Sheila's Posts

Shortly after 8 am, I heard (through my opened window inches from the top of my head in bed) a flock of geese flying overhead. It seemed perfect to hear them for the first time this year on the morning of the day spring arrives, especially upon awakening from a night of restful sleep.

There is a reason this spring’s arrival at 1:32 pm is special to me. It’s the limit I put upon the time I’m allowing myself to be interested in learning new technical information. Now that I have a decent hosting company, it’s important I have a commitment to detox myself away from what probably made this past winter go by the fastest I ever remember a winter season passing.

My latest, and highly useful, project took an absurd amount of time to accomplish. For a long time, I’ve been wanting a way to listen to the bible, while I’m outdoors taking a daily walk with my Ragdoll cat for an hour or two. Oliver has been nagging me with his meowing cry lately, because he knows the weather is now decent enough again for him to enjoy some time outdoors. Oliver is five years old. It wasn’t until last April when I realized Oliver became depressed by seeing Puzzles (my brown mackerel tabby cat) and Rascal (my Chi-Poo dog) getting to go outdoors and not knowing why he was never allowed to be outside. If you know Oliver, you’d understand why he needs human supervision. It is true that cats which get to spend some time outdoors in a natural environment (i.e., not urban) live longer and healthier than those that don’t.

The quickest and easiest way to now have a portable audio bible is to purchase a GoBible digital audio bible. They come in three translations (each with a different narrator) and three different varieties. Their prices range between $63-$100 for the new ones. Amazon.com usually offers the best deals. Used ones are lower in cost, but not by much. The two negatives causing me to opt out of owning one are: high price and Alexander Scourby narrating the KJV.

It’s only logical that if you’re going to spend an large amount of hours listening to the bible, you’d be wise to invest a substantial amount of time with considering who the narrator will be. That means sampling your choices. Alexander Scourby does have a pleasant voice, but he talks like the words coming out of his mouth are on fire (i.e., too fast). Being that I would only consider the KJV, my choices were: Stephen Johnson, Eric Martin, and Max McLean. The other challenging choice was what tech gadget to use for listening.

As I was investigating my options for listening to Max McLean,¹ I started to think about how my son no longer listens to his iPod. I never wanted to get involved with knowing about an iPod and told my son when he bought his to not tempt me into thinking about it. Well, the thought of listening to the bible on an iPod became increasingly more attractive. Little did I know the full extent of what I was getting myself into with the goal I had in mind.² The obstacles wouldn’t have been so bad if my son and I would not be sharing the iPod. He treasures his song collection, so my challenge was to make sure it wouldn’t be deleted by accident (that will happen if you sync an iPod to a computer which does not contain those files on its hard drive — which cannot be installed on either my son’s iMac or mine since the songs were not purchased).

Besides stepping into mastering how an iPod works, it’s necessary to be well acquainted with Apple’s iTunes program. That means knowing about converting MP3 files into AAC files. If you don’t do that, there is no way for the iPod to remember the playback position. The GoBible comes setup with the ability to bookmark exactly where you’ve left off with your listening, but installing downloaded MP3 files on an iPod without going through the time consuming process of making all the necessary conversions for bookmarking will leave you without the ability to pickup from where you left off listening and without being able to use the iPod’s option for changing the speed at which the narrator talks (doing so does not alter the sound of the words spoken).

There are programs for sale to better manage the files in iTunes’ library… but, finding, comparing, learning, and using them could take a lot more time than just going through the annoying process of changing everything manually. iTunes is music friendly, but not so audiobook friendly. Once you’re done doing what you have to do, then you have a nice user-friendly compilation of audio books… but getting there for the first time is a lot worse than reading this post. I went the extra mile and burned the bible onto CDs in MP3 format for high-quality listening by my bedside stereo.

Now I can put or give away my previous bible CDs that were free from familyradio.com; they’re not only a poor quality recording, but also the last few verses in each bible chapter won’t play on the MP3 CD player I listen to (they do on some others thought). You usually get what you pay for, but how can you complain about what you get at no charge?

It wasn’t just this past winter I’ve spent too much time doing tech stuff on my computer, I also did it throughout a lot of last autumn’s season. With all the melted snow and rain that has hit my area, I’m once again attracted to the rivers, creeks, and lakes. It was the end of last summer when I first began kayaking. I loved it and can’t wait to get back onto the water! I’m also craving to ride the road with my bicycle. So is my son. My husband insists that we each carry a handgun off road now that bears are coming out of hibernation.³ There also are coywolves to consider scaring off too. I’m not too keen either with knowing about the evil rail-trail stalker (he looks for women that are alone) who probably still lurks nearby. I’m not paranoid, but I’m not stupid either.

What’s definite for spring here are Lyme disease carrying ticks, but they’re a little too slow for bicyclists on back roads and they’re not too fond of swimming out to meet kayakers. All in all, I’m looking forward to being less of a tech-know addict and spending more time outdoors! There’s only about a couple of hours left to winter as I publish this post, so there’s time for me to make and eat brunch before bolting out the door at spring’s official arrival.

¹Biblegateway.com uses Max McLean for narration.

²The price I paid for it was $35.96 (after applying the 20% off coupon code) from the products section of MP3 downloads from The Listener’s Bible ministry of fellowship for the Performing Arts.

³The black bears around here are aggressive, especially towards women.