For your entertainment i have decided to tell you of my ongoing battle with my new ipod.
The story so far:
Off to Tottenham court road i went this morning, feeling good with a brand new shiny Ipod to buy. (also needed were a haircut and a new suit for plindoe's wedding on saturday but i didn't get round to buying those)
two hours later and about 8 shops with no i-pods, PC world told me that they had only one in stock and that was for display purposes.
a gentleman in a later shop confidently informed me that THERE WERE NONE TO BE FOUND IN ENGLAND!
i found this hard to believe and continued the search.
a man in the next shop told me that although he personally didn't have any to sell, the main branch (50 metres up the road) had some 15GB ones. this being the model i desired i set of in search of said shop.
I found the shop, and indeed they had some in stock, i promptly asked for one and a nice firewire card for my desktop. only to get into a 15 min conversation about ipods, musicmatch, apple's website and various other issues. it seemed that the act of properly configuring an ipod was more complicated than i thought. i informed the gentleman that i already used Musicmatch in an attempt to be helpful and he promptly told me that the version i had (version 8) would not work with said ipod and i would have to use the included Version 7.5 he pushed the point firmly home by stating slowly and clearly, as if i were a japanese tourist:
IT WILL NOT WORK WITH MUSICMATCH VERSION 8!!!!1
So i made my way back home with joy in my heart and a big smile on my face (partly due to the hot summers day bringing out the very finest of londons T&A.
first things first, i spilled out the contents of the ipod box on my desk and plotted my next move.
Being of the philosophy that instructions are for pussies (something i learned in the era of Transformers) i opened up my desktop box and carefully inserted the firewire card.
This was the start of my problems, the act of this installation promply dumped my internet connection and it took a good 40 mins fucking around with reconfiguring wireless bridges, adaptors and the like, i turned it off and re-started 3 times and still no joy, i finally took the desperate route of uninstalling the connection software and re-installing, this did the trick and i regained contact with the world.
that is the story so far, but i am entirely certain that it is not the end.
Ten good mins of the day wasted trying to find out if the firewire bus controller thingy is working properly. turns out it is.
Nice.
five more mins installing the software on the disk, why do apple care what i do for a living? or where i will use the ipod? big brother is watching.
the install crashed halfway through, possibly because i was playing musicmatch at the same time. Skunk anansie - weak. if anyone cares.
software installed this time, i have the audible manager screen on. its time to plug in the ipod.
well the software does not recognise the ipod, fucking great. there is an audio file which i hope will tell me what to do, on it an american woman informs me that my ipod can read me the morning newspaper and make me laugh till my sides split, i could do with a laugh at this point.
updater cannot configure the ipod because other resources are using it, wish i knew what, i'm sure not doing much.
Poor thing. We are having trouble getting the new hard drive installed on my computer. I wish you the best of luck.
remembering the wise words of the shop assistant i have taken the bold move of uninstalling musicmatch.
after doing this i noticed that the window for the software installer was still on the taskbar, i couldnt close it from the options so i did it with the task manager, it then informed me that the installation was cancelled. oops.
It now recognises the ipod. why do i never listen to people? why?
about to format the ipod hardrive, the way things are going i'll probably format my c drive instead.
here goes.
ahah, after a random reboot, things are looking good. i'm not fooled though, there will be more pitfalls ahead. i relish this battle, the days of plug and play have made us weak. a good old fashioned technical tussle will make me strong again!
here we go, musicmatch will not start because mmvcp70.dll was not found.
re-installing, a message reads 'please plug in your ipod' guess where the ipod is?
thats right sports fans, right there in the dock.
son of a bitch.
maybe this is apples revenge on me for not using a mac.
dunno what its doing now, maybe its transferring files, maybe not. i don't know how fast these firewire things go but theres seven gigs of music on my desktop. anyone know how long?
hah, i rule. downloading tracks now!
hmm, why won't all the tracks in my 7 Gig music file fit onto my 15 gig ipod?
Hah, i win! Vic 1 Technology 0
actually its more like vic 1 technology 512 but whos counting eh?
Posted by
Sul, 23:47, 12th July 2003:
the ipod sales guy was comedy GENIUS, I just have to say :)
he was a star. with his bearded sidekick.
Posted by
stephen, 01:21, 13th July 2003:
Buy a Mac! :)
Steve (who just approved himself for posting in the DB, thanks Cal!)
Posted by
plindoe, 16:54, 13th July 2003:
so have you got the new suit, and more to the point my fuck off big present!!!
:)
suit yes, haircut no, fuck off big present no.
Posted by
beargod, 09:29, 14th July 2003:
SO are you listening to the ipod now?
Posted by
beargod, 10:59, 14th July 2003:
has it not run out of batteries yet
nope, stop trying to bring me down.