I listen to a decent amount of music. Most of it is random classical stuff on the radio but I also have a pretty good pile of rock CDs. I used to listen to the Doors all of the time, to the point where I literally had every one of their songs memorized. The same goes for a lot of '80s metal like Motley Crue, LA Guns, Guns 'n Roses. Once I got into college I moved towards bands like Dream Theater and Type O Negative.

At the same time I was listening to Suzanne Vega. A few years ago I picked up a Sarah Brightman CD purely due to the cover art. That was a fortuitous find. Jewel visited the place where my mom works so I started listening to her to see what she sounded like. Turns out I liked her music quite a bit. My roommate at the time then got me into Liz Phair. He also found a Canadian metal band for me, Kittie. Thanks to stuff like this I'd bet half the music I know the lyrics to is being sung by women.

I really don't have much of a problem with that. I kind of screwed up my voice after high school thanks to a number of events such as a violent disagreement with tequila, sucking in sheetrock dust, strep throat, and a whole bunch of stupid things I can't remember. I can't really sing low anymore without severe throat irritation and my voice giving out. Actually I can't always sing high either. Lots of times I just don't have enough voice to sing period. The only issue with screwing my voice up is I used to be able to imitate pretty much anyone. I could sing just like whoever I was listening to, whether it was Axl Rose or Jim Morrison.

Actually I did come up with one problem today. When singing along with your favorite artists, you have to make sure you pay attention to what you are singing. While doing some hardcore coding today I pointed winamp at my entire Liz Phair directory. After a couple hours of singing along I realized something. I sure as hell don't ever want to sing a number of these songs where anyone else could hear me. I got enough problems in my life without further confusing people by singing songs like H.W.C. Look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Yeah, I said winamp in the previous paragraph. My good computer speakers are hooked up to the Windows box right now. I was planning on buying some really nice speakers, like professional monitors, for the linux workstation but got laid off so it hasn't happened yet. The latest winamp seems to be a vast improvement over the bug-ridden, bloated pieces of crap that were versions 3 and 4. This one may be as good as xmms.