iPod Touch: The Rest of the Story

9/4/2009

About 2-1/2 months ago I put up a post about a bittersweet day, in which my beloved and trusty, and just under one-year-old, iPod Touch died. I left it in a cargo pocket of a pair of shorts, didn’t tell my wife it was in there, and didn’t remember until it was in the middle of the soap cycle in the washing machine. It was squishy, loaded with soap and water, and dead.

Much consternation on this, trust me. I’ve got a history with gadgets. I left the last Palm I owned, I think it was an enhanced Palm Vx, in the seatback of an airplane. I was on a flight from Vegas to Portland and it was in the seatback of my initial airplane, bound for Los Angeles. Never recovered, of course.

But back to the iPod Touch.

So with the Touch full of white bubbles — you could even see them under the screen and hear them squishing around when you squeezed the iPod gently — I sat it down next to me as I Googled how to save a waterlogged iPod Touch and asked my brother in law what he did when something similar happened. The answer I kept coming across: Put it in a bag of rice and let it set for a few days. Do not turn it on or try to reset it. The rice may absorb the water out of the iPod.

Please, I thought. This is ridiculous. It’s going to lure the water OUT of the inside of the device? But the truth is, I was also hopeful and knew I had nothing to lose — the Touch was dead at this point. No pulse. So I borrowed a bag of sand from the Obergs, our great friends in Beaverton whom we were staying with, put the Touch into the depths of the rice, said a prayer, did a funky dance the instructions described, and went on with my vacation. (Okay, the prayer and the funky dance were added for dramatic effect.)

Then I waited.

Nothing doing for the rest of the vacation (which took us through July 5). Nothing doing when we got home. Nothing doing for so long that I, yes, got a new iPod Touch and gave my son the dead one to just mess around with.

Fast forward these 2-1/2 months.

Lori and I went to Conner’s school open house last night while the boys stayed home alone…with Conner watching them. When I came home and checked into the office, sitting on my desk was “Conner’s” iPod Touch. The old one. I hadn’t thought about it in at least a month. So, with a glimmer of hope, I clicked the power button. Nothing. I left it on the desk and went to bed.

Friday morning comes. Another beautiful, sunny day in Temecula. The sprinklers were spritzing my grass just outside my office window, the birds were chirping, it was calm and serene. I click “Conner’s” iPod Touch power button again…why, I don’t know. Nothing, again. The thought pops into my head that, even if it was ready to start working again, a full 2-1/2 months later, surely the battery would have drained by now. So I plug it into the USB adaptor which is attached to the family laptop. And I go about my business.

To keep this short story long, let’s just say that after about 30 minutes of looking over sales numbers and replying to a couple emails, I had totally forgotten that the thing was even sitting next to me UNTIL THE APPLE LOGO SUDDENLY APPEARED ON THE SCREEN. Are you kidding me????

I left it plugged in so it could finish charging completely, updated the OS to 3.0 like my replacement iPod Touch, synced it with my laptop, and VOILA, folks, we have an iPod back in action.

Was it the rice? Was it the 2-1/2 months? Was it the glimmer of faith I showed? Was it the fasting and prayer? Oh, wait, I said I DIDN’T pray about it, didn’t I? Was it some magical thing Conner did with it during the time I turned it over to him, thinking it was dead?

We will never know. But I do know one thing: what once was dead lives again. I can now introduce my sons to their own shared iPod loaded with Rush, Boston, U2, The Replacements, Paul McCartney, ELO, The Outfield, Neil Diamond, Kiss, Ace Frehley, AC/DC, Little River Band, Journey, Jackson 5, The Ramones, George Strait, Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks, The Clash, Cat Stevens, the Bee Gees, and other classics I’m sure they’ll grow to love.

Tumblr audio posting

7/27/2009

Hmm… Can’t get the Tumblr iPhone app’s audio feature to post…

Bittersweet Day

6/28/2009

Outstanding day spending time with the boys and the Lavalley family. We walked through a natural wonder — a 1,300-year-old obsidian flow (video forthcoming) — that for the second time utterly captivated our boys. Our Heavenly Father has created a beautiful and amazing world for us to learn about and explore…

On the other hand, the wonderful, durable, rugged, khaki shorts I wore today needed washing before we head onward for Beaverton in the morning. Okay, no problem there. But there was just one catch: my beloved iPod Touch was in one of the lower cargo shorts pockets when it entered the washing machine. I realized my error sometime during the foamy wash cycle.

The result: a very clean, very fresh-smelling iPod…that doesn’t work whatsoever. You can even hear the soap and water squishing around it inside. I had just finalized customizing that sucker with a couple new apps that were also beautiful creations — maybe not on par with an obsidian flow, but nice productivity tools nonethless. And my boys felt adequately cared for with an array of games I had installed. And yet, it’s goodbye to a dear friend. Perhaps I will replace you one day, iPod Touch…

Klamath Falls

6/26/2009

We’re here in Klamath Falls. Been here since about 3:15pm, all because we left about 3:15am. Nice decision on our part, if I do say so myself. Beautiful drive from about Redding up through Klamath Falls.

Tomorrow includes a morning trip over to Crater Lake, which still has a few trails shut down and bit of snow. Then we’re on to Bend to spend time with Steve & Kristin LaValley. That will be a ton of fun. But what I’m most looking forward to? Above all?

Not paying sales tax on anything. And not pumping my own gas for the next week. Awesome with a capital A.

There’s a certain luxury that seems to go along with not pumping your own gas. Almost like, when the guy comes up to your car to ask what you want and to take your credit card, you should speak with a British accent or something. Or at least tip the man. I think I’ll take the British accent approach this trip.

It's a girl!

6/22/09

At least, that’s what the nurse said. But she didn’t sound too confident.

There’s a joke that Demetri Martin tells that goes something like this:

“‘Sort of’ is such a harmless thing to say. Sort of. It’s just a filler. Sort of – it doesn’t really mean anything. But after certain things, sort of means everything. Like after ‘I love you’ or ‘You’re going to live’ or ‘It’s a boy.’”

Lori’s ultrasound was today. We went together, because that’s what husbands like me do. But after complaining that she couldn’t get a good angle on the little munchkin growing inside Lori’s belly (not literally in her belly, you know what I mean), the nurse halfheartedly told us it was a girl, and pointed to her proof. But proof to a nurse isn’t always convincing to the untrained eye. Without turning this PG-13, let’s just say three white blotches in THAT part of the body doesn’t prove much to me.

And we’ve been down this road before of “it’s a girl!” only to be handed a boy at childbirth. So we’re skeptical. Cade was supposed to be Brenna. Conner was trained on the name. We were told “it’s a girl” twice back then. The nurse was 95% certain. Then BOOM. A boy popped out. That was October 27, 1999. We filed that away in our minds, wondering how certain we’d ever feel if we were told a girl was on the way.

So the nurse today sucked all the joy right out of the ultrasound appointment. With four boys already in the stockade, we were anticipating this ultrasound to be a watershed moment one way or the other: a FIFTH boy, wow! Or a FIRST girl. We were either going to be the freak family with a full starting lineup for the hardwood…or the freak family with a girl lopped on to the end to keep the rest of us in check.

But with that nurse hedging her bet, we feel we’re left hanging, with a little doubt. So for now, it’s sort of a girl on the way.