May 2009 Archives

Finally got around to blogging about the Vancouver Strobist meetup that I went to a couple of weeks ago to learn more about off-camera lighting. Read about it over at my photography blog: http://k20dblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/may-strobist-newbie-meetup.html.

Well, Mr. Buck Stops here was on the ball all right. Less than 2 days after my Apple support debacle FedEx showed up at my doorstep with my new headphones. Yay!

Thanks to Meege at my previous work for passing this on. Turns out the famous picture of mine has once again been used illegally, and with malice! :) This time it's over on a video on youtube, which you can see it here. I grabbed a couple of screen caps of it for posterity (he he he, see what I did there?).

OK, this is going to be long and ranty I think, so I apologize in advance.

About a month ago I bought a set of "premium" apple headphones for use with my iPhone. The default iPhone headset had been the victim of being crushed under my laptop, and the microphone/clicker wasn't clicking properly. I figured why not. Two days ago the clicker and microphone on the new, premium, expensive headphones stopped working. Aside from the fact that this is the same issue as before, I was a bit perturbed. So I call the store that I got them from. First they told me I'd have to go through apple, but when pressed (as in "I bought them a month ago and they're not working, why the hell can't I just bring them back for exchange?!") they said I could bring them back, but they were out of stock. I told them to order them in, but that I would deal with Apple and if they could help me, that'd be fine.

Based on my previous Apple support experience, I figured this would be a quick 5 minute call which would end up in waiting a couple of days for boxes to be delivered to the right places, and all would be fine.

This is where my troubles started.

Another quick and dirty link.... this video of a cat sanctuary is something that haunts my dreams.... 6 cats already and I can only see myself turning into this sort of crazy cat man. Check out this video of Caboodle Ranch, a 100 acre cat sanctuary. They now have something like 150 cats. I calculate that I'm already 4% of the way there, though I don't have the $100k to build a ranch.

Is it wrong to think that the guy isn't completely insane?

I don't remember who I was talking to about this, but they didn't believe me when I told them about "noodling", the "art" of catching catfish by sticking your arm in the mud and letting them bit onto you, and then pulling it up. As you can imagine, this is mostly done by... shall we say, "southern gentlemen" as this video shows. Just to prove that it exists. Oh, and also that rednecks are insane.

Had an absolutely incredible rainstorm here earlier this evening, torrents of rain, wind, thunder, lightning, etc. Got a couple of shots off of the rain and wind hitting the tree in the front yard. Sadly I'm not that good at conveying or capturing the power of the rain that there was...

Finally got a chance to see the new Star Trek movie. Read more to see my (very) spoilery review. The short (and un-spoilered) review is it is a near perfect movie, fantastic in almost every way. A definite go see, go see right now. Trekkies old and new will love it.

Now, on to the spoilers and bitchings!