Are you completely exhausted by my adventures with electronics lately? You may want to pass this post over, then. Apparently my electronics are sick of me, too. Or maybe there were sunspots yesterday that disturbed the electromagnetic spectrum. Or maybe I’ve just exceeded my place on the techno-savvy spectrum, and this is the way that the universe busts my britches.
My iPod died last night. It’s been a stellar two and a half weeks, and each day I found new ways to love the little dickens, but it’s all over now but the crying. I don’t know what happened. I downloaded two songs off iTunes and transferred those plus three songs that Beloved had ripped from our CD collection back when he gave me my original MP3 player last year onto the iPod. I got a funny message from the system tray of Windows XP, and started fiddling with things. (cue ominous music) At one point, I decided I should just take everything off the iPod and start all over again, but even though I deleted everything it was still showing the memory as in use.
Eventually, I made my way to apple.com’s iPod support pages, and I tried their 5R approach to troubleshooting. I installed the iPod updater twice, reinstalled the iTunes software at least once, maybe three times (things got a little fuzzy after I was up past my bedtime) and restarted the computer at least four times. I got at least five different types of error messages in different platforms, but the bottom line was that something in the iPod itself was corrupt. By the time I was done, I wasn’t getting the funny message from the system tray anymore – but iTunes wasn’t recognizing the iPod anymore either.
My iPod has been disowned by its peeps. And it’s so deeply in mourning that it won’t speak to them or me. Poor little “Escape Pod” gave me nothing but joy, and it had to end like this – it’s nothing short of tragic.
I finally gave up and went to bed and turned tech support over to Beloved. He fiddled with it for another couple of hours, and this morning I figured all would be right with the world again. Au contraire – it seems over the course of the night, my iPod gave up the will to live entirely. Despite being almost fully charged, and being plugged into the laptop for the better part of five hours last night, it ran out of power and died a lonely death sometime around midnight. Thank electra for the extended warranty program.
And that fancy-ass Nokia phone I’ve been going on about? It went on strike last night, too. I was trying to key a few names and numbers into the contacts folder, and the keypad started behaving randomly. You know how the number pad keyboard works, where you click the number a few times in rapid succession to get the letter you want? It started giving me random letters from each number, sometimes starting with the second or third letter on each number and sometimes giving me random strings of letters. If I pressed 333 quickly, sometimes I’d get a D, sometimes I’d get FFE, sometimes I’d get DEF, sometimes just an E. No idea why. Sometimes it would stop at four letters and give me a ? and not let me type any more characters. Random confusion.
So today I’m going out to Grand and Toy and buying myself a nice gel roller pen to go with the pretty little notebook with handmade paper that my mom gave me last week. Maybe I should make that a quill and ink, just so the universe sees that I’m truly penitent for my unapproved forays into the land of technology. And hosting my own blog? You never heard that from me. If the universe isn’t satisfied with my contrition, it may come down to writing my posts with an eyebrow pencil after all.
P.S. I guess Blogger was listening. Even though I damn well know better by now, I clicked “publish post” without copying or saving this post – and got a 404 message. Luckily, it was still here when I pressed the ‘back’ button.
I prostrate myself in repentance, gods of technology. I apologize for having offended thee. I’m not worthy.
Edited to add: at least I’m not the only one with techno-woes. Maybe it’s contagious?
iPod. Phone. Blogger.
YOu had your three….everything will be good from now on. Well, after you get a new everything, I guess.
iPod. Phone. Blogger.
YOu had your three….everything will be good from now on. Well, after you get a new everything, I guess.
i have no advice as i am most technologically inept, except, high thee to the nearest store from whence the escape pod was purchased and get thee a replacement, anon. (no idea what’s with the bad old english – aparently that’s how I dispense bad advice these days 😉 )
i have no advice as i am most technologically inept, except, high thee to the nearest store from whence the escape pod was purchased and get thee a replacement, anon. (no idea what’s with the bad old english – aparently that’s how I dispense bad advice these days 😉 )
*waves from her dark corner of Ottawa*
*waves from her dark corner of Ottawa*
My sympathies Dani.
After suffering the horrors of a pc motherboard meltdown last year, I am all too familiar with the devastating let-down and abandonment related to random techno-failure.
If it is any comfort: you are not alone.
Several iPod-philes I know quickly follow their iPod praise with the advice to purchase the extended warranty. I think it’s a pretty common occurrence (to shame, given the pricetag).
Maybe they should be packaged like tissues… after you’ve grabbed one another pops up at the ready.
Sigh.
My sympathies Dani.
After suffering the horrors of a pc motherboard meltdown last year, I am all too familiar with the devastating let-down and abandonment related to random techno-failure.
If it is any comfort: you are not alone.
Several iPod-philes I know quickly follow their iPod praise with the advice to purchase the extended warranty. I think it’s a pretty common occurrence (to shame, given the pricetag).
Maybe they should be packaged like tissues… after you’ve grabbed one another pops up at the ready.
Sigh.
Might I recommend a chisel and a stone tablet? And perhaps a stick to pound on a stretched and tanned animal skin with?
Might I recommend a chisel and a stone tablet? And perhaps a stick to pound on a stretched and tanned animal skin with?
Oh, yes…and of course, you can make this thing called a fire by rubbing two sticks together, and then you can wave something over the smoke from it to send signals to people far away,.
Oh, yes…and of course, you can make this thing called a fire by rubbing two sticks together, and then you can wave something over the smoke from it to send signals to people far away,.
Breaking news – my darling Beloved has just been to Best Buy, and they exchanged the dead iPod for a new one. Hooray!
I’ll try not to kill this one within the month, but I’m not making any promises. Heck, I knew I was hard on houseplants, but I had no idea I’d be so hard on technology…
Breaking news – my darling Beloved has just been to Best Buy, and they exchanged the dead iPod for a new one. Hooray!
I’ll try not to kill this one within the month, but I’m not making any promises. Heck, I knew I was hard on houseplants, but I had no idea I’d be so hard on technology…
my your Ipod rest in peace..>Did you ever name the little dickens?
As for a cell phone my is a nokia and is 6 years old…apparently it is a dinosaur in the cell phone world. And antique really.
Good luck with the quill and parchment.
my your Ipod rest in peace..>Did you ever name the little dickens?
As for a cell phone my is a nokia and is 6 years old…apparently it is a dinosaur in the cell phone world. And antique really.
Good luck with the quill and parchment.
Maybe you should rename it die pod.
Maybe you should rename it die pod.
hahaha SaucyMomma! What she said!
hahaha SaucyMomma! What she said!