iPods and Goodnights

The passing of the brilliant Steve Jobs has reminded me of the story of when I acquired my dearly beloved iPod, and I thought I’d share it with you. I think this saga will give you an idea of my single-minded determination as well as my tendency towards knuckleheaded idiocy.

As you read this, please know that I have many friends who are actually computer technicians and would have been happy to help. I also know many people who, at the time, had a high-speed internet connection. And notice that I DIDN’T EVEN THINK ABOUT calling them. Only after it was all over did I think to myself “Hey, I could have called…” Or gone to the library and used their connection, for f****s sake.

But anyway, here’s what happened. I don’t watch television, I listen to audiobooks. And, as you might imagine, that can be a little hard on a CD player – especially when Brillance Audio had like 99 tracks on each CD. Getting to the track you wanted required a lot of button-pushing. So, about three years ago, I decided to buy an iPod.

Me, being who I am, wanted to get the biggest and bestest iPod out there. Never mind that I had no idea how it worked. I went to the Best Buy and spent a significant amount of money on an iPod with the ability to hold 160 gb of stuff. Books take up a lot of room, I reasoned, so I needed a big Pod. And actually, I’m kind of glad I got that one – they didn’t make them very long because most people thought they were TOO big.

Oh, by the way, my laptop at the time had a 40 gb hard drive, with about 20 gb available. Do you sense a problem? I didn’t.

Oh, and I had a dialup internet connection.

So I brought home my shiny new toy and opened the box, prepared to be delighted. And I was…until I realized that the software to run the thing didn’t come with it. It needed to be downloaded over the internet.

Do you even want to know how long it took to download a 68 mb program over a dialup connection? No. You do not.

But eventually it was downloaded and I proceeded with the install. Only to find out that iTunes required Windows XP Service Pack 2. I had been dutifully downloading my updates (and THAT was fun on dialup), but apparently Microsoft had determined that my computer was no longer worthy, so I did not have Service Pack 2 installed. I went out to the Microsoft site, eventually found the download for Service Pack 2, and started the proceedings.

It was going to take 36 hours to download.

A trifle miffed, I stopped the download. Then I realized I had an old version of iTunes already on my computer. HUZZAH! I put some songs in there, and synched up my brand new lovely iPod.

My iPod would not recognize the old version of iTunes.

See, now this is the point where I should definitely called some friends. Well, actually I should have called them before downloading the 68 mb program.

But I was determined. I had an iPod and as GOD WAS MY WITNESS music was going to go on that thing.

So I went and bought a new laptop.

I can’t explain it…I think I was just in the zone. This was going to work. I was going to make it work come hell or high water. And at least the new laptop would have a hard drive big enough to hold all of the songs and books the iPod would hold.

Rationalization is a lovely thing.

I brought my laptop home, and (eventually) got it set up. I was feeling pretty good about myself because I had saved the iTunes download on my old computer. I figured I could just move that to an external harddrive I have, then load it into the new computer, and I wouldn’t have to download the program again. That’s what I did.

It didn’t work.

The new laptop was running Vista. The old laptop had been running Windows XP. The iTunes I downloaded on the old laptop was the Windows XP old computer version.

So I downloaded iTunes – the 68 mb file – over a dialup internet connection AGAIN.

But at last, SUCCESS! iTunes was downloaded…the program was set up and running…. there were songs in the library. All that was left was to move them to the iPod. I hooked up the iPod and…

it didn’t work.

Apparently the iPod thought it was corrupted because it had synched to the old version of iTunes, which MEANT…

I had to download the 70 mb iPod software file and reinstall it.

Over the internet.

With a dialup connection.

After a week, I had songs on my iPod.

And peace reigned once more in the Palatial Horvath Estate.