How ironic was it that Gerald R. Ford passed away on the first day of Kwanzaa, eh? I mean, given that the guy actually had an affair with one of his slaves and even made babies with her, oh wait, no, that was Washington, not Ford. Ford, Ford, Ford, he did something notable didn't he, boy, I'm sure he was a President but I can't quite put my finger on what he's known for. Ah well, it'll come to me. Anyways, he was a great man and an even greater American I'm sure.

I survived another Christmas with my family, or what's left of them anyways. I did have a scary moment on Christmas Eve. My mobile CD/Mp3 player up and broke on me. It would turn on and start spinning, but after spinning for aboot 5 seconds it would power down. So I was faced with a 10 hour drive to Smallville with NO MP3 PLAYER for the carriage, which is tragic at best, given that many sections of the trip entail driving through uninhabited parts of the jungle where nary a radio reception can be heard.

Thusly I had to purchase a new CD/Mp3 player poste haste. I travelled to the local Fairly Alright But Not Really the Greatest Buy store and picked up a Sony NE330. As I've already got the old car adaptor I'm thinking I can just take it out of the package and plug it in and go on my merry way. Well, it turns out that UcBlockHead decided he needed a bigger bonus because the friggin AC adaptor DOESN'T FIT. The bastards at Sony want me to buy a brand new one even though the old one works just fine, just so UCBlock can build onto his house or something. Bah, so of course nobody has just the adaptor thingy for sale, they want you to buy the whole car kit thing for like 800 million dollars more. Well, screw that and screw you Sony you money grubbing fascist bastards.

$5.00 later I had a pack of AA batteries, I plugged one into it (it only takes one) and BLAMO I'm back in the tunes. The thing works great and I really dig the remote, it makes it much safer to look for songs while driving. I didn't spend any time tweaking the sound as it sounds right good with the default settings, but it comes with some EQ capabilities I think, should the need arise. The cool thing about using a battery is that the player remembers where it was when you turned it off, which is right nice. Still, I'm going to have to get an adaptor (unless UC can mail me a free one, plus a fiver for the batteries I had to buy, which would be the right thing to do after all) but the batteries I bought should last for months at the rate I use it.

As such I made the journey to and fro Smallville and can put a fork in another festive Christmas holiday season.

The End.