I have three iPods.

Only one of them actually "works as designed".

One of them - the 80GB Classic - won't update anymore - the only use for the USB cable is to charge it.

This is the other one -a second-generation Nano - and, as you can see, I had to fix it with Duct Tape.


                            
There's just something wonderful about fixing an Apple product with duct tape - it feels almost the same as (say) reconfiguring a Microsoft operating system with a chunk of C4.

This was a case of simple mechanical failure - the cap on top of the iPod won't stay down, which means that sliding the locking mechanism back and forth doesn't work. Well, it still doesn't work - I have to actually push down the cap with my thumb while locking or unlocking - but at least it doesn't pop off and spill iPod innards into my running bag (kinda makes you wonder what the music itself would look like doesn't it? Would the Deep Purple be deep purple? Would the Grateful  Dead be in a paisley print? And would the Meatloaf be all bloody? :)

I've not been posting Fat Charlie regularly lately, because Ethel owns the only camera that's not part of a cell phone, and Ethel won't upload any pictures. Ethel won't do a lot of stuff these days, because Ethel's brother and his family has been here this week, and Ethel has been posessed by the Sister Demon.

Ethel was raised as an only child, as she is adopted - then, when she found her bio-family, it was a major event (for one thing, it meant that I had TWO mothers-in-law). And her brother Bill(there were like 27 girls, and Bill) was the most special person in the bunch - mainly because they look alike, and Ethel had never had anybody that looks like her before. (Actually, they really don't look alike, or I wouldn't be married to Ethel, but there are some similarities - coloration and hair texture, some facial bones in the same sort of arrangement, and they are both life forms based on carbon and oxygen).

So, whenever Bill comes around, Ethel just changes into some other type of person entirely.  Everything that I say to her goes through the "sister filters", which means that it  can't be considered if she suspects  that her brother won't like it. We have to eat foods that he wants to eat, we have to go places that he wants to go, and the woman that I'm married to - my wife - disappears behind this other woman - Bill's Sister - until he goes away again.

Well, actually, when he leaves, she doesn't return to normal immediately - first she has to catch up on everything that she's neglected while he was around (besides me, you understand). Then she has to rest up from his visit, and from all of the catching-up that she had to do. Then all of the angst that she's felt while trying to decide if Bill would like this or Bill wouldn't like that starts to come out, so I get yelled at for a few day (wait a minute - maybe that IS the "return to normal" part).

At any rate, now that Bill's left us, she was willing to download a few pics that I'd taken with her camera so that I could post a Fat Charlie or two. But I"m so whupped that I can barely function. I'm beat up, hung up, beat down, hung down, brung down and all kinds of mean, nasty ugly things - I'm ready for a weekend, I think.