(Originally appeared on www.h2g2.com, Sept. 22, 2002)

I’ve begun working abroad since the end of April, 2001. In the sudden transition from one part of the world (where you drive on the right side of the road and have an old lady as the figure head of the state even thought she’s from another country) to another part (where you drive on the left side of the road and have an old chap as the figure head of the state even though he has foreign blood), I have missed what was probably the most important, meaningful, but totally shocking piece of tragic news.

For one and a half year I was kept in the dark of this most important, meaningful, but totally shocking piece of tragic news. I did keep in touch with the rest of the world via the internet, but alas I was not destined to acquire this bit of mind-numbing knowledge, at least for one and a half year. Then a friend from The Bush Country, a Mac-lover and a subject of my merciless Mac jokes throughout the years, showed me what a wonderful and cool piece of electronic gadget the iPod was. I went and bought one as soon as the “Windowsu Baasian” became available in this country.

This, began the infinitely improbable and yet inevitable series of connections leading to my final acquisition of the previously mentioned piece of information, and my coming here to tell about it.

In any case, I stuffed all my music, 3 gigabytes worth of (legal) MP3s to be almost exact, into my new iPod and went to a conference.

It is amazing how fast you can get bored with 3 gigabytes of music.

When I returned from the trip, I was immediately looking for more things to listen. It is also amazing how such a craving to listen to “stuff” didn’t seem to exist before I bought this wonderful and cool piece of electronic gadget.

To make a long story short (if it is not too late already) I discovered that you can buy and download full-length audio books (which the iPod supports) from the net. So, improbably, but perhaps all too naturally, the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy was the first book I looked up. All my Douglas Adam books, radio scripts, tapes, CDs were all sitting memorably at the bottom of a cardboard box in a storage room on the opposite side of the Mostly Harmless Planet. And, infinitely improbably, but all too fatefully, that was when I discovered that THERE WAS A NEW BOOK! So finally in this book, I became aware of this simple piece of news…

…that Douglas N. Adams, may he rest in peace, had a non-functional nose.

I did not know that.

On the bright side, though, from now on whenever I go to a book store, I will never have to wonder if there ever were going to be a new book from the great DNA.

Alas, there is never going to be another one from you, DNA, and there will never be another writer quite like you.

I am truly going to miss you.

*Note: this was written at the time of first edition iPods. I have an 60 GB iPod Photo now, and ca. 17 GB of music and audio books stored on it. And yes, I am still constantly looking for new stuff to listen to.