Ellen's iPod is dying.  It had a good run and played hard for 3 years--which according to what I've read is a very long life for anything born in a Jobs factory.   Apples are notoriously strange fruits with seeds in their core that have been genetically engineered to  develop incurable infections on a preordained schedule--rendering them juiceless and useless.  Maybe it's a generational thing, but disposable technology never feels right to me.  I don't even like disposable razors.  And the idea of buying something that runs on batteries and will not accommodate a replacement is even more galling.

 Brett Mosley, the guy who started "BuyMyTronics.com." is also a huge EcoGeek...he basically buys broken electronics, fixes them, and then sells them on EBay. It's like recycling, but way better, because the gadgets get to keep living. He's recently expanded his business to cover iPhones, Zunes, and gaming systems, and is about to expand even further into cell phones and laptops.  But Brett is upset, and that makes me upset. Cause I when I went to the site to see what I could get for Ellen's failing iPod, I filled out all the info and received an estimate of two dollars.  Apparently, the recent generation iPods and the current iPod Nano have been designed to be 100% unfixable. According to Brett,

The new generations of iPods and the iPhone are not designed to be opened. Because the Nano, iPhone and generation 6 "Classic" bodies are metal to metal --the body gets completely trashed upon opening. In the Nanos and Shuffles, parts are actually soldered together, eliminating the possiblility of simple repair. So, for me, it will be harder to fix these, increasing repair costs and diminishing their resale value after they have been repaired.

I guess the flip side of the equation is that Ellen got three years of magic out of that device.  And it is like magic when you can store so much portable music (and pics and video if you like) on something slightly larger than a credit card.  Like my friend (SL) says about the price of gasoline:  " How much do think it should cost?"  It's all relative. 

Either Will Shortz didn't see my recent post, or his strong stable of clever cruciverbalists took an extended summer vacation and there's only slim pickins in his IN box .  Got Eliza (and) Doolittle before I knew why she was there, and when I did, the rain in Spain fell  heavily on my pain.   It's not often I walk away from a Sunday Puzzle, but this was really getting on my nerves.  Went to Rex Parker the next day to see what he thought and he concurred.  It's not often you'll hear him say: "But this grid has literally NO interesting answers outside the theme answers...."
and  "There's just so much rot. And I thought I hated ALIENEE more than any word that length—and then I met ENOUNCE. You'd have to hold a gun to my head to get me to let that thing into my grid. There's just a [shrug] "sure, whatever" attitude in the fill. "Well ... it's a word. Good enough—next!" It's dispiriting."  

But abandoning the Puzzle gave me more time to Paddle out in Gardiner's Bay where residual wind from previous evening storm had me rockin' and rollin' on chop so wild I quickly high tailed it for the quieter lagoon where I promptly sunk up to my waist in mud before managing to climb back aboard and ride the current a few miles down to the the beach where Ellen and Renee (who took short turns on the board only to quickly abandon ship and concede the day to the Mighty Wind) and Marty came in the car to save me from having to fight the wind coming back on hands, knees and prayer.