My refurbished iPod showed up via UPS late yesterday afternoon. I have to give Best Buy full marks for sending a quick replacement; they said 3 - 5 business days, and it ended up being only two. They sent an iPod identical to the one I had before (20 GB 4G, white), though they had obviously cleaned this one up, buffed out the scratches, etc. It looked good.

So last night I hooked it up to the laptop to reload the 4100 songs that belong on my iPod. The first time I tried a sync I got a weird Windows delayed write error. Strange, I thought; maybe I just jiggled the cord at the wrong time or something. So I tried again. The second time, it managed to sync about 2 GB worth of music, then stopped syncing. When I disconnected it and tried to play the music from the iPod, uh oh. The iPod didn’t show any music on it at all. When I reconnected it to the PC, it gave me a nasty error and told me that I would need to re-download the iPod firmware and reset it.

At least running iPod firmware updates isn’t so tough these days; it did make me dig up my wall power charger, but I found that and completed the reset. Then I set it up to sync again. As I watched it gallantly attempt to copy the music, I started listning to the iPod - not to the music, but to the device itself, and discovered that the hard drive in it sounds sick. It’s clicking too much, spinning up and then quickly spinning down; I think I found the source of the problem. Again the sync died after 2 GB of transfer; this time it shows that the songs are there, but it locks up if I actually try to play any of them.

So after work this afternoon I will be heading back to BestBuy with my refurbished iPod (still in box) and my service plan paperwork (still conveniently accessible - hadn’t refiled it yet). I am sure they will have me send it in and get yet another refurbished one. I can only hope it goes better than this one did. I think I have to have three replacements die before they’ll actually just give me store credit. I’d be happy enough just to have one that works.

It’s been a couple of months since I did the math and realized that Mediacom was no longer a good deal for our household. Let’s review. Mediacom provides us digital cable and high-speed internet. They have repeatedly raised prices over the last two years (including a $10/month upper over the past 3 months). They had a real pain-in-the-backside dispute with Sinclair that caused us to lose one of our local channels for a month. We chose to go to Mediacom two years ago now when we dropped our home landline and went to cell phones-only; at that point, Qwest didn’t have the option of getting DSL without having a land line, which priced their service out of our range.

Fast forward to today. Qwest now has the option of getting DSL even if you don’t have regular phone service. Dish Network has an option that will give me pretty much all the same channels I have now. I’ll get a few added benefits from Dish like a dual-DVR system. (The one downer about Dish? I don’t get Versus in the top-200 channel pack, which means I won’t get to see much NHL next year. But heck, for what I’m saving per month, I could order NHL Center Ice next season and still save money.) When all is said and done, we’ll save $35/month for the first year, then when the Dish discount expires, we’ll be saving $25/month. That is, as Bullwinkle J. Moose says, antihistimine money. (”Antihistimine money?” “Not to be sneezed at.”)

So for Qwest DSL, you can either buy the DSL modem for $50, or you can lease it for $5/month ad infinitum, or you can get one from Best Buy. Normally I’d assume Best Buy would be the worst deal of them all. But Best Buy has this deal where if you sign up for Qwest DSL while you’re at the store, you get the DSL modem for free. That’s right, free. No mail-in rebate; they just walk you through the online signup, then they take the modem, throw it in a bag, and hand it to you. I was amazed. The signup went smoothly, appears to have made it to Qwest OK (I got a confirmation email last night), and it’s definitely the same DSL package I would’ve signed up for if I signed up directly from Qwest. So good on you, Best Buy. Now if I get my refurbished iPod yet this week and it’s satisfactory, Best Buy will be on my “very good” list for the week.

Tonight I’ll stop by the satellite TV place on the way home and put in my order for Dish. When I checked with them a few weeks back, the lead time on installs was only a couple of days. I’m guessing I’ll get an install Friday afternoon or Saturday. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it all goes smoothly.

We had the whole clan over this weekend - well, almost the whole clan. Ryan came in from Chicago, Aaron and the folks from Wisconsin, Andrew from his job in Illinois. Becky’s folks were already here visiting. We were only missing Rebecca, who is finishing up her six-month DTS in Panama. She’ll be home in about 10 days - sure looking forward to seeing her.

We took a whole ton of pictures over the weekend and I’m in the process of uploading some of them to a Memorial Day Weekend set on Flickr. Here’s a couple samples. Enjoy!

Took my iPod with the bad battery and service plan back to Best Buy today.  They have to send it in for service, and gave me the option of either having my iPod serviced in about 2 weeks, or in the quick replacement plan where they send me a similar iPod, refurbished, right away - i.e. 3 - 5 business days.  I opted for the latter option - the quicker the better, and I’m not tied to my particular piece of hardware - I just want something that works.

I’m hoping it ends up being more like 3 business days instead of 5, but then, I’m just awfully impatient sometimes.  We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve had my 3G 20GB iPod for two and a half years now, so it’s no surprise that the battery was about due to go.  Well, it pretty well happened last week; I could charge it overnight and still not get more than about 30 minutes worth of play out of it. 
When I bought the iPod, I shelled out an extra $50 for the 3-year service plan, since the Best Buy associate assured me that it would cover replacing the battery, and I knew that batteries were the iPod’s weakness.  So when I get a chance this weekend I will be heading to Best Buy to see what they’ll offer me for service options.  I think it’s unlikely that they’d just offer me a replacement, though if they wanted to offer me $300 towards a new iPod I certainly wouldn’t complain.  More likely they’ll tell me I have to send it in for service and be without it for a month.  Ugh.  I guess I’ll see.  A month would be a long time to go without my iPod.

How quickly we get attached to these electronic gizmos.

Having been in DC since Monday night, I’m good and ready to be heading home.  Our meetings have been useful but are winding down, and my flight leaves Washington Reagan at 2:30.  I’ll head out of here, find some lunch, and make my way down to the airport.   I heard a rumor that our next quarterly meeting might be in Seattle instead of DC, which would be nice for an August meeting.  If not, I’ve got a couple hotels scoped out that would be nice to stay at when we meet back here in August.

It will be good to get home.

I’ve known about this for a while now, but it’s finally official and fair to announce. Caedmon’s Call announced yesterday that Derek Webb, a former member of the group, and since then an excellent solo artist, will be joining the group on their new album, Overdressed (due in August) and will be touring with them on the Overdressed tour.

I never made it to hear Caedmon’s before Derek left the band; I’ve heard both of them separately, though. I can’t wait to hear them all on stage together.

I’m headed out of town today; assuming that Northwest Airlines does their thing, I will be in Washington, DC by mid-evening. I’ll be attending two and a half days of RTCA committee meetings. Such fun! I should be home on Thursday night.

Happily, my in-laws are arriving this afternoon to visit. They will be good company for Becky and the girls while I’m gone, and since they’re staying for two weeks, I’ll get to see them too when I get home.

Last night was a date night for Becky and me. We dropped the girls off with some friends for a couple of hours and headed to Casa Las Glorias for the Mexican food I’d been craving all week. Darn tasty stuff. (What’s this white stuff on my nachos? (Sorry, square peg joke. Carry on.)) Unexpectedly, they had a musician strolling the aisles at the restaurant, singing and playing the guitar. He was singing what I’d consider to be typical Mexican restaurant music, and doing a good job of it.

He finished another song in Spanish, thanked the patron at the table next to ours for a tip, and then started on another guitar strum. This one sounded vaguely familiar. I was trying to place it, and then he started singing, and I was dumbfounded. “Well it looks like five thousand miles broke the camel’s back… but it’s not as though I had a plan to win you back…” At this point Becky looked at me quizzically, because she recognized the song, too. No way. NO. WAY. The strolling guitarist in Casa Las Glorias is playing a Caedmon’s Call song?!? What the heck!

The young man continued strolling and singing while we finished our dinner. He had an assortment of Mexican songs, but he was also verging into pop music territory with some John Mayer, Dave Matthews, and the like. When we finished dinner I gave him a tip and we discussed Caedmon’s for a couple minutes. He was surprised to find another fan in the restaurant. He admitted that the latest album he owns is Back Home, and I encouraged him to get ahold of Share The Well and that they have a new album coming out in August. Then we parted ways; he kept singing, we headed off to continue our evening out.

I have a feeling it’ll be many days before I hear a Caedmon’s Call song sung in a restaurant again.

I’ve had two songs running pretty much on repeat today. This happens to me on frequent occasion; I get stuck on some song and I will just loop it over and over. It usually takes a day or two for the compulsion to go away.

The first one is Nothing Left To Lose by Mat Kearney. Why this song? It gives me a feeling of calm; laid-back, content, happy. Not so much that it makes me calm, content and happy, but that it reminds me that it’s possible. I’ll admit right here that it doesn’t have a lot to do with the lyrics - I probably couldn’t sing along with the song if I wanted to - it’s more to do with the music, the melody. Good stuff. Why is it stuck in my head? I think it started back on Sunday while we were eating breakfast at McDonalds while waiting for the rain to stop. This song came on over the McD’s muzak system, and my brother Andrew and I both pretty much simultaneously started singing along. It was pretty cool

The other song is Coldplay’s Swallowed In the Sea. Again, I haven’t taken a lot of time to try to figure out the lyrics. What I love in this song is the way they build it sonically. It starts out pretty sparse, just some keyboards and a little bit of pad. Then they build it in, first with the drums, and finally with the guitars and vocal harmony, until at the end they’ve built up this massive sound… it’s so… there.

Am I the only one that suffers from this compulsion? What songs have been stuck in your head lately?