I finally managed to track down an iPod Shuffle today, at Target in Sunnyvale:
It is tiny and well designed and entirely awesome. But it appears to have given my mac some indigestion for some reason -- I suspect the new 1.1 firmware update. I have reverted back to 1.0, and it appears to be working just fine. I will have to investigate further. It was something of a kick in the pants that Mike was able to get it to work much easier on his Windows XP box than I was on my Mac.
-Andy.