{"id":139,"date":"2004-10-24T11:25:34","date_gmt":"2004-10-24T11:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/?p=139"},"modified":"2004-10-24T11:25:34","modified_gmt":"2004-10-24T11:25:34","slug":"exclamation-folder-fun-or-it-only-took-six-weeks-for-my-ipod-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/?p=139","title":{"rendered":"Exclamation Folder Fun or It only took six weeks for my iPod to die"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Life with the iPod has been great and groovy, easing my commute and blocking out waffle at the office when I’ve needed to focus. Until one evening earlier this week that is when it froze\/hung\/stopped being an iPod and would not do anything other than display the Apple symbol and the dreaded Exclamation Folder icon<\/a>. Placing an ear to the beast, I could hear the drive ceaselessly cycling up to speed and then stopping, whilst displaying the last song that played. Tried the reset thing but to no avail so tried the ‘drain completely and hope it comes back to life’ thing but still no luck. After four frustrating attempts to log a return and replace service via Apple’s web site (where I got a ‘We’re sorry we can’t process your request’ message during the SSL session), I then spent a pleasant enough \u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00bd hour jumping through hoops and waiting on hold (with dire ‘world’ music rumbling on) for a call centre guy called Tarquin (name changed to protect the oblivious) in Cork to tell me that he had “checked with the technical authorisers who have evaluated this case and have agreed that your iPod is not usable”.  In my mind, what actually happened was that this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Tarquin, listened to my lengthy description of the steps I had taken to try and resurrect my Pod by following Apple’s own troubleshooting guides and a variety of forum posts by those suffering similar problems.<\/li>\n
  2. He then wrote “blowk’s eyepod browk” on the back of his Cork Municipal Traction Co. bus ticket<\/a> and scrabbled around for his inter-departmental phone list.<\/li>\n
  3. He called Miguel the Technical Authoriser, apologising profusely for interrupting him whilst he was blasting the living c**p out of some poor bugger in a networked Doom game, and asked him for his advice on this call he has on hold.<\/li>\n
  4. Miguel says ‘Damn it…wait…this is a tricky bit….’ then proceeds to flame-throw Sandy in Palo Alto, mortar Andy Jr in Seattle and atomise Nguyen, who’s hooked in via the mainframe at White Sands Missile Range<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  5. Blood-lust momentarily satisfied, Miguel tells Tarquin ‘Sure, have him send it in, we’ll just swap it for one of the others lying around here and tell him we spent $3,000 in man hours working to fix his $200 Pod’.<\/li>\n
  6. Tarquin then nips to the loo, grabs his mung bean & organic huumous wrap from the communal fridge, not forgetting his mandarin smoothie and heads back to his workstation.<\/li>\n
  7. Tarquin reconnects saying ‘I’m sorry I was a bit longer than I anticipated’ before regaling me with the fantastic news that a ‘technical authoriser’ has graciously agreed that Apple will take time out of their busy schedule to repair or replace<\/a> my six-week-old iPod.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Once back with the ‘good news’, Tarquin then launched into a labarynthine description of their ‘despatch > box > label > collect > despatch >arrive > swap > relabel >despatch >get lost > get found > deliver 3 times whilst I’m out > return to lose somewhere in depot’ service.  Comforted by this, I now await UPS delivery of the box and instructions on how to mail my iPod to oblivion.  Stayed tuned for updates.<\/p>\n

    my lo-fi ears are listening to Heat<\/a>\/Balligomingo<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Life with the iPod has been great and groovy, easing my commute and blocking out waffle at the office when I’ve needed to focus. Until one evening earlier this week that is when it froze\/hung\/stopped being an iPod and would not do anything other than display the Apple symbol and the dreaded Exclamation Folder icon. Placing an ear to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}