Things that Just Don't Work
Originally uploaded by evilgenius.

Today is a day of trying to do simple things that just fail. Last week, some kind folks started a thread at Podcast Pickle talking about AmigoFish. I've resisted signing up there for over a year because I just never felt like joining, but I thought I'd do it in order to join the AF conversation. I created an account, added this podcast, but that didn't give me access to the forums. Then I had to do a seperate registration step that kept failing. I tried and tried until I was finally ready to quit when at one point it just worked and I was logged in. I made my few posts and that was that.

Fast forward to this weekend, I want to respond again. I try to log in, and my password that is remembered in Mozilla isn't working. I do the "forgot password" and I got the page you see on this post - enter your username and 6 digit code, only there is no 6 digit code. Sigh. I still don't understand why I log into the system correctly, and then have to turn around and log in again to post to the forum. It's confusing, I told it to remember me anyway and it didn't, etc etc etc. In oh so many ways, it just is a huge drag to use the system. It's a shame, because I really want to be a part of that conversation. Sorry folks who are kind enough to talk up AmigoFish on there. I'd love to participate with you but it is too much of a pain in the ass. Feel free to leave comments on the AmigoFish blog if you like.

My MobiBLU cube MP3 player has been acting up, failing to start with the buttons and requiring hard resets with a paper clip. I decided to update the firmware. The updater only runs on Windows, so I fired up my one Windows box and downloaded and installed the firmware updater. When I ran it, it hang for minutes looking for the device (which was already mounted as a lettered drive and which I could see via the file system.) The instructions say that if that happens, you hold down the play button, press the reset button with a paperclip for 5 seconds, release the reset but keep the play button depressed until you get a recovery screen. Wow. I did all that, a thing popped up on Windows saying that the "USB Recovery Device has been installed, reboot to make it active." Dear god, what a pain but I did it. When I rebooted, nothing ever happened again. The installer looks for the device forever, the reset never again prompts any response, nothing every happens.

I'm about this close to throwing this piece of shit out the window. I strongly recommend against anyone buying the MobiBLU. It's cute and tiny, but is a pain to use on its best day and eventually shits itself. There are a few rampant iPod haters on here (and it is only a matter of time before the exact same anti-iPod rant gets commented on this post as I've received one dozen times already) but my Shuffle was fun to use and caused me zero problems up until the day it failed catasrophically and stopped mounting on the computer. The mobiBLU was never fun to use and caused ongoing problems for a long time. I'm half tempted to pull the Shuffle out of the drawer and see if it magically works now. If the mobiBLU can't be updated and continues to act finicky, I'm thinking about going for the slap cheapest MP3 play that takes SD cards as its media.

Thus far today, I'm pretty sick and tired of things that Just Don't Work.

Update: I installed the mobiBLU updater on my wife's computer, followed the instructions to the letter. When I did the reset and it entered recovery mode, I pressed "Update", then the program bombed out with a "semaphore time out period expired" error message. Now the device is completely dead, won't mount or turn on or anything. I guess that's that, end of the line with this device. Thanks Hyun Won for dispelling my stereotype that Korean consumer electronics tend to be shoddily made pieces of shit. I strongly recommend that people avoid this manufacturer.

Update 2: Thanks to Jared in the comments this device is back alive!