potentialities

This weekend we had a tax holiday, so I finally replaced my dysfunctional iPod and you should hopefully not have to hear me complain about it any more, especially that one day where it wouldn't play any given file from beginning to end but selected something itself at random and started playing it somewhere in the middle and went on until I had sort of figured out what I was listening to, at which point it would switch to something else, until I thought I was in some sort of fever dream. I definitely shouldn't have to complain about that any more.

There was a sort of average-to-middling amount of shopping going on at the Country Club Plaza, except in front of the Apple Store, where there was a line half a block long. And apparently this was the least crazy day.

While we were waiting in said line, I won a T-shirt for naming the year the first iPod was released and what its capacity was. (They didn't ask me to quote the full text of the relevant Slashdot post, but I totally could have done that too.) Although I could have also won T-shirts for naming the astronomer who sued over his name being used for an Apple internal build and giving two of the five original iMac flavors, I felt this would have been unsporting and other people deserved a chance to win.

Like my late, lamented iPod, it has been named Serenity.

I'm afraid my iPod and I are going to have to break up.

It's not me; it's him. It was bad enough when he started hanging my entire computer -- no mean feat -- every time I plugged him in to sync. I managed to patch things up after much reformatting by syncing only a few playlists containing a small fraction of my library, but now he's got a new trick where he drops out in the middle of long tracks like audiobooks and skips to the next one, whistling innocently. Just today he's already skipped the train scene in Half Blood Prince, which is one of my favorite bits! I see a trip to the Apple Store in my future.

Ironically, my 3G iPod is still going strong, if you allow for the fact that even the aftermarket replacement battery no longer holds so much as a secondsworth of charge. Stan uses it in bed plugged into the wall.

My iPod has a new battery in it now. This is a good thing, because my iPod is two and a half years old now (wait, that means there was a time before I had an iPod. I am confused) and its battery, which was kind of the weakling sibling of the iPod family to begin with its mere eight hour published spec, was now holding about an hour and a half of charge, tops. And that's assuming that you didn't actually do anything with the iPod during that time except press the play button. And even that was pushing it, sometimes.

I did not get this battery from the Apple Store. The people at the Apple Store are pretty nice about most things, like the time I dislodged my H key by pounding on my keyboard in rage when I was unable to copy files off of my brother's corrupted hard drive and I brought it it into the Apple Store and they did not merely stick my H key back on, they replaced my whole damn keyboard FOR FREE, which was a little above and beyond the call. However, batteries are a weak spot with the people at the Apple Store. Batteries die, and some batteries die faster than others, and this is a fact of the universe that Apple does not particularly want to be responsible for, although they seem perfectly happy to accept responsibility for me banging on my own keyboard like the short-tempered idiot that I am, so I think, cosmically, it all balances out. But, in short, batteries from Apple == expensive and mayhap == poor. So.

I bought my particular battery from iPod Juice, whom I at least tentatively endorse, although I have not actually used their product except insasmuch as it did cause my iPod to turn on, and it is charging now, so this is, at least, a good omen. They included a blue plastic poky thing and an instructional sheet, which makes it look SO EASY to separate the two halves of the iPod. Easier than twisting an Oreo, which is not something I ever experienced a great deal of success with, owing to the fact that a.) I am clumsy, b.) my mother never bought Oreos, and c.) Oreos are actually kind of gross, unless you embed them in ice cream, which magically turns them awesome.

These instructions LIE. It is not easy AT ALL.

I enlisted my brother for this task, as he is the Designated Doer of Things That Require Tools in the family. (My father used to be the DDoTTRT, but he doesn't see so well any more, and Danny managed to replace the hard drive in his iBook himself, so he is indeed fully qualified to take over.) This was somewhat difficult, as he only lives in our house in the most technical of senses at this point, but I cornered him last night and he took the blue poky thing to the dead iPod to try to make it see reason.

Nothing happened. Well, at one point, he caused it to make a scary snapping noise, panicked, and then snapped it right back, but this is not what I call progress. Then he claimed that he was tired and that muscles hurt in his fingers that he didn't even know that he had, and he retired for the evening (by which I mean, went and played around on his own computer).

However, this afternoon he came home from school early (they were tired of him, I think) and brought his friend Nathan with him. Nathan is at our house at least as much as Danny is, and possibly more. Sometimes I call Danny's cell phone and Nathan answers, which is slightly disconcerting. Nathan watched as Danny applied the blue poky thing to the iPod and accomplished nothing.

The scene, if you will

"Here, let me try that," Nathan offers, seizing the iPod.

"Did you read the directions?"

"I looked at the pictures." Nathan vigorously plies the poky thing.

"You need to read the directions!" Danny yelps, scandalized. Danny read the directions.

The iPod is already half-open. "Be careful!" Danny admonishes. I occasionally peek through my fingers, moaning.

"Stop, that thing is very fragile!"

"What thing?"

"That ribbon thing! Here, hold that exactly where it is while I look at the directions!"

"I'm taking out the hard drive!"

I moan some more, handing them the new battery at the same time.

"There!"

~~~

It made a violent snapping noise when Nathan put it back together, but nothing seems to be broken, except the bit of plastic at the bottom around the part where you plug the cable in, which is definitely broken but doesn't seem to matter. And now my iPod claims to be charged, so if you don't mind, he and I are going to go spend a little quality time together. Taking long walks on the beach and such. You know.