I-Pod woes.....

I love my I-Pod. As far as I am concerned, Apple hit it out of the ballpark when they created I-Pod and marketed it to the mass consumer market (of which I am a major part). However, tonight has been a LONG night of HARD LESSONS LEARNED.

Here's the story: this week I bought an external hard drive as my computer's hard drive was getting full and I was having some performance problems. My personal computer technician and friend J came over to assist me in showing me how it works and all that. Well, he inadvertently not only transferred the actual files of the CD but he also transferred over the .wav files that the I-Pod reads in I-Tunes and then synchronizes with my little gadget. So tonight when I go to update my library and my personal play lists, my I-Tunes gives me this huge error message that none of my tunes can be played because the original files cannot be located. Of course, they are on the external hard drive, which the I-Tunes driver does not read. UGH!!!!!!!

Ok, so after calling my computer tech in a panic and he's not available (so he has a life that includes social activities on a Friday night - unlike his client here - lucky him), I start to tinker around to see if I can figure this out on my own. VERY SCARY NOTION - Cherai tinkering in her computer. Well, I find the file that has all the .wav files (or .aac files - whatever) and import that file back into my I-Tunes. SUCCESS! I now have all my files again and the songs will play again.

Then I look at my library again and figure out "OH NO - NOW I HAVE DOUBLED THE SIZE IN MY I-TUNES LIBRARY AND EVERY SONG IS DUPLICATED!!!" I've sent messages to I-Tunes support help and urgent emails to my computer technician. Alas, I'm stuck out here on my own. It would appear that I now have to go in and manually delete every extra song. HOURS of work.

And on top of that, I have to re-do all my customized playlists (about 15 different ones like work out list and a chill-out list, etc). Ho-hum - I see hours of work in my future. This is so sad. And there is NO WAY I'm synching my I-Pod to my I-Tunes until I know if my I-Tunes is correct and fixed properly. What a PAIN IN THE REAR!!!!!!

HMMMM, I wonder if I delete every song listed in the I-Tunes directly but the files are in the hard drive and then let my I-pod put the songs back on the I-Tunes list when it synchs again. I'll have to go to the Apple Store to see if we they recommend. That could be my exercise tomorrow - walking to the I-Pod store on Michigan Avenue. I did some serious walking tonight but that's another topic for another post on my blog.

Say a prayer for me as I manually reconfigure my I-Tunes. This is so sad....