dear universe, ha HA

Because when you ask it for a nano, you've got to ask for one that actually works.

Strep bought me an 8G iPod Nano for Christmas - and because "everyone buys stuff for Daniel and you're the one looking after him. You deserve having something really want".

Which is very, very nice of him.

(I've got to say, no matter how BIG of a tool he has been over the past seven (!) years, he's always been generous, and not in a "buy you stuff to buy you" kind of way. I always knew the not paying child support thing was never because he was being a tightass, it was because..I dunno. I guess it was because he was (note hopeful use of past tense) a total fuckup)

And now I need to find someone gizmo orientated who might have a clue about iPods and how to get them to talk to archaic operating systems, because I've got a(n utterly beautiful) new nano and after futzing about with the fucking thing all morning (everyone else in the world: Plug and Play? OH YES! aibee: Plug and....what? reset, upgrade, upgrade, reset, error 1418, reset, upgrade, upgrade, dic error, reset...incompatible? THE FUCK?!) the best I've got is that this delectable piece of shiny is too new for my not so new operating system.

So yes, my shiny bright new bundle of joy hates me. Or, it hates my eMac, so now I'm thinking I may take up hating it too. Poor thing. It's never been the same since that fateful day I was discussing laptops with a friend and sighed heavily before uttering the fateful words "cannot get an iBook until my eMac dies". Which it then tried to do at that very moment by throwing itself off the virtual equivalent of a cliff. Unfortunately, I was able to resurrect it, not with my mad skilz, but by finding a mac tech and utilising his. The weird thing was that the problem wasn't software driven. It was a physical problem with the hardware and some switches had been physically, uh, switched, leading Mr MacTech to ask if anyone else had worked inside my mac (no) because he had no idea how it had worked AT ALL in the years prior to shitting itself, not with those switches all over the place like that.

Considering that I used to have a reputation as a watch stopper (a talent not limited to battery run timepieces. Swiss movement never stood a chance with me either, and I even stopped one of those kinetic watches that rely on movement to stay wound. Oh, and the clocks on my old cell phone and PC used to both used to have issues too)(Weird, totally), I do wonder if it wasn't my desire to ditch that old clunker and upgrade to a new, sleek, laptop that caused the switches to move to a position that would not, could not sustain computery type life.

ANYWAY, point being, I need to know if there is a way to get a nano that says it needs OS X 10.4.8 or greater to work with OS X 10.3.9. Unfortunately it's not just a matter of downloading system upgrades, and while I can buy OS X 10.5 (released last week!) for under a hundred, a) I don't have a spare hundred and b) I'm not sure my eMac would handle the newer, faster and more complex operating system.

Uber gah, is what I'm sayin'.