My iPod Died

Daniel

I purchased an iPod almost exactly two years ago. About one month ago, it began failing intermittently. Within a week, it no longer booted up at all.

When I turn my iPod on, the Apple logo appears, and I can hear the hard drive trying to rev up, but then it clicks. Then I can hear the hard drive again trying to rev up. But then it clicks. That happens five or six times until this guy shows up:

ipod-folder-icon.gif

It’s very easy to find the help page that corresponds to this icon on Apple.com. Unfortunately, it didn’t help me at all. After a few misfires I got an appointment today at the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store. (I shudder whenever I call it the “Genius Bar.”) I can pay Apple roughly three hundred bucks to repair my iPod. I can pay someone else as little as $125 to repair my iPod. I can sell my iPod to one of several websites that buy dead iPods, for an unpredictable sum. Or, finally, I can give my dead iPod back to Apple in exchange for 10% off my next iPod. How about 50% off?

Seriously — Are these things designed to last two years after normal wear and tear? I paid 400 bucks for two years. That’s 200 dollars per year. I’m tempted to buy a Nano with its lack of moving parts and ultra small size, but a 4GB is $250 and a 30GB iPod video is only another fifty bucks! But $300 just to get back to where I was a month ago?

PS — Maybe this story has a happy ending. Two weeks ago I bought a Nintendo DS Lite for $130 and it came with a game … F iPod. I’ve got something to do on plane rides.

My iPod Died

Got My Georgia License

Daniel

I got my Georgia Driver’s License yesterday.

I’ve been in three DMVs in my life.  The first was back home, at the NYS DMV in Olean.  I’ve gotten my license there twice — the first one, and when I moved back from Virginia.  The second was the one in Arlington, VA.  And the third was yesterday in Norcross, GA.

The Olean DMV is what you might describe as a small office.  There are one or two clerks available, there might be a line of five people (or no line at all), and no one takes a number.  The other two DMVs I’ve been to are what you might describe as large offices — roughly twenty stations, customers must take a number, those numbers are announced over loudspeakers and displayed on digital signs above each station, and there are a lot of seats.  A lot of seats.

The Virginia DMV I visited sucked.  I went once, waited, talked to a clerk, and determined that I did not have everything I needed.  I went a second time, waited, talked to a clerk, and determined that I still did not have everything I needed.  The third time, I got everything taken care of.

The Georgia Department of Driver Services (Georgia recently split the offices into the license side and the registration side) was not unpleasant.  When I first went in, I had to wait in a short line so that I could talk to a clerk at the front desk.  There, a woman asked me for the purpose of my visit, asked to see every document I needed, then gave me my number.  I think waited about ten minutes, filled out about half a page of paperwork, and paid for my license.  I then waited for about ten more minutes before getting my picture taken.  Less than five minutes later I received my license and left.

Tomorrow I plan to register my car.

Got My Georgia License

Got the Xbox 360 Spring 2006 Dashboard Update

Daniel

This morning when I got up I signed into Xbox Live on my Xbox 360 and it asked me if I wanted to apply an update. So I’ve got the Spring 2006 Dashboard Update. I’m happiest about the option to always boot to the dashboard (instead of whatever disc is in the tray) and the ability to do something else while files download.

The only quirky thing I’v noticed so far is that the music play displays a “shuffle” icon when you’re in standard play mode, and a “standard” play icon when you’re in shuffle mode. So the button shows what you might want to choose, instead of the current status. This seems backwards to me, but whatever.

Got the Xbox 360 Spring 2006 Dashboard Update

Halo 3 Sneaky Sneak Peak?

Daniel

Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this otherwise pedestrian update on Bungie.net feature an all-new render of the Halo 3 Master Chief?

You can clearly see a blurry Warthog in the background, and the Master Chief is dual-wielding sub-machine guns. (But they look very small to me.) You also might notice the bullet holes/dents all over the Chief’s armor. It would be very interesting if marks on players’ armor reflects the precise spot where an opponent’s bullet struck.

[UPDATE] And the Chief might just be busting the Halo 2 cover pose …

Halo 3 Sneaky Sneak Peak?

SiN Episodes on Xbox Live?

Daniel

Does anyone else feel that Microsoft MUST allow/encourage/force SiN Episodes to be available for download on Xbox Live? SiN Episodes might not be a great game and it’s entirely possible that such a model might not pan out on consoles, but if Microsoft does not allow this to happen it will face criticism for a long time to come.

The beauty of Xbox Live is that it offers so much that is not available anywhere else. (At least not on a console.) Fostering innovation seems like the only choice here.

I’d probably pay for a few episodes based on the gimmick factor alone.

SiN Episodes on Xbox Live?

K2, Permanently

Daniel

I implemented K2 today. I will leave it in place for the forseeable future.

I still want to make some changes to the sidebar, but the code is a little bit different than Kubrick, the default WordPress theme and the one I used up until now.

[UPDATE] Sidebar is done. I left out the Newsvine feed. May or may not put that back in.

K2, Permanently

My Least Favorite Thing About Netvibes

Daniel

I’m the type of person who leaves his computer on all the time. For the purpose of this post, I specifically leave it on while I’m at work.

Netvibes, which I have posted about before, is my first homepage. By first, I mean that it occupies the first tab when I launch Firefox. Netvibes pulls down your chosen RSS feeds throughout the day. When it encounters a problem, it pops up a little box like this one.

For the last two or three days, I’ve gotten home to find that same little box. Only, when I click OK, I find another little box just like it, right where the first one used to be. Ten minutes ago I arranged them all over the screen, and took a screenshot, which I have cropped here, but I think you get the basic idea.

That’s a lot of error messages.

I managed to click through all the visible message windows, but after that, a new one appeared when I clicked OK. When this happens (it’s happened more than once), I am forced to call up Task Manager and just kill Firefox.

I estimate that I clicked OK on 100 message boxes before killing Firefox today. I’ve only been gone about eleven hours.

Dear Netvibes: Fix this. If there’s an error, make the whole page crap out to a 404, or something. Anything besides this.

My Least Favorite Thing About Netvibes

New Links/JSS Feeds

Daniel

I added Newsvine to my sidebar and removed digg. Make your own conclusions.

What I want to talk about is the fact that there are not one but two Newsvine sections over there. They represent two feeds (out of a possible three). See, Newsvine presents news from the AP wire — the Wire — and news that registered users might find interesting and decide to seed to the site — the Vine. The third feed, which I don’t pull onto DP.com, has a lot of crap stories. This would lead one to the logical conclusion that the Vine & Wire feed would be roughly half crap. But somehow, the combined feed seems to be the best of the three. This confuses me, although I can sort of envision a fuzzy logic, neural network, popular is good thing going on here.

Right now both sections to the right are identical. I wonder about browser caches, though, and I’m going to check the site tomorrow to see what the headlines are. Hopefully within a few days I’ll have picked a favorite.

Feel free to comment on your preferred feed.

[UPDATE] Eh, they were always identical.  I went with the Vine & Wire feed.

New Links/JSS Feeds