Man, I’m tired. It’s been hectic as usual around here, and while I have had several great ideas for blog entries, this isn’t one of them.

Andrea turned me on to a new radio station in the area: 100.7 The River.

This is our version of “Jack” Radio. I’m finally old enough where someone is trying to pander to me. Jack Radio is basically a selection of songs, heavy on those from the 80’s and early 90’s with some current hits, played randomly.

It’s actually quite fun. With minimal interruptions for ads, it’s much more pleasant than standard Top 40 or Oldies (although you might notice the word “oldies” in the URL for The River). Since I’ve been listening, I’ve heard both a song from Marrilion’s Misplaced Childhood and the Cocteau Twins Heaven or Las Vegas.

I’d been trying to decide on some way to get part of my music archive to play in the Jetta. I found a product from USA Spec which allows you to hook an iPod with a dock connector to the factory stereo through the CD changer controls. I have used the cassette adapter before, but it just doesn’t sounds as good as I’d like, and more importantly, it looks bad.

But I have a second generation iPod (no dock connector) so outside of paying $110 or so for the connector, I’d need to get another iPod. In researching this, the Phatbox from Phatnoise was brought to my attention. This is a component that fits in the place of the CD changer in the trunk, and it contains a removable hard drive for music. Using a USB cradle connected to a (Windows) PC, you can transfer MP3s and AAC files to it and access them through the factory stereo. At $160 for a 20GB system, it seemed to be worth a shot.

The install took five minutes, but I had serious issues with the software. I’m too tired to go through the whole story, but Phatnoise was moving servers and I was pretty much stuck in the middle of an upgrade for a week. Luckily there is the Internet, and I was able to get some help to fix my issues and get it working.

My stereo doesn’t have any real display capabilities, so Phatnoise as gotten around that problem by including “voice tags” that can announce the artist, album, genre, etc. It’s a real nice way to manage 20GB of contacts. For example, if I press “3” for album search, it will announce “Now searching albums” followed by “The Yes Album” or “The Hour of the Bewilderbeast”, etc. and you can search through them with the “up/down” scan controls on the radio or steering wheel. Once you’ve made your choice, it goes into “Track Mode” so you can listen to it.

So despite the problems I’ve had with the software, I think I’m happy with it. Next task for the Jetta: Biodiesel.