Listen Up

I Have Nothing on Idol

IdolStalker.com collected performances of Whitney Houston's I Have Nothing on Seasons 3, 4, 5, and 6 of American Idol onto the same page. It's quite a treat to watch these 4 brilliant singers take on such a powerful song.

My favorite, which also appears to be the favorite for most of the site's visitors, is Katharine McPhee's rendition of the song. Her delivery was much more entertaining than the others.

Of Course Not

"Were you watching infomercials?"

"Yeah...can I buy the complete home gym?"

"No."

"Christy Turlington recommended it."

"She probably has a personal trainer."

"But she's Christy Turlington. Why would she lie?"

Burning Man

Am I enthralled because it's so Star Wars-esque?

Britney's Back!

She is Simply Amazing

Cold

My boss is out of town so I get to work from home all week. After spending 6 hours going back and forth between my work PC and my beloved MacBook Pro, I thought it must be 5 o'clock already. I mean, how can it not be? I've already spent 100 hours on the phone with tech support because nothing works on the PC.

Apparently, mother nature doesn't care how tech support counts their billable hours, and it's only mid-afternoon outside. Since I've given up on doing work on the PC, I decide to take my MBP out into the afternoon sun, uh, shade and do some work away from my dungeon. It is a beautiful day by any standard. Wisps of cloud float in the light blue sky while a nice breeze sways the leaves of our loquat tree.

Now do I put a coat on over my sweatshirt so I stay warm out here? Or do I go back inside and turn on our new central heat?

Twice in One Month

This must be the summer of new experiences. I'm selling stuff on Amazon.com, I painted my apartment (ok, touched up,) I bought (and used) a jigsaw, and I've now stood in line on release day twice in one month to buy a hotly anticipated product (for two different products of course.)

Ah, the power of marketing. Here's the line in front of our local Borders store at 9:30 am. If you don't know what we lined up for, it's not even worth telling you now.

Did You Not Read My Last e-mail?

I recently started selling things through Amazon.com's marketplace and have been totally happy with the results. No one's been interested in my eraser refills (big surprise,) but I've successfully sold a memory stick and two books.

Yesterday, I got a nice e-mail message about the camera I have listed for sale. The lady wanted me to send the camera to a friend in Africa. Now that made me a little suspicious, but it's not like I don't know anyone from Africa and have friends and family in Africa. So I considered the sale and even looked into customs forms for making such a shipment. Another flag started waving in the back of my head when I noticed that she wanted me to respond directly to her e-mail address. That wasn't how the other sales went, but this was only an inquiry. So I thought maybe it was different. I went ahead and responded directly to her, saying that I would prefer not to ship outside of the US.

This morning, I awoke to a message from this Sandra De Jeken telling me she can't receive then re-send the package because she's in the hospital and thanking me for shipping to Africa. Another e-mail told me not only "Sold Ship Now," but also that the buyer has thousands of dollars deposited with Amazon, all of which is frozen until the sale is completed. Hmmm, none of the other buyers had that. Is this special for a "high" value item?

The problem is that I don't care if she's in the hospital or if she has $10 billion deposited with Amazon. I'm not shipping to Africa. I frantically went through a couple of Amazon help pages to find out if I could nullify the sale before noticing the sale is not even acknowledged in the Amazon system. *whew* It's a scam. I reported it to Amazon, and now? Back to my daily procrastination.

p.s.
If there are any spammers out there who want to spam her account, her address is sandra.dejeken@yahoo.com. Cheers!

Self Improvement

"Hey, what's up?"

"My IQ! I just bought a Mac."

Certified Geek

After 11 hours on the sidewalk in Palo Alto, I was giddily walking to the car with my new iPhone in hand. blogger14 was feeling bad that instead of shaking my hand, Steve Jobs put his hand on my arm and said, "I'm not doing that today." A bit disappointing, but I cared much more about the $600 gadget in my bag than I did about shaking a man's hand, regardless of who he is. Plus, he was nice and smiley about denying me a handshake. So that's that.

Tony had said he decided against standing in line for the iPhone because he decided that he would be ashamed of having committed such an act 10 years from now. I, on the other hand, would've been sitting around at home thinking about the iPhone anyway, so sitting in line felt like taking action towards achieving my goal. Plus, I met some cool people, learned about the cute little "slow food" wine bar called Vino Locale, and got to play with a functioning Newton, courtesy of the Stanford Newton User Group. Good times.

In the end, Tony was there anyway. Standing with bystanders watching us get our iPhones and trying not to look left out.

All that aside, the iPhone is sooooooooo cool. I love the perfect synchronization of address books! The other perks are cool, too. Now I can tote around just one gadget to show off pictures of my niece, listen to music, get traffic updates and directions, check my e-mail, surf the web, and of course, make phone calls. All with the ease that Apple products are known to deliver. And now that I've stood in line for an Apple product launch, I feel like a true, certified geek. Go me!

No, Really. She Was Dancing.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm dancing!"

"They don't dance like that."

"Yeah, they do."

"Well, be careful. I don't want to have to explain to your mother that you hurt yourself dancing to traditional Chinese music."

Detail-Oriented or Over-the-Top?

There is absolutely no doubt that I will be fighting the crowds for an iPhone next week. I have waited more than five months, and nothing is going to stop me from showing up on June 29. But I am worried. What time should I show up? I'm pretty sure I don't want to camp out overnight, but is that really the right decision? I do, after all, live in an area with a super high concentration of nerds, geeks, and Apple fans. Is showing up at 10 am really early enough? I would just die (ok, not really) if I end up right behind the person who buys the last available iPhone at the store.

Timing aside, I have never even attempted to stand in line like this for anything since I was not a fan of such hype-generating machines as Star Wars or Back Street Boys. What do I need to bring with me? Will my spot in line be safe if I need to go to the restroom? What survival tricks do I need to learn?

My mind has been blinded by desire, and I can no longer decide if blogs like this are over-the-top or just detail-oriented?

I Love Me, Too

Stranger than Fiction

This guy should definitely go to jail for knowingly putting so many other people at risk, but this is kind of interesting.

"And in yet another twist to a story that seems to grow murkier with each new revelation, Mr. Speaker’s father-in-law, Robert C. Cooksey, is a tuberculosis researcher who has worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." (See the NY Times article.)

Our Neighborhood Bar

The Blue Bonnet in Google Maps street view.

It opens at 6 am!

Found This in My Pile of Old e-mails

AS CALIFORNIA GOES, SO GOES THE BLUE STATE NATION

Dear President Bush:

Congratulations on your victory over all us non-evangelicals. Actually, we're a bit ticked off here in California, so we're leaving. California will now be its own country. And we're taking all the Blue States with us. In case you are not aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and all of the Northeast.

We spoke to God, and She agrees that this split will be beneficial to almost everybody, and especially to us in the new country of California. In fact, God is so excited about it, She's going to shift the whole country at 4:30 pm EST this Friday. Therefore, please let everyone know they need to be back in their states by then.

So you get Texas and all the former slave states. We get the Governator, stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay. (Okay, we have to keep Martha Stewart, we can live with that.) We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ol Miss. We get 85% of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get all the technological innovation in Alabama.

We get about two-thirds of the tax revenue, and you get to make the red states pay their fair share. Since our divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms to support, and we know how much you like that. Did I mention we produce about 70% of the nation's veggies? But heck the only greens the Bible-thumpers eat are the pickles on their Big Macs. Oh yeah, another thing, don't plan on serving California wine at
your state dinners. From now on it's imported French wine for you. Ouch, bet that hurts.

Just so we're clear, the country of California will be pro-choice and anti-war. Speaking of war, we're going to want all Blue States citizens back from Iraq. If you need people to fight, just ask your evangelicals. They have tons of kids they're willing to send to their deaths for absolutely no purpose. And they don't care if you don't show pictures of their kids' caskets coming home.

Anyway, we wish you all the best in the next four years and we hope, really hope, you find those missing weapons of mass destruction. Seriously.

Sincerely,
California

Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?

I haven't been a true NPR junkie in a while. These days, I try to stay up-to-date through my 37 RSS feeds in NewsFire. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report would probably keep me informed as well, but I'm way behind on those. I think I've only just watched the March 19th episodes yesterday. Plus, they don't have the Mac-focused tidbits that make me happy.

It's not always easy to read all 37 feeds. In fact, I have a group called "Skippable" for items that are, well, skippable. Some days, it's also disappointing to go through dozens, if not hundreds, of posts to finde nothing exciting. Other days, like today, there are just gem after gem after gem. Check these out:

== Ten Things We Hate about Apple - No, not the one that involved some editor resigning. This is a spoof that any Mac fan can relate to on some level. Me? The distraction and the weak knees.

== The hybrid notepad - I've downloaded my free copy. Can't wait to print!

== The Bevy bottle opener - I don't even have an iPod shuffle and I want one of these. I barely even open bottles, ever. But it's only $15!

False Sense of Security

I posted some stuff for sale on Craig's List in preparation for the westward move. The site's popularity is definitely making things crazy. Instead of one for-sale post, I had to write 4 different posts for 4 different categories. There's gotta be a better way. I can understand how it used to just be someone's pet project. But now that Craig's List is a for-profit company (am I dating myself?), I feel a little better complaining about the site's shortcomings.

Anyway, it took me some time to decide which of my 11 e-mail addresses to use for managing the responses. Whether the spam and privacy concerns are warranted or not, I don't really want to use my main e-mail address when communicating with random Craig's List users.

The first response I got came from a Georgetown address, which felt safe enough. I responded with my Georgetown address, and sold my TV in less than 12 hours. Now I have to find somewhere else to watch American Idol.

The next two responses were from Gmail addresses, followed by a Hotmail address. Guess what I realized? Response content aside, the Gmail users seemed much more credible than the Hotmail user simply because of their e-mail provider. Isn't that interesting? Discrimination based on internet savvy-ness.

Nightmare

I would rather not imagine this happening to me. Although I must say, I am not a fan of the Blackberry wheel, hence not a fan of the Blackberry. Can't wait until I get my hands on an iPhone.