[redpoint5]

I probably coastered 20% of my CDs, which as a high school student and at a buck a pop, was not insignificant.

My $200 2x burner died just over a year of use. I scammed my way into a 4x burner, and it too died outside of warranty, and I scammed my way into an 8x burner. With $200, I got 3 burners over the course of time. At 2x, a CD took 40min to burn, at 4x, 20min, at 8x, 10min... that's how I discovered the law of diminishing returns. Each doubling of effort returns half the improvement. Every speed above 16x was insignificant. Who cares if it takes 2.5 minutes, or 1.25 minutes to burn a CD? Those suckers were spinning insanely fast, making tremendous noise, and there's plenty of videos showing catastrophic failure.

I was selling mix CDs for $10 well before Napster was a thing. Took 20min per song to download over my 33.6 connection, if I could even find the song. Took me 9 months to get the full King Harvest - Dancing in the Moonlight.

The last CD I burned was in 2012 for my ex-girlfriend. I had the keys to her crappy Pontiac Grand Prix briefly, and found just enough time to copy it before returning them. Then at 2am, I broke into her car, replaced her cracked headlight, and put in the CD I burned for her into the player. She's now my first wife.

*As an aside, 2am in Kenton (Portland) is more alive than 2pm with all the weirdos, crackheads, Johns, and prostitutes. There's a torso on a skateboard (no legs) wearing all black, in the middle of the street using his hands to wheel around at 2am. Once, a woman jumped out in front of my car at 2am sobbing and saying she was desperate for a ride. It's where dysfunction coalesces.