I am disappointed

It's been a hard weekend - I've spent most of it feeling pretty sick. Definitely going to call the doctor on Monday and get an ultrasound scheduled. This shit is ridiculous. I'm disappointed in my body right now. Even coughing hurts me in the side. And that's not good when a) you have cystic fibrosis and b) are an asthmatic runner. Shit like this is enough to make one believe in god, if for nothing else than to have someone to blame.

I slept another 11 hours last night and woke up feeling almost as tired as when I went to bed. I resolved to go run, even if just a short one, and got out the door at 1 p.m. I decided to do three miles only, since I knew I'd be walking a huge part of it and the run would take forever anyway. I took the NikePlus thing on my NEW ipod and when I turned around at the 2-mile mark, found that the system had stopped reading sensor signal at 1.28 miles. No announcement of that, nothing. I am becoming rather disappointed in the Nike+ system. It seems so simple and so elegant, yet it just doesn't work! The only thing I haven't replaced, at this point, is the receiver. I'm willing to do so, because running in the rain last year may have damaged it, I admit, but I'm just needing to express my frustration, especially when other people don't seem to have this problem.

So, yes, I got a new ipod Nano for my birthday (thanks Mom!). I had my doubts about the form factor, being so short and squat and all, but my doubts have evaporated in the face of the video capabilities and the shiny new graphics of the menus. Now, when Apple gets Sudoku game updated to run on my Nano, the world will be peachy.

Since it was a gift, it came to my house wrapped in a neat little box with a red ribbon:



With a card:



The box opens up like a flower:


Size comparison, new and old:


Fresh out of the box - the "black" is actually a very dark grey:


Mom got my blog name engraved on the back:


I didn't even take it out of the box until my Invisible Shield for it arrived. I'm surprised the ZAGG company had a shield ready to go for it so fast. I've used this stuff on all my electronic gadgets for a couple of years now and it is bulletproof. On the Nano, it makes the "black" matte finish into a rather seductive gleaming graphite. The Invisible Shield wraps the entire Nano and doesn't interfere with viewability or the touchwheel.



And, yes!, the new Nano does video! I've spent a little time downloading some easily-obtained movies for the nano (a couple of them obvious bootlegs - taped in the theatre - rock steady camera and crystal clear sound, but the movies have their own laugh track...)



The video is 10 times better than shown in this crappy pic, so if you're even remotely curious, go check one out for yourself at an Apple store or check out the commercial, which I would say is a pretty accurate rendition of the gorgiosity of the screen.

I am really loving this little thing, Nike+ or not. I am NOT disappointed with it! There's already a 1.0.1 firmware update, apparently fixing a few bugs and speeding up Cover Flow. (Cover Flow is neat, but not too useful when it lists a separate cover for every album/artist combination. You have a movie soundtrack? Yep, it will list 13 separate copies of the same album cover.) And I love that there's twice as much room on this one as my old one, which I guess I'll keep around as backup or for motorcycle riding.

I am already using the nano video on the subway to catch up on my pop culture content - movies everybody seems to have seen, but which I haven't. Who the hell can afford to go the movies these days? I have iRobot, Pirates of the caribbean 2, and 300 cued up for the next couple weeks of subway rides.

I'm curious about 300 because, after all, the Spartans were wiped out, though they took out 25,000 Persians with them. (Okay, they had the help of 700 Thespians and 900 of their serfs to do it, but that's still better than 12 Persian dead for every Greek.) I enjoy Frank Miller's work. I thought Sin City was freakin' phenomenal, and so I expect quite a bit of something out of 300. It's not only his ability to tell a gripping story, but his talent for welding graphic sensibility to the narration so as to produce a unified piece of art. I am ecstatic to learn that Sin City II and III are in the works.

So between the nano and the advent of my Alaska article (part I) being published (and is generating a lot of buzz), my birthday weekend is half-good. BTW, for those of you looking for a Nikeplus.com alternative, but still want to use the Nike+ system, try runometer.com