A Monday Recap! I finally fixed my MPx200 problems: got an AudioVox SMT5600. Also fixed my music woes: WinAMP and iTunes both helped. Side stepped an inner fear: stayed in an MRI machine for more than five seconds… of course, with all the good stuffs, I now wonder if I’ll have more phone problems, an exploding iPod and a misread from the MRI scans in a backlash or something…

You remember my MPx200’s right? Yes, I have two. One refused to hold a call for longer than three minutes, if I was using a Headset. The other would spontaneous switch to Headset mode, which doesn’t sound too bad, right? Problem with it is that the phone will ring like normal, but if I answered it I couldn’t say anything to or hear anything from the caller! Unless of your you have the Headset plugged into the handset – I also found that blowing in the port would clear it out. Don’t ask me – I just got stuck with it.

Given the problems I’ve had with the MPx200 and the problems I’ve heard about with the MPx220 and the delays of the MPx – not to mention the fact that Motorola spent time in a lab embedding a phone with a sunflower – I’ve decided to jump ship: I now own an SMT5600. No more cradle or holster but the phone seems to kick ass, even with the screwy non-joystick joystick! Oh, I also unlocked it using http://www.imei-check.co.uk – he’s unlocked a number of phones for me now, and he’s not that expensive (especially for an instant response) – so I’m sticking with T-Mobile, for service.

Oh, as a neat side effect of over anxious buying, it seems that I have my current SMT5600 and another coming from an auction that ended later… when that one comes in, I’ll have one to sell back on eBay!

And then the music stuff. I can honestly say that I’m disappointed by Windows Media Player (sorry guys!). I usually promote it to other people, but having used it for a while now, I can’t use it anymore. I’m done. While I love the latest visual effect, it won’t even show the correct Album Art when the WMP is minimized to a toolbar – unless you run it in a large window, what good is it? Then there’s the lack of shuffle options. They’ve got these Smart Playlists that work well – they let you select some criteria and it dynamically builds a list. The problem is that it’s just for some criteria. So, you can sort by Album or Artist; you can’t further sort by Track Number and you certainly can’t Shuffle by Album: the pieces are there and it’s just been left out.

So I’m using WinAMP5 with a plug-in called Album List 2.0. The downside to that was that Album List required that the album name be in the MP3’s file name. It says it supports reading ID3 tags – which I believe – but it never gets that far because of the file names: it put entire subdirectories in as one album. You see I used to have my MP3’s stores as “Artist – Song Name.mp3” and grouped into play list folders. Album List has options that will let it dig through subdirectories and treat them like Albums… Enter iTunes. It’s got a feature called Consolidate Library… this takes all of the MP3’s that iTunes knows about and copies them to a new directory – it stores them in \Artist\Album\Song Titles(s).mp3… yeah, I know: *w00t!* I’m going to now store my music as \PlayList\Artist\Album\Song Title(s).mp3 and just use WinAMP to play music.

Then the MRI thing. I hurt my shoulder a long while ago and after months of PT, it still hurts randomly and painfully, so it was off for a scan today. Funny thing about MRI machines – they’re cramped and not very friendly to claustrophobic people. Am I claustrophobic? I dunno, but I know a few things. One is that when a couple of friends of mine put me in a car trunk during high school – I did this willingly, as we wanted to see what it was like – I freaked out. I figured that happened because I thought they’d drive around town with me in there or something, but I dunno about that. I had another MRI in 1998 – I dislocated a knee cap for that one – and while my head was kept out of the machine, I still felt very confined and I was borderline freaked. Go figure.

Today, for the shoulder, I went all the way in. The poor technician ran through all the regular stuff. I was fine. Got me situated and moved me into the initial position. I was fine. She rolled me into the machine, where I opened my eyes, and asked me how I was doing. I was not so fine. Two minutes later I was heading towards the lobby, in a bit of shock… Four minutes later I was back in the machine, a bit pissed off. Thirty minutes later – after pings pongs pangs and punks a plenty and 25 minutes with a cloth over my eyes – and I had my results… the results of those results will take a while longer, but still… good to know that a case of pissed off will kick the crap outta fear.

For every Ying, there is a Yang – if my Good Geek Karma is this weeks Ying, keep me away from machinery for the coming Yang!