I usually begin transposing my blog late in the afternoon after a long day of job hunting and tend to complete it anywhere between 6pm and 9pm. However, I sit here at the breakfast table drinking my breakfast brew and lo and behold, it is actually breakfast time! …And this is all after just 4 hours sleep!
I’ve obviously got some catching up to do but first of all, let me explain my absence.
From 11am on Day 15 right through until 5pm on Day 16, I suffered from a terrible condition that has become increasingly difficult for the modern-day- man to cope with. Cut adrift from the world as we know it, it was akin to losing an arm as I found myself enduring the agonising pain of being ‘laptop-less’!!
Whilst checking into rehab for this difficult period, I was teased by the knowledge that my trusted machine was spending time behind my back flirting with ‘I.T. Paul’. To make matters even worse, the laptop was cajoling side-by-side with my brand spanking new machine! In the real world, I had two laptops …but in my murky world of cold turkey, I had none!
In summary, (and without getting too technical) my ‘old’ laptop is about 4 years old and with just 80gb of memory and a Centrino processor, it was struggling with the demands of coping with my ever-increasing iTunes library, as well as the rigours of day-to-day life. (NB: I’m extremely proud and hugely protective of my iTunes library, and we’ll come back to this shortly.)
Now, for a man in my position, it may seem a little unwise to go out and purchase a new laptop, when I have no idea where my next wage will come from. However, as the old saying goes, you need to speculate to accumulate and as I was still operating on Windows XP, I thought it was time I got up-to-speed with Windows 7, Office 2010 and an i5 processor. Many of the national recruitment websites I’ve been signing up to also allow you the opportunity to upload a Video CV nowadays, and without a webcam, I have been unable to do this.
Right now, I need fast, reliable and up-to-the-minute I.T tools to help dig myself out of this unemployment mineshaft. My main fear was that I might put too much pressure on my machine and be without the means to find a way to fight my way out.
My other concern was the computer crashing and losing my sacred iTunes files, so I popped up to I.T. Paul’s to get advice on how to avoid this, and to tap into his wisdom for advice on the best laptop to buy. He lives just around the corner from me and over the years has done everything from restore machines to connect our wireless router. I.T Paul has been an invaluable contact and I couldn’t recommend him highly enough.
I wanted the reassurance that everything would be transferred and backed up onto my new machine, before I wiped the data on my old machine. As far as iTunes was concerned, this meant backing everything up from my old machine onto DVD's, and transferring them onto my new machine; all very pain-staking and time-consuming stuff …and the reason my blog wasn’t published on Day 15.
The omission of Day 16’s blog was a slightly different issue and although a symptomatic of the above, I must accept culpability. I collected my machines at tea-time, and being a bloke, it was my prerogative to have a good play with my new toy! Several hours later … having tinkled all the bells and blown all the whistles, I sat down to do last night’s blog ...but then I fell into the iTunes Trap …
One of the first things that anyone close to me would tell you, is that I’m extremely tidy and well organised. There tends to be structure in everything I do and everything I own has a home. All my shirts, jackets, tee's and sportswear have their own compartments and each garment has an exact order in my wardrobe. Jeans and knitwear are folded, dozens of ties are wrapped and stored in the same shape and even my white and black socks are separated into their own compartments.
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| Military Precision ..or just a bit of a saddo? |
I don’t know what the exact symptoms of OCD are, but my family are pretty sure I’ve got it; Without looking into it too deep psychologically, I grew up on a council estate and was raised by a single Mum and whilst it might all sound very cliché, we really didn’t have much. My Mum always taught to me put my toys away when I’d finished with them and from a young age, I learned the value of things. I always loved collecting stuff and hoarded everything from Matchbox cars and football stickers, to the wrappers of 'Club' biscuits!
During my teenage years, the rule was that if I wanted a pair of those 'fancy' Kickers or those expensive football boots, I would need to save up my spending money and paper-round wages and put ‘half-to’. In turn, this meant that the Kickers and footie boots were regularly polished and well looked after by yours truly.
The lessons learned as I grew up seem to have transferred to adulthood and I still take great care and pride in the things I've worked hard to buy. I find categorising and compartmentalising things strangely therapeutic and can completely understand why some people think of me as being a little ‘sad’. …Some have even referred to it as ‘anal’!
But as this is a blog about finding work, it would be advantageous to sell myself in the best light possible, so it makes total sense to turn this ‘negative’ into a huge positive! For any prospective employers reading; “I am obviously well organised and pay great attention to set procedures and detail. I am able to work accurately to SOP's under pressure, whilst maintaining a good standard of work”!!
And this is where the ‘iTunes trap’ and my 4 hours of sleep comes to the fore.
I’d successfully transferred all my songs along with their descriptions, ratings, play counts, playlists and their artwork over to the new laptop. ...Or so I thought.
What I quickly realised was that there were about 600 album covers missing that I’d painstakingly downloaded over the years. The error has occurred where an artist has a featuring act, and as I’d written the song titles in the wrong format, iTunes no longer recognised the artist. For example, I’d always uploaded my music in the format of Column 1:
Column 1 (Wrong way!) | Column 2 (Right way!!!) |
Beyoncé - Irreplaceable | Beyoncé - Irreplaceable |
Beyoncé Feat. Jay Z - De Ja Vu | Beyoncé - De Ja Vu Feat. Jay Z |
Beyoncé Feat. Sean Paul - Baby Boy | Beyoncé - Baby Boy Feat. Sean Paul |
By using the format in column one, iTunes believed that I was looking for three different artists …and two of them don’t actually exist! With a massive collection of R&B and Dance collaborations to edit, I started fiddling with my iTunes library at 6pm last night ...and only quit when I reached the letter ‘K’ at 4pm this morning!
Quite an elaborate explanation of it all I’m sure you’ll agree …but I do hope the absence of my blog over the last 48 hours will be forgiven!
Until next time, many blessings,
Jason
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