Life in CD Burner Land is hard, I tell you. You're a second-class citizen if you have a Mac, and many of your civil rights (such as the right to have a manual that actually explains how the damn thing works) are denied on a regular basis. I just don't get it -- the little booklet was perfect, with separate Mac and PC directions, right up until you're done with the software installation. And then the directive, "Double-click on the Create CD icon on your desktop." Um. There's no Create CD icon on my desktop.

I look at the booklet again. I look at the little online tutorial. I look at the FAQs on the Web site of the one of the programs it comes with. I look at the Web site of another of the programs, and finally, in some old discussion forum that hadn't been updated since 1999 (is that possible? I didn't even think these things were around in 1999... I'm more behind than I thought...) I found some little vague explanation which did not work. Then I found another -- whatever, this isn't the interesting part of the story. Begging the rhetorical question, IS there an interesting part of the story? Not really. But here's what I've learned so far:
· Nobody likes you if you have a Mac.
· Toast 4.1, although it is the burning software packaged with a CD burner heavily advertising the fact that it IS compatible with iMacs running 8.6 or higher, is NOT compatible with anything until OS 10 according to the Toast Web site. Hello?
· This sucks, but not as much as I thought, because it is not actually true. It is get-around-able, but only if you have some mysterious extensions disabled.
· Modifying your extensions somehow changes settings in your chooser that you are unable to isolate through trial and error.
· This also sucks, but also not as much as I thought, because it's relatively easy to change back.
· This does not change the fact that I still can't use stupid Toast. Or that I do not have any actual bread with which to make actual toast, becuase I am staying up until 3 a.m. playing with my CD burner and wasting time I could be grocery shopping or doing anything else remotely useful.
However. I can, in fact, burn CDs now. Not necessarily the way I want to, and not through the groovy software that lets you specify how many seconds between each song and filter noise and blah blah, but I can burn CDs. So now a real question: Who can tell me where to get mp3s now that Napster is (mostly) no more?