David bought me a Zune!  =) 

I came home from work, he took my laptop bag and lunch box from me, and said, “Do you want a present?”  Of course I responded in a very excited affirmative - a surprise like that from my husband is a BIG deal (he’s a planner and very practical - not much into surprises).  He gave me a pair of scissors, and I said, “Thanks!  Scissors!  Just what I always wanted!”  He laughed and pushed me into the living room, where a box sat on a chair.  We opened the box and there it was - my very own Zune!  (For you non-computer folks, a Zune is Microsoft’s version of a video iPod.)  I’m so pysched - it’ll be PERFECT for the flight to Hawai’i!

Yay!  I’m still excited about it.

Techno-babble (disregard, moms):  I’ve been playing with it for the last few hours and have figured it out - all but ripping DVDs to Zune formats.  I downloaded several applications (shareware-style stuff) and the best I’ve seen so far is called AnyDVD Converter.  The DVD to .wmv conversion is fast, and doesn’t require a DVD to .avi step before going to .wmv (a big plus on the speed side of things).  The video quality is stellar, the audio quality is good and rich - the only problem (and I imagine this is something to do with me and my computer, or else this program wouldn’t be rated so highly) is that my audio and video aren’t syncing up.  I only tested one DVD (but several times, from scratch), so I’m in the middle of ripping another DVD to see if it was the disc’s fault (fingerprint, or something else that would cause file reading drama).

Techno Update:  The issue is the video conversion - it’s dropping frames.  It’s very subtle, but very consistent - it’s dropping 1 or 2 for every 30 or so.  =)  So, now to figure out how to stop it dropping frames.  I’m hoping it’s just a resource thing on my machine, but I’m not completely sure it is.  *sigh*