Zune oh Zune

Familiar with the techno gadget pictured to the left? It is a "Zune" media player, Microsoft's answer to Apple's IPOD, you can watch movies, listen to music, play games, listen to the radio, look at your photo albums, listen to pod casts and audio books, shop for songs, and share music with friends. I've owned mine (Zune 30) since February 2006 and have used for many hours as I've drove, flown, spent time in a hotel room, worked, showered, etc... it has become an everyday type of item for me, much like a fork or eye patch (for those who need eye patches).

Having provided you with this brief explanation of what a Zune is, and how much it means to me, you'll understand my hearty chagrin this a.m. when I woke up to find my poor little Zune locked up on the logo screen. I pushed buttons, shook, cried, and tried to plug into my computer to magically "unlock" the poor little beastie. Alas to no avail. Jami was sympathetic and asked if I'd dropped it or something, and I said "no". She went to get hers so that I could look at it in fond memory of what mine used to look like when it worked, when she discovered that hers too was locked, so was Ciara's... (musical interlude) "Gloom, Despair, and agony on me, whoooaaa, deep dark depression, excessive misery, whhhhooooaaa, if it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all, whhhhoooaaa, gloom despair and agony on me." Sorry for the drama :(

I don't think this would have been such a calamity if i hadn't just lost my Zune a few days ago for almost 24 hours. We searched high and low, we dug through boxes of stuff that I didn't even know we owned. I almost pulled the engine from Jami's blazer because i thought maybe I'd dropped it in the engine compartment when i was changing oil. I did sift through the ashes in a fire barrel thinking perchance it'd come unclipped from my belt and fell in. OOohhhh the joy when i found it laying behind my tool box where a kindly kitty must have knocked it when jumping and running from my BB gun tirade. Annie Oakley I ain't! That or the kitty is durned quick.

So we've spent the day "Zune-less" wandering about like an ObamaZombie (one who realizes that words without actions are like a fire alarm in Hell) wondering what to do with ourselves. My brilliant wife finally went on-line this afternoon and found the following statement by those sadistic son's of a motherless goat from Microsoft:

"Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year. That being the case, the issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on."

This event has been dubbed "Z2K"... tell me, how can 100 engineers at the world's most prestigious computer company all fail to account for leap year in the software that operates Zune? Yikes, darn glad they didn't program the autopilot software for the Space Shuttle, or something more meaningful to the world than a little bitty Zune. Come On Bill Gates, get em straightened out!

Thanks for letting me vent.

Superluke :)