As you may have guessed from my previous post, my iPod displayed the sad iPod icon, which is indicative of hardware failure.  I did “a google” (h/t McCain) and came across an article suggesting a fix: banging the iPod against a hard surface.  The idea is the harddrive cable can work loose and a sudden burst of kinetic energy can reseat it.  My iPod is pretty old, so figured it was worth a shot.  I’ll be damned if it didn’t work.  Technical tap FTW!