Archive for October, 2006
So, Friday Oct 27 my newly batteried (due to the apple battery settlement) 3rd gen ipod (Micropod) fell a full 3 feet off my desk at work as I was packing to leave and landed on its head. Sadly (electronics usually do pretty well with me), it now makes an unhappy grinding noise noise with a click every couple of seconds. I’m really quite sad about it.
I had been threatening to get a nano since they came out, and I figured I might as well get the (Product) Red ipod in red — especially since I won’t be attending Oprah’s show and get one under my seat any time in the foreseeable future. Ten bucks is donated to to the global fund to fight AIDS in Africa. I have to say, I’m pretty happy about that, and the little red thing itself. It will be nice to have a much more spritely music player for the bike/muni ride downtown, and its red without being the empire strikes back black and red of that u2 ipod. Its only 4gB, but it fits a surprisingly large amount of music (after having the 30gB for so long). As a friend said, summing up my independent tentative conclusion on the matter - you either get one that fits everything, or you get the super-portable. Oh yeh, and it’s also nice to have the scroll-wheel device with the tactile feedback — the buttons on the 3rd gen were starting to not really function well anymore…
Sat, 2006 Oct 28, 11:42pm
So, I’m in the market for a cordless mouse for my new San Francisco work. Today I stumbled on this one, the Logitech MX 610. I like the logitech mice usually, and its kind of a nice mouse at first glance, but then notice the email and im buttons on the mouse. I don’t know who came up with the brilliant idea to put *lights* on a cordless mouse in the first place, which just drains the battery faster, but the fact that the buttons light up when you get email or instant messages is just ridiculous. I feel sorry for whoever had to market this silly thing. The description says, “Buttons light up so you can see when new messages arrive from selected friends, even if you´re not in front of your PC.” My questions are:
1. Who carries their mouse around with them when they aren’t at the computer?
2. Is the range so great that I can take it to the other side of the office when talking to colleagues, but then be able to say, “Oops, sorry, gotta run, my mouse here notified me that I just got an email.”
3. Who looks at their mouse while using it, unless out of frustration when it isn’t working properly? “Damn tracking, I wish this mouse had better…Ooo! I have mail!”
Thu, 2006 Oct 26, 11:58am
Thought this was funny. Got an email today from AirTran regarding online check-in for my flight to San Francisco. This would be a great little “this is broken” anecdote.
From: Atlanta, GA (ATL) / Departing: 9:30 AM
To: San Francisco, CA (SFO) / Arriving: 12:1 PM
My flight arrives at 12:01 PM. Apparently someone forgot that we humans put a preceding zero in front of the minutes less than 10. After the week I’ve had, I have to say, this gave me a little chuckle. Yes, I am a geek, nerd, etc.
Fri, 2006 Oct 20, 2:38pm
So, here is my second moving madness post. This story starts back a few months ago, when we bought a new LG front-loader washer and dryer (these things rock, keep reading). The “jokers” that delivered the washer and dryer were very much less than professional, and other than installing our new appliances undamaged, were pretty lazy and were goofing off the whole time. I didn’t really care at the time, I was just happy to have a new washer and dryer that came with a decent warranty.
Unfortunately, the jerks that delivered them took the shipping bolts for the washer with them. The shipping bolts are supposed to be left behind, and, according to one person that I spoke with at Best Buy, if the bolts are taken away at the time of delivery they are thrown away, so if you need them, there is no way to get them from Best Buy. I am moving these things across country, and according to my friendly LG representative from today, moving the washer without the shipping bots voids the warranty. Best Buy totally dropped the ball on this one. They were completely unhelpful on the phone and could only recommend that I call LG, even though we have a warranty with Best Buy for the set. Best Buy’s customer service in my case was POOR. (just typing that a few times for the search engines).
The LG customer service, on the other hand, was great. I had read some bad reviews of their customer service before and I have to say today contradicted that for me. I have to pay for the bolts, of course, but they are shipping them overnight to me so that I can prepare the washer for the movers coming on Friday (tomorrow if Thursday). If you end up without your shipping bolts for your LG, call the customer service number and explain the situation and they will hook you up with the parts line - where you can order the new bolts.
Wed, 2006 Oct 18, 9:42pm
This is the first of my posts for this week detailing the craziness that ensues when you give yourself plenty of time to get ready for a cross-country move. This post is in regard to the fact that I am now sitting at Octane lounge in Atlanta, checking my mail (and posting nasty messages, apparently). Octane lounge is actually pretty cool. The coffee is good and the wireless is free. (it does kind of look like a mac rally, but that’s ok - i’m adding to the pretentious protest as well)
I am here instead of workiing on the last of my packing because my cable internet is supposed to be on until Saturday (today is Wednesday). Someone at Comcast made the decision to go ahead and send out the technician today to remove the filter from my line (or whatever the line was they gave me) because they had an opening in his schedule. They sure as hell didn’t send someone out 3 days early to set up my service in the beginning. Comcast’s service has been somewhat spotty, although download is pretty fast, and this I can only say unfortunately, is par for the course with this company that has a rather poor record in my book.
How to deal with it. Ok, its been a rough week so far, so this kind of pissed me off. I would have let it slide and gone off the network for a few days, and just come to a place like Octane for printing out my plane boarding pass and whatever other online errands I needed to run. So, I asked to speak to the supervisor, who apologized and has someone comoing out to turn it back on tomorrow morning, at a rate slightly lower than I would have paid for keeping the service on the whole time. Not optimal, but acceptible at this point (because there is no other choice…).
Wed, 2006 Oct 18, 9:33pm
Ok, so the San Francisco move is looming, and I’ve been checking things out. On November 2, Love is All is playing in San Francisco, and I will be there, well in San Francisco at least. Perusing the show listings for Atlanta, I found that somehow I had missed the fact that Jamie Lidell is now touring, and is playing Atlanta after I will already be in San Francisco, so I checked his site to see when he might be playing there. That’s right, November 2. Somehow, 2 of the artists that have filled the air around me for many hours in the past half year manage to double-book me. How is it that a city so geographically small can host as many bands as they do? Anyone reading this - which is the better show?
Wed, 2006 Oct 11, 11:09pm
Holy Boogedy! Well check this out. So 3d movies have so far been pretty much campy failures that look ridiculous on television re-run broadcasts (hello Jaws 3d) and turn into weak excuses for movies when you take out the 3rd dimension (ok, so most were weak to begin with). I guess Disney (or someone) had the bright idea to start with a great movie and go from there. Don’t know where its showing exactly, but the Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D supposedly is hitting theatres October 20. This is going to be interesting…
Ok, well, in the interest of science, I checked for theatres and I’m a loser. I will still be far from a showing theatre when it comes out…how far is it to East Ridge, Tennessee from Atlanta?
Thu, 2006 Oct 05, 9:51am
So, to be terse. The last fm scrobbler worked for a little while on my older grey and white G4, which is running OSX Tiger. It had a burp a few weeks ago and didn’t work for a few days. There was an update, and it worked for a while, and now it stopped working altogether (well, it won’t post anyway, which is pretty much what its supposed to do). The AMUA open source scrobbler app can’t post tracks to my account to boot. The last fm app crashes immediately upon clicking the connect button on my work mactel. Obviously, there is some problem with their service, but the forums turn up no easy to find acknowledgement of a problem or solutions. The question: how long on average do “Web 2.0″ community service users (after committing a time investment in the service) stick around after the service stops working reliably or altogether? I guess the answer has something to do with how much Rupert Murdoch paid for Friendster. Oh, that’s right, MySpace took all their users and a Murdoch bought MySpace. Remember, just because you are offering a free service doesn’t mean it can suck; you wouldn’t give a starving person half a sandwich that your dog puked on, now would you?
Tue, 2006 Oct 03, 10:37pm
