Just a beautiful day skiing in Vermont today. Sunny skies, freezing cold, but I'm bundled up nice and warm. Best of all, plenty of tunes to listen to. I love nothing more than to ski listening to music. But just when I was about to get off the lift and start my second run, my iPod Video packed up. There was a click, then silence.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn. Last year, my Rio Karma MP3 player served me well. But it later died in the summer, so I joined the cult of iPod along with the rest of the world, despite my general dislike of things Applicious.

Did it get too cold? I had the iPod in my front external jacket pocket, since I don't have any good inside zipped pockets. I took it out and had a look. I could work the menus just fine, but when I'd select a song, it would just sit there and not play. I figured the hard drive must have frozen or shut down for some cold related reason.

I had a couple of those chemical hand warmers, but they take about 15 minutes to really get going. I wanted to warm the iPod as fast as I could, so down my shirt it went, freezing cold metal right against my skin. Nice!

I finished my run, then rode the lift back but, but it hadn't apparently warmed enough. I did another, and still no luck. One more, and I was still tuneless plus out of time. I had to meet my wife for lunch.

Lunch at least gave me a chance to play with it more. At this point, the iPod had been sitting under my shirt for about two hours. Maybe it wouldn't play out of fright of my bare flesh, but cold shouldn't have still been an issue. Moreover, I noticed that it was having no problem displaying any of the many photos I have stored on it. Thinking about it more, I realized I was stupid for thinking the hard drive froze. If that had been the case, it couldn't have been selecting songs as it had up on the mountain. Accessing the hard drive wasn't a problem. Playing the songs once selected was.

Back at the apartment, I plugged the iPod into my laptop (brought along solely for doing family photos and music, no work!). Just connecting wasn't enough to break it out of its musicless funk. iTunes (how I hate that software) had been suggesting I upgrade to iPod 1.1. OK, maybe some upgraded software would help. Since the resort now has wireless access, I signed up and started downloading.

Waiting for the software to download, I started exploring the iPod support area. Prominent here was the suggestion to try the Five Rs, with Resetting your iPod being the first of the Rs.

Reset my iPod? There's a way to reset it? I have to explain my ignorance. The incredible intuitiveness of the iPod was lost on me when I couldn't figure out how to turn the damn thing off the first time I used it. An on/off switch would be far to easy. I had to do a web search to discover I had to hold down the pause button to do this. Of course! It's so clear!

Most portable electronic devices I've used have a little hole you push with a stylus to reset them. For the iPod, I know it's toggle the hold switch, then hold Menu and Select.

I did the reset and voila, music started playing again. Just to tempt fate, I went ahead and then upgraded the iPod software. What a nightmare that was. First the updater wouldn't run, just staying frozen on the splash screen. Then after reboot, it ran and demanded I plug the iPod in. I did, but nothing happened. It froze again. After a couple more reboots, I eventually ran iTunes, then plugged in the iPod, then the updater kicked in and did its job.

Overall, my confidence in the iPod's been rattled now, but I'll hope for the best when hitting the slopes with it tomorrow.

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