A couple of weeks ago, Arvin - one of the guys I frequently drink with - mentioned that the local Apple Store sold refurbished stuff as well as the usual high priced first-cut Mac cocaine. Stop in and ask for pricing and so forth. Disclaimer, Arvin's an AS employee and is the kind of person that would know these things, etceteras.

To cut a long story involving Jason, the waterfront, Target not stocking pants in my size and Eides short : The Apple Store isn't next to a Banana Republic. It's next to a Rite Aid (it may actually be near a Banana Republic, but I didn't see one). It's disturbingly clean and looks like it was designed by Stanley Kubrick. There were a hell of a lot of people in it for 8pm on a Friday night, most of them college kids, the rest of them either employees or the sort of people who don't know much about computers (eg the so-called "Target Market"). Talk to Arvin about refurbs, start leaning in the direction of a 30 gig Photo but hey, look! A 6g mini, silver, refurbed (with warranty, etc.)- for the price of a 2g nano! Sold!

It was financially irresponsible of me - mindalteringly stupidly irresponsible - but after the hour or so of ROD STEWART and fucking SOUL ASYLUM (I hate that single, so very, very much- just thinking of the band gets that whinyass thing stuck in my head, makes me want to stab my brain with a fork) I suffered while pants-hunting, after the drooling inbred honkings of yinzers exploring the uses of public transit as a dating service, I found myself more than willing to pay anything to end that pain forever - anything at all.

Next time I stomp into Target to not find pants, I'll have Whitehouse, Joy Division and Gridlock to filter out the badness. I will have an easy and painless method of filtering out meta-corporate focus-group "taste" and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the thrill of victory gives me an erection. No sir.

No point in going into details - you've either already drank the kool-aid or you're thinking about it or you can't afford it or you think the whole fad is for fags or whatever. The iPod is a work of art, the interface is great, the learning curve is as close to horizontal as it's possible to get in a piece of consumer electronics, and just by existing the thing underscores just how horribly, skull-fuckingly retarded every non-Apple product designer on the face of the planet is. We're talking massive congenital neurological impairment here. Look at any Motorola product, any Sony product, and compare form factor, features, functionality and interface and you too will be wondering what sort of crack these high-paid retards are smoking. I hate the price tag on Apple kit but I'm still wishing they made a cel phone, since I have yet to find one that hasn't been designed by a special olympics team doped to the gills on PCP.

I use Apple kit because at its worst it sucks less than everything else on the market and at its best - and believe me, the iPod is easily the best example of Apple engineering - it points out just how bad all other product design is. Doesn't matter if it's software or hardware, kiddies - you pay that extra few hundred bucks for underpowered kit because the people that put it together actually care about what they're doing more than they care about making mortgage payments or getting laid or what's on O'Reilly tonight.

Straight up.

The only real downside is that the thing came with a USB 2.0 cable, which doesn't seem to want to charge from the USB 2.0 PCI board in my home G4. Grr. I'll need a Firewire docking thinger (MSRP : 30$) to get the maximum bang for the buck with my home and portable kit - in the meantime, Sputnik gets tethered at work. Both Arvin and bda have offered spares. It'll be cool if one falls into my lap, but I'm not counting on it. // Update - cables are like five bucks on ebay. Kids these days!

Oh, and those dorky white earbuds have better bass than my old rotted out Sonys. Bonus.