Tripin’

A while back, I got an iPod as a birthday gift. It is awesome. Being able to carry your entire digital music library from one computer to the next is amazingly fun. Wanna know what’s better than that? Listening to it in your car.

Enter iTrip. This little gizmo plugs into the top of your iPod and allows you to set a station and then listen to your library through your car’s radio. The default station is 98.9 and in Austin, that is no good. It just cuts out too much with bleed from more powerful, real radio stations. No worries, the makers of iTrip (Griffen Technology) provide helpful software to find radio stations in your area that are most likely free — meaning they only have static and no signal. I changed the station my iPod would use to 97.5 but that turned out to be sketchy at best. You know how in some sitcoms/movies/funny stuff, they show a person standing in a weird pose so the reception on their TV comes through? Ya, I kinda had to do that with my iPod. While driving. If I wasn’t at least touching the iPod, it would fuzz in and out of clarity as it competed for the station broadcasting from -Houston-. So, for the last week I had been testing several stations (while still having 97.5 set) trying to find one that is predominately static for the entire day. 94.1 was looking good for a while, but then I noticed something odd. When on my street (and on my street only) the station would lose it's silent nature. It isn’t that there is another station bleeding into it that is odd. It’s that there are -three- competing for it. A Tejano station, a country station and a general mix station. It’s just bizarre, and it only happens on my street. Anyway, I have finally discovered a station - 91.5. It worked all the way to work and we shall see how it does all the way back home.

Erm… nothing else for today… go home.