Work, Music and Books

The last 2 weeks have been some of the busiest since I started with my current agency. I filled the VP of Sales role and my candidate started today so that was excellent and to date, it was the largest billed fee at our company.

Tomorrow our company is going to the Rodeo to see Willie Nelson in concert which I am pretty excited about. Not only is he a local legend, but he is an actual music legend and word is he puts on a phenomenal show.

I am finding it very hard to read lately due to lack of time. Since December I have been listening to several audio books (www.audible.com) on my Zen V. So far, I would say that Malcolm Gladwell is my favorite both in terms of his books and his voice. I listened to "Blink" and "Tipping Point" and I am finishing up "The Art of Woo" (spun from Buckinghams "winning over others") which is not a direct counter point to Art of War, but an interesting study in persuasion.

Since I am on the topic, I highly recommend you own at least one MP3 player. I am very product agnostic so I won't go on about how good or bad the ipod is or is not. I have nothing against the ipod, but I have not been able to make myself buy one as I find I can get more storage space in a device for less money by going with other brands.

About a year ago, I bought a Sansa e260 which I generally loved save for two things: first, it did not support audible.com and second, it did not have any kind of sleep timer. I used it heavily for most of last year until it developed a problem with the jog dial. The mechanical dial is a great feature when you have a lot of music to scroll through as it is much faster and more accurate than a single speed scroll button. In early December I contacted Sansa to get an RMA on my player and I nearly waited too long to send it (mostly due to traveling back to California and then forgetting about it). Long story short, Sansa replaced my unit inside of 1 week and they replaced it with a factory sealed unit that included new headphones and accessories. Not only that, but I got their revised model that now supports audible.com and includes a sleep timer! The new model boots much faster and generally feels "snappier" - highly recommended.

The Zen V I picked up just after Christmas. It is also a 4GB player but about half the size of the Sansa. There are trade offs but I would say the two devices are both very good and I like them equally. I use the Zen V to commute and listen to books (thanks to its better book mark system) and the Sansa more for music (due to the jog dial).