How Did I Get Here?

Saturday

Today is the day. After many, many years, I have finally bought myself a new iPod.

Giggy, my intrepid iPod Mini (which they don’t even make anymore) was getting long in the tooth and was getting more “personality” than I wanted to deal with. Mainly, it would think it was out of battery power if it got cold.

Hey, who doesn’t have that problem?

But it became high on the suck meter on runs. So a year after I thought I was going to get an update (I actually bought one LAST Christmas but returned it), Giggy lasted an entire year and even survived my busiest running year of my life.

So props go out to Giggy.

And it’s not like I’m throwing it away. It just now resides full-time in my car where it stays charged and in the transmitter so I can listen to it while driving. It lives on and that’s a source of comfort (I’m so damn sentimental.)

Now, onto the new one. I got an 8 gig Nano. That’s double the space I had before.

You would think I would be all excited but spending money for me is a painful experience and even though I got $50 cash for Christmas and just got two reimbursement checks for marathons, it still felt like giving birth to a porcupine to plop down 200 bones.

We went to Costco and they don’t even put them out for people to steal. There is something inherently wrong about grabbing a plasticized piece of cardboard and paying $200.

I had a long debate over the color with Carrie. The package had a blue one and a different part number than the one on the sign which was specifically identified as “black.” I argued that this meant that if we brought a blue package up, we would get a blue Nano. I wanted a black one.

Carrie thought it didn’t matter and that we could ask for whatever color we wanted when we got up there.

I countered with a suggestion to ask (actually, have HER ask) before we paid but I was ignored.

After Carrie paid (something that was just too painful for me), I took it up to the distribution counter and asked the lady about it. Turns out I won the argument but lost in the long run. Blue meant blue. Black would be, well, black. Her logic was relentless.

I almost returned it but then I thought, what the hell. I’m going to get a case for it anyway so it could be pink as far as it mattered. OK, I would not have taken pink. A man has his limits.

Our next stop was at Circuit City to see about this case. The leather one I got for my mini way back when was just over $10 so imagine my dismay when the one I needed for this was over double that.

Son of a BITCH!!!

But I had to have it and the bastards knew it.

As we left the store, Carrie cheerfully pointed out how much the total was and my reaction was:

“Thanks. That makes me feel real great about all of this. I really didn’t want to know. I didn’t even want to think about it and you just had to point that out.”

You would think she would know me better than that after 20 years.

I got home and got to work of putting songs on it.

For those that know me, you know I hate iTunes like a weak prisoner hates shower time. I absolutely refuse to use it and was looking forward to going to the replacement program I found works better; Media Monkey.

I plugged in the Nano, synced it up with the old list from Giggy, and voila, the songs transferred on the first try. I was set.

Until I plugged in the earphones and pushed play. The screen proclaimed there was not music. What?

I plugged it back into the computer and saw that there was 988 songs on there. (you can’t have it plugged in to the computer and listen to it at the same time because after all, crApple is still crApple).

No matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to work. I was getting less and less happy about this whole thing and wasted several hours unloading, loading, messing with settings, and cussing to get it to work but no joy. I even did some research on the web and saw that some people were having the same problems. One person even went so far as to claim that they had designed the new iPods so they can ONLY work with iTunes. I was about to lose it.

Utterly defeated, I actually downloaded the iTunes installation executable and was about to launch it when a thought came to mind. I am not kidding, my finger was on the mouse ready to double click the installation program when the thought came to me:

Have I tried updating the Media Monkey software?

I went to the site and sure enough, they had a new version. In fact, I was several version behind and the new one specifically said that it works with the new iPods as a “new feature.”

I upgraded (still free which made me purr), and uploaded the list.

I unplugged, put the earbuds in, pushed play, and heard “Sweet Child O Mine” come sweetly pouring into my ears.

It worked. For the love of God, it worked.

The first thing I did was go to my “installs” folder and deleted the iTunes install program while laughing maniacally.

Then I got to the business of adding more songs.

Like I said, I had 4 gig to work with and a long time ago, I made a long list that I had to whittle down to fit onto Giggy. But now, all bets are off.

I started by doing onesies and twosies but then got sloppy and just started adding huge swaths of songs. Like instead of trying to pick out Sarah McLachlan songs individually, screw it, I threw them all on there. Same with Hootie, Alanis, Seal, Dido, Enya, and Sheryl.

I wandered through my collection and just loaded up songs willy-nilly and STILL only used 3/4 of the space I have. This will not be a problem until I have to cut out songs and then I’ll have to go through and see the ones I just threw on there because I had the room.

But that won’t happen for awhile because, come on, 8 gig.

The one thing left to do?

Name it.

I’m considering “Nanny” or just “Blue” although that’s one of Trucky Trucksaurus’s nicknames.

Help me out, here.

Free Advice for Today: “Write a letter to the editor at least once a year.”