Month: December 2011

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In Praise of Apple

The other day I happened to hover my cursor over the battery icon on my task bar and I was surprised to see "Service Battery." I tried all the home-brew fixes suggested on the interwebs, but to no avail. I realized I was going to have to make a trip to the Apple Store. I was not looking forward to this, or to potentially being without my laptop for an extended period—especially on a holiday weekend. But the one glimmer of hope I had was reading online that if I got the machine in early enough, the non-user-replaceable battery could usually be swapped out that day.

I went ahead and made an appointment to bring it in, and this morning we arrived at the Cherry Creek Apple Store promptly at 10 am. While it took about 20 minutes after checking in to meet with a Genius, and I was expecting the worst, not only did they have the battery in stock, the in-house tech was able to swap out the battery—not in hours or days, but in about fifteen minutes…and because I had the foresight to purchase Apple Care when the laptop was new, it cost me nothing.

Bravo, Apple.

This type of service is why I am a Fanboy.

 

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In Memoriam

I've been wearing this brand of daily-wear lens since the early 90s. They're no longer being made and nothing else (including the recommended substitutes that I tried a several weeks ago) fit as well. In fact, the manufacturer has phased out all their vial lenses for the more profitable disposable variety. I mean seriously, WTF?

And I'm not alone. A quick search on the interwebs reveal a lot of folks who are plenty pissed off that these lenses have been axed. Hopefully I'll be able to stretch a few more months out of my last pair of CSIs before I'm faced with having to give up on contacts altogether and go back to glasses full time. (Yeah, the "new" lenses I tried are that bad.) Since I'll once again be insured after the first of the year I'm hoping that I'll be able to find a competent eye doctor who is willing to work with me to find a suitable substitute. (PSA: Avoid Target Optical.)

 

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It's all Bullshit

In response to this:

It's all bullshit—the currently fashionable "God" is no more real than the pantheon of deities were to the ancient Romans, Greeks, or Egyptians (plus countless others) and yet I'm sure those folks believed in their mythic sky fairies just as fervently as the current crop of "believers" who also need to desperately believe in something—anything—to absolve them of all personal responsibility for their lives, give it meaning, and explain away the wonderful, horrible, brilliant, and often unfathomable mysteries of the universe.

Personally, I have no problem with anyone's personal beliefs, as ridiculous and unsupportable as I may find them. HOWEVER…

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Photo


I still find it so very odd to see snow covering a pool area. I guess it's just the Southwest/West Coast boy in me…

And I still don't understand why my iPhone camera sometimes takes excellent pictures, and other times they're crap.

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Scenes from the Snowpocalypse

 It was at least ten inches. "That's what she said."

 I think one of the baristas must do this for their own amusement. Hard to tell from the photo, but the water's frozen solid.