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Plus the fact that the iPhone’s wifi and video capability makes it a shrunken laptop, saving an additional $1000
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Well! After years of running it without utilizing it I finally turned Movable Type into the publishing platform for the Ideapad. (Consider: this blog entry was originally dated January 10… talk about the cobbler’s kids having the worst shoes.) I now have comments, trackbacks and RSS, so I’m finally catching up to blog standards. Circa 2004 at the least.
The foot-dragging was twofold: one, my coding skills aren’t what they used to be, so I had a hard time getting the design just right (you’ll notice that I went for “reasonable facsimile” here); and two, my coding interest isn’t what it used to be, so I needed some good downtime to wade back into the MT templates and get things sorted out. I believe all the basics, including del.icio.us cross-posting, are functional.
Next up is porting over some of the archives, enabling Digg, and reminding the blog aggregators that this site isn’t static after all.
If you wanted an iPhone this weekend, you could have waited on line for three days, like some of the folks who made it into national newspapers, or you could have done what I did: roll into the Apple Soho store just after it opened at 9:30 Saturday morning, gotten on a very short line at the register, and walked out with one in roughly four minutes.
So far, it’s pretty terrific. The learning curve is short and the pleasures of the UI are long. Free wifi is easy to find in the city, so the major shortcoming cited in early reviews (AT&T’s slow EDGE data network) has not been a factor. And I can sheepishly report that the iPhone withstands a three-foot drop onto concrete without any damage to the system or the beautiful display, although my day-old gadget is nicely scruffed.
Also: the iPhone comes in a dedicated iPhone bag. Carrying this bag around Manhattan turns a person into a temporary rock star. The buzz around this device is truly astounding.
Sidenote to the two movie-centric posts prior to this one: With the Loews-AMC merger, AMC’s MovieWatcher customer loyalty program arrived in New York City for the first time. I had a MovieWatcher account in high school, and not unlike my Blockbuster membership I held onto my card for years. So when AMC appeared in my neighborhood, I went digging into my old wallets, found my card, and tried it—online, no less. And what do you know! My account is valid and I’m still in the system.
The account balance was empty, but I felt remembered, and I got a good chuckle out of my card’s longevity. I now use it every time I go to the movies and am once again partial to AMC theaters in my area.
Customers are as easily sated as they are angered. May as well aim high.
<a href="/photos/iphone.jpg"><img src="/photos/iphone.jpg" border="1" alt="iPhone" width="512" height="384"></a>
If you wanted an iPhone this weekend, you could have waited on line for three days, like some of the folks who made it into national newspapers, or you could have done what I did: roll into the Apple Soho store just after it opened at 9:30 Saturday morning, gotten on a very short line at the register, and walked out with one in roughly four minutes.
So far, it’s pretty terrific. The learning curve is short and the pleasures of the UI are long. Free wifi is easy to find in the city, so I the major shortcoming cited in early reviews (AT&T’s slow EDGE data network) has not been a factor. And I can sheepishly report that the iPhone withstands a three-foot drop onto concrete without any damage to the system or the beautiful display, although my day-old gadget is nicely scruffed.
Also: the iPhone comes in a dedicated <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/19348052@N00/667385521">iPhone bag</a>. Carrying this bag around Manhattan turns a person into a temporary rock star. The buzz around this device is truly astounding.
Sidenote to the two movie-centric posts prior to this one: With the Loews-AMC merger, AMC’s MovieWatcher customer loyalty program arrived in New York City for the first time. I had a MovieWatcher account in high school, and not unlike my Blockbuster membership I held onto my card for years. So when AMC appeared in my neighborhood, I went digging into my old wallets, found my card, and tried it—online, no less. And what do you know! My account is valid and I’m still in the system.
The account balance was empty, but I felt remembered, and I got a good chuckle out of my card’s longevity. I now use it every time I go to the movies and am once again partial to AMC theaters in my area.
Customers are as easily sated as they are angered. May as well aim high.
Michael Moore’s new movie, Sicko, aims for the gut. Like the old adage, it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you want to bring the entire family, not to mention every public office, medical, health care and insurance professional you know. It will make you applaud at the end. And it will thoroughly embarrass you for being complicit in a system that has failed the people it is supposed to help.
See this movie.
The Blockbuster Video near my old apartment closed last fall. Not enough business in a land of early-adopting downtown Manhattan folks using VOD and Netflix, I guess. The missus and I liked renting DVDs every so often, but we learned to do without.
Now that we’re uptown, we were pleased to discover that the Blockbuster in our new neck of the woods is still open and doing a brisk business. We were less pleased when the store said we had no Blockbuster accounts. The clerk made us fill out a new-customer form and hand over ID and a credit card to rent a movie.
Here’s the thing. I’ve been a Blockbuster customer for approximately 17 years, since around the time I first got a driver’s license. I was one of the first people to have their then-impressive “universal account,” which amused me to no end when I used my Pennsylvania-issued replacement card in New Jersey. I was a happy customer when they let me start verifying my ID with my driver’s license so I could stop carrying the Blockbuster card altogether, and my account followed me from New Jersey to Pa. back to Jersey and into New York, including an account merge when I got married. All without incident. Never a late fee, never a lost-video charge, just half a lifetime of contented membership.
Frustrating and ironic, then, that after all these years I have disappeared from their system. The only reason I can find is that they probably purge accounts after a year of inactivity. If it’s been a year since I rented from Blockbuster, well, that’s because they closed my local store. And when I became able to return to the chain, a slow and aggravating barrier existed, when in fact they should have welcomed me back with a smile, and perhaps a coupon to re-engage me. A company swinging from its heels like Blockbuster should know that. So much for loyalty.
(“Breach,” by the way, was interesting but only decent.)
The Blockbuster Video near my old apartment closed last fall. Not enough business in a land of early-adopting downtown Manhattan folks using VOD and Netflix, I guess. The missus and I liked renting DVDs every so often, but we learned to do without.
Now that we’re uptown, we were pleased to discover that the Blockbuster in our new neck of the woods is still open and doing a brisk business. We were less pleased when the store said we had no Blockbuster accounts. The clerk made us fill out a new-customer form and hand over ID and a credit card to rent a movie.
Here’s the thing. I’ve been a Blockbuster customer for approximately 17 years, since around the time I first got a driver’s license. I was one of the first people to have their then-impressive “universal account,” which amused me to no end when I used my Pennsylvania-issued replacement card in New Jersey. I was a happy customer when they let me start verifying my ID with my driver’s license so I could stop carrying the Blockbuster card altogether, and my account followed me from New Jersey to Pa. back to Jersey and into New York, including an account merge when I got married. All without incident. Never a late fee, never a lost-video charge, just half a lifetime of contented membership.
Frustrating and ironic, then, that after all these years I have disappeared from their system. The only reason I can find is that they probably purge accounts after a year of inactivity. If it’s been a year since I rented from Blockbuster, well, that’s because they closed my local store. And when I became able to return to the chain, a slow and aggravating barrier existed, when in fact they should have welcomed me back with a smile, and perhaps a coupon to re-engage me. A company swinging from its heels like Blockbuster should know that. So much for loyalty.
(“Breach,” by the way, was interesting but only decent.)
We bought a striped Chilewich welcome mat for the front door of our new apartment. Since the hall floors are tile, the building permits them, and since our door is directly opposite the elevator, the Chilewich is on display.
The other morning we came out of our apartment as our neighbors were waiting for the elevator. Little Ellie, age 4, made eye contact with Amy and beamed.
“I like your new mat,” Ellie declared.
“Thank you very much,” Amy replied.
“My babysitter doesn’t like it, but I do!”