Category: Activities

Not a bad day, overall

Half of our group was off playing golf on company time, so the rest of us figured we deserved a break too and went to Hooters for lunch. Last time I was at one of them was coming back from Oshkosh 2003 when I got weathered in at Muskegeon. Nothing’s changed, except the age dispartity between me and the hot young waitresses is now a few years greater.

I managed to get to UPS to pick up our new iPod Shuffle, but of course being Apple they had to do something wrong and they left out the cable to connect it to our stereo. At least I’ll have something to listen to at work until my new photo iPod comes.

Also, I finally got the FedEx shipping information so I could ship my broken iPod back, so I got to the FedEx Kinkos store and got that shipped off.

And then when I got home with the Shuffle, I find two packages, one my hotly anticipated copy of Bone Wars, the Game of Ruthless Palentology from Zygote Games, and the other my slightly but lightly used new camera, a Nikon Coolpix 8800. Unfortunately it was already nearly dark by the time I got it unpacked and the battery charged, so I didn’t get any pictures to show off yet. But it’s a very nice camera.

More kayaking pictures

Here are some pictures from last weekend’s kayaking.

kayaking/DSCN2129Vicki gets sideways.
kayaking/DSCN2131Traffic jam!
kayaking/DSCN2133

Nothing too artistic or cool, but I like them. It was a beatiful day, but unfortunately the river was quite low because of the lack of rain, and the weir was 95% blocked by a gigantic tree – I probably could have pulled myself through the gap, but I didn’t have any confidence in Vicki’s ability to do the same so we turned back instead.

iPod Number 6 Progress

I spend a lot of time with an Apple support today. He wanted me to go through all the steps with the iPod Updater and iTunes that I’d already been through last night. All the time I kept whining about how many times I’ve gotten dud iPods in the past, and what an inconvenience it was. Finally, after exhausting all the other options, he said “I’m going to transfer you to another iPod specialist”. Oh, great, I thought, another hour going through all the same stuff. Instead I was on hold for 20 minutes or more, and the new guy finally came on he asked me for the dispatch numbers for all my previous iPod repairs. (Once again Apple proves itself incapable of looking up the information in their own damn database – idiots.) Anyway, he tells me that they’re going to give me a new Photo iPod! Score one for the power of positive whining. So I said “well, as long as you’re going to give me a new one, can I pay the difference in price and get a 60 gig one?” And he said “Sure”. And so evidently I’m goin got get a brand new top of the line 60 gig iPod.

Woo hoo!

Ok, that was iPod number 5, bring on number 6

So my replacement iPod arrived yesterday while I was at work. First thing when I get home, I plug it in and start updating it. But as it’s loading 4,000 songs, after two or three hours I noticed that I accidentally selected the Punk playlist instead of the Classical one to auto update on it, and I wanted Classical this time. So I attempt to change it, first by changing the iPod settings in iTunes, then by selecting “Update iPod”, and finally by ejecting it. Oh, I should mention that by this point, the iPod is scorching hot to the touch. By this time, though, iTunes is not responding, so I attempt a “Force Quit”. It won’t quit. I try a few more times. Still no luck. I try ejecting the iPod icon on the Finder, and now the Finder isn’t responding and won’t do a “Force Restart”. Then I notice that the clock on the menu bar hasn’t updated since I started loading the iPod. Time for drastic measures, I think, and restart the computer.

When it restarts, iTunes comes up but doesn’t see the iPod, and the iPod is display an icon of a folder with an exclamation mark. I try using iPod Updater to “Restore” the software. Then iTunes says that my iPod software has to be updated to 1.3 and launches the iPod updater again (I have several different versions of the iPod Updater on my system, and I guess I didn’t use the most recent one when I did the “Restore”). It tells me that the update is complete and to unplug and replug the iPod to continue, and when I do it tells me that it needs to update to 1.3, and then that the update is complete, and to unplug and replug the iPod to continue. Somewhere along the way iTunes then tells me that there is a 1.4 update available, and I go to the Apple web site to download the latest updater (and I delete all the other updaters), which tells me that it’s installing 1.5. I do so, and that leads to another cycle of iTunes and Finder hangs. I try using the “Restore” option in the iPod Updater again, with no different results, but eventually it tells me that it’s loading songs, and then after loading one song and starting on the other, iTunes and the Finder hang again.

I go through a bunch of different combinations of software restores, reboots and plugging it in with or without iTunes or the iPod Updater already started. Eventually I’m at the situation I’m at now, where the computer won’t see the iPod at all, and the iPod is showing a new icon, that of a disk with an exclamation point.

You know, this is the 4th time that Apple has send me a faulty iPod if you count the time they sent me back iPod #3 saying there was nothing wrong with it and I sent it back because they hadn’t read my letter on how to reproduce the problem. I don’t know if they’re making any money off of this purchase, but I suspect that it’s a major profit center for DHL.