The old adage, “If you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes, it’ll change”, has certainly held true for the last month or so. That, or Mother Nature either has ADD, or she’s been consuming a lot of avoids lately. *chuckle* New England weather is always changing, but even more so of late.

Last month, we had enough nice weather that I figured I could put the winter clothing away, and pull the snow shovel out of the car. The next week, it snows. *sigh* : ) The week after that, heavy rains, and severe flooding. Not even a week after the flooding, some 20 brushfires across the state, with temperatures in the low 80's. This past weekend, a few more days of rain. And last night, a frost advisory. Frost! At this rate, we just might have Christmas in July! Yet in spite of all the unpredictable weather, I can’t imagine living somewhere where the weather was more constant, and less varied. Whatever the weather, each kind has its own beauty to be admired, and at the same time respected.

Technology has been kind to me this last month. Instead of fighting with technology, as I did in February and March, I’ve had the opportunity to embrace it. However, I do have another computer to work on soon. Yeah, I couldn’t say ‘no’ to one of my Better Half’s co-workers, whose having a problem with her computer. : )

For those of us who enjoyed our youth in the ‘70's and ‘80's, the cassette tape was our medium for music. Like anything else, time brings better mediums, and the cassette was eventually replaced by cd’s, MP3 players, and iPods. But what to do with all of your favorite music that’s on cassettes? Well, I went looking not too long ago, and found something that works quite well to bring our music on cassette tapes into the 21st century.

It’s called the Plusdeck2c, manufactured by a company called BTO. The Plusdeck2c is a cassette deck that fits into one of the drive bays of your computer, and with the software provided, converts the songs on your cassettes to MP3 files. In the past few weeks, I’ve been digitizing all of my music. I installed the Plusdeck2c on my old computer, and have run about 25 cassette tapes through, with no problem. On my current computer, I’ve been ripping all of my cd’s to my computers hard drive. With some 300 cd’s, and 400 cassettes, I’m going to have quite the music library by the time I’m done. : )

Having been doing all of this, my thoughts turned to my brother. You see, my brother doesn’t care for new technology. He’s still stuck in the cassette tape age. For awhile, I would buy the cd’s of albums that he wanted, he would pay for them, and I would put them on cassette tape for him. And I got to keep the cd. Sweet deal, huh? I thought so. Well, I’ve decided to bring him into the 21st century, kicking and screaming if necessary. *chuckle* My brother likes his music loud, and can often be found working in his garage with the music cranking from his stereo.

Recently, I found a product called a HiFi-Link that will connect a computer to a stereo receiver. That way, one can play the music on their computer through a stereo. Computers may have speaker systems, but they have nowhere near the power and loudness that a stereo receiver, and a good set of stereo speakers have. So for my brother’s birthday, I’m going to take an old computer, take all the crap off, install all of the music that he likes, and ship the computer and HiFi-Link up to him. No more swapping cassettes, no more worry about losing them, or wearing them out. He can just click “shuffle”, and go to work.

Well, back to changing out another cassette. Twenty five down, 375 to go. May you all find the beauty that is in each and every day, and take a moment to appreciate them all. Until next time.