Working Out a Workflow

We fear change.

-Garth Algar

Over the past few years, I've had a pretty good work flow for syncing my iPod to the podcasts downloaded to the computer. I would plug in the iPod and wait for the sync, then I would kick off the download of the latest episodes and go to bed. In the morning, I would do another quick sync, unplug my fully-operational battle station...er...fully-charged iPod and be on my way. Some strange fluke of iTunes running and the iPod being plugged in kept the computer from going to sleep/hibernation. After nearly a full week with the Droid Incredible, I'm having to shift that a bit. It seems as though having the phone plugged in to the computer doesn't keep it from going to sleep. This means that in the morning, I wasn't having a fully-charged phone. With the battery life on the phone already much shorter than I would like, this is pretty much unacceptable. As such, I've been having to work out what process of steps I need to take to make sure that I have everything sunk and charged before I walk out the door in the morning.

Basically, I'm having to do more work before I go to bed now. I download the latest podcasts to doubleTwist, then sync my phone. As soon as that is completed, I unplug the phone from the computer and plug it in to its charger.

This might not seem like that huge of a change, but believe me, for me it is a large change. I'm very much a creature of habit. I always do the exact same sequence of steps when I'm in the shower in the morning. I always listen to my new podcasts in the same order. Therefore, changing my workflow, even a little bit, is kind of unsettling for me.

Another note about podcasts, while we're here: It looks as though the default media player doesn't mark the podcasts as played, so as it stands right now, I'm having to manually delete them. Also, they are being duplicated in the playlist for the individual podcasts, so I end up with at least two instances of each episode in the playlist. Hopefully, this doesn't mean that each one is having to be copied multiple times to the phone. That's using up space for no reason whatsoever.

I'm still taking suggestions for a replacement media player.