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July 23rd, 2008
 | 03:22 pm - Neat!
This actually applies to me now!
http://www.sysadminday.com/
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July 22nd, 2008
| 02:41 pm - Yum.
Turtles think ducks are snack cakes.
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| 02:38 pm - Just ducky.
Spring decided to float some plastic ducks today.
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July 21st, 2008
| 11:55 pm
Power was back by noon, so only out for ten hours.
Work was brain breaking.
The Dark Knight was the most intense movie I've seen since 1991.
Going to sleep now with K. Very tired.
Current Location: 214
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| 09:27 am - Zapped.
At 2AM last night, my power went out. It is still out. It is quite warm in here. Good thing I have to go to work.
Sent from my iPhone.
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July 19th, 2008
| 01:59 pm - Friends List Amnesty Time
I'm about to do a minor friend's list shrink because my free time to keep up with LJ has dropped off again. If you want to drop me now, no questions asked, now's the time.
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July 18th, 2008
 | 12:49 am - I need a clone.
My e-mail inbox is up to 98 messages again.
My to-do list is overflowing.
My TiVo is backing up.
I haven't had a chance to do dishes, or straighten up, or finish sorting the boxes of condo crap that I had to bring in from the office.
My list of "I need to write that up on LiveJournal" topics is growing.
I haven't even emptied the ashtray on the patio- I quit smoking last Friday- because I haven't been on the patio in a week.
::sigh::
Current Location: 214
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/punquinheads/blue/grumpy.gif) frustrated
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July 17th, 2008
July 16th, 2008
| 10:41 pm
Neat! ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) technoshaman posted this link to an unbreakable fighting umbrella. This is genuinely cool: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/07/unbreakable-fig.html
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| 01:40 pm - D'oh!
Even with the fancy-schmancy iPhone in my hand, I've been dating stuff with tomorrow's date all morning.
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July 15th, 2008
| 08:18 am - This has been stuck in my head for three days.
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July 13th, 2008
| 07:51 pm
http://www.loopt.com/ is kinda neat. It uses your location for phones that can provide it and tells other people on your loopt friends list where you are.
Right now, I can see jozzfest at work. Neat!
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July 12th, 2008
| 07:40 am - Seven Hours In Boca
Acquiring an iPhone took seven hours. It took seven hours because the activation process was reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally slow for the first six hours of the onsale. Basically, Apple and AT&T planned badly and created the perfect storm.
- Apple stores all over the country, and AT&T stores all over the country- using iTunes to activate new phones.
- New version of iTunes being downloaded and installed.
- New 2.0 firmware for old iPhones being downloaded and installed by existing users.
- App store opening.
- MobileMe opening.
Long story short, hundreds of thousands of people hit the iTunes interface that authenticates the phone with AT&T's back end at the same time, and zaniness ensued. Lots of people had temporary bricks. This was not a problem for me, because they resolved all the activation problems long before I ever got out of the mall. Here's how it went down:
7:30AM - The official end of my shift. jozzfest meets me at the office, and together we drive over to the Town Center Mall, where our closest Apple store is located.
7:39 - maxymyllyn and malluna have arrived at the Apple Store, and report via SMS that the line is long.
7:45ish - Since I work in Boca, and morning traffic was light, the drive only took about five minutes. We're in line by about 7:45 AM. We're about ten or twelve people behind maxymyllyn and malluna, and we're in front of the Kay Jewelers near Stir Crazy. The line goes all the way up to the place where the mall curves and the Apple Store is revealed. I haven't seen it yet, since we're at the end. Some orange-shirted Apple Store conscierge people come by, give us little pamphlets, and make sure that all our ducks are in a row for the impending on-sale. I decide to give all the orange shirts nicknames. The one who hands me the pamphlet is forever known by her elven name, Silvershoes. (Her shoes were silver and sparkly. Kinda hard to miss.) Other nick-named conscierges are Hornrim, Broadway, ETM (explained further down in this post), and Hairpick.
7:55 - Here's what the line looked like from my perspective, not counting the people behind me, who were looped around all the way on the other side of the mall, almost to Neiman Marcus:
8:00 - As 8am approaches, people start to stand up and nudge forward a little bit. We inch forward by a few feet, but not a tremendous amount. Jozz and I are directly behind a guy in bike shorts and running shoes, who I shall refer to for the rest of this post as Patchouli-Stink. He was clearly using patchouli to cover post-workout body odor. I was directly behind this man. For seven hours.
8:06 - No motion in the line, and maxymyllyn jokes that they're actually selling the new Harry Potter.
8:15 - One pair of girls ahead of us in line find out from the conscierges that there's stuff they didn't know about, and they leave. Two down, too many to go.
8:35 - maxymyllyn finds that the closest bathroom is the one in the food court. When he tells me this, I decide that Joe's water bottle would be more convenient. Oh yeah; the Apple Store people are handing out bottles of water and cups of coffee. They do this periodically for the rest of the day, which is nice. I elect to skip the bottled water the first few times it comes by, because I don't want to have to leave the line to pee. Stupid move on my part.
8:56 - I notice the Starbucks adjacent to the line for the first time. I thought they opened it just for this event, but I realized later in the day that there's actually a Starbucks cart there all the time, and I'm just used to tuning it out.
9;55 - Two and a half hours in line, and I still can't actually see the Apple Store. I take a minute to go move my car out of the fifteen minute parking. Oops!
10:00 - The Mall opens. The fountain starts up. It does a few minutes of water patterns, shifting the spray heights and whatnot, then goes off. It repeats this once every five minutes or so as long as the mall is open.
10:13 - We've finally moved up enough that we're across from Neiman Marcus.
10:34 - The fucking fountain is driving me bat-shit. My eye is twitching. I wish I'd brought the ear-plugs from home.
10:56 - There's a trickle of people moving into the store and a few people have come out with their phones. I count at least 60 people in front of me still.
11:08 - jozzfest, sitting on the floor, comments that he's really tired of seeing Patchouli-Stink's ass.
11:17 - My resolve wavers; I consider leaving. Jozz has been awake for almost 22 hours, and I've been awake for almost 19. I resolve that if we're not past a specific pillar by 12:30, that we'll go.
11:33 - Nearly four hours in line, and I still can't see the Apple store. We're slowly getting closer to ETM (Extraordinarily Tall Man), an Apple Store employee in a blue shirt.
12:13 - Mall cop on Segway glares and poses.
12:26 - We get to the 12:30 pillar. I guess we're staying a bit longer. We're also far enough away from the fountain that it's slightly less annoying.
12:42 - My resolve wavers again. I tell malluna that we're going to bail. When I get back to our spot in the line, someone from work is visiting with Jozz, and he relates that the AT&T stores are out of stock. I immediately slide into a mindset of "Well, we've come this far. Might as well stick it out."
12:52 - Feel like I'm going to starve to death in the line.
1:03 - malluna notices that we're still in line. A series of wtf shrugs are exchanged at a distance.
1:04 - I notice that malluna has been walked into the store. Hooray!
1:10 - jozzfest, who has now been awake for 23 hours, announces that he hates me. After a half-hearted attempt by him to strangle me, I go get us a snack.
1:13 - My starvation averted by waffle fries. And I'm back in line.
1:54 - Almost to the head of the line. So close, but still waiting. My feet have begun to cramp up; I should have worn more comfortable shoes. I spend some time sitting on the mall floor and wishing I had gone to get a haircut and gone to sleep instead.
2:23 - I finally make it to the head of the line, as jozzfest is escorted into the store to make his purchase. I spend some time chatting with Broadway, another orange shirt who is wearing a long-sleeved Wicked t-shirt identical to one that I own. We bond briefly over our respective love of musical theatre. And no, I'm not gay. Shut up! Another Apple Store employee walks up and shows off the white iPhone. It looks much nicer than I expected it to. And although I'm pleased with the black I finally wound up with, I do think the white hides finger smudges better.
2:28 - I'm in! Woot, woot! A short orange-shirted girl who has no nickname because my brain was out of comission at that point escorts me in and begins my purchase on one of those nifty little handheld devices. She tells me that I'm the second customer she's led through the purchase process. I suspect she's relieved that I know before we go in what I want, and that I already know about the extra fees. Some folks are getting a nasty surprise when they try to check out and discover a few hundred extra dollars on their purchase price.
I get the 16 Gb black iPhone, and a MobileMe account. There's a 30 dollar discount on MobileMe when purchased at the same time as an iPhone. I discovered this two days previously and cancelled my pre-order of MobileMe. Hey, 30 bucks is 30 bucks.
Neat! They e-mail the receipt to you.
I opt to skip a case and screen protector for now; I was too tired to think rationally and I want to see some of the cases when it's a little less crowded anyway. I definitely need a case though; I'd like to keep this thing looking pretty.
2:37 - Random Apple store employee asks me what my "Kneel Before Zod" shirt is from.
2:43 - Seven hours later, and I'm done! iPhonein hand, I walk over to jozzfest, who is less than a minute from completing his own purchase. malluna is next to him, waiting for her own stuff to be sorted out.
A side effect of the purchasing process is that our phones are all rendered unuseable once the iPhone is activated by AT&T, so I had an unuseable RAZR in my pocket (Unregistered Sim, it said. No service, it said.) and a still-boxed iPhone which needed to be connected to iTunes to do the final step.
3:03 - Jozz runs to the bathroom, and I get questioned by a random passerby while I wait. She's a little old woman who wants to know what an iPhone is. After Jozz returns, we head out to the car. The line is just as long as it was when we first arrived. People at the end of the line joke that they should jump us and take our phones. I take Jozz back to his own ride, and autopilot home.
Once I got home, I plugged the iPhone into my computer, and it immediately gets a text message. I go through the 'register your iPhone' and 'terms of service' dialogues, and my phone is active.
For my next trick, I will get four hours of sleep before going back to work.
Current Location: 214
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/punquinheads/blue/tired.gif) exhausted
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| 05:55 am
Happy birthday to raptorgirl. And nancyblue. And _chandra.
All y'all should have some cake.
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| 04:41 am
I want to post about the iPhone adventure, but I'm at work alone and don't really have the time to write something that in depth. It will be posted later; probably after I've slept again.
In the mean time, I give you:
Techno Chicken.
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July 11th, 2008
| 08:57 am
They spontaneously opened a Starbucks in the iphone line. Ha!
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July 9th, 2008
| 09:30 am - Cool idea; lousy slogan.
This ad can be taken wrong in SO many different ways...
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July 8th, 2008
 | 02:45 am - iReady To Pull my iPants down And iBend Over.
I'm not sure if I'm going to buy the iPhone 3G on Friday. I've been jonesing for months, and there's a lot of things built into the iPhone that I've really been looking forward to using.
But...
Last week, AT&T released its iPhone pricing information, along with information on "how to be iReady for the upgrade.
And Steve Jobs lied. Or at least he left out some important details.
$199 for the 8Gb and $299 for the 16Gb, right? That's what he said. That's what they advertise. But then there's the fine print.
I had to replace my RAZR last May. I've been paying for insurance on my phone, but in order to take advantage of that, you have to call their provider and deal with the delay while they mail you a new handset. I was about to go to Utah for work, and I couldn't be without a phone. So I bought the new handset... which means that I'm on contract and I'm not eligible for a hardware upgrade at this point.
AT&T wants existing customers to be able to get the new iPhone, so they're willing to allow you out of your existing contract... for $200 more.
And all existing customers, even the ones who are eligible for hardware upgrade right now, start off with an $18 upgrade fee.
So...
$299 - New 16Gb iPhone
$200 - Loyal Customer Penalty Fee
$18 - Upgrade Fee
===================
$517 = My cost for the "$299 iPhone."
If you're coming to AT&T as a new customer, your fee isn't $18 to upgrade, it's $36 to establish a new account.
The data fees are about ten bucks more than they were for Edge; that's doable. But they've removed SMS messaging entirely from that plan... so if you want to send sms text messages, you need to add an additional text messaging plan for anywhere from $5 to $20 a month, depending on your needs.
So... to recap:
A new iPhone would cost me more than five hundred dollars. Before the first service bill.
My options, as I see them are:
1) Suck it up and get the phone.
2) Wait until January, and get it then.
3) Allow my rage at AT&T's poor handling to push me away from AT&T altogether. Most of my family is on AT&T, so I'd lose the free mobile-to-mobile minutes. But my lady love is on another carrier... (Although it's a carrier that I hate, but that's another rant.)
So, my friends- what would you do if you were me?
Current Location: 5050
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/punquinheads/blue/angry.gif) annoyed
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July 7th, 2008
| 03:43 am - Hooray for TiVo!
I recently discovered that TVLand plays "Night Court" every weekday at 7am. Through the magic of TiVo, I've been watching the last few episodes of season 9, and seeing how it ends.
But here's the cool part- today and tomorrow are the series finale episodes. On Wednesday, they loop over and start the show from the beginning of season one. I've been jonesing for the old eps of Night Court, the ones with Selma Diamond, for ages. And now I get to see them ALL. In order.
Kick ass!
Current Location: 214
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July 6th, 2008
| 07:41 am - Another movie I'll actually watch.
Repo: The Genetic Opera.
Starring Sarah Brightman and Anthony Stewart Head. With Alexa Vega, Paul Sorvino, and Ogre from Skinny Puppy. Oh yeah, and Paris Hilton. This looks like it might be a good enough rock opera to even overcome Paris Hilton.
Repo! The Genetic Opera - Theatrical Trailer
Repo! The Genetic Opera - Trailer #2 (HiQ)
Current Location: 214
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July 3rd, 2008
| 10:50 am - Locals...
anyone need some patio furniture?
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July 2nd, 2008
| 09:13 am - Random bulleted thoughts before sleep-time.
- Someone could make a passable mash-up of the live recording of Tori Amos' "Girl" and Concrete Blonde's live recording of "Roses Grow." They have basically the same percussion line.
- When shelling a fresh clove of garlic, it is actually possible to squirt yourself in the eye with garlic juice. I had no idea. Also, I've never managed to embed a sliver of garlic under a fingernail before. This stew is kind of painful.
- Similarly, I had no idea there were so many types of potatoes. Russets, Reds, Whites, Yukon Gold... little ones, big ones, baking ones. Brand names, store brand names. Wtf?! I just want to make a stew, not write a dissertation!
- As for the stew, it's going to be tasty, I hope. I was mostly going without a recipe. I glanced at a bunch of stew recipes just to see what other people were doing, and I went with the following ingredients: cubed beef for stewing, Swanson's beef broth, Swanson's vegetable broth, half a can of Guinness, four small red potatoes cut up, baby carrots, diced celery, part of a clove of garlic, some more minced garlic when the clove didn't seem like enough, some McCormick slow-cooker stew seasoning, some little white boiler onions, and a little dried sweet basil. It's in the crock pot now, and it'll cook all day while I sleep. I hope it tastes good.
- As for things that shouldn't taste as good as they do, I had mango key lime pie last night. It's blasphemy to use mango in a key lime pie. Tasty, tasty blasphemy.
- I watched the leaked pre-air of "True Blood," and it's actually quite good. Excellent set-up, and I hope the show continues. Basically, it's set in a world where vampires have "come out of the coffin" on national television, and there's a synthetic blood called "Tru-Blood" that's sold in six-packs like beer. Oh, and I love love love the opening theme song, enough to have tracked it down and paid for an mp3 copy via Amazon's DRM-less purchasing, which I also love. It's called "Bad Things" by Jace Everett, and for a short while, you can grab it from here.
- I mentioned Randy Pausch briefly the other day- he has some great speeches available. You can see 'em on YouTube, but you can also download them for free from the iTunes Music Store- both in audio and video format. I've been watching it in pieces on YouTube, but I'm quite happy to have a higher quality version in my local collection. His speech on Time Management has been amazing so far.
- I have a lot of other posts brewing, not unlike the stew, but I've been short on extra time lately. They're coming, though. Very slowly.
Current Location: 214
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Jace Everett - Bad Things (Club Mix)
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| 02:17 am - Watching "news" people gives me an aneurysm.
Wow.
I grabbed this from glenathon, but I'm fairly disgusted- enough to repost.
Here's this clip. It's about seven and a half minutes long.
The beginning is an interview with General Wesley Clark, where he talks a little bit about McCain's military service, and he makes a very simple point- that getting shot down isn't a qualification to be the next president of the US.
The rest of the clip is all the media people talking about how Clark attacked McCain's military records. The phrase swift-boating is used. These people make my brain hurt.
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July 1st, 2008
| 10:27 am - Time slippage.
I forgot it was July 1st.
Today marks six years with Mr. Company.
I've spent 312 weeks there. 12,480 hours... not counting all the times that I've worked more than 40 hours, which is a pant-load.
I knew there was a reason I had the urge to bake a cake last night...
Current Location: 214
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| 09:46 am - This guy is fascinating.
I've been watching speeches by Randy Pausch, who is a fascinating individual.
"This advice is good for the ladies: when it comes to men that are romantically interested in you, it's really simple: just don't listen to anything they have to say; pay attention to what they do" --Randy Pausch
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