Apparently, the Lyra either “works or doesn’t” because the files are the same for all models, so that means I can’t play mp3 (seems no one knows why that happens), but that doesn’t mean I have to use icky-picky ol’ Windows. DbPoweramp works fine under Wine (technically Crossover Office), I can convert to wma with that easily enough, and a helluva lot faster with a USB 2.0 reader than with that glacially slow parallel reader and whatever crap Real product came with it (Real Jukebox, I think–it was shit) or WMP10. Doesn’t sound too bad, and the point is that it works even though the only C:\Program Files to be found is the fake one in the Crossover directory. I should support OSS, and I do almost exclusively, but sometimes it’s fun to use Windows apps without Windows, just because I can. Interesting, though, is that I’d got Crossover because I’d thought there HAD to be some Win apps that I couldn’t live without, even little ones like Irfanview, but there just weren’t. Any Photoshop post-7.0 doesn’t work under Wine because of the stupid product activation, and my beloved patch tool didn’t exist until v8.0; anything else I can do with The GIMP (though that multi-windowed interface is difficult to stomach). I had heard somewhere that Adobe was finally showing some interest in porting to Linux, but I’d expect that’s years off, if ever. Oh well, I can dream, and now I must get some work done.

P.S. Cut off a bunch of Hair last night, too–about 6″ of it. Still halfway down my back, but feels very light and swing-y. 🙂