That was a lot work
Corey suggested that I try playing with the 'Album Artist' ID3 tag because that allowed him to consolidate two problem albums in Windows Media Player 10. Sure enough, that fixed the problem of the Zune software splitting up albums based on artist. Totally dumb, but... now that I know what to do.. I also went through and tagged a bunch of songs that weren't tagged and fixed other albums that had songs out of order or missing. I did this all on my Windows' music collection. Meaning I need to figure out what I've done and copy over the updated files to the Linux collection. Hopefully I only played with mp3s and not mp3s that used to be FLAC or OGG. Perhaps I won't bother. I mean, yeah, FLAC and OGG versions of songs sound better, but I've been listening to my Zune even while at my computer. I wonder if the Amarok hanging problem is because I fucked up DBUS at some point. The only way to fix my particular problem with DBUS is to do a complete reinstall of Ubuntu. I think I'll wait 'til 8.04 is out to do a clean reinstall, which will be sometime this month.
But yeah, everything looks to be in order now! As for the afforementioned not updating the tags problem, I just had to drag the songs into the Zune software for it to update. Even when I hit "Sync to Blacky" on albums that I fixed (i.e. ones that were split by artist), they were still split on the Zune itself, yet deleting the albums from the Zune and then syncing it over produced the desired results. Because of the sheer amount of work I've done, I just decided to erase everything off the device and let it resync it all while I sleep.
Man, despite my belief that the user should never have to adapt to the software, now that I know what the Zune software expects of me, things should be a lot easier from here on out. I feel relieved that I no longer have to fight the software to such a degree. It should still be better designed, though. I should not have to use two different tagging programs (one for ease of use, the other for editing the 'Album Artist' tag because I can't figure out how to edit extended tags in the first) just to make an album appear correctly. I should be able to do that directly within the Zune software.
4007 total items to be synced. There are 45 pictures/images that I cropped to fit the Zune's display for use as backgrounds and 270 Brawl pictures, only 31 one of which are mine. The rest were saved off of /v/.
Anyway, it's 7:20AM and I really need some sleep. I need to start on my precalc before 11PM today.
Last night (I think?) Corey reminded me of the existance of the CIS degree. Computer Information Systems. It requires Calc 1, but I'll have done that after this semester of precalc is done. It also requires one of two Bio classes (which I've already done), Chem 1, and Physics 1. Now, neither Corey nor I have heard much grief about Chem 1 or Physics 1, mostly the pain seems to be from Physics 2. It also requires a bunch of CS classes that I have already taken/am currently taking. There's one CS elective (that I saw), and two or three CS technical electives. CIS requires a minor, however, and that'll probably end up being ITM if I go the CIS route. Bauer has been pushing me for an ITM minor since second semester. ITM, however, has specializations if you major in it. The two that stand out to me are "Software Design" and "Systems Administration." "Software Design" looks like what I wanted to get out of the CS degree: Programming experience without all the heavy math and theory bullshit. Systems Administration sounds pretty fun though. I like setting up and managing computers. The thought of keeping a whole network (or multiple!) of computers and servers from shitting on themselves is oddly (read: masochistically) appealing. I have a phone conversation scheduled for 1PM on Tuesday with Bauer. We'll figure things out then. I really wanna go the ITM route, but Corey says I should go CIS. Erm. Physics and Chem are mathy. I'd rather not do that. I'd rather focus on what matters. But we'll see.