I got a new iPod for Christmas to replace the one my mom lost in her car, in about four square feet of space. And of course, one of the only reasons I had that iPod in the first place was because it was free, which made it totally acceptable that it only held 1 GB, or about 200 songs. My music tastes are decidedly more voracious, so I decided to go with one of these:

I’d forgotten how hard working with iTunes can be sometimes. For one, not all my songs are, how would you phrase it, acquired with any exchange of money. This makes trying to find album artwork and album names and correct spellings and all of the little neurotic tendencies I have when I organize my music somewhat difficult to find. So I’ve spent the last few weeks on Wikipedia looking up discographies and such to get my collection up to speed. I’ve decided that I don’t want to deal with listing the compilation albums that a lot of these songs appeared on when I got them, so I’ve been going back to the original album. Not only is this way easier when I’m searching by artist (since organizing things by album is pretty useless to me — I just wanted to see pretty things when I played music) but also, it makes me feel less ashamed about having songs from Now! That’s What I Call Music!

Those commercials still haunt me.

Hardware issues

Headphones

I apparently wasn’t plugging in my headphones correctly, meaning I wasn’t applying enough force. However, it is customary to stop applying force to a delicate object when you encounter resistance, so I figured there was just a problem with the jack. It turns out that you actually have to shove the headphone plug in there until you hear that nice loud click that either means, “Hooray, your music won’t constantly shift from channel to channel” or “I don’t think this is covered by your warranty.” Also, I find it very disappointing that my iPod doesn’t pause when my headphones come unplugged, — this was rectified when I plugged my headphones in “correctly” — which was a really handy feature because my headphones have a 6 ft. cable, and let’s say I’m not the most graceful person when moving my arms around, frantically like there’s a giant ape chasing after me. But then again, if I yelled, “Oh good lord, it’s a giant ape!,” I don’t know that I’d be taken seriously.

USB cable

I feel really harsh trying to put this cable in. I have to jam it in somehow, and this being an expensive and sensitive bit of equipment, I’m not very comfortable with that. Yanking it out is like pulling a knife out of someone. I miss the tiny release buttons that my old Nano’s cable had. Those cables might even be compatible. But anyway, when you yank it out, you can hear baby Jesus crying tears of gold and myrrh and tiny donkeys. It ain’t pretty.

Another thing: I know iPods don’t have external speakers — which is why a dock would be a decent investment ‚ but for every normal human being who goes to sleep without wearing headphones, the iPod is useless as an alarm clock. I only tried to use my iPod out of desperation (my mom keeps stealing my phone and putting it in random places. It’s not that hard to tell the difference. My phone is very dark purple, and hers is black. My phone’s wallpaper is Sandy and her phone has bubbles. SANDY. BUBBLES. SANDY. BUBBLES. Actually, now I can see why she was confused.) before I realized that I wouldn’t be getting up until 4 PM if I did, unless I had the ears of a highly-trained midget bat that resided deep inside the iPod’s headphone jack. These ears, of course, would be gold-tipped.

But now I can finally fulfill my dream of walking to class to Santeria by Sublime. I might wear a sombrero for good measure.