Macintosh Misadventures

The shiny white rectangles in our life turned on us during the past two weeks. First, Kelly updated her iTunes software, mysteriously resulting in the deletion of her computer's entire music library. Then, the wires inside the power cable for Kelly's Mac began to slowly burn through the plastic casing, which was both unsightly and stinky. In short order it was all but unusable, and anyway seemed like a fire hazard. Then yesterday, my iPod broke my fragile heart. The sound blinks in and out of the right ear of my headphones, and I'm pretty sure the problem lies with the headphone jack, and not with the headphones themselves.

Like something out of an especially pointed J-horror movie, no? Or worse, the opening paragraph of one of those numerous and predictable articles about our dehumanizing addictions to the conveniences afforded us by consumer technology (usually posted in constantly updated web magazines that you can upload directly to your PDA or SmartPhone with a simple subscription). So who knows, maybe we'll learn how rich and fulfilling our lives can be without access to the internet or an impractically large collection of mp3s. Or, maybe, the ghost of Sam Cooke is trying to crawl out of our electronic hardware to clear up the more dubious details of his death. Not liking the sound of either of these possibilities, we did what we could to patch things up.

The first problem proved little more than an aggravation. Kelly's iPod still contained pretty much all the music she wanted, and we have an external hard drive on which we'd backed up quite a bit. Still, we managed to lose David Bowie's Low in the ordeal. (We have it on vinyl and CD – but in Seattle.)

Melting cord, it turns out, is a common ailment. Apple will replace it for free if your equipment's under warranty. Ah, but Kelly's computer is no longer under warranty! Foiled again. Helpless without it, we bought a new power cord. Money we'd have preferred not to spend (especially since its twice as expensive here than in the US), but problem solved.

As for my iPod, I dunno if anything can be done about that. Probably I'll wait to deal with it til I'm back in Seattle in a couple weeks. I've had it for more than a year, though, so I may just be out of luck. In the meantime, the songs of birds will have to suffice when I step out into the world each day. But I kinda doubt they know anything by the Undertones.