The Twilight Report

Today really felt like shorts weather. Yay for spring! I was in the parking lot down at Wyoming shops today of all places and I felt better than I have in months just because it was so warm. So awesome to feel so alive! I am excited about the approach of beach weather.

$5 got me a once-again-working tyre and for $60 I replaced the ink cartridge in the printer (well more like $30, but I also got a B&W one), which I think I already had a replacement for in a drawer somewhere. These things would be much easier to find if they were on the floor where I can see them.

Also excited because 30 Rock is back on iTunes. I am pretty sure it is on TV here somewhere, but I am also pretty sure it isn't on Aunty which means commercials which I hate. Why does everything have to be about selling stuff? It seems like they can't even sell me something without trying to sell me something else now a days. Like the other day I noticed someone had an iPhone so I asked how she liked it. She said it was wonderful, except for the phone part (it drops calls apparently). Remember when we used to get phones primarily for... well the phone component? Apple has done this really amazing job of making us focus on things that aren't really important. That would make Steve Jobs a wonderful President don't you think?

Brendan Fraser was awful in that Dragon Emperor movie. He was terrible in the first two but he managed to set a new low. The start of that movie so wanted to be Indy 4, which is weird because it was the least cool movie from the series (though still so much better than any of the Mummy movies).

Wanted was pretty bad too, but it was the Russian version which sort of made it interesting. All of the writing was pretty much in English except for the stuff that was important and you were supposed to read, which was in Russian. The audio was English though, so it must have come from a source that was subtitled, although said subtitles had unfortunately been stripped. Cyrillic on the bottom of the screen is the only thing that would have saved it. Seriously. Why do I watch terrible movies? Still, I can't complain for the price of admission on either count.

Anyone have any ideas what I should queue up in iTunes next? I listen to everything except for country and rap.

Haha just kidding, everyone says that.

You should never buy new technology the day it comes out. This should be pretty self-evident. The Sony fan boys who camped out to buy themselves a PS3 now have an expensive (AU$1k minus the even more expensive HD TV that you will need to see any difference from a Wii or PS2) box allegedly without any good games. Nice one!

I was talking to someone last night who said she would rather play my yet to be implemented retro Orange Attack^[1], than all the complications and the internets and everything rolled up into a little ball.

Ahh the iPhone. Already predicted to be the next iPod right^[2]? Well, maybe you should ask some users:

• 10 Things that "Absolutely suck" about the iPhone. (Yes he has one)]
• No iPhone For 64-Bit Windows

Of course many of these issues will be corrected in time, but why brutalize yourself with Apple technical support unnecessarily^[3]? Let the fan boys do the beta testing which apparently Apple failed to do.

1. If you think about it you can probably guess what the game is like
2. iPhone: all set to do for phones what the iPod did for pods (I know I stole that somewhere, but can’t remember where: was it Colbert)
3. I am on my third iPod and had to send it back three times. If you do the math you will notice that I sent it back broken once and they didn’t even fix it! All this, mind you, with a device that had been out for years by the time I got it. Can you imagine my pain if I had gotten it the day it came out?

Went to a “Japanese” restaurant with some co-workers. If I were in the states and with my friends or family I would probably call it a “Sushi” place, but that didn’t seem to be the term used here^[1]. This place had a conveyor belt and you just picked up the stuff that you wanted as it went by. This concept has always seemed cool in theory, but also a little bit sketchy in terms of health, but the fish turned out to be quite fresh, and I would probably go back again.

The good news is that my co-workers are actually pretty cool. I keep telling people that there are no Jeffs where I work now (my adventures with jeff were chronicled here, here and here.

There are many things that I miss about working at The Company, but Jeff is not one of them. I do miss my collaborations with Adil, Tiffany, Ed and Ed a lot.

I was excited yesterday because my iPod finally came back to me. I wasn’t sure they would actually do it, but they replaced it, so this is actually my third iPod (I checked and it has a different serial number), my second replacement by the same warranty, so that extended warranty was actually worth it for once. Would I get another iPod? I’m not sure, I mean I love having the thing and it is super simple to use, but as far as reliability it doesn’t score well. My friend e and her husband both have iPods and both are giving them trouble at the moment (one sounds like it has died, the other is having the same sort of problems that mine did before it finally died). Theresa’s died recently too. In my own experience their ability to fix things appear to operating at only about 66%, and you only get a good result if you call up and yell at them. I was actually super courteous both times because Theresa used to work in a call centre and people who work in places like that don’t deserve to have abuse hurled in their general direction, you do (however) have to be insistent when block your path with red tape. On the other hand when I actually have a working iPod it is hard to imagine life without it! I think I would actually get another iPod, but I’d get the AppleCare Extortion Plan up front this time, because although there was more hassles than there should have been, they did fix things in the end. That does count for a lot.

1. I think traditionally Sushi refers to the rice or something, but Americans at least usually use it to refer to the whole thing