Color-coded paint pen or nail polish dot on the plug ends? I don't know. I'm not a toy boy; much to practical to have a lot of accessories. Yes, very boring and behind the hardware wave.

tags, darling.

if you really need to be organized, label both ends of each cable with what it's for and the date.

...so do you label all your plants?

I too have very little to keep track of. A dot of whiteout on a
plug end helps me keep track of audio or video.

Ki, I tag as much stuff as I can, but some of it is so tiny.....

I do need to be this organized because different ac adapters are different voltages and I don't want to blow up anything. I'd really hate to blow up the Nikon battery pack, even though that digital camera and battery pack are living on borrowed time. And some of the "widgets" are multifunctional, so I forget what they are actually designed for. I had even forgotten why I had an Apple Airport in the middle of my network until today when I decided to take the Squeezebox outside so I could listen to music with the bluetooth headphones. Ah, yes, wireless, forgot.

Kevin and Mark, shame on you for being so technologically challenged. Whether something is audio or video is immaterial, I've gone round the bend, it's all digital. If I ever get organized enough for a garage sale all the CD's, cassette tapes, the tuner, amp, analog speakers, CD player and cassette deck are all out of here. I used the cassette deck a couple of months ago to transfer my cassette tapes to digital. The rest of it, I haven't used in years. I haven't even listened to commercial radio in a good 6 years if not more. Thanks to an iPod gadget, I don't even need to listen to commercial radio in the car (without paying for Sirius or XM).

I do use, and will keep the DVD player and VCR, and will continue to use them because they are older and can be modified to bypass DRM. When the movie industry quits trying to dictate when, where and how I can view a movie, that stuff will go too (albeit, I don't watch much TV or rent many movies, it's the principle of the matter).

We won't discuss where I get my music and, no, I don't use bit torrent.

Does anyone know where I can get a 100 port USB hub?

Nope. DonÂt consider myself technologically challenged at all. I simply donÂt feel the need to have all this stuff. When I do get something, IÂm actually quite the whiz at figuring it all out.

Music  what is this obsession or addiction all about? It seems everyone has to be listening to music every waking moment. DoesnÂt anyone simply daydream or get lost in their own thoughts anymore?

Yeah, I'm not technolotically challenged either; I run a computer department for a living actually. But I'm pretty discriminating in the way I use technology. Unlike Kev I actually do like having music around a lot. But I don't care for headphones. I like a mix of my music and the sounds of the world around me. That plus the fact I like to select what album from my music collection (CDs) I want to listen to and listen to the whole thing--and the outrageous expense of the things has kept me from getting an ipod.

I've got my desktop computer(s) at work and at home I've got my desktop and a laptop and a wireless network (thanks to my toyboyish consort). I've got a digital camera. But the palmtop? Sits there unused for over a year. Just not useful to me. Movies? I get DVDs in the mail from Blockbuster. Radio equivalents? I've got four non-commercial radio options to choose from plus streaming off the internet.

My use of technology at work is for graphic and data management, at home it's communications and data management. I guess having to defend new purchases and upgrades makes me ever conscious of ROI :)

All the gadgets are pretty cool and I do want my consort to set it up so I can listen to streaming music plus the stuff on my hard drive in the downstairs speakers, but when I look at the $$$$ of components he's got sitting in the attic I'm reminded of how quickly things become obsolete.

Okay, sorry, I should have said you're gadget challenged. I do use this stuff all the time, I don't always use all the components, which is where my problem of keeping track of what widget goes with which gadget comes from.

Mark get a Squeezebox for streaming music throughout the house and outside. The wireless Squeezebox can also be hard wired. I absolutely LOVE mine. Not only do they stream internet radio and your music collection but you can sign up for Pandora which essentially allows you to create your own streaming stations based on what music you like. If you are so inclined, the source code is available for the Squeezebox so you can modify them but they have so many features built in you don't really need to. They can also be integrated into a server.

I'm not too worried about any of this becoming obsolete very soon. Too few people are aware of this technology and what it can do. I've even read on techdirt and /. people stating you need your computer turned on and running at all times in order to use VOIP and stream music. Funny, VOIP and my Squeezebox work fine with my computer torn apart while doing surgery on it. I guess they've never heard of a router or ethernet adapters.

The issue, as I see it, is the cellphone industry is now claiming to be "wireless", which it is, but it's not the same as wireless computing and that confuses the average person. And the streaming internet/music industry has people confused by stating these products use regular radio frequencies, which it does, but most people don't realize they aren't talking about analog devices. Until the masses better understand what's available and the potential, the technology/gadgets won't advance that fast (or not before what I already have wears out).

It absolutely floors me that people still buy analog stereo equipment. Now that's obsolete.

I only use headphones outside when I'm too lazy to drag a set of speakers outside, since I haven't gotten around to buying wireless speakers yet.

For the record, I don't even own a cellphone but I'm anxiously awaiting wifi VOIP technology to advance a little further. Since I already use WISP and VOIP.

Kevin, sometimes I just get tired of listening to myself think. There is some very cool new music out there that a person would never know about if it weren't for internet music.

Never say never, I guess. The consort is now weighing the Squeezebox vs. Sonos at the moment and I'm edging closer to becoming a podperson.

Ah Mark, how quickly we can change our minds.

You can't go wrong with the Squeezebox. I don't think I've ever seen a negative review. You can even forget the directions, just plug it in and let it "find" your network. Voila, music.

Here's the deal, I won my Squeezebox from my favorite internet station, radioio.com, so I never compared features etc., prior to getting one, only after the fact. It didn't seem to me that the Sonos was worth the extra money.

Yeah, Sonos seems a little pricey to me. My consort/IT guy says our wireless net work is not the kind that Squeezebox will work with. Discussing it, we decided there are only three zones we'd want to have speakers in anyway, and one of those is the home to the main desktop PC.

Winning one would rock! I'll have to check out radioioioio;) I mostly just listen to skyfm and somafm.

Netgear makes ethernet adapters that allow any outlet in your house to become an ethernet port. You could plug a Squeezebox into one of those. My Squeezebox works fine wireless but there is something to be said for using it hardwired. It doesn't get dropped very often, and 9 times out of 10 finds the signal again on it's own, but hard wiring it may eliminate any drops.

The Squeezebox is also open source, don't know anything about programming, but you should be able to write a code so it works on your network.

Radioio's history stream just plain ROCKS.

I should have mentioned, we have ethernet jacks in every room but the bathroom.

Ha, I draw the line at the bathroom too. Can't understand why some people seem to need a phone in there. But, yes, if I were building a new house today (or rewiring), Cat 5 or 6 would run throughout the house.

OK, lovin' the Squeezbox. The only problem we've had is it precludes using Second Life at the same time but we'll find an amicable way to share bandwidth. I think I'll start burning the rest of my CDs to the server this week.

When you get done burning all the CDs to the server you can do what I did, sell them. In a few months you'll realize how obsolete all the old stereo equipment is and sell that too.

And then I'll use the proceeds from the CD sales to purchase the ipod. I was "trading" my truly unwanted CDs on Lala but that's dried up pretty much. I wonder what some of the titles I'll be ditching would bring on ebay. Last time I checked it wasn't much, but a couple bucks would be almost worth the hassle of packaging and mailing.