2001-05-28 - 11:10 p.m.

Computer Warrior

I think that I've mentioned that I have a pretty huge CD collection. Lily, on the other hand, has about 7 CDs but over a thousand MP3s. She's poked gentle fun at the fact that I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on my music while she's spent... well, almost nothing.

I haven't been listening to that much music recently, mainly because it hasn't been convenient. The stereo is on the other side of the room, and Lily can't hear her MP3s while it is playing. Lily has offered to turn my computer into a stereo, and today I finally took her up on it.

Actually, what kept me from doing this up until now was the fact that I had almost no hard disk space. But since she installed a new HD on my machine, I have oodles of room.

Watching Lily when she is doing some serious computing is an awesome experience. She is like an unstoppable force, moving in a straight line toward the answer to whatever question happens to be front of her. Woe betide anything that gets in her way. She furiously clicks her way into a site and then opens another window when the first page is loading too slowly.

First she downloaded Winamp onto my machine. She'd done this a while ago, but I hadn't used it much and now the version was obsolete. She'd shown me how to use it, but I forgotten how. Lily firmly told me that the only way to really learn to use something is to tinker with it and discover for yourself the ins and outs of it.

I asked her if it was possible for me to build up a library of MP3s using my own CDs. I'd then have a playlist of songs that wouldn't require me getting up every three minutes to change the CD. No problem, she said.

She quickly got a list of sites that offered CDs "Rippers." Some didn't work or required buying and registering the software. After a few minutes she finally found one that would work on my computer.

She then set me up with a MP3 sharing service. Previously she'd set me up with BearShare, but I'd hardly used it. In the interim she'd come to the conclusion that there was a better service available - Audiogalaxy.

Without going into too much technical detail, it allows you to access a huge library of music that is on the computers of other users, and at the same time it allows users to access the MP3s that are on your computer, too.

I was just in awe of how quickly Lily was able to set all this up, and how totally goal-oriented she was as she ruthlessly rejected possible solutions to the problems until she hit on the best one. I've been using computers for over 25 years, but I don't know if I could ever be as speedy and skillful at it as Lily is.