irritating

I bought an iPod shuffle last December, to carry with me on my walk to campus and home (it's 3.5 miles round-trip). I figured it would make the time pass pleasantly, would give me some needed motivational/meditative tunes, and that I could play demos of songs we're writing during the walk, to see if any ideas came up.

After a couple months of smooth usage, it was time to change out songs and recharge the iPod, so I plugged in its little USB connector, set the iPod onto the plug on the other end, and it flashed its little amber light to tell me it was being connected... and then didn't connect. I tried again, and again, and again.

I looked up troubleshooting on the Mac site, which told me quite helpfully that if there are problems connecting the iPod to the computer, you may need to reset your iPod, and to do that, just connect it to the computer... I'm not kidding. Would that I were kidding.

I gave up. A couple months later, just for kicks, I plugged it in again, and it worked. I recharged it, changed tunes on the unit, and it was fine for two more months. Then it stopped connecting again.

Then it stopped working. My loveliest told me to send it to Apple and get a new unit (which was apparently how they were handling the problem - well, that and ignoring it). But it was past its warranty date by then. And then, of course, it connected to the computer again.

Tonight it failed to connect again.

I suppose I'll just have to learn harmonica.

10

There are 10 cell phone stores/kiosks in the Vintage Faire mall in Modesto. That's not counting either Radio Shack or Circuit City, which of course both also sell cell phones.

Douglas Adams loved physics, but in the radio series of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy he also explained an economic phenomenon called the Shoe Event Horizon. The Shoe Event Horizon is the tipping point in a civilization's economic development when shoe shops overtake all other production, so that it becomes unviable to build anything but shoe shops. As a result, the economy and civilization collapse and everyone who survives evolves into birds.

Obviously he was right, he just had the wrong product at the center of the theory. But to be fair, cell phones didn't exist when he wrote Hitchhiker's Guide. At the current rate, by 2011 every shop in the mall will be a cell phone store, and all anyone will do is work selling cell phones to one another.

I am not a fan. I don't desire an iPhone, or a camera phone, or a Blackberry. We have a pre-paid cell phone we only use while driving to LA, to report on our progress or the smog level in Bakersfield (on a scale from Totally Obscured By Brown Air to Instant Death). But even I felt like I should have a more up-to-date and snazzier phone, passing all those damn stores - all of them busy, by the way.