The 2nd truck

When I was 12 my family and I moved from North Tarrytown, NY to Cincinnati, OH.  We had been told that all of our stuff would fit on one truck.  However, when the movers loaded the truck there was too much stuff and they needed an extra truck.  This extra truck was not a “inter-state” truck and the stuff that was loaded on it was taken to a warehouse until a truck with space on it came to Cincinnati.  

In the intervening weeks my parents and I spent a lot of time worrying about “the other truck” and frustration ensued. There was yelling and screaming and gnashing of teeth with the moving company.  There was a lot of lost sleep.  The contents of “the other truck” suddenly became very valuable.  Everything that we couldn’t find must have been on “the other truck”. 

Then “the other truck” arrived.  It was filled with junk.  The only thing of any value on the truck was our brand new microwave, something which could have been easily re-purchased.   Some of the things that arrived on “the other truck” are still sitting in my parents garage, untouched for more than 20 years.  Yet, those useless items caused so much stress.

It’s exactly like my iTunes drama this week. 

Sunday when I started organizing my iTunes I discovered that a number of my songs wouldn’t play.  There was something broken.  I attempted to fix it and I couldn’t.  I became obsessed with fixing it.  I lost sleep 3 nights in a row trying to figure out the problem.  Last night I spent my whole evening on the phone and got nowhere. 

Last night the Apple Customer Service manager had done all he could and he promised to look into things this morning and asked me to email him when I got home, so I did.  We talked, and tried the exact same things we did yesterday,and guess what?  It didn’t work.  He said that the only option was to go to iTunes support, which was only available via email or chat, if it was chat time.  I’d have to type everything into an email and wait for an answer.  

Before I did that I  decided to go through my iTunes library and see exactly how many songs we are talking about here.  I had it estimated at a couple hundred.  I checked most songs, I’d just listened to every single song on Sun/Mon so I pretty much remembered the ones that worked and the ones that didn’t. 

I have 70 songs that won’t play.  70.  Less than 100.  Some of the songs are Christmas songs that I’m pretty sure my dad has on CD, which means I can get them for free when I go to Williamsburg.  There are others that I don’t even listen to anymore and don’t really feel the need to own.  That leaves about 40 songs that I still want. 

For $50.00 I can fix the whole problem.  Getting a good night’s sleep and not staying up late trying to solve unsolvable problems is worth a lot more than $50.00 to me!

Also, all the songs currently work on my desktop.  If I put them in my iPod and only synch my iPod with my desktop I can listen to them. 

What was a big deal problem yesterday, is suddenly not a big deal problem tonight, I just needed to get all the facts about exactly what the problem was! 

Just like the 2nd truck – because it was the part that wasn’t working it became the object of the utmost importance, but in reality it wasn’t worth all the worrying we did over it!