Copious Free Time

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Kip Asks for Help, part XVIII:

iTunes wanted to update itself, for the benefit of iOS users. Whatever. I let it do so.

Next time I synced my iPod, it only synced photos. Turns out the "synchronize music and movies manually" is now checked somehow. If I uncheck it, it wants to rebuild my iPod from scratch, which takes all day or more (120GB).

It also claims that the iTunes library on my computer isn't the one that the iPod is synced with. This is an outright lie.

I don't want to go looking for everything I've added to my iTunes library and put it in place by hand (again) every time I add something.

I called Apple, which offers to sell me a $19 service plan for one month, during which time they'll presumably tell me something that isn't "You just wasted $19. Now rebuild your iTunes library, just like you were going to have to anyway." The tech did send me a couple of links to helpful articles in the database, one of which told me how to make sure I hadn't forgotten to turn the unit on, and the other of which told me how to make sure I wasn't mistakenly trying to use a box of gum instead of an iPod.

So does anybody know what's going on here? Seems to me the problem isn't my (out of warranty) iPod, but the brand-new software they just made me install.
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Send Message Error.
Sending of message failed.
The message could not be posted because connecting to the news server failed. The server may be unavailable or is refusing connections. Please verify that your news server settings are correct and try again, or else contact your network administrator.

This is what I get when I try and send Usenet messages. For a while, it was a sometimes thing. Rebooting the program, or my computer, or both, seemed to help a time or two. Now it doesn't.

It will sometimes pretend to send a message, and then not really do it. (I will add that even before this problem came, for some time I have had to manually check every message I send on Usenet to see if it really went out or not, and re-send if it didn't. Every bloody time, and sometimes I'd send over and over and over before it took.)

I'm using a MacBook Pro running 10.7.4 (OSX). I use SeaMonkey for my newsgroups. My Usenet access comes from a block I bought from NewsgroupDirect. I checked, and I still have over 50GB of access remaining, and their help page says that everything is running just fine.

I feel like I've been through all this before, but can't remember what the hell made it finally stop before. Is this God's way of telling me to get the hell off of Usenet and do something with my life?
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