another one bites the dust

I noticed something strange. Every time I'm about to get my hands on a new MP3 player, the previous one dies. I thought this time would be different. Me and my MP3 player have been together for over a year now and aside from the minor scratches, it was relatively fine ("was" being the operative word) . The built-in speakers still worked (for singing in the shower) and that's usually the first thing to go.

I was in the grocery with my parents and my sister yesterday, listening to a David Sedaris audio book when the battery ran out. Segue to coming home, plugging the darn thing, expecting to see the friendly orange "Charging" screen. Sadly though, this was not the case.

"It's dead!" I panicked. What'll I do now?

So I tried plugging it in again. I tried all the sockets in the house. I tried the PC but just like the infamous Filipino blood dish, it dinuguan. "It's dead!" I panicked some more. Then I fell asleep. And when I woke up, I glanced at its once alive display and sighed. "It's dead", I thought (with less panic).

So this last one adds to my list of dead MP3 players. I figured I owe it to them to give them a proper burial so I took pictures and listed some memorable things about them. (collective sigh)

This was my first ever MP3 player. No one else had one, if I recall correctly. It was a glorified card reader (which proved to be useful even when it couldn't play anything anymore) meaning it didn't have it's own memory nor did it have its own battery. A single AAA battery would last for 8 hours and then you had to buy a new one. One day, I dropped it and the cover for the memory card flew away. "Bye bye" I yelled but it never looked back. Favorite moments with this thing was listening to Aimee Mann's The Forgotten Arm over and over and over and over...

This was my second MP3 player. It had the smallest screen ever and had an internal memory of 256 KB. "Wow", I thought, "that's a lot of space!!!" I was super excited because it didn't have any buttons and the glass thing with the circles is actually how you communicate with it. You could upload videos (although the converters at that time weren't as sophisticated as they are today so each 3 minute video would have the same file size as an entire album) and best of all, it had its own battery (gasp!). And a single charge would last three days! Best for those MRT moments when you just wanna block out the entire world. One day, I unscrewed the back and off came the battery. With lots of double sided tape, I was able to salvage the files inside but sadly, this littly piggy had to rest in peace.

This one had the most promise, as I recall. It had 1G storage space, a battery (of course), video, and (tada!) a personal speaker. It was built in and stuff. The only thing that I didn't like was the damn flowery user interface so I Googled and joined some forums and learned how to change it. Sadly though, as I uploaded the new firmware, my MP3 player blinked and died. I spent countless effort and moments trying to revive it but it didn't work anymore. If you look at the picture, it barely had any scratches. If in the future, I would find some way to restore this baby, I'd probably find some Sergio Mendes and Shakira stuff and start laughing. Sigh, those were the days.

This one has got the award for most irritating MP3 player. It had a big fake SONY sign on it but I forgave it for it was super thin, had a big ass screen, and 2G space. I couldn't believe my eyes. I bought it with my EJ paycheck. I uploaded tons of stuff (including a lot of 80's OPM hits), all I could get my hands on really. But what I failed to see when I bought it was that it had a small earphone jack and to use my super kawaii earphones, I had to use a big bulky converter and this inevitably spelled the end for it. In certain angles, you'd get a hollow sound, similar to a radio inside a cave. For most angles though, you get a karaoke version which was kinda funny at first until I realized how irritating songs are without the singers. The one day, the speakers gave out. So I had it fixed. BIG MISTAKE. I brought it back to the place where I bought it and months later, they called and said it was fixed. The battery was drained so I couldn't check if it was working. When I got home and tried charging it, I realized that the battery was dead. Everything was dead. And then it wouldn't open anymore and all my files were caught inside. :( I thought I'd never go generic again until...

It was perfect. It had less space than my last player but I wasn't choosy anymore. It was brandless and had a Samsung processor inside. It had durable speakers which I abused but did not break (like I said, for those "keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding" moments in the shower). It even read me Neil Gaiman stories to sleep. I bought it with one of my first Chase paychecks and I've had it with me ever since. I had just uploaded some Duffy and Mika yesterday and never even got to listen to it. Sigh, so much for that.

Last night, I dreamt that they all came together to form this silly Transformer like machine and they wanted revenge. Creepy... Maybe I should think twice about getting a new one and enroll in some technology protection awareness seminar first. Or maybe, I should just get this fixed instead of spending so much time (and griping extensively) feeling sad about it.