This Should Work

On Monday my iPod finally kicked the dirt. It was pretty sudden too; Sunday night I was listening to Death Cab for Cutie while cooking dinner, then Monday morning when I plugged it into my Mac there was an error message about a corrupted hard drive.

I spent most of my time at work researching how to fix my iPod that would do no more than show a sad iPod face and here are the top three suggestions fixing this problem:

1. Shake the iPod violently, then try turning it on.
2. Drop the iPod from 4-feet above a carpeted or tiled floor (not concrete), then try turning it on.
3. Drop Kick the iPod across one’s office space, then try turning it on.

People had success with all these methods multiple times and since my iPod already seemed dead, I thought I would try the first the two. Shaking the iPod did nothing, but amazingly dropping the iPod onto the carpet actually brought up a menu screen! My music was gone, but I thought all I would need to do is connect my iPod to my Mac and re-sync the information.

I connected my iPod and watch as iTunes attempted to restore the data. No dice. The error message stated that the harddrive was either corrupted or damaged, again.

So I started to look into the cost to repair an out-of-warranty iPod and prices start at $250! That’s the price of a new one, so I’ll probably pick up a new iPod soon. I could try replacing the harddrive, but there are no guarantees that that would work either. So the present my wife gave me on our first wedding anniversary is gone…but not forgotten.

So allegedly Tennessee Titan’s Adam “Pacman” Jones is in trouble with the law, again. This time it’s for “making it rain” in a strip club. I’ve never heard this term before and first thought it had something to do with relieving one’s self on a stripper (gross, I know) but I was wrong.

Apparently “making it rain” has to do with throwing thousands of dollars on to the stage at one time, in Jones’ case $81,000 dollars. Pacman did not get in trouble for throwing the money on the stage, but for allegedly getting mad at the strippers for picking up the money and starting a fight.

Here are my questions for Mr. Jones:

1. Just like Bodog Beat, I too want to know which bank has $81,000 dollars in ones just hanging in the vault?
2. He brought the money to the strip club in garbage bags. Dude, why not take some of those one dollar bills, go to Dick’s Sporting Goods, and buy a few duffle bags? Or a briefcase?
3. Who throws money at a stripper and thinks they’ll get it back?

The money was supposed to be for visual effect only, but even I would be tempted to grab a few bucks and I’m not a stripper. Even if he did get the money back, would Pacman Jones really notice (or care) if $100 or even $200 dollars were missing?

Akismet went ape-s$!t on me some time ago and I wasn’t paying attention. Somehow I ended up with enough blog spam to break the Wordpress “Awaiting Moderation”User Interface; there was so much spam (over 7600 blog spam comments) that I had delete them in batches of 30.

It was the same repetitive motion over and over: Select All, Delete, Confirm, Refresh. Select All, Delete, Confirm, Refresh. Select All, Delete, Confirm, Refresh… all the while flashing on my screen were phrases like these:

• Viagra Viagra Viagra Viagra Viagra
• Hey! If you like that, then you’ll totally dig my manga porn at …
• Viagra Viagra Viagra Viagra Viagra
• COme join our fiesta at cumfiesta…
• Viagra Viagra Viagra Viagra Viagra
• Love your design. Check out the Hot MILF’s at…
• Viagra Viagra Viagra Viagra Viagra

While I’m doing this insanely repetitive task of deleting spam (Select All, Delete, Confirm, Refresh) and thinking about giving up I remembered that once when I was young played a video game (Final Fantasy on the NES) for 6 hours just to level up my characters to the point where I could kill almost any bad guy in one or two rounds. Talk about insanely repetitive, I had my characters walking through the same small area over and over again and fighting the same bad guys over and over again just to gain more experience points. Hell, if I could to that when I was young then I can certainly knock this spam out.

After about an hour of work (Select All, Delete, Confirm, Refresh. Viagra Viagra Viagra Viagra Viagra. Select All, Delete, Confirm, Refresh.) I got down to under 1000 blog comments, the “Awaiting Moderation” function started working again, and I was able to delete the rest of the spam with two mouse clicks.

Since I do have access to my own server, I might try adjusting the file that drives Apache, or try re-installing Akismet. Either option would be better than doing this again.

“I always know when my friends are calling because my cell phone plays the ‘Friends’ theme whenever they call.”

Yes, I actually heard that the other day on campus. I once heard this at the at mall:

“That’s my phone. I love this song-it’s so me.”

Which begs the questions: what part of A-ha’s “Take on Me” is so you?

I don’t understand spending two bucks for a thirty second clip of a song. And even if I wanted a ringtone, they don’t sell ones I want (Neko Case ringtones aren’t in high demand). Besides, my previous phones didn’t support ringtones.

Then I got new phone –the LG Chocolate– with all the bells and whistle. I love my new phone, but the one down side is all the accessories needed to unlock the phone’s full potential. $30 for a “Music Kit” $20 for a “data cable,” etc.

So instead of spending money I found an open source program–BitPim–that would allow me to connect and manipulate my phone via bluetooth. Sending contacts to my phone, retrieving pictures from my phone, and much more could be done with this little program including creating custom ringtones.

So I started creating my own ringtones for my phone. The Pixies, Teo Leo, Art Brut, and a few others. I thought I was cool. I had ringtones that no one else had. I was special.

Then my cellphone rang in public and some folks turned and stared at me with a look that said ‘what the hell is that?’ I felt like saying “It’s okay, I’ve got a cool ringtone. It’s Jon Brion’s Knock Yourself Out from the I Heart Huckabee’s soundtrack.”

Instead I realized that the look I was receiving is the same look I gave to ‘Friends’ ringtone chick and ‘Take On Me’ ringtone guy. Now, my phone is set to vibrate.