Online, Finally
My new computer arrived this morning! Yay! It’s taken all day to get it up and running and online! Boo! Man that was a pain in the neck. Lots of tweaking of settings to get everything ironed out. And I at least have a good idea what I’m doing. For someone who doesn’t, that whole process would have sucked.
We had a few friends over to play board games and have dinner this evening, and now we’re sitting in front of the fire with the pets lounging around next to us, reading blogs. Yay!
I still have to get my pictures and iTunes libraries transferred over, and then I’ll be all set up.
Macbook Delivery Delay
It’s not going to arrive until Tuesday. God, that is frustrating. I deliberately ordered it very early so it would arrive before the long weekend, and I paid for 2-day shipping, which was the fastest possible rate. After getting off the phone with Apple, they’ve refunded my shipping charges entirely, and they were very apologetic, but it’s still not at all cool. They don’t make it clear on their messaging that two days is two “business days.” I hate that fracking concept. In this day and age, shipping carriers should be delivering 7 days a week.
My New Macbook
Speaking of GeekBling… I ordered a new laptop today for home. I got a 13″ white Macbook:
2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM-2x1GB
200GB Serial ATA @ 4200 rpm
Superdrive 6x
No Modem
No Optional Software
Keyboard/Mac OS
Country Kit
I’m embarrassed to admit that my current personal device is a graphite iMac, circa April 5, 2000, as seen in this old blog post I created when originally bought the thing. It was quite pretty, at the time.
Worth about $20 today on eBay. It’s been supplemented for the last several years by my high-powered Powerbook from work, but that’s not really very cool at all, and I try hard to minimize my home-use. Especially since my work laptop is now having some hard drive issues. Yikes! We were going to wait until my house sold to do this, but it’s high time to cut the cord.
So now begins the anxious wait for the shipping and delivery. Order tracking is great and all, but I really wish Apple had a “Now were taking it off the shelf. Now we’re configuring it for you. Now we’re moving it across the warehouse” real-time notifying system. I wanna know exactly where my new toy is. Sadly the only information I have is “Not yet shipped.” Sigh.
The Apple iPhone
It’s pretty – here’s a snapshot from the Keynote Address going on right now —
You can read about the address through streaming updates at MacRumorsLive.com
I know I was bitching about “smart phones” being too complicated earlier this week, but this is anything but. I can seem this being my next phone/ipod definitely.
$499 for 4 gig, and Cingular is the exclusive carrier. Hmmmm. That’s pricey, but if it’s an iPod and phone. Also browser – and google maps, which means it eliminates GPS devices, too.
Available in June in the US.
Oh my goodness, I blogged about the first Apple iPhone. Look how cute I was with my excitement about an iPod+phone. So adorable! 9 iPhones later… Past me, I paid $1,100 bucks for my iPhone sMax. It will blow your mind.
Truncated
I finally got wise, and created a new group in my feedreader software called “Truncated” just for people who truncate their posts in their syndication feeds. These are people I love, who are great writers, but the frustration of needing to have a browser window open to read their work is too great, and I have to put them in their own little holding cell to read them at some future point when I’m not working on another project at the same time.
Another thing that frustrates me about some of these writers is that they don’t seem to write for that truncation — It’s not clear, from the first few lines that manage to come through, what the subject of the post is about. Sometimes I’m intrigued by a hint that’s wildly off base when I finally land on the site, and other times, I’ll blow by a post that seems irrelevant only to hear about it somewhere else and discover I missed something cool.
They should be tailoring their writing for the medium in which it’s being presented, which is something they hammered into our skulls in my college journalism classes. If you’re going to truncate in your syndication feed, be sure to convey the subject in the first few lines.
Happy Birthday, Apple
In 1983 the Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple Computer, Inc. to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, was announced.
Thanks, Apple.
Motorola RAZR Phone
I got a Motorola RAZR phone last night. Stephanie and I upgraded our phones together on a family plan with Cingular, so we could call each other for free any time. She’s had the same phone for over four years, and she really needed to upgrade, so we did it together to save money.
So anyways, We’ve both got cool new camera phones. I got the RAZR, and she got a Sony Ericsson, something or other.
And I’m figuring out if I can sync up my contact info from my laptop to the phone right now. I’m realizing that I don’t have a lot of people’s phone numbers; only their e-mail addresses. How big a web dork am I? So if you want to be in my cell phone directory e-mail me and let me know. 🙂
White Elephant Gift Exchange at Buca Di Beppo’s
Dinner at Buca’s wasn’t the raucous blow-out that it was in years past, but it was still great fun. I got a t-shirt with Geupel’s picture on it. Maybe I can use it to pick up chicks with Westies, like in the commercial. 🙂 Now if I can just get a house, I’ll have the shirt and the house to entice women with.
In other news, I got cable modem, and it ROCKS! It ROCKS HARD! You could call me up right now, as we speak, and we could talk on the phone, while I write in my journal. I’m buying an answering machine and cancelling my voice mail later, as well as telling the friggin’ people at iquest to shove the poorly-serviced account I had for so many years. So if you still e-mail me at the old address (batgirl) it’s going to be gone, baby! Plus I now have a super-secret e-mail account that I’m not giving to anyone. No sir.