I recently moved to a very nice home in a very nice area. At the same time, I inherited a commute to work that some have commented as “insane.” The bastards; they’re right.

After listening to talk radio for the past 3 months, I can tell you that I have heard more about politics than any person should consume. I’m also convinced that both presidential candidates are complete dolts. Worse than the candidates are the talk shows that I tuned into to get away from the shows about politics only to find hosts wax on about their own politics. Ugh. The only politician I’m convinced is actually working for the people is Schwarzenegger, who regularly breaks from his own party's view to vote his concious. Who knew?

In an effort to find something else to listen to during the drive, I found two excellent resources: ITConversations.com and Audible.com.

ITConversations is a really great site that releases various recordings on a variety of technology topics. The best part is that the site is absolutely free, and judging by the first 3 recordings I’ve listened to, the content is outstanding. If you’re interested in sampling one of these recordings, I’d recommend the interview with Joel Spolsky if you’re a programmer type, and Wil Wheaton if you’re just a geek type. By the way, Wheaton’s audio tape doesn’t get that interesting until 20 minutes or so into it; your patience will be rewarded.

Audible.com allows you to download audio books and burn them to CD. For $19.95 a month, you can download 2 full books each month. That didn’t sound like a lot of content initially since I really have never listened to audio books. I can tell you that the first book I downloaded and burned is fully 9 CD’s. That’s a lot of driving I can now look forward to. As a bonus, you can get a sweet little mp3 player for free for signing up. I received mine yesterday, but haven’t had a chance to play with it, but I love the form factor.

In the end, I’m finally looking forward to the drive rather than dreading it!