To celebrate the ninth anniversary of the weblog, I seem to have skipped two entire weeks, which is unusual even for me these days. I've been posting a little more often to the secret Dale Innis weblog, mostly because that's much easier to post to on the spur of the moment. It's tempting (as it's been for years) to either start using someone's weblogging infrastructure for this log (which would no doubt be annoying when I wanted to do something they didn't support), or write my own code to make it easier to post here (which would require work).
But probably not tempting enough to get me to do either one. *8)
This is the last weekend before we drive the little daughter off to college and the Real World. Today we all went out together to Cold Spring for one last going-out before the Big Event. We ate at the good old Foundry Café, and the ladies shopped in clothing stores, and I bought a copy of Ayn Rand's "For the New Intellectual", which I probably already have and have even read but it was just a quarter, from the perpetual porch-sale just beyond the path under the railroad tracks.
And we sat on the grass in the shade of a tree down by the waterfront, where's they've knocked down the old decaying factory warehouse and built nice-looking house-style condos or apartments or flats or something where that and the weedy fenced vacant lot used to be. People were playing music on music-things, and the little daughter's new iPhone (3G) was getting an internet connection from somewhere.
The little black LG phones that we got a zillion years ago (I went back into the old weblog entries to find out when, but I got distracted) are all wearing out, and the little daughter decided that she wanted an iPhone as her big birthday and going-to-college present, so now she has one of those. And the little boy decided he wanted a Samsung A737 (in orange), so now he has one of those. M and I are still thinking about it.
The AT&T Store in the Mall (where we got both the iPhone (because the Apple Store can't do it if you have a discount thing on your AT&T account) and the Samsung) is like the most inefficient store eh-var!
We ordered the iPhone awhile back, and M noticed that the postoffice or whatever web site said that it was in, so we called them and they said oh yeah hey look at that it is (but they hadn't called us to tell us yet). We went to the store to pick it up, and the person that we'd talked to to order it wasn't there. This is apparently a Highly Unusual Situation, because they had no idea what to do. We'd ordered it from Chris, but Chris wasn't there! How could Nick possibly give it to us? He'd need Chris's codes!
Thinking quickly, Nick sent a message to Chris on his Blackberry. Now all we had to do was stand there until Chris got out of the shower or whatever and replied to the message. Perfectly sensible. Unfortunately Chris must take long showers, and no reply came for awhile. Thinking quickly again, Nick decided to ask the store manager for Chris's codes. The store manager was busy with a customer, but after only a few hours he became available and began writing down the codes on a scrap of paper. But then Nick's Blackberry warbled! It was Chris! Out of the shower and replying with his codes! Wow!
So now all we had to do was wait while Nick entered Chris's codes and then stared at his terminal for another few hours, moving his mouse around and clicking on things, and then wandered away for awhile for no apparent reason, and then asked the little daughter if we'd like to transfer the numbers from her old phone, and when we said yes he pushed buttons on her phone for a bit and noticed that it was set to Spanish (the little daughter showing off for her Spanish-speaking boyfriend), and she set it back to English for him, and he pushed more buttons, and wandered off again for awhile, and came back to tell us it would be done soon, and then came back again and moused and clicked for awhile longer, and then finally, after only about five days in the store, we were done!
It was similar for the Samsung phone for the little boy, except that rather than having to find Chris's codes, Nick had to (a) fiddle around for an hour or two with his register, because it was "full", and (b) wait around for Chris himself for another hour or two, because Chris was both a salesperson and the Acting Manager tonight, and had to approve everything that Nick was doing before it could actually happen.
I was going to go into more detail about the Samsung-buying visit to the store, but I'm just too exhausted. Suffice it to say that when we got back to the parking lot, moss had formed on the car, and several large tree were growing out of the roof.
Oh and then on the way home with the little boy and his new phone, we were stopped by an Officer of the Law, who noted that I'd been driving 59 in a 45 mph zone (unlike everyone else on the road, who as doing at least 60). Fortunately for us (and I hope not too unfortunately for anyone else), as he was examining my license and registration, his radio said something, and he handed them quickly back to me, said "have a nice evening, sir", got back into his car, and sped off siren wailing.
So it's been an eventful day. *8) And I'm very sleepy due to staying up to late in Second Life! But now I've at least written in my weblog, and tomorrow's Sunday, and we can have bagels...
