Shuffle has mind of its own??

[rjoslin414]

I have a problem with my older (3 inch long) shuffle... or maybe not:

One particular podcast (The Math Factor, from Univ of Arkansas, if it matters) when transferred from iTunes to ipod, seems to be in the right order, but when I later start playing the episodes, they come out in reverse order.

I should add that, as is always the case on iTunes, irritatingly,the podcasts ARE in reverse order, with the newest one first on the list. This means that in the podcasts folder (or whatever it is) they end up in newest-first order. I generally want to listen to podcasts in the order in which they were broadcast, which, in this universe anyway, means oldest first In the cast of the Math Factor, since there is a puzzle in every episode, and discussion and answer to the puzzle in the next episode, it is particularly vexing to have them in reverse order.

I know this is convoluted, but bear with me if you have time. The method I have devised of having podcasts come out in chronological order is to transfer them from the podcasts folder to a playlist which sorts them in the order I want, and then "writing" the playlist to the ipod. It has seemed to work fine with all other podcasts, but with this particular one it seems like the ipod is reversing the list on its own, i.e., immediately after transferring the casts, they are in the right order, but when I'm in the car listening the next morning on the way to work, they are in reverse order again. Is this possible? Am I crazy? I even tried moving the files manually within the ipod window on itunes, and it still seemed to end up the same way.

I like to manually control everything on my ipod, and it seems that it is trying to "help" me in some way. Have I missed some option I should turn off? Am I somehow unintentionally telling the ipod to sort these things in reverse order? This is driving me nuts, listening to the solution to a puzzle first. Once I tried "sorting" the ipod window and that appeared to work, but later it seemed the casts were back in the reverse order again!



Rick Joslin
rjoslin@charter.net


PS I'm pretty sure the answer is "no", but is there a way to simply highlight several items and simply "reverse order"?