Soooo, the newegg drives were supposed to arrive today. Buuuut they didn't.
What happened is that I was waiting for said UPS guy to come, except when I updated the tracking info page, it said that 10 minutes before they attempted a delivery and nobody answered. Um, excuse me? I was WATCHING FOR THE TRUCK. Nobody called or rang any doorbells or ANYTHING. I thought I was blind and deaf and asked my mom, and she said she didn't hear anything either.
So, I shot customer service a call and they were all apologetic. And I subsequently got 3 more calls from them asking if I wanted it redelivered the same day..except I didn't cause I wasn't going to be home to pick it up, and since the seagate drive is coming tomorrow, I wanted them both at the same time.
Well, apparently the UPS guy came back to leave a sticker saying there was nobody available for pickup..after I called UPS the first time and then left for my prior engagement, and before I came back home.
Um.
Yeah.
If these drives are busted in any way...
So, I'm flying back home in a few hours, and I pretty much don't have much more to do than to write about how awesome it was since most of it is lame apple confidential stuff.
Like, I'm about to cry at the idea that it's all over already. The past week just flew past.
The Saturday before, I went to Tim and Emily's place, and oh dear lord Evie is the most adorable baby I've seen. Like, she makes me want to have kids of my own. Then on Sunday five of us made a trip down to Cupertino and Mountain View - went to go check out the Googleplex too but Google security managed to kick us out (they were a lot nicer than the Apple security folks who were all in our face about taking pictures).
Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, I met a ton of new people, I saw a TON of mac developers that I practically worship (couldn't even believe I was at the conference with them), blah blah. I mean come on? Being in the same building as the likes of Aaron Hillegass (yes, that Aaron Hillegass), Wil Shipley, and all the devs of the software I use is pretty inspiring and awesome.
Woke up at 4am to go to the keynote line.
Attended a gazillion NDA sessions, ate crappy lunches, met up with friends, met up with ani and alex, met up with new people, got drunk. Used up half of the blister block product I got, which is a godsend..last year at WWDC my feet were completely and utterly blistered and fucked up and painful, and this year I don't even have a single blister!
The band at the bash this year was barenaked ladies. wisequark thought it would be cool to start a rumor about coldplay, which was unfortunately not true. but that was still cool.
Aarrrghhhh. I don't know what the fuck I was doing last year that I had such a miserable time..it was still pretty neat last year but this year just blows it away by comparison for some reason...
Anyway, someone has to remind me to write some more on wwdc or something (I thought I was out of the loop yet I still met a whole bunch of people who were totally clueless about some things), and also to bitch some MORE on the wwdc attendee survey (I tried to rip apple a new one on some of the sessions that were WAAAAY too introductory) and how there isn't an official apple NDA forum of some sort.
Regardless. This WWDC rocked. I'm utterly exhausted, but I'm going to be so sad to be leaving. I still have a few dozen pics to upload to flickr, and also void's pics that are unfortunately on facebook, so I guess I'll have to get around to asking him about those.. and void's pics that i'll also be uploading to flickr..
So here's to WWDC 2009. ;)
Anyway, here's the outrageous stats from my pics. Mostly keynote/keynote line..since you can't really take pics of anything else (nda). Shrug.
oh did i mention i sent virgin america an email about their twitter account and some oddities on their website, and this guy named bowen replied to me asking what i think they should be doing and i told them... and they actually made those changes? it was almost freaky to see how fast the response was. i have never gotten such good customer support from any company. this is why i'm flying with them again instead of with perhaps another airline with more convenient times. :)
i will not be live-tweeting the keynote and what i think of it, sorry. there's going to be about 10000 other people doing the same thing or speculating/analyzing, eventually killing twitter ;)
i think i'm going to be able to pull off renting a car up there for a few days. i'm not sure why nobody can give me a definitive answer, but the insurance company and the rental guy i talked to said it's probably okay. i mean honestly, im willing to throw money at them, why won't they take it :( i have a flawless albeit short driving record..i've ONLY been driving for more than three years (at this point driving 100+mi/day on average) and have a business credit card with a crazy credit limit, boo hoo hoo. fucking age discrimination. someone sue car rental companies? why does NY get to have a law about this but not a state like california..
i tried dyeing my hair earlier today, and it was great up until my mom offered to do the highlights. well, my hair is a mess now.
also, the obama news..awesome. although what id like to see most is obama+clinton. i honestly don't think there's anything THAT bad with her, i'm just sad that despite getting so many votes (its not like she lost by a huge percentage) she's pretty much lost. what sickens me most is the amount of money being spent on this. almost a billion dollars so far. ugh.
(oh yeah, did i mention california rocked the june 3rd election? majority voted no on prop 98 :) )
I saw these whitening strips at costco for $27. I thought that was an excellent price, given that the same thing is available at most places for around $25, but the costco pack came with an extra week's worth of strips (3 weeks, instead of the regular 2) and I get 2% or something back for being an executive member (business shopping == $$$, 2% back == $$$ :p ), even cheaper!. Buy them at costco if you must.
Pros:
- Two days of the strip ended up with my teeth getting whiter by a couple of shades, or maybe that was just my eyes playing tricks on me. The rest of the two weeks ended up with just a teeny change. I've yet to start the third week.
- The strips dissolve. You have no idea how awesome that is.
- The price is reasonable, especially if you bought the Costco pack.
- Putting these on is like putting on a big and long strip of the listerine pocketpack strips, because not only does it whiten your teeth, but it also has the same effect of making your breath smell really minty.
- The strips work for both top and bottom teeth, so if you only want to whiten the top or something, it's entirely possible.
- The strips don't taste like crap (aka peroxide. it tastes like mint).
Not really cons but enough to bother me even in the slightest:
- Your hands need to be dry before putting these strips on.
- The whole strip doesn't dissolve after 5-10 minutes, especially if your mouth is particularly dry, but you can pretty much just lick it off. The residue is like a minty gummy...thing, almost like gum except it dissolves.
- The strips didn't whiten as much as I wish they did, plus I wish the insert contained some sort of shade chart you could use to see how much of an effect the strips have. I reused an old one I found somewhere.
- The pouches you have to rip to get to the strips can be hard to open straight. I tore parts of some strips when I was trying to open some of them, but that's not a problem because you can then just trim it if it's a big tear, or just put it on cause it doesn't matter that much.
A few things worth pointing out though.
Some of the reviews I've read about this have a whole load of totally incompetent people who can't understand the idea of having dry hands while putting these on. I have NEVER ruined a strip in the past two weeks. That's fifty fucking six strips that I put on with no problems, didn't even have to stop to dry my fingers off after the first strip and before the second. I don't know what their problem is, but if that's the only reason why you're not considering it, then ignore all that BS.
I've tried other whitening products before, but never actually did them for more than a couple of days. Crest whitestrips were the worst. I tried the two different 10 day whitening strips, but I couldn't get past a couple days. It was annoying, it was smelly (peroxide stinks, okay?), I wanted to whiten my top teeth more than the bottom, I didn't want to spend an entire HOUR a day not eating/drinking/talking, and that's if the strips even stayed on (they didn't).
Now, I've also tried the gosmile whitening stuff. Normally I wouldn't buy those cause the whitening pack is SO expensive, but I had a gift card I needed to use. Those certainly whitened my teeth, but it wasn't noticeable nor did it last long. In fact, I'd have to say that those and the listerine strips are practically the same in how much they've whitened my teeth, the only difference being the ultra cool ampoule you have to break and the scrubbing of the teeth and the yummy taste vs. boring strip that leaves residue. So, save your money and buy the listerine strips instead.
Ultimately, did I feel that I got my $26.45 worth of whitening in a convenient package? Hell yes.
Would I do it again? Yup, unless you can find me something just as convenient that whitens even more.
Would I recommend it? Indeed, unless you have really moist hands (and I thought MY hands were sweaty!) or you have an aversion to a little bit of minty gunk on your teeth you could just lick off.
Now, onto that third week's worth of strips..
Please don't go with VistaPrint. Ever.
I have no idea why people think that buying these cheap shitty quality cards is a good idea. The last thing I ever want to give someone is a crappy way to sort-of remember me by. Even if they throw it away or it never sees the light of day buried underneath other cards, I refuse to give someone a shittily printed card. For the same price as a half decent VistaPrint card, I can go elsewhere and be happier and be given more options that don't look cheesy as hell (most people cannot pull off foil stamped designs well). My current cards would have cost more than $30 not including shipping and like three week turnaround time and no spot UV varnish for 250 cards from VistaPrint...but no, they were only $35 including shipping for 300 with the UV varnish! Full color on both sides, and shipped to me in a week despite the longer turnaround time for the varnish, etc. From China too, not the same fucking country like VistaPrint.
This question of "who do I get my cards printed with?" comes up more often than I would have expected, and every single time I sound like a corporate shill for Print 100. I'm not. I don't get paid to do this. I don't even have any referral code or anything, because I don't really care about that. What I do appreciate is how Print 100 can give me a better quality card in a shorter amount of time with more custom options than VistaPrint at a reasonable price. And if you call me a shill for being appreciative of a company that knows how to do its job and to do it well...and being willing to readily recommend a good company to other people, well then.
Before I start anything, I want to point out that Prop 98 phases out rent control. That is a bad thing. It is really expensive to live in some California cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles without anything like rent control.
I know you're probably saying that if someone moves out, rent control is phased out anyway...but what happens is that if someone moves out, management can re-rent the space at the market value, but the rate at which they can raise the rent is controlled. If Prop 98 passes, there will be no such thing anymore and lots of people are going to be stuck where they are now, or forced to pay sometimes extortionate rents at the whim of management. This is only and ultimately best for the property owner. Why this is bundled into Prop 98..which is predominantly about eminent domain..is beyond me.
Prop 99 is a bit more complicated. Basically to my tiny little brain, it doesn't really..seem to change much. The big points are that 1. the government can't transfer the property to a private entity, 2. none of it including #1 matters if it has to do with public health/safety..etc. So um, again, what is this supposed to do again? ;) Every single case I have seen of eminent domain involved some exception outlined in Prop 99, which only leads me to think that it's really not an improvement either way. The analysis says exactly the same thing. If there is any other reason to possibly vote yes on this (if you're like me and you're in the "why bother" school of thought), you might be interested to know that if Prop 99 gets more yes votes than 98, none of 98 takes effect.
Okay, so I don't have anything else to say about Prop 98. To be honest, I didn't even give a shit about what it had to say on eminent domain. On the basis of rent control alone I believe it is harmful.
So I reallllllly hope that the californians reading this post actually educate themselves and read things like the guide you should have gotten in the mail (alternatively available at http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/) before voting on these two propositions. And if you're truly undecided, check out who's donated to what proposition on http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Me
Full disclosure? I voted no on both. I'm not happy with either one of them. Hopefully people who don't look into what they're voting on will vote no on 98 for the rent control thing.
And just before I forget, there's a ton of judges on the ballot as well. I originally thought it was going to be a total bore voting on those, but there are some interesting things about some of the races...like:
- The LA Times claims on their judicial endorsement page that the six judges alone on the ballot are because of:
Ronald C. Tan, a Carson minister, is trying to recruit lawyers to unseat these judges. Tan alleges that he is concerned about appellate rulings in religious-rights cases on subjects such as abortion, same-sex marriage and evolution, but he produces no evidence that these judges are part of that concern. Instead, he has targeted six jurists, all of them Latino men.
Yeah, well. More than one newspaper (just google, dammit) has mentioned that Tan, together with another judicial candidate named Bill Johnson, are doing this precisely because the judges are Latino (what a racist prick?). Well, good luck with this write-in campaign I can't even find much publicity about? Also, the dude must be steaming about the California Supreme Court's decision on same-sex marriages (and sexual orientation-based discrimination!) the other day (awesome news, by the way). - Bill Johnson, mentioned above, is mentioned a few times around the blogosphere and in some papers as being..well..a white supremacist. Since I already voted (for Bianco), I didn't look into it too much, but that is quite the interesting thing to say about someone.
Here's what I'm missing from off the top of my head, because I already purchased my flight to sfo for wwdc and it is nonnegotiable, period:
last day of finals for me
rescheduled doctors appointment I've been trying to get for a month now
someone's birthday
pride and outfest
erotica la
apparently, mrs. palmer's last concert (if you were in choir at portola)
Maker Night
I've already said no/sorry to some other June 6-14 events. I literally had nothing to do in May but those two weeks in June are so fucking packed I can't believe it. I'm sure there's more to come.
And the only reason why I'm coming back on the 14th is because some of my piano teacher's other students decided the 15th is the ONLY day in June that they could possibly spend a few hours on a Sunday playing piano and eating food. So yeah, you guys, I have scheduling conflicts too you know? And you also saw that I said I was available on every single day but the weekends around WWDC right? Like a month ago? I'm going to be in another fucking city 400 miles away, but you have some stupid party or church or school shit to go to that you can't miss for whatever reason, and you don't want to compromise, so you spoil my weekend in another city for it? Thanks a fucking bunch. I can't say no because I'm her oldest student-student that can actually go and not piss her off by fucking up and it's unasian for me to say no and I can't say no even if I wanted to because someone would say shit about it and my mom would be like "fuck your ticket you're flying back home at 7am that sunday to play your teacher is old and you can't do that to her!". So I fly back the night before.
She asks this of us ONCE A FUCKING YEAR AND YOU CAN'T MISS fucking CHURCH FOR IT?!
I wanted my stay to be longer. But no, I have to play the responsible older person, so I'm going a day earlier which is/was making some things somewhat awkward (like the hotel situation).
Hell hath no fury like a Janey that had to cut short a wwdc trip for some inconsiderate twerps.
Check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/chix0r/sets/7
What I found funniest was the stats the day after skyrocketed. Over 400 views on several pics is even better than my MWSF 2008 pics stats.
And of course, all this wouldnt've been possible without the AWESOME guys at etchstar! If you live in Los Angeles, they're right on Melrose so you should go check them out if you have anything you want engraved. I was tempted to get my iPhone done at the same time but well, given the 3g and black iPhone rumors...I can wait.
I'd just like to say a special thanks to Joe Mansfield of engrave your tech for being superhumanly patient with me while I slogged through a possible engraving with him which I decided not to for reluctance-to-ship-a-laptop-to-Portland reasons.
first (sorry for the camera pic, shoulda taken a screenshot)
second
third
I didn't do such a good job cropping the last two pics, but you get the idea. Illustrator was sort of pissing me off :)
And I'm having a really hard time figuring out how it will end up looking on the MacBook. I actually sketched the designs on it with a pencil and I still can't figure it out.
Ideas? :(
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