Sure enough...
They said it would take 3-4 weeks for the 512MB version to come in. I rang up a bigger chain in the biggest shopping center in Melbourne and they told me the same: 3-4 weeks.
I bought mine three days after they said that--and they told me Apple's website was saying it was supposed to take another 3-4 weeks.
Personal review?
Pros:
It's light. It's really, really light. We're talking about the size of a slightly longer-than-usual cigarette lighter but half the weight. I keep it in my jacket pocket and I can't even feel that it's there.
For comparison, my family's also got a 128MB-everything-included USB player. It's about as long, more than three times as thick and weighs at least four times as much.
512MB storage. I keep 90 songs on it and still have 50MB dedicated for file-transfer (it's not full, either--I could fit a few more on without problems).
Sound quality gets two thumbs up.
It works brilliantly with iTunes (of course) and is instantly recognisable as an iPod just by the headphones alone (kids are so perceptive :-P ).
Simple control method--on/off, play/pause, skip forwar/backward and volume.
Shuffle is my favorite method of playing my music :-)
Cons:
As I believe Karen mentioned already--it's expensive and I do worry about losing it. The negligible weight doesn't help much; it could probably fall out of my pocket and I wouldn't notice the difference. (I keep it on an inside pocket, though. It's got the lanyard and headphones attached, so theoretically it should be rather visible if it does try to sneak its way out.)
No screen, so you couldn't find a specific song in a 90-song playlist unless you'd had it memorized. Especially in shuffle mode.
Neckstrap lanyard hooks onto the USB cap, so although I've stress-tested it by bouncing it up and down on the string (Over my bed, of course! No, I'm not stupid.) and it didn't come off, theoretically there's the possibility.
Then again, when I was trying to get the regular USB cap off in the store to test it, the outside of the cap came off before the rest did...the two little ball-bearing-things are nice and tight :-)
iTunes totally takes over the thing. If you eject it from iTunes, you can't even use it as a drive in Windows unless you remove it and re-plug it in. (I haven't tried plugging it in without iTunes open yet.) Of course, it also doesn't allow you to transfer any songs to or from your iPod unless it's registered with that particular copy of iTunes. (Haven't tried to search for them using Explorer yet either.)
All in all, though? I'm a happy customer :-)
Hover Car Racer by Matthew Reilly
If you like cars, tales of never-say-die struggles for success and mild science fiction...give it a look.
Unfortunately, although he released it on the 'Net for free, it's no longer available there :-(
Yup, it's been another rather long gap here. What can I say? I've been busy *and* I don't have a regular internet connection.
Then there's the more solid job I've landed...
Teaching can be fun...or it can be hell.
(Speaking from current level of experience, I think it's both--and often at once. Or five seconds apart. Good moment, *very* bad moment, just like that.)
I'm teaching Jewish studies, like I've been doing privately as a tutor for the last year. Now I'm just doing it officially as a teacher rather than tutor.
I started out one-on-one with a 14-year-old who was new to Judaism. Really new and not particularly sure about it. Two hours a day, 9am-11am, Mon-Fri.
Yesterday, I got upgraded...I've now got three students, each different in age but not so far apart in ability. More hours, too: 9-1.
Let me digress a bit and explain about the school. It's newly-established, some distance from the main Jewish community, on the premises of a Jewish-school-that-was. The whole focus of the school is, "Teach the child according to his way," which is a Biblical axiom from...Proverbs, I think. (There you go, Karen--something to look up! :-D )
So, it's almost entirely special-ed. Really small classes, personal attention, non-formal (or at least non-usual) teaching style.
But all the usual discipline problems, of course. Kids are kids; most don't really want to learn (or at least not for long periods of time) or do things they think are boring :-P
So, I've been exceptionally busy. I've pretty much dropped any chat-based roleplaying I'd been doing (dropping in on the Hall included) because I'm busy during the US night hours now. Most of my roleplaying is now play-by-post only. A bit of a shame, but work does have to come first.
Anyway, until next time I can force myself to sit down and write! :-)