So Close, Yet So Far

I’ve had what could be called a trying day, in a sense of the word, and it was not made better by my episode with Best Buy’s service, or lack thereof. I was very excited when at dinner my mother told me that a package had come in the mail today. I haven’t ordered anything lately so my mind raced to try and think what could have come in the mail. A sample for the PUG? Some books from Amazon? My camera back from the dead??? The return address had actually come off the box, but as soon as I opened it and dug through the peanuts I was delighted to see my camera. The slip of paper said they had reconnected two of the circuit boards, cleaned it, and tested it. Wonderful! Right?

The trouble started when I tried to turn it on. The problem before was that every time it tried to use the lens, the camera would just turn off. It would turn on in setup mode, or play mode, but as soon as you turn it to take a picture of any kind it would just turn off. I assume this meant there was some sort of bad connection with the lens mechanism, and whenever it tried to send power there it would short out. I was baffled: how could they send it back with the exact same problem it had before? What happened to this testing they talked about?

So I decided to go back to the store, because maybe there had been a mistake and this was how I should get my replacement, since they couldn’t/didn’t fix it. Nope. The store couldn’t have been less helpful. I eventually talked to a lower level manager, Marcus, who actually informed me to get a replacement they would have to send it to the service center four times! I’m on time number two right now, so taking the time the whole thing has taken so far, it could be well over a month before I can start taking pictures again with the digital. I can’t comprehend how them mailing me a broken unit back and me sending it back four times as a prerequisite to getting a replacement evolved as part of their bueracracy. It just boggles the mind. This has seriously tainted my view of Best Buy’s service and I will think very seriously before making any sort of significant purchase from them again, and I encourage others to do the same.

Final Departures

I know I haven’t been getting enough sleep when the Radiohead songs start to make sense. I just got back from taking Rene his laptop, a Compaq Armada 7800. I had the darndest time getting XP to load up on thereand spent most of last night (this morning?) having to reinstall things. But other than those diffilculties it’s really a nice machine, though somewhat old, but I’ve done a lot to make it good for college. Rene has a very early flight though, and to get it to him I had to be at his house (far North side) at 5:30 AM. The traffic wasn’t bad, but now that I’m home I don’t think I can go back to sleep since this is when I would be getting up anyway. I haven’t gotten to the best part yet though: when I got there the computer wouldn’t turn on! It didn’t respond to any of the buttons at all. Rene packed it and hopefully something will jiggle back into place on the flight to Boston, where he’ll be attending Berklee College of Music.

Everyone leaving so far has been hard, but I think this is the hardest, both because he is leaving so late and because we’ve really grown up together, at least in high school. He’s definitely one of the nicest, friendliest, and most sincerely religious people I know, and Rene will be dearly missed while he’s away. Not to mention the incredible BBQ I’ll be missing ;).

At College

Well I just had my first college class, and now I have one hour of downtime before the next, and I’m pleasantly suprised to find an open wireless connection in the building I’m waiting in. Actually I just found a page that lists all the locations that wireless is supposively available, although where I am right now isn’t even listed, so there may be more hidden goodies like this throughout the campus. More updates later!

Towed

Overall it was a pretty good night—ate good food, saw old friends, played frisbee in Hermann Park, and saw Simone (which was not a highlight of the night). However the tough part came during the last part of the night, when Joe, Rene, and I went to see the movie. We took two cars instead of one or three, because I had driven to the park with Joe and Rene met us there, and to not leave a car at in the park we decided to take both cars. The problem came when we got to the Edward’s Cinema on Weslayan and neither Rene nor I wanted to pay the $2 for parking, because we’re both a little low on cash at the moment. So we drove around the theatre, and all the spaces were taken on all sides, so I had the brilliant idea to park behind the strip mall across the street from the theatre. There were only a few cars there, probably belonging to workers at the restruants and such, but I didn’ see any signs and we were only going to be in there a few hours anyway. Rene was nervous about parking there but I assured him that there wouldn’t be any trouble, and that if he was towed I would pay for it.

He was. There’s nothing quite as frightening as walking out and seeing absolutely nothing where your car used to be. Rene was a little hysterical, but we managed to think through the situation logically. Luckily Joe was there with his car and we drove around till we found the “No Parking” sign that seemed to have alluded us earlier, and we called the number, was redirected, and found out that the car was at a lot at 45 and Ennis (not a good neighborhood) and could be picked up for a small fe. So we all went back to Joe’s house to get my car, and I went to the hardest part of the night—getting the money from my parents. Thankfully my Mom was very understanding and in a short while I was back to pick up Rene and head to the place. One hundred and twenty dollars later Rene was back in his brother’s truck and I began the long drive home, utterly exhausted from the events of the night. Picking the car up was pretty easy, and nothing compared to the long car rides home and back when my mind went over every detail of the night thus far and thought of a thousand things that could have gone differently and prevented the whole thing. $2 would have saved $120, and I think the moral of the story has been burned pretty well into my head. Don’t declare liability for any risky ventures :). Oh, and parking where it’s legal wouldn’t hurt either.

Release

Sleep finally came but I had bad nightmare about my cat. First thing when I woke up I checked her, and she was purring contently on a pillow. Strange how dreams can sometimes be so real and make you worry about tangible things as a result of an intangible and imaginary experience.

Insomnia

As I enter my 38th hour awake, I’m starting to wonder, academically, how much longer this will last. It might be a useful tidbit of information starting college on Monday. I think I’m just nervous about everything that’s been happening. We had to postpone the production meeting today because the producer is down with a cold or virus of some sort. College is starting in just a few days, and Iଁm not sure if I’m ready physically, emotionally, intellectually.

I rearranged all the furniture in my room, which was almost like the puzzle where you have the squares with the different numbers and you can only move one at a time. Anyway I’m pretty happy with the way things turned out, as I now have true surround sound, dual monitors set up, and a *real* space to study that doesn’t require me moving other stuff out of the way. Also I have a much better practice area now, the next step is practicing more.

One of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve heard in a long time is Sing A Song of Song by Kenny Garrett which is available on the CD Songbook. Although I had heard it before, I was really introduced to it through Rex Gregory’s wonderful senior recital where I thought it was one of the best songs. The recital made me reexamine the song on Songbook and I was really moved by the performance. Kenny Garrett has more vitality and life in his playing then twenty of the other players with record deals and such.

Pictures!

Don’t get too excited, I still haven’t gotten the camera back, but today my photo crave was satisfied by the photo booth at 59 Diner on Shepard. The beautiful Sarah and Rebecca decided to grace the pictures as well. The only thing is it didn’t give any warning when it started, so the first picture didn’t really come out. Enjoy!

 4 59 Diner pictures

There are going to be a lot more scans over the next few days, but I haven’t decided how I’m going to represent those in the photolog yet. Some are really nice though; I have a picture of me and Alan Greenspan!

Address Book

The built-in address book is the single most used feature on PalmOS devices. To me this sometimes seems like the dark secret of the Palm world. Every manufacturer is rushing to add new features and increase the memory, but still the single most useful thing people do with their Palm is use the programs that come by default on every unit—the address book, date book, memo pad, to do list. I personally use an enhanced address book called Tealphone which adds some nice functionality and is rock solid. I wrote a review of it for PalmStation.com a while ago that is still mostly applicable. PalmStation used to be a really thriving site but has really fallen off as of late.

I bring all this up because I’ve been taking some pretty austere measures on my address book lately, trying to eliminate people that I haven’t talked to in forever, and don’t plan to talk to in the future. Being the information junkie I am, it’s still all backed up on my computer, but it was a very cleansing process and I feel better now because of it. As previously mentioned I had too many contacts in there, and I’m happy to say I have more than halved that number. In other Palm-related news, if you’re still awake ;), is that Friday at 3 has been set as the definite time for shooting the show. I’m very excited!

Cordless MouseMan Optical Mouse

It’s the Mercedes of mice, the one with everything you could ever want in a pointing device. With each item I review here in the Toys section I like to say a little about why in the world I would buy this particular item over all the other available. My personal philosophy is that I spend a lot (perhaps too much) time at a desk and on the computer every day, and I do a lot of work there that earns money, so it’s in my best economic interests to make the environment as comfortable and productive as possible. To this end I tend to spend a little more on interface devices, the things that you actually use to interact with the computer. So, following that logic, the mouse, keyboard, monitor, and chair are four of the most important things about my computer to me. So on to the mouse itself . . .

Is This Thing On?

This is a test entry:

The dog’s bone was tougher than the mystery in episode 14 of “Babylon 5”.
“Charlie’s Angels” was ‘pretty darn’ cool.
So there’s a 4-way intersection with a hundred dollar bill in the middle of it. ‘Yeah?’ “Yes.”
“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”