Back in 1998, I didn't know much about MP3; I was still hauling CDs all over the place. But, I heard about the mp3mobile and thought it seemed cool.

When the MK1 was for sale, I had just started as a professor, so I could consider buying something that would have otherwise cost me an entire month's stipend. But, I wimped out, particularly with the rumors of the MK2 being bigger, better, faster, stronger...

I was wait-listed on the MK2 for a while (I forget my queue number, but I seem to recall they went through the queue pretty quickly once they got rolling); it finally showed up a few months after I'd bought a new car. The time in between was maddening: my shiny new BMW had only a tape deck in it. I wasn't going to go buy an aftermarket CD player when I knew there was an empeg on the way. So, instead, I satisfied myself by slowly ripping my CD collection (using grip, and stupidly assuming that 112kbps CBR was "good enough" -- ha!).

Then, when it arrived and was finally installed, I remember being frustated and annoyed at the volume. Turns out, BMW's "standard" is something like 5.5V for max volume, where the empeg uses 4V. It wasn't until voladj came out that I was satisfied with the volume (and I'd still like it a bit louder sometimes, but not often enough that it's worth throwing money at the problem). Still, just imagine it: being able to fix an annoying hardware problem (volume levels) in software!

And, then there was the tuner. I installed it early September '01 and I was still dorking with it when I was driving to work on the morning of September 11 and listening to the news...

And, then there was the firesale. I tried to convince everybody I knew to buy an empeg. One friend listened, and he's very happy. Everybody else didn't get it, even when it was so cheap that you could hardly ignore it. Sigh.