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.

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!

Last Saturday during the beginning of the SNOwhatever I kept getting emails from Matt Alber and Tom Goss concerning their show that evening. It turns out the original venue had cancelled the appearance but Matt and Tom didn’t want to call the event and found an alternative venue, St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church. Since Matt’s music can get a little acoustic and atmospheric, I thought this would be a great place to see it.

When I got there it turns out the show was in their fellowship hall instead of their main sanctuary and I was a little disappointed about that, but I still got a seat in the 2nd row in the center. I was giddy!

I recognized Tom and spoke with him before the show and he thanked me for coming out. I wasn’t that familiar with Tom’s music but after seeing his performance (guitar) I’m a fan now.

Then, came the moment when Matt (!) came out to do his part of the show and it was great to be that close while Matt was performing. He was also pretty jovial with the intimate audience which is always entertaining. After the show, I had to go up and talk to Matt and simply thanked him for his songs, the perspective he wrote them from and how all us little queer boys felt that way growing up. While introducing myself I mentioned futurejunkie on Twitter and he’s like “Oh yeah, futurejunkie!” which of course made me melt right there on the spot.

Here are two clips of Matt during the show, “End of The World” and “Field Trip Buddy” (my favorite). They sang a duet of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” but at that point my iPhone battery was dying and I couldn’t record it. Dang, but it was beautiful.

Thanks for a great show, guys!

I went home for Thanksgiving this year. I didn’t go last year. Speaking with my Dad last year he said, “I know sometimes you want to get together with your friends…”. I hadn’t missed a Thanksgiving in the last fourteen years I’ve been living here so I had no idea what he was talking about. But I took advantage of it anyway, and didn’t have to deal with the travel hassle of a quick trip. But this year I decided to go, since I hadn’t seen many relatives since February and I think Christmas is going to be a little “off” this year as my brother and his family will be going to visit my sister-in-law’s in New York state.

It turned out that renting a Zipcar was just as expensive as taking the train down to my Dad’s so I chose that option, which would give me greater flexibility about traveling times and definitely less stress about getting to a train station twice. I scheduled a 24-hour reservation, leaving Wednesday evening and coming back on Thursday, after the feast.

Since all Zipcars (thankfully) have iPod adapters now I was able to leave the seemingly-archaic CDs at home and just take my iPhone and play music from there. I put on Arcadia’s So Red The Rose and headed south, reminding me of those Friday nights headed to Badlands cranking the tape (EMI Catalog: 42148) so many years ago. It still sounded good loud, exhibiting its many nuances.

Upon arriving it’s the requisite sit-in-the-living-room-watching-History-Channel stuff, and then when it gets close to 9:00 I ask “Can you switch it over to Channel 5 so we can watch Glee?”. Well. About ten minutes into it my brother (my oldest brother) says “This would be a great show if they would stop singing.” Um, yeah, I think that’s kind of the point. He gets up and leaves and then my Dad, instead of watching the show with me, starts reading a road atlas.

Fast forward. It’s about 2:00am and after going to bed and listening to some music I decide it’s actually time to go to sleep but I toss and turn until almost daybreak. Looking back I think I was dozing in and out of consciousness but at the time it seemed like I was just laying there, awake.

At times the dim light coming through the cracked bedroom door would appear to turn red like a laser beam, but only in its color not in its concentration. Then it would cloud and flicker back to a warm dim yellow which seemed more natural.

Then, and I don’t know if I dreamed this or imagined it and whether it actually happened, I felt something, a cloudy presence, off to the right of my eye. It was a form, but not a recognizable form, that slowly changed and flowed as if smoke from a cigarette was contained in a glass sphere, swirling around and around but not dissipating. Was this the ghost or spirit of my mother, who had died in the bedroom down the hall two-and-a-half years ago? Maybe I was groggy and frustrated from not being able to attain sleep. Regardless, I looked at it for a while and said “Hi Mom, I love you.” and immediately fell asleep.

The next thing I remember is waking up a few hours later and hearing my dad in the kitchen making coffee. The remainder of the day would be filled with having my five-year-old niece read a story about Pilgrims to me, getting kisses from my nephew and catching up with aunts, uncles, cousins and their children and grandparents. There was a lot of family love there, I could feel it.

Adobe has added to the image-processing software pile for the iPhone. They’re branding it with the flagship Photoshop, and more importantly with photoshop.com. The website is a place to store & share your uploaded photos, similar to Flickr. I think it’s a little too late Adobe but it’s a valiant effort. Flickr has also come out with iPhone software that I haven’t tried out yet.

The controls for editing are pretty simple: cropping, exposure, saturation, tint, black & white, sketch (filter), soft focus, and a variety of sepia/duotone effects. Most of these have live preview while sliding your finger across the screen, which is nice. There’s multiple undo and of course the option to send it to photoshop.com.

Here’s some before & after samples after playing around with it:

10:30-ish // Eddy’s awake before I am, something that never happened at the beach. Now is groggy-sleep time, the TV is on am I’ve opened the curtains to reveal the brightness outside. The city looks bright but a little hazy and looks warm enough to wear shorts outside.

12:11 // Time to leave the hotel. The bits are at Astro having diner food and after a nice long shower, it’s time to join them. Maybe we’ll check out the High Line today?

12:16 // Ah, the sidewalks.

1:16 // After a brief walk thru the park, we’re now at Tavern On The Green, having bloodys/screwdrivers. Feels good.

3:49 // We’ve walked and walked. Now we’re thru The Bowery, thru Chinatown and down near (what I believe is) City Hall and to the Brooklyn Bridge. We’re going to walk halfway across the bridge and then back. Then back to Canal and then I need to drop by and see John at Record Runner. He’s got the new a-ha and a video bootleg of DD’s Songbook sessions they did last year (?). Also on order for (unfortunately) next week of the Rio release that contains all original 1982 mixes and demos, an the 1981 Hammerstein concert DVD. I wish they would have cone out this week so they’d be waiting but oh well.

10:30 // Record Runner purchases secured! I’ve put two more upcoming DD purchases: the Rio Masters DVD which came out in the spring and the Hammerstein DVD. John was able to give me the advance copy of the Rio re-release which isn’t officially available until Tuesday.

We reconvened at Gym Bar with Scott & Mikey who drove up from DC today. Dinner reservations were secured at Landmarc in Tribeca. Back to the hotel for another street gyro (nothing to eat all day) and then a nap and showers.

12:33 // Grilled skirt steak salad on watercress with roasted peppers, gorgonzola cheese and chimichuri vinaigrette.

4:27 // Back at the hotel room now. After dinner we went to Rawhide which was boring. Between us all there was a battle to where we’re going to go next. Half of us wanted to The Eagle and half wanted to go to double-headed Disco at Nowhere. It was raining and cans were sparse so once we made a commitment we needed to stick to it. Instead, we looked in a guide and found that Barracuda was only a couple of blocks away so we walked there and spent the remainder of the evening there. Logan Hardcore was performing in the back and we had a fun time having cocktails and hanging there, meeting people and watching the show. No street-vendor gyros tonight, time for sleep!

5:09 // Goodnight.

This morning I woke up an extra hour early to prepare six brownbag lunches. I’m going to NYC with Jeff (his bday weekend), Chris, Eddy, Shawn & Doug. Since my frig was stoked this week I’ve volunteered to make lunches for everyone for our bus ride. Orders have come in and there are sandwiches to make! I’m adding surprises to everyone’s bags: Twinkies and chocolate candies.

Chris is needing to go downtown and file some paperwork so I go with him to drive around in the car so it doesn’t need to be parked. I cruise around downtown/N Cap/Rhode Island Ave and listen to MTV VJ Mark Goodman on 80s on 8 on the satellite radio. Apparently Martha Quinn starts the morning show and Nina Blackwood is up next. They referenced Alan what’s-his-name so I’m hoping JJ Jackson also had a job there. Funny how they’re all working together again.

Back to the trip: we all make it to the bus ontime and get seats together. They have electrical outlets in each seat so we can all arrive with our phones and laptops fully charged. Nice.

Once the bus is moving we break out our picnic-sized amount of food. We also have countless bags of chips and Slim Jims. We’ve take over the aisle as our open-bag picnic storage space. Doritos? We got ‘em. Sun chips? Got those too. Kit Kat? Why sure!

1:53 // Three of us are asleep. The other three are clicktapping away on a laptop, an iPhone and an iPod touch.

2:44 // Eddy’s playing SimCity on his iPod touch. And cranking on it, as a matter of fact. He knows the interface wells and narrates his city’s history as he plays. He has 37,304 residents and $478,887 in his bank.

3:25 // After a bus break at the Woodrow Wilson Recreation Center and Stop we have reached the split in I-95 North. Those that have traveled this will know what I’m talking about.

3:49 // We’re getting to the point where, over 20 years ago, the World Trade Center first appeared on the horizon for my first trip to New York. On that trip I remember driving down West Side Highway and taking a picture straight up out of the sunroof of the twin towers. I wish I knew where that photograph was today. It’s probably in the basement of my Dad’s house, packed away in the box it’s been in since 1986 when my parents moved. I still have the picture in head though; that will have to be enough.

This is Eddy’s first time to the city so it will be fun to play semi-host and watch someone else be starry-eyed like I was all those years ago.

5:16 // In Manha’an! We walked the 20 short blocks north of where the bus dropped us to make it to our hotel. A great, short walk that took us right thru Times Square. Good thing for Eddy to witness. We’re staying at the 4-star Hilton a block away from the MOMA. This is world’s away from the cheap hostel I usually stay at on W83rd.

5:23 // Our rooms are on 32nd floor!

9:39 // At Stonewall, where the Pride movement began.

10:54 // These things that go through my head seem to not matter in personal conversations, and this is why I share them here.

12:37 // After Ty’s, Hanger, now a limo ride to The Eagle.

4:20 // Bedtime. After yet another trip to the corner gyro merchant. I think we’re going to be seeing a lot of him in the next few days.

4:40 // In bed. Talking with Eddy about the Towers and about old Manhattan and new Manhattan and what that all means. Can you relate?

4:42 // Eddy’s game stats: Population 113,336 and his bank is $653,689.

4:43 // We’ve opened the windows to sleep to. There is a pleasant rumble from the city coming up, and sirens and honks seem distant because they are so far below us. I love this city.

I’m writing this on my new iPhone 3G/s. I took the plunge.

I tried to deal with the shattered-into-100-pieces glass situ but it really got to be too much. Watching video was fine, but trying to read anything, from emails to websites, was somewhat annoying.

Yesterday I worked a cater/waiter event and made some nice cool cash and since it’s under the tax claimant limit I can run with it. This was the impetus that pushed me over the edge to decide it was time to get a new phone.

I’m up today, early from yesterday’s physical work and therefore an early evening, and I decide that this is the day. Why wait, right? The Clarendon store opens at 11:00 and I figured it was better to get there as early as I could for two reasons: a smaller crowd, and more time in the afternoon to play with the new toy.

When I get to the store I hold two new iPhones up, showing their backs. I’m still torn between the black or the white. And while I’ve leaned towards the white for its crisp look it’s still black on the interface side while you’re using it. I thought it would be cool, on the white ones, if they would make the front side top and bottom (where the ear speaker and home buttons are) white as well, and maybe have a white background for the desktop icons. So I chose the black back for its cohesiveness.

Apple apparently doesn’t want you paying cash for iPhones (afraid they will be “jailbroken” and shipped overseas or something) I have to buy a gift card and turn around and use that gift to purchase the phone. Whatevs. I have a leftover balance on the card and with that I get iTunes gift certificates.

The process to activate the new phone was pretty quick and simple. The employee helping me said it would be activated “within twenty minutes” but then about 30 seconds later it pinged and was on. My old phone was instantly turned into an iPod touch.

Now, to fill these 32 gigs up with almost all my iTunes library and even more video (Dexter episodes for $0.99 anyone?)!

As shown in the previous post, my iPhone didn’t come back from Rehoboth the same way that it left. Luckily, it still works. Even the touchscreen aspects are still functioning properly although there is a little bit of “scratch” on some parts of the screen. It’s not enough to scratch my finger but it’s still friction.

This is how it happened:

We all woke up on Saturday and did the normal routine: coffee and computers on the back deck. It’s such a great time, those mornings, usually nursing a slight hangover, bedhead, clacking away on keyboards, talking & laughing about the previous evening’s activities.

We decide to head out for breffus and we go to Sunshine in Dewey Beach. There I have a gyro omelette, which sounds crazy but was delicious. Afterwards, we split for errands. Christopher is going to do some shopping so I decide to hang out with him, driving around in the top-off Jeep. Well, I’m texting, checking status, etc while we’re stuck in traffic and instead of putting the phone into my pocket which I normally do I put it on the seat, between my legs, figuring that I’m only going to be breaking out to do something else soon. Of course I forget about it there when we stop in the parking. I open the door, slide out of the slide and crash goes the phone on the pavement. Crakt.

After much cursing I decided to not let this incident destroy my beach weekend. It works, deal with the mess later.

Now, dealing with the mess later, I’m exploring options on what to do about this. I first go the Bethesda’s Apple Store because I could secure a quick appointment the afternoon of “The Crash”. I hadn’t been to that one before so it would be an adventure. I even saw cutie John King from CNN there at the Genius Bar. But the Genius told me it was $200 for a glass screen/sensitivity chamber replacement which is the cost for a new 3G/S. Next.

Then a friend sent me notice of takeitapart.com which is a great little site that demonstrates how to, um, take things apart. In true Web 2.0 fashion there is a YouTube clip with each instruction so you can watch along. Really nice. But unfortunately the first generation iPhone is as easily accessible as the newer ones and the voiceover on the instructional video was “yeah, this is kind tender here… don’t do this unless you’re really sure… ” something like that. I check the price of the parts and they’re practically $140, which is comparable to the cost of a new model.

Now what to do?