I’ve been spending about an hour each night with the monotonous task of entering data into the MP3 tags in my music library. The obsessive-compulsive side of my brain is silently singing happy songs to itself because it has something else to do besides make my nose twitch or worry about the coffeepot; when I get done, I’ll be able to use the Smart Playlists feature of iTunes to update and organize the 25+GB of music into a comprehensive collection, weeding out the average of 50% filler on each album. Which means, of course, that I have to wade through each artist and categorize by genre, then drill down to the album category and categorize by year, and then finally wade through each individual song and rate fron zero to five. (Nevermind that I could theoretically erase the songs which rate, say 1 or below: this is about compulsive behavior, remember.)

Whew. I’m somewhere in the M’s, I think, and I have about 2,000 more to go. I keep telling myself it will be worth it when I’m done. It is nice to start making dinner, though, and start the ‘Early Jazz’ playlist: All songs in the Jazz, Big Band, and Swing category recorded between 1920 and 1929 with a rating above three gives me a pleasant mixture of early Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, Louis Armstrong, and Fletcher Henderson.

Here’s a fantastic gallery of pictures from Iraq taken by a soldier there. It’s worth a look.

My Kingdom For A T8 Star Wrench. Dammit. I have Jen’s Powerbook here at work ready to install Panther and I forgot that the hard drive sled takes a star wrench—the size below the standard in every stupid wrench set sold. (I’m swapping her 6GB drive for a 12GB drive.) I have one, but I think it’s at home. Along with my wallet. Can you tell it’s one of those mornings?