Well, that didn't take long

Had my Skullcandy G.I. headphones less than a week, and today I discovered that the the leather earpad replacements that came with the headphones that I put on upon receiving them had one of the plastic tabs that hold the pad to the earphone had snapped off. And not just one side, either - both of them had a broken tab, one was just broken and the other one had snapped off and was completely missing. I've babied the heck out of these things, and probably would not have discovered it had I not noticed that the pads on the headphones were a little loose. So when I removed the pads to find out why, that's what I was greeted with. Not really a great first impression for a first-time user of a brand.

Oh, and for anyone who is curious, I still haven't heard a thing back in regard to the Split Stick. With the mood I'm in right now, I'm really tempted to head over to the site and cancel my order (providing it's not too late, as it appears they've already charged my debit card). Not a good day so far, and there isn't much day left.

Scratching the itch again

Picked up a couple more toys this weekend, supposedly due to necessity (or at least as far as my wife knows, since our dog decided to have my earbuds for a snack). First one was a gadget I came across a couple of weeks ago from a company called Quirky, Inc. Essentially from all appearances all it is is a 4GB thumb drive, but there's a bit of a twist. It's called the Split Stick and if you look at the product image it's pretty much self explanatory. It's split into two 2GB memory cards with one on each end, and a slider switch in the middle to switch between the two. What makes this unique is the possibilities it presents. For example, on mine I plan to have a System Rescue CD installed on one side for emergencies, and on the other I'll install a bootable image with Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it that has a small persistent partition to store data on. My wife saw them and ordered one as well, although I have no idea what her intentions are for hers since she has plenty of SD cards to carry her data around on.

The other was a pair of Skullcandy headphones (the G.I. model in Winter Camo) to replace a 5+ year old set of Panasonic cans that are starting to short out on me. Reviews are mixed on these headphones and there doesn't seem to be any in-between either, people either absolutely love them or absolutely hate them. But they were reasonably priced ($69.95 at Skullcandy, but got them for $33 at Overstock.com) and I suppose I will see whether or not you get what you pay for, plus they come with a lifetime warranty. One consenus is that the low end seems to be a bit weak, but that has never been an issue for me as I a) mostly use headphones to listen to podcasts and watch videos and b) don't listen to rap or any other genre of music that involves a lot of bass, so a pair of 40mm drivers with a decent midrange should suit me just fine.

Don't know when I'lll get a chance to review them for you as I'm a sucker for the "Free Shipping" opeion meaning it's a crap shoot as to when I'll receive either of the items, but hopefully it will be before the end of next week.