Five Days of Isolation

I'm an Apple fan.

Last week, I went to the Apple Store in Palo Alto, looking for support on a problem with my MacBook: seemingly, some internal wiring snapped and the built-in speakers aren't working, nor are they detected as an output device. When I went to the store, the wait was about 10 minutes, but the Genius took about 30 seconds diagnosing the problem, which she told me nothing about, simply saying, "Unfortuantely, your computer needs to be repaired." I was fine with that, except when I found it would take five days to get it back to the store.

What? Back to the store? Why then does Apple's website claim they do repairs at the store. Last time I needed a repair (the first time, by the way), it was done in 2 hours, we picked it up, and that's that. There is no way I'm going to manage without my computer for five days in a row, let alone school days. She told me I could bring it in whenever until my warranty expires.

I'm an Apple fan, and I'm surprised.

Obama and his Email

I'm a big fan of Obama, and I really think he can bring change, though that word has been used so much it's brought headaches to people. But I digress, one of the ways I think that'll happen is that he's the first president to use email. I, for one, couldn't imagine doing a job as hard as that without email, but everyone who's had the job has been able to.

The previous presidents needed to have extra skill to be able to run the world's only superpower without email (I imagine IM is out of the question, right?). Obama sure seems to have more skill than at least our last president-who-must-not-be-named. Email, then--along with his BlackBerry--should make things much easier so that, you guessed it, he could focus on more important tasks*.

My point is this: if worse presidents could do it without email, then a better president could certainly do it with email. And maybe add some positive growth when we're through the list of what we owe.

*I don't mean that California is much more important than, say, the war in Iraq or the national economy crisis, but this is just to illustrate how many thing Obama needs to fix.

New Favorite Blog

Sometimes the ads on craigslist pique more interest that the products.
You Suck at Craigslist

My Favorite Post:

YSaC, Vol. CXXXV

Posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 8:20 am

EMERGENCY SEARCH-BUYER OF FRENCH LOPS [LOCATION] 10-08?

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DESPERATELY SEARCHING FOR THE BUYER OF THE PERSON WHO BOUGHT FRENCH LOPS IN [LOCATION] APPROXIMATELY 1 MONTH AGO. I HAVE TWO OF THEM MYSELF, DOES. I HAVE INFORMATION AND OTHER THAT YOU WILL WANT FROM ME AND WANT TO KNOW FOR ALL GOOD REASONS FOR YOURSELF. ANYONE KNOWING THIS PERSON AS WELL, PLEASE HAVE THEM CONTACT ME. SINCERELY, KAREN, [LOCATION]. xxx-xxx-xxxx

Wait, let me get this translation right. I’m going to have to break this down bit by bit.

DESPERATELY SEARCHING FOR THE BUYER OF THE PERSON WHO BOUGHT FRENCH LOPS IN [LOCATION] APPROXIMATELY 1 MONTH AGO.

You’re trying to find the person who bought the person who bought French Lops from you a month ago. That’s pretty clear.

I HAVE TWO OF THEM MYSELF, DOES.

Apparently you’re Gollum.

I HAVE INFORMATION AND OTHER THAT YOU WILL WANT FROM ME AND WANT TO KNOW FOR ALL GOOD REASONS FOR YOURSELF.

You need to tell the buyer of the person who bought the French Lops some information and other. Other, I’m assuming, is pointless stuff. And they’ll want to know both the information and the pointless stuff for all good reasons. Does that mean that all the reasons for wanting to know the information and other are good, or that they’ll want to know the information and other for all the good reasons that exist everywhere? I mean, that’s a lot of good reasons. But at least the good reasons are for themself.

ANYONE KNOWING THIS PERSON AS WELL, PLEASE HAVE THEM CONTACT ME.

So, if you know the person who bought the person who bought French Lops, have them call Karen.
The mind boggles what information and other Karen might have. I’m assuming it’s about the French Lops; I wonder if they turn into were-rabbits or something?

My New Favorite Video

Passive-Aggressives and Cake

I've got two new favorite sites, and it's getting hard to choose which one is the best. The first is Cake Wrecks, "When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong." The second is Passive-Aggressive Notes, a running collection of pictures of notes from people easily angered.

Here are a few samples:






(Read the Post for this one, it's hilarious)

Back to Blogging

Yet again, sorry I haven't posted in a while. A long while. School is coming up, and I've been getting supplies and preparing. Just before the 4th of July, I had visited my brother im Michigan, and he tipped me off to a program called Schoolhouse. It's a homework manager for the Mac, and It's amazing (yes, I'm saying that about a homework manager). This has all the features carefully thought out and it's really easy to use.

Anyway, I also went to an apple store in Michigan and they fixed the problem I was having with mail, so now I'm using it for emails. Much better. For a while I had been using NetNewsWire for my RSS feeds, but after I could use Mail, I decided to try it for feeds instead. I used it for a while, but it just wasn't as good as NetNewsWire, so I switched back.

They've sent me a letter about my website (not this, the other one), saying that I has to pay to keep it up after August. Microsoft said it would be free, I guess they lied. But I wanted to de-register it anyway, because of Microsoft's abysmal editing tools, and it's just plain ugly, and there's not much I can do to change that. Once I take it down, I'm thinking of using a different host who will let me upload my own site to there. All I've found so far are either too expensive, because they seem cheap but make you pay for a year or more in advance; or push ads onto your site. Maybe I should just register a domain and put my blog on there.

del.icio.us

I just signed up for del.icio.us, and, well, I imported my bookmarks from Safari, and, well... To be honest, I just don't think it's quite that useful, considering  I don't have many friends that are usually online. So pretty much, it's just online bookmarks for me. Oh well, at least I can gauge the populatity of sites.