Zeros. See What I Mean?

Leading zeros are still important, people!

I don't think those people appreciate being called Zeros.  Maybe "Numerically Challenged?"

Wait, what? 

Playful twist using the verb form of the word "Leading."  You've been grammared.  

Terrific.   So, today I decided to share with all of you one of my newer hobbies.  I've discovered audio books.  These things are wonderful because they combine learning and sitting on my duff while doing something completely unrelated.  Two of my favorite pastimes.  I'm often multitasking.  I have at least 10 tasks open at any given time at work (including a little Sametime Status Blag I run), when I'm watching TV at home, I'll have a laptop next to me and probably at least one other project going on at the time, and I've worked on perfecting the art of making two different types of cookies at the same time.  That one's really only helpful around Christmas time, so I don't get a lot of practice.  

Anyway, audio books.  I don't read enough, if you don't count news and current events on the internetz.  I've never read "War and Peace" or any of the Lord of the Rings series, or 90% of the other "Classics" that are out there that everyone says people should read.  I don't do this mostly because I can't acclimate to doing just one thing, and reading a book takes up too much of my system's resources to allow for multitasking.  The times that I have decided that I will start reading more, the end result is that my brain realizes I'm only doing one thing and decides that's the time to shut off for the night, and I fall asleep.  Progress is limited.  

My car has a USB port for connecting MP3 players and memory sticks through which stuff can play through the car's stereo.  I discovered this early on, and have a memory stick with most of my music collection tucked away in the car.  I expanded this concept just before a long road trip to include a supplemental memory stick on which I put an audio book.  The way I figured it, time would seem to pass more quickly, I wouldn't get bored with the same songs, and I would "read" one of those books I'm always told I should read.  23 hours later, I had read "Moby Dick," finally understood that bit in the middle of "Major League," and had a new hobby.  

Since then, I've gone on to "read" four other books, and my "reading" is no longer confined to extended road trips...it's pretty much a constant in the car now, and I catch up on important books 20 minutes or so at a time on my way to and from work.  Not long ago, I started on the second book in a short series soon to be a major motion picture.  Anyway...rather than being one big file, the book is broken into each individual track from the original CDs.  This is largely irrelevant to me, but when whoever it was created the files, they simply numbered them 1-16 (in the case of disc 1).  This is all well and good for Windows 7-based computers that understand that 2 comes before 10, but in the case of most other consumer electronics (such as the stereo in my car), 2 comes after 1, so the tracks end up playing in the order: 1,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.  This is annoying and flipping through the tracks to find the one that's supposed to be playing during one of the awkward transitions distracts me from whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing...which I guess is driving.  The more annoying part is that there is a significant story gap between tracks 1 and 10, so when it jumps ahead to track 10, I get a big ol' spoiler before I realize that it jumped ahead and rectify it.  All of this nonsense could have been easily avoided by simply numbering the tracks with leading zeros. Just making them 01, 02, 03 etc, and no computer system would get confused.  So let this be a lesson, people.  Leading Zeros!  Use them!  Love them!  Make the roads safer.