Mike's Weblog

I had just downloaded some video file at work and wanted to view it at home. It was under 100mb, so I thought “no problem, there’s plenty of room on my shuffle”. I plugged it in, iTunes came up and wanted to upgrade the firmware. Having never had problems with their firmware before, I let it fire away. The upgrade seemed to go fine, but windows could no longer access the iPod Shuffle. I wrote it off to a temporary issue, copied the file to a compact flash card I had handy, and went home.

Today I tried to get to the bottom of it. I plugged the iPod into a different computer, and saw the same results. Windows doesn’t even see it on the storage manager! I read through the apple support forums and proceeded to install iTunes 7 on my home computer to ‘reset’ my iPod Shuffle. iTunes proceeded to automatically analyze my whole music library before I could use it to fix my Shuffle. About an hour later, it was done and I could now proceed with the attempt to fix my iPod via a ‘reset’. The reset failed.

At this point I was beginning to get concerned. I executed the obvious search on the popular search engines available and became even more concerned. The search ‘iTunes 7 kills ipods’ on Google as a blog about my very problem as the first result! Keep in mind that iTunes 7 has only been released for a few weeks! Many others are having the same problem that I am having.

The next step was to request a warranty repair from Apple. Their website’s automated system complains that my Shuffle is beyond its warranty. Could this be due to its refurbished nature? I’m going to have to fax them my receipt, which Winnie luckily kept track of, in order to hope for a replacement (which will hopefully not die also).

Now I'm in a situation where I may, or may not, have my ipod fixed. My iTunes library has already been upgraded to the new format. And, I'm afraid to sync my G2 ipod for fear that it will also die.

Apple (just in case you read this): This is very disappointing.

I stole the picture from digital-lifestyles.info.

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This new product, usbcells, is one of those inventions that makes you wish you had thought of it. It's a simpel leap to go from USB lava lamps to these USB rechargable batteries. They're a bit expensive now ($30 for a pair), but they'll be sure to come down in price once the volume increases. Once they hit $15 a pair and come in AAA size, I'll pick some up.

So sad... I suppose we just need to be more observant to those little annoyances in the world and try to think of simple ways to fix them. Afterall the really great ideas are the ones that were right in front of your (and everyone's) face forever.

http://www.usbcell.com/

Posted by at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

aaaaaaaaaaaaaarggg!

Yee be needin' lessin's, you rotten scallywag.

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My favorite podcast, because I truly am a slacker astronomer, is no more. They uploaded their last show a few days ago. This is very sad. They spun off two new podcasts, but I have little more faith in them than I had in any spin-off television show.

So sad… I'll have to find a new way to geek out.

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This past weekend I took Winnie to the boardwalk.
o She had never been there before. We went on what was probably the busiest day of the month.
o The traffic in Santa Cruz was so bad that it took nearly an hour to drive from the highway 17 exit to the boardwalk parking lot.
o We went to the 'fried terrible stuff for you stand' and ordered the works. We split a fried Twinkie, three fried Oreos, and a fried apple rolled in sugar. I felt sick for an hour and a half.
o We took advantage of the opportunity to drink outside. We shared two 24oz Heineken keg cans.
o We received our weekend dose of vitamin D by sun.
o It was fun.

I hosted poker night yesterday (Wednesday).
o Since I hosted, I expanded the audience a bit. The table was much fuller than it had been in months.
o We managed to eat tons of food and polish off several bottles. There was much food and drink.
o I lost $5.
o It was fun. We should continue another week.
o And yes, Wednesday is the true poker night, and Wednesday it will stay!
o If you'd like to poker, let me know. It's an open table.

I ran over a squirrel today.
o On the way to work a very fast squirrel went from totally camouflaged on the central expressway median, to an obstacle in front of me in a fraction of a second.
o He ran out so close to my car that there was no time to swerve or brake. Only to see that I was about to run him over.
o He missed the tires, but made a nasty 'clang' sound on the undercarriage of my car.
o I saw him scurry off the road in my rear view mirror. He was alive but probably mortally wounded.
o This is the third animal I've hit with a vehicle.
o I've never hit more than two animals with the same vehicle yet. I hit a prairie dog with my Miata, a squirrel with a U-Haul truck, and this most recent casualty.
o I tell myself that it's just Darwin in action, but running over an animal is always sad.

That's all for now

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