Toys
This week had a major downside. My $60 Zaurus case, with a 128MB CF card inside, went missing from college. Nobody has turned it in yet, apparently. Also, my combo portable CD player/radio stopped working. I knew it was going to soon, but it finally died on me. Never fun.. Tonight, I kind of made up for part of that.
I bought a CD player from Sony that plays MP3 CDs and shows ID3 info, and also picks up local TV and weather stations, along with playing CDs, CD-Rs, and CD-RWs. I haven't tested it yet, but it seems good enough for my needs.
I also picked up a Sony DVD player. I'm pretty strict in what I want as far as entertainment center equipment goes, but I only had so much I wanted to spend on a DVD player. Now first of all, I really dislike this concept of, "Let's put all the buttons on the remote control and leave none on the player!" I want to be able to navigate menus without a remote. I want to go into setup. I want to do all of that. This one doesn't let me, unfortunately, navigate menus and such from the DVD player, but it was the only one I liked that was in my price range. It plays DVDs, CDs, MP3 CDs, JPEG CDs, DVD-Rs, DVD-R+s, DVD-RWs, and DVD-RW+s. It works well enough, and was simple to setup (aren't they all?).
I had one condition, however. I wanted Circuit City to throw in a free velcro cord thing that they use to keep the remotes attached to the players. Best Buy said they'd throw one in, since I expressed an interest, and I wanted Circuit City to match that. They were a bit confused at first, but ended up giving me one, so that was good.. Should keep me from losing this remote :)
The funny thing about this player is that it came with 2 AA batteries for the remote. The remote, however, takes AAAs. Somebody screwed up :)