Back in 1982, Sony and Philips teamed up to create a little shiny object they dubbed the compact disc unleashing it one the world initially with album by one William Martin Joel. By the end of the 1980's CD players were becoming more and more prevalent. Prior to Entertainment Weekly's launch in 1990, they issued a test market issue with a cover story on the death of the LP. Thanks to the college radio station I worked at, I possessed a smattering of CDs before I actually owned a CD player, which I bought in the early 1990's. Using student loan money. Fight the power.

CD players have been standard issue in new cars for, what, ten years? Fifteen? I have owned four different vehicles, one of them with a model year that begins with a two, and I have never had this twenty-five-year-old technology at my disposal. Then yesterday I received this in the mail:



Naturally, this arrives after the point a new technology has taken over, but luckily this nifty little device has a plug-in that can accommodate the magic rectangle I can't believe I ever lived without.

Maybe this new technology will offer further encouragement for the crazy boy summer road trip that's been discussed recently.