Organizing Your iTunes Library with Ratings

I was talking with one of my friends Jason the other day, and the topic got on iTunes and how we sort our music.  As of right now, I have 19141 songs (57 days, 2 hours, 59 minutes, and 53 seconds, or 91.91 GB) in my library.  That’s way too much for one person to have, I think.  I used to have nearly 22,000 but I’ve been cleaning music out utilizing this process.

I use a whole boatload of playlists for various things… certain bands I like, my favorite albums, and so forth.  Truly, though, there are only 3 playlists that I use on a regular basis, and this is in an effort to weed out all these bands/albums that I just don’t listen to, for whatever reason.  To do what I do requires a bit of setup, and a lot of future discipline, but it helps you weed out all the crappy songs, no matter what song your library is.

What you need:
1) iTunes (obviously)
2) Quicksilver (optional, but definitely nice to have… get it here)

What I Learned In College…

College has been the best and worst experience of my life. I say that now, knowing full well that I have 3 semesters left to go. I have learned so much since the fall of 2005 when I stepped foot into my dorm for the first time. Yet at the same time, I feel like I’ve learned nothing at all.

See, college is funny. College gives us a place to go to “further our education”, a place to pour thousands and thousands of our parent’s dollars into, in order to get force-fed a whole bunch of nonsense that we will probably never utilize again, and more than likely won’t even be close to the career field that we end up in. But here we are, just waiting to line up at the end of the day and get a slip of paper.

Actually, scratch that… those get mailed to us at a later date. Fuckin’ pricks, can’t even give us what we earned on time. Right, Allyn?

Instead, the things that I’ve learned fall more into the “life experience” category. Even the things I’ve learned in school have fallen here. Humanities 2, the one I took only because I liked the professor (I thought I’d hate the subject matter), has been one of the most eye-opening and enlightening classes I’ve taken. That is, when I’m awake enough to comprehend the lecture. I’d call it class discussion, but there’s only one guy that ever talks, so…

So what I have I learned? I lump these things into 2 very gigantic categories: Things About Nic, and Things About Life.

On Elections, Gay Marriage, and Ignorant Voters

Man, this is *not* how I wanted to be writing post #200.  At all.  (Also, apologies for my absence.  I promise to explain myself, and soon.  But for now… on to other topics.)  A pre-emptive “sorry” for the long rant.

And no, I’m not censoring myself in this post.  I’m sorry in advance, but I’m really ticked off about this.

As many of you know (and all of you should have participated in), yesterday was Election Day across the country.  Governors, Senators, House members, and more were all up for election/re-election.  If you went out and voted, regardless of who you nominated or what party you’re affiliated with, thank you.  I think across the board, this election really went to show that every person does count.  There were tons of tight races across the country.  Colorado had to wait until this morning to announce one of the winners, it was so close.  If you didn’t vote, I’m ashamed of you.  Freakin’ A, apparently only 10% of the under-26 population in Iowa actually got out and voted yesterday.  What a crock. (EDIT: Apparently it was only 6% of the under-24 population… wow.)

“But Nic, I don’t care!” Then I don’t want to hear you bitch about anything mildly related to politics until the next election rolls around.  Seriously.

“But Nic, I didn’t know anything about <insert candidate’s name>’s stances or policies!” There’s this wonderful tool called the internet, and an awesome site called Google.  I suggest you acquaint yourself with it.

“But Nic, I’m lazy!” Then kindly roll your ass across the border to Mexico or Canada so I don’t have to pay taxes to support you when you’re eventually on welfare.  Yeah, I said it.