On Monday Amy gave me an iPod Shuffle for a father’s day present. It says “#1 Dad You Are” on the back (intentionally Yoda style).

I’d been wanting one of these for a long time, but had been holding off cause I didn’t really have a good reason for one. And yes, I’d been more wanting one of these than a full iPod, although I guess that would be nice in a different way. But I almost always listen in shuffle mode, and I don’t tend to have much in terms of video content on iTunes, so this is perfect.

I need to have a little AppleScript run as an hourly cron to make sure that Podcasts get included in the shuffling though, because by default they are not, and Apple has no preference to change that.

How I listen almost all of the time these days, both on my computer and on the new shuffle is as follows.

I have a smart playlist containing the 10% of my music library which has been listened to the fewest number of times. I have another smart playlist of podcasts which have not yet been listened to. I have a third smart playlist which combines those two playlists.

When on the computer, I always Party Shuffle out of that third playlist.

And I autofill the new shuffle out of that same playlist.

Only (very minor) annoyances so far… I have to manually press the “Autofill” button to refresh the iPod shuffle instead of it doing it on its own as long as it is docked. Also, when you redock the shuffle after having listened to it all day, the “last played” date for all the songs you listened to is time stamped to when you sync, not to when the songs were played. I guess unlike full size iPods the shuffles do not have internal clocks, which kind of sucks. But I guess it isn’t too bad.

Then finally, less than 30 hours after I got the thing, I had it plugged into my car with a cassette adapter, but still clipped to my belt. Of course when I got out of the car it went flying. And then I did the exact same thing again about 3 hours later. So the poor thing already has a bunch of dents and bruises. You can see several of the blemishes in the picture above. I was very upset about that. I like my toys all pristine and shiny, but I can never manage to keep them that way very long.

But I am still loving it. Using it in the car to and from work every day, and also at work at my desk occasionally. It is looking like I’m averaging listening to about 20-25 tracks a day off the shuffle.

Early on Sunday while I was in the office I heard a cry from the other room. “Sam, I need you!” I rush out. What is going on? Birds in the living room. Finches or sparrows or something.

Two had flown in through the open sliding door to our patio. We’ve been keeping it open when it is nice out and we are home. Unfortunately one of the birds had flown straight through the house and attempted to go out the other side, hitting a window full force and breaking his neck instantly.

But the second bird, seeing what had happened to his friend that he was chasing, had turned aside and was now flying around the living room. We got the dog downstairs. We put the curtains and such in front of all the remaining open windows, and started trying to help the bird find the way out. After sitting in a couple of different places he had gone to hide above a cupboard in the kitchen.

I got up on a chair to try to catch him. I almost had him, I had him mostly in my hand and was about to close around him when he flew again. In a big circle around the kitchen… then he landed on my head.

“OK, that’ll do” I said and slowly got off the chair and walked toward the back door. He just stayed there on my head. I made it to the patio with the bird still sitting on my head. Obviously a very scared little bird.

He stayed on my head about a minute. Long enough for Brandy to get her cellphone and snap a couple of pictures. Then he realized that we were outside again and flew off to a nearby tree.

I’m sorry only one made it. :-( But at least we were able to help this one a bit.

And he sat on my head!

This week I am trying to be good. Brandy is on a wider “healthy food” campaign. But my focus is on trying to do just one thing: See how long I can avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup. I started trying on Monday. Apparently I probably failed, because someone at work brought in donuts, and I had, um, a few, without checking the ingredients, and I gather there is a good chance they had HFCS.

Tuesday onward I have been good though. I’ve been reading ingredients on stuff I buy for snacks, and avoiding the ones with the corn syrup. And I’ve basically been skipping things with no visible lists of ingredients, “just in case”. Although I have somewhat been assuming that if I order the roast beef and such at the cafeteria, it doesn’t have HFCS.

But let me tell you, this SUCKS. All the good stuff has HFCS. For me it basically means no soda, cause I think the Diet stuff is foul. The sweeteners they use there are just as bad or worse. But it isn’t like cutting out soda isn’t good for me anyway.

I’ve been eating stuff I probably wouldn’t otherwise. It is annoying, but so far (since Tuesday at least) I have stuck to it. Not sure how long it will last, but I’ll go as long as I can!