love/hate.

about 3 weeks ago, we took advantage of the fact that he's going back to school, and bought a powerbook, which came with a "free" ipod mini. since he already had a 30gb ipod, i got the mini.

it was silver.

at first, i was very confused. for one thing, you can't just rip songs from a cd and put them on your ipod. at least, not using itunes. itunes likes to keep them in a "library," which means it stores them all on your harddrive. i don't want music stored on my harddrive, that's what i have an ipod for. alright, so it's only 4 gigs, it's still the principle of the thing. computers, in my mind, are Not For Music. i understand that i am unusual in this, but that's just the way it is. possibly, it's because i don't really listen to music in general. nearly 10 years after receiving my first cd player, i believe my entire collection tops out at something like 30 cds.

we decided to put my music on the server, because he had never ripped my cds anyway, and he's not one to ever turn down more music. so, over the course of a few weeks, i gradually ripped my cd collection and slowly built up the ipod. then, i bought new headphones for it so i could listen to it while i walked to and from work. my ears are too small for the earbuds; they hurt. this is going to be so cool, i thought. now i can listen to music while i walk. i like listening to music when i have to go places in the morning.

i bring the headphones home sunday afternoon, and put them in the ipod. for those of you who don't know, even if the ipod is locked, it will still turn on when it detects headphones.

nothing happened.

i held the pause/play button. nothing happened. i took the ipod upstairs and plugged into my computer's usb port. nothing happened. at this point, i was a little concerned. i plugged the ipod into the ac adapter. ah! it turned on. i plugged it back into my computer. nothing happened. well, maybe windows was being funny; it had also stopped recognizing my digital camera earlier. so we plugged it into the mac's usb. nothing happened. we attempt to reboot it by holding down the menu and select buttons. it turned off. we plugged it back in. it turned on, but still did not recognize the pc nor mac, nor was it recognized by either of them.

we took a break to watch The Simpsons.

then, we had an idea. why not plug it into the firewire port? we plugged it into firewire. success! thinking the firmware might be screwed up, we re-formatted it for mac. then we plugged it into the firewire on my computer. i didn't even know i had firewire until sunday night. i downloaded the newest ipod updater and told it to update my ipod's firmware.

it said, disk write error.

well, shit. then it popped up the folder-with-exclamation-point icon. no apple, no music, just a folder with an exclamation point. i gave in, and actually went to www.apple.com/support. it told me to uninstall the ipod software, uninstall itunes, re-download and install them, and attempt to update the ipod again.

i did. it worked. yay! now all i had to do was copy all my music and podcasts back onto it. so i sat there and copied everything back. at this point, i saw why it wanted to keep all your music on your computer. then i turned off my ipod and went to bed.

this morning, i was supposed to walk to work. having packed my lunch, grabbed an extra t-shirt, found my phone, wallet, and keys, and put my shoes on, i was ready to leave. i clipped my ipod to the strap of my bag, and held down the pause/play button.

nothing happened.

i put the headphones in. nothing happened. he came downstairs and did the same thing. nothing happened. and now i was late for work. so he drove me to work, and we decided we'd take the ipod back to the apple store because the thing was obviously fucked.

we did. i gave them an edited version of this story, concluding with, "i think the firmware just keeps crashing." the young man in the black apple t-shirt looked at it and said, "yep. we'll just replace it." then he came back from the back of the store and told me that there were no more warranty replacement silver ipod minis in stock. would i give them my phone number so they could call me when they got some more?

4 days until my new ipod.

current reading.

Dissolution

by C. J. Sansom

a murder mystery set in a monastery in the political turmoil of tudor england, specifically, shortly after the death of Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour. as such, it reminds me to some extent of The Name of the Rose, albeit with less semiotics. and you don't need to speak 5 languages to understand it, although a smattering of medieval latin might come in useful. i'm maybe a third of the way into it right now, and i'm enjoying it thoroughly. well, almost. it's a little slow.

pix.

just updated the flikr site with more pictures from the vacation as well as a couple new ones of the cat. enjoy.

it lives.

my parsley is still alive!

argh.

Harry Potter 5 is too damned long.

yes, i said 5. i got it out of the library monday and just finished it now. i read them as summer fluff reading; i'm not mad enough to go stand in line with a bunch of squishy-minded fan-things at midnight so i can pay an outrageous amount for a book i'm only going to read once.

er. that came out a little vitriolic. what i mean is...i don't take them seriously, so i tend to be a little behind. there. that's better :)

owie.

you don't really realize just how much your fingernails actually protect your fignertips until you lose a couple of them.

and then the stupid band-aids fuck up your typing.

current reading.

The Wee Free Men

by Terry Pratchett.

not precisely a discworld book, but in the same universe, if you will. funny, but in that understated way that i'm beginning to associate with his most recent, and quite frankly more mature, novels. i am enjoying quite a bit.

also, happy bastille day.

free lunch, here i come.

my boss dropped a wad of business cards on my desk yesterday. i have never once, in all my employment history, have been asked, "oh, do you have a card?"

on the other hand, they identify me as a "Software Engineer." which i suppose is better than "Q/A Monkey."

reality check.

i was going to blog about my new ipod, but there are more important things this morning.

it seems the two people i know who work in central london are both alive and unhurt.

i think that's about all there is to say at the moment.

en vacances.

well, not anymore. back at work now, after spending 5 days in upstate NY with my sister and her boyfriend. it was quite a bit of fun. her boyfriend owns a 20-foot fishing boat and took us out on lake ontario for an afternoon. after my sister caught a 12 pound lake trout, i had the oppurtuniy to wrestle in a 15 pound king salmon from 275 feet of line *grin* that was fun. actually, it took all 4 of us to get the damn thing in the boat. it's over there; i'm sure you've noticed it by now. it's still alive in that picture, btw. that's my sister's bf holding it.

blogger image sucks, btw. there are more pictures, but i'll have to post them later. i should probably qualify that: blogger image sucks, where sucks means it breaks in 2 different browsers and can't seem to actually upload any images.

anyway. sunday, we went down to lake seneca, one of the finger lakes out there, and trolled through some of the wineries down there. unfortunately, it seems most people in NY like sweet wine. if one more person proffers a "dry" riesling with 1.5% residual sugar, i think i'm going to break it over their head o:) although not dry, some of them were still very nice, and we bought a bottle for the next time we go out for good asian food. we also bought a miraculous cabernet sauvignon, and tasted many, many other wines and beers. thank fuck one of the wineries has a restaurant. popcorn and little crackers only go so far to tamp down tastings of 10-15 wines.

the cat seemed to miss us quite a bit, and even went so far as to curl up and sleep next to my face for several hours last night. aww. poor lonely kitty. and now back to the daily grind.