iPod podcast sorting (2) Mar 30, 2011
My iPod sorts podcasts in reverse chronological order, i.e. newest ones first.  This is a dumb system in my opinion, since many of the podcasts I listen to are news shows and other date-sensitive stuff that only makes sense when listened to chronologically.  But oh well.  There's no way to change this, so I'll move on to the next problem:  Changing the sort order of podcasts added from external sources (i.e. not iTunes).  I have several spoken word mp3s that I like to consider to be podcasts (one of which is an audio version of the Bible), but they weren't added through iTunes; they were ripped from CDs or downloaded from various websites.  When these mp3s were added to iTunes and classified as podcasts, they were sorted in some unintuitive, undocumented way.  And no, it's not based on file name, track number, date added or anything else.  After some digging, I found that it actually all depends on an iTunes-specific mp3 tag called "RELEASETIME".  The way to utilize this is to get a program like Mp3tag that can edit "Extended Tags," add the RELEASETIME tag in the form of "2000-01-01T12:00:00Z," and go from there.  For a chronological list of mp3s, change any part of the date (I changed the seconds) so that each successive mp3 has a chronologically different date.  But remember that since iPods sort the way they do, you should use the earliest date for the last file in the list, and go up the list from there.  Finally, in iTunes, right-click on each file you just modified and select "Get Info" so that iTunes realizes the file was changed. #technology
Emotion sponge Mar 30, 2011
I learned recently that my wife is often unintentionally, subconsciously affected by my negative emotions, even when they're not specifically directed at her.  So if I'm stressed out from work, or angry at someone who cut me off driving home, she's negatively affected, almost like she's absorbing my negativity.  In fact, it turns out it's a two way street; I'm also an emotion sponge. #psychology