iPod Crashes and Caffeinated Fridays

Now that my elementary spring programs and festivals are over, I am having a difficult time deciding what to do with my lunch breaks. Who knew that forty-five minutes would feel like a luxury? For the past three months, every break and prep has been filled with blocking rehearsals, art meetings, costume fittings, and solo practices. Not to mention, I was performing in a community theater production of my own, so I spent most of my evenings at rehearsals. I also survived on less sleep than usual.

Now that I am able to get the recommended eight hours of sleep per night, I find myself more tired than usual to the extent that I almost fall asleep driving to work. And for some reason, our faculty room coffee inventory has been non-existent the last few weeks.

Today (Friday) was especially bad. I thought I might look over some sheet music during lunch, but I dozed off while peeling my orange. So I decided to make some black tea to perk myself up. I even added Irish Cream Coffee-Mate to trick myself into believing I was drinking coffee. Apparently, we keep fake creamer stocked in our faculty room but not coffee. (The tea did help, and now I am at Starbucks ingesting more caffeine so that I can stay awake while I finish this blog post.)

Once properly caffeinated, I decided to load some podcasts onto my iPod. I plugged my iPod into my laptop and got a "there is something wrong with this device" message. I attempted to scan and repair it only to find every single file deleted.

My "iPod Just Crashed" expression.

I quickly messaged my husband, Dan, hoping that the stray kiddos roaming the halls wouldn't hear me swearing at my computer. I had the following conversation with him.

[3:04:58 PM] Becky Duggan: My iPod just crashed and is wiped clean!
[3:05:10 PM] Becky Duggan: There are absolutely no files on it!
[3:05:32 PM] Dan Duggan: Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?
[3:05:43 PM] Becky Duggan: Yes.
[3:06:49 PM] Dan Duggan: Have you looked at it in Windows Explorer?
[3:07:15 PM] Becky Duggan: Yes. And I unplugged it. There is no music on it.
[3:07:18 PM] Becky Duggan: Nothing.
[3:08:05 PM] Becky Duggan: It said there was a problem with it and it needed to be scanned so I did and then it crashed. I unplugged it. It was wiped clean.
[3:08:08 PM] Becky Duggan: Gone.
[3:08:21 PM] Becky Duggan: Plugged it back in. Gone.
[3:09:03 PM] Dan Duggan: I might be able to find some kind of recovery software.
[3:09:32 PM] Becky Duggan: Anything I need to do to not screw that up?
[3:12:09 PM] Dan Duggan: Probably just unplug it and don't touch it. There isn't much you can do with it now anyway.
[3:12:32 PM] Becky Duggan: I already loaded a podcast onto it.
[3:15:03 PM] Dan Duggan: Yeah, don't do that.
[3:15:16 PM] Dan Duggan: If you put new files on it will overwrite the space where the old files were.
[3:19:33 PM] Becky Duggan: Well, I already did. Shit.
[3:20:11 PM] Dan Duggan: Don't worry about it too much. I might not be able to do anything, but the less you do the more likely I'll be able to get it back.

The jury is still out as to whether or not any of my music will be recovered. But if I have to copy all of my music back onto my iPod, at least now I know what I can do during my lunch breaks for the next few weeks.

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