Alanis Morissette - Thank U

Duplex-bonded 128k ISDN.

A chintzy Compaq with an old-school Pentium OverDrive CPU -- the fastest thing my parents could afford to give me for Christmas after my laptop died. It ran RedHat Linux for a bit before one roommate hooked me on FreeBSD.

The Bachelor Pad.

EtherMonkeys adorning the place. Literally, Barrel Of Monkey pieces hanging from do-it-yourself crimped Category Five strung up and across the ceiling.

Bowls of ramen noodle soup.

The occasional Screwdriver or White Russian (even though I was only 19)

Late nights.

Early Mornings.

Really, really pampering my 1995 Ford Escort, which I'd barely had a year, if that, at this point in my life. Weekly wash and wax and detailing.

Crashing at my girlfriend (now wife)'s apartment on occasion after really, really late movies. Not that we'd do anything but talk until our mouths hung open and drooling as we succumbed to the sandman at 4 o'clock in the morning.

Gizmo, the evil death cat that would shit, piss and vomit on anything touching the floor.

Audiogalaxy Satellite, and racing MP3 downloads home from work to see which would get to my computer faster. Damn, I miss AG Satellite. What a mindfuck. Why hasn't anyone ever duplicated it on some kind of Pirate Bay level?

Hitting the data center to help -- or watch, really, as Kenny Root performs massive upgrades on "Orator of the borg"

I expect no one but myself to know what all of these are. But that's what this song brings back.

B-Movie - Nowhere Girl (Adam Freeland Mix)

The original track was nothing too exceptional, but this version, which made it into a Various Artists Compilation called Future Retro, really rocks. I love the driving drum beat.

This reminds me of my half-year spent working in the wonderful, tumultuous world of dot-com start-ups. I was responsible for building, maintaining, and enhancing our "Appliances" -- That is, little rack-mount servers that booted off a mere 32MB of storage. Appropriate, since I bought the album from iTunes while on the clock and working on the very stuff that this track reminds me of.

My desk was often cluttered with 3 or 4 of these servers, a pile of Bootable USB flash drives. The smell of burnt electronics is faintly lingering in the air because we were building these appliances on the cheap and they often failed or overheated.

Ben Folds Five - Brick

This song embodies the "college photography class" era, specifically memories of working in the digital photography computer lab. Year: 1998. Cutting-edge consumer-grade digital photography consisted of things like the Apple QuickTake 200. This song brings back memories of putzing around, digitizing my 35mm black-and-white negatives in that lab while getting paid to babysit the computers and their humanoid users. Playing around with PhotoShop 3. No, not Adobe CS3. Photoshop 3.

I really liked this time in my life. There were a lot of fresh things unfolding. My relationship with my wife, my career, my fascination with tinkering really blossomed in full force.

Deep Blue Something - Breakfast at Tiffany's

This track hit the airwaves in 1996 or so. It reminds me of working at CompUSA as a lowly cashier (my first job), of trying to come out of my shell of shyness, and of my attempt to socialize in real life with so many other BBS addicts that were much like myself, trying to find some real life friends. A lot of other stuff happened in 1996, but that's probably tied to another song, somewhere...

Hybrid - If I Survive

I'd just packed my proverbial bags at a local information security company, setting foot outside their door for what was sure to be the last time. Sick and tired of their goofy games, their crappy compensation, their politics, and their incessant prying into my personal life, I resigned my position effective immediately. With that, I gathered up the few books and the coffeemaker I kept in my office. I placed my belongings into a printer paper box and stepped out onto the crispy freak snow that was hiding under a thin layer of ice on that cold March evening. One of the many mix CDs I had made was in the CD player of my car. I found this track and blasted it as I drove to my other job... my only job.

To me, this song is one of freedom that transcends hardship and angst.