The other drinks made their rounds. Michelle asked Daniel how it was and he replied "this is so delicious!". She checked on Michael and he just had the biggest grin on his face, with sort of a "where have you been all my life" smile.
MP3 - Yesterday the audio file format MP3 celebrated its 10 year anniversary. MP3, the bane of the music recording industry and the RIAA. Rarely have I seen a standard take off so quickly. Shortly after its release there was software for ripping CDs into MP3 files and numerous MP3 playing programs. By January of 1998, the first commercial MP3 player handheld, the Diamond Rio, was introduced with a whopping 32 megabytes of storage. Be still my heart! 32 megabytes! Even back then the major complaint was that it held so little — about a half hour's worth of music. Ironically, most of my 40 gigabyte iPodPhoto color iPod (Apple can't settle on a name) is unused, even after backing my laptop up on it and putting several photo albums on it.
For many folks MP3 seems like a commodity item now. It's hard to believe it didn't exist more than a decade ago.
Ironically, on this 10 year anniversary, I listened to my first amateur podcast.