shaver

At the best of times, I’m a pretty soft touch for interesting gadgets, and when “my”:http://off.net/diary/ “good”:http://www.loolix.com/diary/ “friends”:http://joeshaw.org/ start acting as “enablers”, well, there’s not a lot that can be done. So I came back from Boston with a shiny not-quite-new iPod, and now I’m stuffing its abundant music hole with the most reckless of abandon. (2.8 gigs of Tragically Hip bootlegs from the year 2000 alone!)

On the way back, I clearly and righteously marked my toy’s value on the customs form, and was then somewhat surprised when they didn’t ask me to pay any duty; I had exceeded the 48-hour limit by a fair margin, and was three days short of the next allowance up (which would, in fact, cover it). I didn’t think it was my job to tell them their jobs — though I am often assertive about such corrective measures, I am pretty much never thusly inclined when dealing with customs and/or immigration officials, duty-owing or no.

I’m enjoying the iPod (30GB, “refreshed” with full warranty, touch-wheel, dock, middlingly-slim) quite a bit so far, which should not surprise anyone familiar with the concept of “new gadget honeymoon”. Tyla seems to like it too, which is an endorsement of a subtly different kind. If the Linux firewire support doesn’t go completely asshat on me tomorrow when I try to attach it to my desktop at the office, I will consider it an unqualified success.

This entry is just here to quell the shame of a totally blank diary page. If my laptop were capable of charging its battery, I’d maybe burn some juice on the plane — DEAR TSA OFFICIALS: I AM SPEAKING METAPHORICALLY; THANK YOU — and write some ridiculously entertaining updates.

But, you know, that’s not how this hand was dealt.