In a fortnight, Season Four of Mad Men starts up. If I burn through an episode of Season Three a day, I can be all primed for the debut.

Mad Men’s official website is here, which contains sneak peaks and cast interviews, recaps and full episodes from last season as well as a cocktail guide. The official iPhone app can be downloaded here.

AMC brilliantly whipped up interest and hype last summer before its Season Three premiere by allowing users to “Mad Men Yourself” which just about everyone on the planet did. The avatars were able to be used on Facebook and Twitter and everybody was a cartoon character for a while. If you were one of the few that didn’t, you can still do it here.

Bring it on, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce!

Obtaining groceries without a car can be somewhat cumbersome. Thankfully there are now (within the last few years) online services that will deliver groceries to you, just like on those ’50s television shows. But then when you lose your job those convenient online services tell you that they don’t take the EBT Card as a form of payment. That means I’ve been walking (or biking, or evening Zipcarring) to the local Safeway to get my groceries for the past 18 months. Ah, I do miss that EBT Card though…

So now that I am working 55 hours/week in order to make up for all that moola I didn’t make in ’09, and I’ll mention The Crash which has put the bike out of commish, it’s a little difficult to get to the grocery store. I decided to pull up my Peapod account and take a look at what they’re offering now that I’ve been shelf-shopping for the past 18 months. I found that I had an unplaced order already tallied up that I hadn’t set for its delivery schedule when I got the pink slip back in December ’08. Oddly enough, it seems pretty much in par for what I’d be ordering today. I’d have to add a couple of items to get that additional $1 off on the delivery fee though (on orders over $100)—like frozen entrees that I could take to work instead of spending $8 a day on lunch! I’ve still got a pretty well-stocked pantry, due to the EBT system providing much more purchasing power than I would use in a month, $200. So I’ve got boxed goods and canned goods for a while. Bomb shelter!

Item	Size	Qty	Item Price*		Total Price*
Produce Stand
Apples Granny Smith	1 EA	2	.99		1.98
Banana Green	1 EA	3	.39		1.17
Banana Yellow	1 EA	3	.39		1.17
Carrots Baby Peeled Organic	16 OZ BAG	1	1.99		1.99
Lettuce Red Leaf	1 EA	1	1.99		1.99
Lettuce Romaine	1 EA	1	1.99		1.99
Onions Yellow Organic	3 LB BAG	1	3.79		3.79
Meat & Seafood
Ground Beef 85% Lean Big Buy	APX 2.5 LB	1	11.22		11.22
Deli
Cabot Cheese Cheddar Sharp 50% Reduced Fat	8 OZ BAR	1	3.39		3.39
Deli Ham Virginia Style Cooked (Thin Sliced)	APX 1/2 LB	1	2.99		2.99
Beverages
Deer Park Spring Water - 24 pk	16.9 OZ BTL	1	6.49		6.49
Bread & Bakeshop
Nature’s Promise Naturals Bread 100% Whole Grain	24 OZ PKG	1	1.99		1.99
Nature’s Promise Naturals Bread Multigrain	24 OZ PKG	1	1.99		1.99
Cereal & Breakfast Foods
Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts Frosted Strawberry - 12 ct	22 OZ BOX	1	3.00		3.00
Snacks, Cookies & Candy
Doritos Tortilla Chips Nacho Cheese Family Size	17 OZ BAG	1	4.89		4.89
Giant Saltines Fat Free	15 OZ BOX	1	1.50		1.50
Snyder’s of Hanover Pretzels Sourdough Hard Fat Free	16 OZ BAG	1	2.50		2.50
Grains, Pasta & Side Dishes
Barilla Pasta Rigatoni	16 OZ BOX	1	1.79		1.79
Barilla Pasta Spaghetti Thin	16 OZ BOX	2	1.79		3.58
Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper Cheesy Enchilada	7.5 OZ BOX	1	2.19		2.19
Baking Goods
Guaranteed Value Sugar Cane Granulated	4 LB BAG	1	2.29		2.29
Condiments, Oils & Dressings
Giant Olive Oil Spanish Olives Extra Virgin	17 OZ BTL	1	6.29		6.29
Ken’s Steak House Dressing Fat Free Sun-Dried Tomato Vinaigrette	8 OZ BTL	1	1.00		1.00
Ken’s Steak House Dressing Healthy Options Parmesan & Peppercorn	8 OZ BTL	1	1.00		1.00
Sauces, Spices & Seasonings
McCormick Oregano Leaves	1.37 OZ BTL	1	3.49		3.49
Laundry, Paper & Cleaning
Brawny Paper Towels Big Roll 2-Ply Prints	6 CT PKG	1	8.99		8.99
Health & Beauty
Softsoap Liquid Hand Soap Antibacterial with Light Moisture Pump	7.5 OZ BTL	1	1.50		1.50

From brendee, whom I met doing the fabulous 2007 New York City Blarg Crawl.

I know I haven’t written anything in a while, what with working 55-hours a week and all (gotta make up for all that $ I didn’t make last year). And while exciting things have been happening at The Orchard, I didn’t want to bore you with that or turn this into a fanboy-obsessed blog. So I was thinking that tonight when I got home after both work shifts that I would possibly write about

Last Saturday. I caught a whiff on Twitter that Rana Sobhany, the world’s first iPad DJ, was going to be “spinning” a set at Bluebrain, a special night at The Fridge, which is a new (to me at least) little art gallery on Capitol Hill. I was working last that night but I tweeted her and she said she wasn’t going on until 11 or so and that worked with my timetable of getting back on The Hill. The show included a downloadable iPhone app where the audience could twist the knobs and affect the sound output of the DJ, but unfortunately I missed that portion of the art show. But on the good side, I got in without paying the $5 cover. Rana was on when I got there and I listened and grooved to the rest of her set. It was pretty poppy but still fun. I talked with her afterwards and she seems like a nice person, really warm and conversational. There was some other fun art showing there too, and a live painting in process that anyone could add to. Fun.

Or I could have written about

Last Sunday. Eric H, sky mattress extraordinaire, art curator and sometimes blogger, was celebrating his 40th birthday. And what better way to do that than to get 30 friends together, start them drinking mimosas at 11:00 am and then throw them into a disco bus and take them out to the Virginia wine country for the afternoon? Some bottles of champagne made it onto the bus and there was a wide selection of yummy nibblies being passed around. We stopped at two wineries, sampled some wine, bought some wine and sat out in the hot sun. The 2nd winery had lawn bowling setup under some shady trees and that provided some recreation as well as relief from the sun. Needless to say, knowing this crowd, we all had a good wine buzz going by the time we rolled back into DC. Then topping the evening off with La Lomita? Perfect.

Or I could have written about

Today. I’ve been thinking about Mom all day, as this would have been her 73rd birthday. I miss you Mom, not only today but everyday.

And then this happened:

I’m biking down Maryland Avenue, on my way from the full-time to the part-time. Apparently I am not paying too much attention to the road as I hit a major bump and am sent flailing head-first over the bike, at 20 mph. I crash down on the pavement in a twisted heap with the bike twisting up my legs so that when I realized I’ve stopped on the street I’m not sure which way I’m facing and I cannot move. I remember at that moment being in extreme pain, yelling out “Fuck! Fuuuuuck!” and having visions of dropping florescent lighting tubes from four-story buildings, tomatoes and what it would feel like when you think you’re standing in your life and all of a sudden the walls, ceiling and floor get stripped away and you’re then standing on nothing in darkness wondering where the fuck everything went.

Luckily the kind folk who live on Maryland Ave came to my rescue. An older gentleman from across the street, who had seen the whole crash happen, came over and helped me untangle myself from the bike and get me to stand up and get out of the street and onto the sidewalk. A woman came out of her house asking if I was okay and went back in to get me a bottle of water and a wet towel. After realizing I was basically okay with only flesh wounds (no broken bones, no head injuries) and telling them I was only going one more block down the street they reluctantly left but took many thanks with them.

I hobbled on down to The School and immediately looked for a first aid kit, finding supplies and getting into the shower to rinse the blood (and hopefully the gravel too) off and clean my wounds. My left elbow and left knee took the worst of the fall, which is weird because I think I remember the wheel turning left as I fell, meaning I would have fallen on my right side. I guess it all happened so quickly those details might not be clear.

So I’m pretty beat up but at least no broken bones in this old body and thankfully there were no cars directly behind me that might have run me over. As the man from across the street said “It may hurt now but you’ll really feel it in the morning”. That’s what I’m afraid of.

Today, in true Apple formality, I received my blue t-shirt.

The (current) blue t-shirt is the shirt worn by all Apple employees in the store. As an employee that has been shadowing for the last few weeks, this is a big deal to me. I’ve had the lanyard with my name on it for some time but the customers coming always wouldn’t recognize that because I wasn’t dressed like all the other employees. There would often be a question of “oh, do you work here?”

So tonight I was finished up with a customer setting up their iPad and Andrew, who has been so very kind and welcoming to me since day one, motioned me aside and said he needed to speak to me. We started discussing aspects of introducing our MobileMe service to customers and how I had approached the different elements this service had to offer. The conversation seemed a little strange, but I presented how I had delivered the different elements of MobileMe to different customers. Then Big Tony (who is a mentor at the store) came along up beside me, mentioned in a booming voice “Can I have everyone’s attention?” to, literally, employees and customers in the store. (So of course Andrew was the fall guy to keep me distracted while Big Tony could getting everything set up. So clever.) He then proceeded to announce to everyone that I was a new Apple employee who had just, basically, earned his stripes and that we should all give me a round of applause. And with this, he handed me the company-issued iPad-branded blue t-shirt that all the other employees were wearing. It was at this point that I’d not be wearing street clothes with the lanyard, but that I was one of them, an equal, someone who would interacted with customers solo without any kind of supervision. Needless to say, I was beaming smiles and gave a gracious bow as the claps from employees and customers alike abounded. Co-workers that either weren’t on the floor at the time or that were out-of-sight of the main room that I had shadowed with had big, beaming smiles on their faces and gave me high-fives or fistbumbs the next time they saw me.

Wow.

I felt so appreciated, so respected for the work that I had done and the interactions with customers that employees had watched me perform during the reverse-shadowing sessions. It was a strike of confidence and acceptance that I carried with me all the ride home.

I am official. Officially Apple.

How can I help you today?

Yesterday Apple and its carrier partners took pre-orders for more than 600,000 of Apple’s new iPhone 4. It was the largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions. Many customers were turned away or abandoned the process in frustration. We apologize to everyone who encountered difficulties, and hope that they will try again or visit an Apple or carrier store once the iPhone 4 is in stock.

Next Thursday on release day is going to be a busy day!

Also, today Apple release iTunes 9.2 which includes the following iOS4-ready features:

• Sync and read books with iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4 and iBooks 1.1
• Organize and sync PDF documents as books. Read PDFs with iBooks 1.1 on iPad and any iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4
• Organize your apps on your iOS 4 home screens into folders using iTunes
• Faster back-ups while syncing an iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4
• Album artwork improvements make artwork appear more quickly when exploring your library

iOS4 stand-alone upgrade will be available for current iPhone users on June 21. (Original iPhone [metal] is excluded and not all new features will be available for all models. More info here.)

Today marks the first time I will be working in an Apple Store while the WWDC keynote happens. This is where Steve usually makes new product announcements and this year’s anticipation I’d all about a new iPhone, rumored to be called “iPhone HD”.

The keynote starts at 1:00 Eastern so I’ll be on the floor helping customers while the liveblogging sites are doing their updates. I’m hoping someone will be upstairs checking these and coming down and keeping us updated.

~

All of the above was written on the way to work and I’m home now after my shift. It turned out that because we’re using iPads now at the concierge that we were able to follow the minute-by-minute on a webpage there, which was totally nice. It’s also nice to work with so many Apple geeks.

So the new iPhone 4 (as it’s being called) is out now and it’s identical to the one that Gizmodo bought a couple of months ago. And while there may not have been many surprises, it still looks pretty sweet. Although I’m not eligible for an upgrade by AT&T until February 2011 so it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting this phone anytime soon. And after February, I may as well wait the few months until June 2011 when iPhone 5 is announced.

One thing I find odd about the announcement is why weren’t the hard drives bumped up from 16-gig and 32-gig to 32-gig and 64-gig?

~

And happy 4th blog anniversary to me!

Tuesday I went over to Apple to sign my tax forms and all. It was great to go “backstage” into the employee-only area and see iPods stacked for purchase (no stock is kept on the showfloor). And the warm welcomes by employees coworkers was really nice too.

According to new Homeland Security standards, there’s a list of government-approved documents I had to bring with me to prove that I am actually me. I brought in my driver’s license and my passport but under close inspection it turns out my passport actually expired almost a year ago. Has it been that long since I went to Scotland? I guess so.

I was told I could not be processed until bringing in one of the other approved forms of identification and the only one I remotely had was a birth certificate, and I can’t remember seeing that in the past three or four moves. When was the last time I used it?

So I come home and tear apart all my filing cabinets and places where I’m hoping it resides. No luck.

In a bit of a panic, I go online and check how long it takes it obtain a replacement passport and it’s at least four weeks. And in order to get a new passport I need the (missing) birth certificate and a social security card. I don’t even remember ever having a social security card. I assume I had one at one point or maybe my Dad has my copy but regardless, I don’t have one. In order to get a replacement social security card, I need a passport and a birth certificate. The terrorists have won.

Luckily I was able to go online and order a birth certificate but it’s going to take 10-15 business days. Yaargh! I was worried this was going to delay my new employee training sessions this weekend but luckily my manager said he might be able to temporarily process me without it but that I’d need to show it eventually.

This whole worrisome story comes to a good ending this morning when I received my official email from Apple welcoming me as an employee. It directs me to an employee-only section of their website that allows me to set up my employee account. It’s a great way to set up all of that information concerning health care, benefits, 401(k), etc.

There are “My First Month” and “Going Forward” tabs but it won’t let me access them; I have yet to actually start my first day. I’m hoping that these information tabs will be unlocked after Saturday & Sunday’s all-day training sessions.

Yesterday’s in-store interview (#3) was a success! I am now a full-time employee of this company. Have you noticed how I’ve never mentioned the company by name? I thought it best to avoid googling caches (although I’m sure there’s about a billion for the A-word) and tying me to them, especially during the hiring process. I haven’t said anything derogatory but you never know who’s monitoring. But it probably doesn’t matter now that I’m hired unless I started bashing them. Which is unlikely.

Apple. There, I said it.

Unfortunately the position I’m hired for isn’t exactly the DreamJob I’ve been hoping and laboring for. It’s not the location I wanted (Georgetown) or the position I wanted (Creative). It is a Specialist position at the busy Pentagon City store, which I think was my fourth store choice because its busy and hectic nature of being set in a mall. But I’m not going to complain about it, it’s still with Apple and I’m happy with it. The P-City store is the highest-grossing on the East Coast, so it will be nice to cut my teeth there. And the store manager said that moving into a Creative position when one opens up is encouraged and transferring to another store is okay too. So I’m going to give this Specialist position a run for its money and move up from there. It won’t be the nice one-bus commute in the city (and above ground, too) that I had hoped for either. But again, I’m not going to really complain about that either. After all, it was DreamJob.

The pay is not that good though and that’s the one thing that is a little unsettling: it’s about half of what I was making at Grafik. While I was going to try and hang on to my part-time job at Evolve it now seems mandatory. I hope I can get the schedules of both jobs to fit each other.

Now, how would you like your discount?