True story

I let Z play with my iPod this afternoon and right after he gave it back to me, it froze, I reset it and promptly got the sad frowny dead iPod face. Boo.

I blamed him secretly, but really it's been acting funky since I went to Canada last August, and on the plane ride home I turned it on and it was completely empty of music, I reset it and it all came back. It's living on borrowed time, I'm saying.

So I reset it no less than 15 times tonight, tried to get it into disk mode, left it charging for 6 hours, read a million forums and Apple support, and find one with possibly useful (force diagnostic mode), and/or possibly destructive advice (take it apart and disconnect things), and someone posted a follow-up in the thread:

"Yo,
I have just spent 2.5 hours going through every single combination to restore my girlfriends ipod mini, all very interesting and useful.

It had the unhappy face etc.

The ipod now works from one very useful piece of advice... i hit the top right hand corner quite hard against a wall.

Technology is great."

Yeah, right, I say, except 7 other people post to the thread that they all have the exact same problem and the banging worked.

Turns out? Worked for me too. We are, perhaps, into the 7th of 9 lives of this iPod. I still can't believe it.