The brain in my iPod

My iPod is sentient. I know it.

Why? Because it has musical tastes.

This has become apparent while using the shuffle feature in the past week. Let me explain: I have a 30-gig iPod Photo with about 13 gigs of music loaded in -- roughly 3,750 songs (and still six inches of CDs [without cases] to rip). According to iTunes, there's currently enough music in my iPod to run continuously 24 hours a day for about 10 days without any duplication.

So why am I listening to the same 20 songs over and over?

My first thought was that the songs were being scored and weighted, causing some songs to be played more than others. But (a.) I have not rated any songs, and (b.) the songs it's playing over and over aren't even songs I really like.

I commute around 35-45 minutes to work each way, so roughly an hour and a half total. And during that time, I do hear plenty of songs that the iPod hasn't played before. But for the last three days, at some point in that hour and a half, I have heard the following songs:

• Juliana Hatfield's cover of Weezer's "Say It Ain't So"
• Billy Joel's "I Don't Know Why"
• The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
• the karaoke version of Alanis Morissette's "Ironic"
• Rage Against the Machine's "Take the Power Back"
  

There are several other songs that have played at least twice during the last three days. Paul says the shuffle feature is far from perfect; I say the iPod is thinking. Next thing I know, it'll be plotting my demise or worse!, trying to convert me to a Mac. (Okay, guys, I'll front: I've had a soft spot in my heart for Macs ever since I my first programming class -- I learned BASIC on a university Mac when I was like eight. ::grins:: AND Macs are all I worked on for years as a reporter, a designer and an editor. But, still, they're inherently evil ... right?)

So, I'm left with these questions: Does anyone with an iPod SDK think you could, you know, fix this little problem for me? And in the meantime, should I even bother ripping the rest of the CDs if I'm sure I'll be listening to the same songs in a different order tomorrow?