The mystery of the Zune

I received my mp3 player last year. It was a mystery to me. It's a Zune, and it's in an absurdly small container, like a Lego. Not as small as the mp3 that was handed to me for viewing several videos about dog nutrition at the recent convention, though.

"Oh, it's an Ipod Shuffle," my daughter said. It looked like a potato chip.

I'm really trying to get along with the Zune. My husband found ear (things... not plugs... ear phones? BUDS! Ear buds...) that didn't seem to carve ulcers into my ear cartilage and I actually uploaded an audiobook from the library, all by myself. It only took slightly longer than it would have taken to drive to the library and check it out, but here it was, ready to entertain me on purely theoretical treadmill workouts. I felt that it was somehow rooting me on.

Only, I sort of fell asleep when I was trying it out and now it's on Chapter 5 and the last I remembered was somewhere in Chapter 1, not to mention I set it down without turning it off since none of the buttons I pushed seemed to respond, and so: dead battery. I thought it would just know when I was done and would turn itself off out of sheer boredom.

We're currently recharging, both of us. It assures me it's "connected." It's been assuring me of that for five minutes. Before that it was "syncing," with a little display of what Richard Dreyfuss saw when he looked up at the mother ship.

"Connected" apparently means "I'm communing with a battery somewhere so leave me alone right now." I thought maybe we could reach some sort of electronic harmony, where it could recharge while I checked on the audiobook, but no. It has to recharge in private, no multi-tasking allowed. Now my appliances are giving me reasons to put off the treadmill. Cool.

And the recharging? I understand cell phones, and computers, and even rechargeable batteries, but this thing requires a middleman. It's connected (I know, because it says so) to my computer, which is connected to that square thing that's connected to the outlet. You'd think the electrons would be pooped by the time they make their way out to the Zune. Milling around, as electrons do, wondering where to go next. I do know how to connect wires to places they look like they belong, though, because Bill's company puts little pictures on the connections. I appreciate that. I don't know what they mean, but I can match stuff up. Turns out those nursery toys were useful after all.

Wait! I just went to check on the whole connecting process, and clicked on a few things and now I'm transferring music onto the Lego! David had transferred Simon and Garfunkel for me, and bless them, I love the album, but there are only so many times you can listen to "Cecelia" before the uncontrollable shaking starts.

And.... (this is later, now it's "syncing" again....mother ship!) Much music downloaded! Or uploaded! Whatever!

My head's spinning. So many albums! Only they're not albums anymore! So many.... digitally compressed bytes of information that will sound musical once the Zune is no longer "connected"! Right in my nonulcerated ears!

Technology, it is a wonderful thing, if you can keep it charged up.