iPod Death
It was a sickening sound, not too much different than the crisp rattling noise you get when you shake a small unopened bag of potato chips. And where was it coming from? My iPod.
Sure the iPod had been having weird issues anyway: all day Sunday it was having trouble booting up (it just keep looping through the Apple screen, but then finally came to like late that night). But then, this morning, as I was walking down the front steps selecting the listening material for my commute, my already very rain-lubricated iPod slipped right through my fingers and landed SMACK flat on its back on the front steps.
I'd dropped the poor abused iPod a time or two before, but in a way where it slid, rolled, or bounced — not a full-on inelastic collision.
And upon gingerly picking it up and pushing the little centre button, that's when the potato chip sound started.
So now the question: Spend around $220 (plus tax and shipping) on a replacement hard drive for it (assuming I do the replacement myself, and with the probably 5% risk that it still won't work), or spend $279 on a new iPod Classic 80GB.
Right now the new iPod plan seems to be winning, although I'd rather not have had to make that choice right now in the first place....