This time, it is a story about my first Ipod. Well, actually, my first two iPods.

I jumped on the iPod bandwagon as soon as they made them available for Windows. It was a 3g iPod (the one that lit up red, with the 4 buttons at the top) and I loved it. I had purchased it with money I got for my high school graduation. I was in love. I had been waiting a long, long time to experience the iPod. But then something terrible happened.

Just weeks after I purchased my iPod, the brand spanking new iPod photo was released. I felt like an asshole. This is pretty common for Apple, or any device company for that matter, these days, but back then it felt like a shot in the stomach.

My new, shiny, glowing iPod felt stupid. It felt old, and I had become jealous of anyone who was about to purchase the new one. (Give me a break, I was 17, okay?!)

But then, I had an epiphany.

What if… what if I returned my OLD iPod, told them I just wanted an exchange and received a new iPod instead?! It just might work…

First off, I had to find an unnamed big blue appliance/tech Store that only had the new iPods and not the old ones. After an hour or so searching online, I found one pretty close that only had the new iPods at the same price point as mine. The next task was to break my iPod… on purpose.

Back then, devices could be finicky. There was an easy way to brick your iPod, of which you had to be very, very careful not to do. Of course, in this case, I wanted it to happen.

So I brought my newly bricked iPod 3g into the store, explained to them that “something happened, I don’t know. It won’t work”

If I remember correctly, the SOP for a bricked iPod at that time, provided it wasn’t damaged, was to just replace it. My plan was working.

After a few minutes of confusion. (They couldn’t figure out why the box, UPC, and SKU were different. To them it was the same thing- same price anyway).

It took a little convincing (“Yeah, I think they added photos to it or something. Maybe they just changed the box?) But in less than 15 minutes, I was walking out of the store with the brand new iPod.

This of course only lasted about a year or so before the new new iPods came out, but at that point, there wasn’t much I could do except just buy a new one.

To this day I look back on those times and wonder how the hell I got away with it. Was it stupid? Yeah. Immoral? Mmmm… probably. Hopefully, my teenage sins can be forgiven. I would never dream to get away with something like this nowadays. (The workers at the stores as too smart