My buddy Bags received an unexpected boon the other day while downloading the latest version of itunes (11.0). He once had more than 1000 songs there. Since that was taking up so much space and affecting his PC's performance, he pared the list to about 300. To his surprise and delight, every song he ever downloaded from the store has become available for play in its cloud -- and it doesn't take up any space on his hard drive! If he should want to burn a CD from it, all he has to do is select the tracks and download them. When my desk top crashed and burned three years ago, I lost my whole catalog. I didn't want to go through the hassle of uploading the songs from the CDs I've burned, so I decided to use Amazon to purchase music and store it in Windows Media Player, although I don't like its format. I'm reluctant to download any apps these days for fear of disturbing the sterling performance of my Dell laptop (just jinxed it). But when Bags said the songs were now available in the cloud, I decided to give it a shot. Sure enough, even though it's been more than three years since I've made a purchase at itunes, the songs are there. The only ones missing are those I uploaded from store-bought CDs or those burned by others. One never ceases to be amazed by the genius of the people who come up with this stuff. And perhaps the best aspect of all is being able to access Apple's wide variety of music stations through its mini-player, which I hope is safe to keep open while I perform tasks in another application. When I used web pages for radio, I had the feeling I was being monitored by the Wi-fi network of users I somehow picked up. There are about 20 names on the list. Now playing: CCR's Down on the Corner. I can also create new CDs to burn for sale on the street. Oh, I forgot -- that's illegal. Speaking of which -- given the snowfall yesterday, I wasn't expecting to open the floating book shop today. Since it was so beautiful, I decided to spin by Bay Parkway and see how things looked in front of the Chase Bank at 85th Street. The sidewalk was almost entirely clean and dry. What the heck, I thought. Why not spend a few hours in the sunshine, especially since the forecast calls for rain tomorrow? I didn't sell any books, but I did sell several of the CDs in Marie's latest donation. I'm not surprised the Swing Era stuff has been popular. I'm surprised Russians haven't snapped up the classical artists. Author Bill Brown, who just received a yearly $300 royalty check from Lulu, did, buying a Haydn CD. Thanks buddy, and to all the other customers, and Bags.
Visit Vic's sites:
Vic's Third Novel (Print or Kindle): http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
Vic's Website: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/
Vic's Short Story Collection (Print or Kindle): http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/6b86st6
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/94t5h
Vic's Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3
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