The sound of silence

Hello, Darkness, my old friend...

OK, so maybe this blog doesn't have anything to do with my favorite Simon and Garfunkel song, except that I now have fewer ways of listening to that song.

You see, my friends, on Sunday afternoon, my iPod died. I was mowing my yard, listening to a podcast, when suddenly, I was only mowing my yard.

My internal dialogue remained calm.

These kinds of things have happened before. No big deal. Toggle the lock switch twice and then hold in the Menu button and the Enter button.

OK, so the battery was low. It's got a dead battery and it's acting funny. It will be OK after I get to work and have it hooked up to the computer.

Only that didn't work either -- something about an iPod in recovery mode. I was now in the tough position of making a decision about restoring factory settings.

You see, this could not be taken lightly. It's an 80GB video model that was nearly full. That means it contained more than 13,000 songs, a couple hundred podcasts, maybe 30 music videos and one full-length feature film ("The Hangover").

Except for the podcasts (which are free), I probably had 97 percent of the other stuff backed up.

But does anyone know how time consuming it is to put all that crap back on a tiny electronic device?

All the same, I had no other option. With much pain, I clicked the option to restore. The only problem was, after five minutes or so, I got another message that said there was an error.

My constant companion still would not function.

I've since tried twice more to no avail. While apple.com has a number of suggestions, I can see the writing on the wall.

As John Cleese might tell you: "This iPod's not pinin' for the fjords! He's passed on! This iPod is no more! He has ceased to be! He's expired and gone to meet his maker! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, he 
rests in peace! His metabolic processes are now history! He's kicked the 
bucket, he's shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-IPOD!!"

And I suppose that's that. I could send it to California to be fixed, but that's money I don't have. It's the same story for buying a new one.

I guess it's back to CDs and the radio for me ... if I can remember how to use them.