Step up and lick the Apple dick.

Against my better judgment I have finally broken down and purchased an Ipod Shuffle. I want to hate Apple products, I do, I really do. I want to hate them for their cult like following, their elitist groupies wearing their black rimmed glasses speaking in their German accents but it all boils down to one thing; they make cool shit. They make really cool shit and the fact that I just dropped $100 for a player that has no screen, no cradle and no accessories doesn't bother me . I still feel dirty, like I caved on some fundamental belief, like I was a priest or minister who just realized they don't believe in God. I didn't bend over and take it full on like one does when they buy one of the dual core hyper innercooled neural network processor towers that Apple sells but I still feel like this could be THE gateway product. You know the one that starts my Apple addiction.

What started this? Well about two months ago while working out I noticed that the music from my Creative Zen Micro kept cutting in and out. Thinking that it was just my headphones I swapped them out with another pair and noticed the same problem. I then thought maybe the contacts in the headphone jack were worn out but after a little more experimentation I realized that wasn't it either. A hop skip and a jump later on the interweb and I find out that the problem I am having is a known manufacturing defect on the Zen Micros. It seems I was one of the lucky ones as my Micro has lasted me over a year most peoples have been dying after a couple of months. The problem in a nut shell is that the solder points that connect the headphone jack to one of the boards isn't sturdy enough. When too much pressure is placed on the jack the solder points loosen and bada bing bada bang bada no sound. It appears that this is all fixable if you happen to be (A) little handy, (B) have experience with a soldering gun and (C) potentially a degree in electric engineering, all of which I DON'T HAVE.

This reminds me of a story. I had a friend of mine attempt to mod the PS2 that I had just received for Christmas. He happened to be an EE major at Ohio State University (OSU) and was son to a EE Professor at OSU. I figured, shit this guy probably has been soldering from the womb. So he sits down and takes the mod chip and attempts to solder it onto the board. It wasn't 2 minutes before I hear him say "Ooops that wasn't good." So we put it back together attempt to turn it on and nothing. Saddened by the fact that I was one less PS2 I came up with a not so original plan, buy a new one put the old one in the box and return it. I won't say if I ever got it fixed or if I attempted the plan mentioned but I will say two hours later after nearly sweating myself to death from stress I was again back in business with a working PS2. Did I attempt to get that PS2 modded again? FU~CK NO.

When I told SG that I was going to open up my player and attempt to re-solder the points myself she exploded in a fury, something about "You've never soldered anything bla bla bla, You'll break it, yada yada". So my current solution is to position my Micro in a way that places the minimum amount of pressure on the headphone jack and only use it while exercising on cardio machines that have a minimum amount of arm movement and use my new gateway drug... err mp3 player for running.