The New Damned Toy

Oh, woe.

I've finally bought myself a brand spanking new MP3 player (you there in the back, stop snickering!) and I've had the thing for only slightly more than 48 hours and already I'm having problems with it. Problems I created for myself--inadvertently, but still--problems that even the young, friendly and presumably techno-savvy Radio Shack Guy who sold it to me Wednesday afternoon wasn't 100% sure how to help me solve, though he made a suggestion that sounds like it might work (Please, God, if you're there, make it work, especially since the Sansa support@ people have not yet responded to my electronic SOS). I feel so dumb about this, and so ancient, like this boneheaded mistake I made was the kind of thing I'd be tsk-tsk-tsk at my mother for doing--except that it's me this time. I'm my mother. I'm my grandmother for Chrissakes, that's how idiotically inept was this botch-up with my MP3 player.

What happened was this: I eagerly took the thing, a Sansa Fuze 8GB flash drive thing, out of the box and my heart sank at the sight of the included mini installation disc because it's for Rhapsody music service and I hate Rhapsody and don't care who knows it. Apparently Rhapsody and Sansa are good buddies and Sansa promises cool fun features on my new MP3 player if I install Rhapsody on my computer and use that to download my music.

No. Noooooooooooooooooooooooo. Not again, not in a million years. I won't bore you with all the headaches I went through with Rhapsody a few years ago when I decided to try it and downloaded it to my XP; suffice to say I learned my lesson and, cool features or no, I won't be using that music program for my player.

Besides, I don't have to. Just plug the included cable into the USB port of my computer, charge the battery and start dragging and dropping my music files into my device. Simple. Except....

It wasn't completely my fault. I mean it was, but honestly, anyone could have made this mistake, I think. See, I'd opened my Windows Media Player to look over my music files, trying to decide which ones I wanted to transfer, when I suddenly remembered I should be charging the battery, the very first thing the little operation manual instructs you to do. So without giving much thought, I plugged it into the port....and continued scanning my audio files....should I include the comedy mixes I created for myself too, or would that take up too much drive space? What about the Spoken Word (American Writers Edition) stuff my mom gave me for Christmas?.....and what about my soundtrack CDs?....how many songs does 8 GBs translate to again? 2000, is it, give or take? At the time I purchased the player that seemed like a lot, like plenty, but now that I look at all these files....maybe I should have gone ahead and popped for that other little thingee, that tiny 8 GB card that goes in the player's slot for even more audio storage (Wonder how long that sale is going to last..?).......

.....When I was snapped out of my reverie by the unexpected sight of my library of music files rapidly "synchronizing" themselves to the player. What the--? Why's it doing that? I didn't tell it do that! Why's it doing that? Hey! (I said to my computer, uselessly) Hey, stop it! Hold it! The battery's just supposed to be charging now, that's all! Drag and drop! I'm supposed to drag and drop the music, like it says in the manual, like the Radio Shack Guy said!! Hey, cut it out!

And I disconnected the cable from the USB port (was going to say I "yanked" it, but that's not strictly true; I didn't want to break anything), looking worriedly from the MP3 player to the computer and back again. I noticed the player's battery was nearly completely charged and I had a bunch of songs already downloaded--there was the album cover art, the name of the artist, and the album and song titles...cool! That was easy! Maybe I don't need to do the tedious dragging and dropping after all. For now I'll just close out Windows Media and plug it back into the pc to finish charging, and then reconnect it to WM and let the two talk to each other for awhile. Simple!

And that's what I did, checking from time to time to monitor the process and keep an eye on the remaining disk space. After, oh, I don't know, approximately 500 songs had sync-ed, I decided to stop the operation for the time being. I plugged the headphone cable into the player, pressed the horribly uncomfortable ear buds into my ears and, after some wincing adjustments settled back to enjoy the songs and get comfortable with the device's functions, adjusting the volume--amazingly good sound--scrolling through the various menus, checking out the FM radio, and so on. Finally I decided to charge the battery some more, turn it off and put it away.

The next day I was out and about running errands in my old neighborhood--no more annoying transportation rerouting since the Obamas have finally moved to D.C., though I notice the barricades and a few strategically placed police cars are still blocking off the house--and I took my new toy with me, of course, vastly enjoying carrying a chunk of my music library around in my pocket as I shopped, posted mail and tried not to fall on my ass on all the slippery new snow and ice. The sound quality of this baby is truly wonderful, and pitched just so, many of the songs weren't playing into my ears so much as reverberating through me. Duffy cooing "Mercy," Al Green wailing "Here I Am (Come And Take Me)," Cat Stevens's lilting, contemplative "Into White," even the Ting Ting's funny, punky "Shut Up And Let Me Go"--it was gorgeous, a religious experience. Sitting on the upper deck of the bus and gazing at the passing neighborhood as the music flowed into and through me I felt fifteen again, when music was as necessary for my well-being as air to breathe.

It was great.

Then I came home, sat down at my pc, and, delighted with my MP3, decided it was time to transfer more music to it.

But first, I would delete the files already sync-ed. I wanted to upload other stuff for sync-ing and after all, I don't really need them on the computer anymore since they've been safely downloaded over to my MP3. Audio files can eat up an awful lot of hard drive.

So I did. I started merrily deleting away, and later in the evening when I decided to play with my new toy again, I began to notice an odd and disquieting occurrence. An awful lot of the songs on my MP3 player were no longer playing. Oh, they were still in there alright, or at least they appeared to be--yeah, there they were. I could scroll around by song title or artist name and see them and the accompanying album/CD cover art, still in there. They just weren't playing anymore, even when I deliberately interrupted other songs to select them.

Hmmmm. That's strange. Why is this happening all of a sudden?

I did a fair amount of head scratching as my anxiety steadily rose. The pocket "quick start" instruction manual didn't address this particular peculiarity and I was adamant I was not going to slide that damned Rhapsody install disc into my computer no matter what. But what was going on??

Then it began to dawn on me. The way I'd downloaded my music to the player--I'd synchronized it. Actually I didn't, Windows Media did, initially, and without my bidding, and then I continued the process once it had started. Anyway I began to realize that the synchronization, the method itself, was the key to the problem. The American Heritage definition of synchronization is "to operate in unison, to cause to occur at the same time as something else." I sync-ed those songs instead of directly dropping them in, and each time I plugged my player into my pc they were communicating with each other about them. When I deleted those music files from my pc, my player felt it had no choice but to dump them as well, though the mystery was that they still appeared at least to be sitting in the player.

Damn. Damn damn damn damn it all to hell. Why me? And now what?

Today I took the player back to the Radio Shack Guy and explained what had happened, sharing my conclusions as to the source of the problem. Ah, he said sympathetically. Wow. Never heard of that happening before. But, yeah, that's probably what it is. You should have dragged-dropped instead of sync-ed, especially if you were going to remove the audio files from your pc. Either that or keep syncing but get a separate hard drive for your music...

Fine, right, right. But in the meantime--? Any thoughts?

His suggestion--and this sounds like a good idea to me; I don't know how many of you other Sansa Fuze owners feel differently--was that I:

1. Plug the player back into the pc without powering up Windows Media (and if it opens up on its own, close it immediately)
2. Double-click on My Computer (what I should have done to begin with) and look to see if the sync-ed music files are there. If they are, try deleting them (again) with the device still plugged in and then see if they are now removed from the player as well. If yes, delete ALL the music you sync-ed to your player, even the ones that have been playing okay until your flash drive is clean.
3. Now unplug your MP3 player from your pc and power up Windows Media. Before you plug your player back in however, go to Preferences and see if you can disable the sync function so it won't create any further headaches for you.
4. Upload all the music you want to transfer again (sigh) and
5. PRAY. PRAY TO JESUS FOR GUIDANCE AND LUCK AND WHATEVER THE HELL ELSE WILL MAKE THIS VEXING PROBLEM GO AWAY PERMANENTLY. (Okay, I added this part.)
6. Repeat step 2, this time dragging and dropping your music files into your MP3 player, checking periodically to make sure the playback is okay.

So that's what I plan to do, as soon as figure out how to fix this other little problem that happened as I was typing this post. I was trying to delete a song while it was playing, something I've done before without incident, and the song didn't delete. I tried again and now the player has frozen, with "Delete Song?" showing on the player's screen. I can't do anything with it now, anything at all. It doesn't respond when I try to shut it off, or charge it, or anything.

And now my cat is looking at me funny.