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?

I’m at the beach. I came down with Eddy (and full-grown yet little dog Buddy) yesterday; Chris & Jeff came down the day before.

Last night was making the usual rounds at Aqua for cocktails and then Nicola’s for pizza w/ extra sauce and extra cheese. Then back home for True Blood and standup comedy. It may sound rather bland and routine but that’s the way time is spent at the beach and it’s relaxing and carefree.

For instance, our mornings are spent drinking coffee and Facebooking/surfing on the back deck. Sometimes we have to piece together the previous evening but since there are only four of us here I don’t think things are going to get too out of hand. But you never know. It’s exactly noon now and half of us are still on the back porch: Chris is watching True Blood on Hulu and I’m writing this. Our afternoon hasn’t been planned out yet and that’s the pace at which things go. It’s nice.

Just now, a notice from Eddy to get showered, our day is starting to move forward.

It’s 1994. Kurdt has just offed himself, Blur’s Parklife and Orb’s Live 93 play continuously in my CD stack while The Twins™ sunned themselves on the brick courtyard in front of my lovely little garden house. I motored about in my 1977 VW Beetle at 25 mph, filling the tank on Friday evenings on the way home from work and giving her a wash on Saturday mornings. I never locked her doors.

I had recently purchased my first computer, a Performa 630 CD. Yes, it had the “CD” in the name, pushing the new-fangled technology of CD-ROM. Fancy. One of the underlying reasons for this purchase, aside from the fact of not wanting to go into the office to mess around with Illustrator and do side projects was to play some games. SimCity 2000 had just come out and I was embarrased to have my boss finding me playing on my work computer on a weekend, so I figured I needed to move it home. Another game I desperately wanted to try was Myst, a game played with a CD and Mac-only at that point.

Myst was really a revolution when it came out. It featured wonderfully rendered 3-d images, almost unheard of at that time. The interface was simple, static point-and-click images to turn, navigate down a path, etc. The game put you on a mysterious island and you had to figure out what to do; it’s intrigue was in its beauty and simplicity (and once playing, complexity) and wondering around, figuring out how to work the elements on the island and puzzles contained within. I remember it came with a blank notebook where you could jot down things to remember, sketch out maps of the puzzles and basically doodle what was happening around you, as several “books” in the Library on the island showed you as you read them. The game also featured QuickTime movies embedded into the gameplay, which again, was unique for gameplay at that time.

During this time I was also dating Mr. Shipman who was currently working for a client in Chicago and would return to Houston for the weekends. On weekends we would have our together time, going to dinner and having beers and doing dating things. Once I had a big outing planned and Mr. Shipman, after learning I had Myst and being the computer geek he was, said “Why don’t we stay in, order a pizza and play Myst?” Heaven.

Last week Cyan, the creators of Myst, released the iPhone port of the game which is identical to the original from 1993. I think I still have the original booklet that I diligently wrote all my clues in 15 years ago but I’m not sure where it is. It may have been discarded before the last apartment move, I’m not sure. What I do know is that I’m immersed in a world that is oddly familiar (sometimes blatantly) but feels primitive, exciting and full of nostalgia.

I haven’t had to diagram much this time around and back then finding a solution to a tricky puzzle was to sit there and figure it out, whereas now a simple Twitter question or using a provided “hint” link will eventually lead you online to the answer you’re seeking. Trying not to use the hints I’ll still be through it in a week or so now, because I know what to look for, opposed to the couple of months it took me to complete it back in 1994. It’s still fun.

Web 2.0? I’m still waiting for a pedestrian definition of this term so that I can understand it. Is it a Facebook community? Is it constant web connection through our phones? Is it free wifi connections at coffeeshops? Who knows. Maybe I’ll need to wait for the 3.0 upgrade to figure it out.

What I’d like to go back to is Web 1.0, or maybe even 0.5, back when pages were basic, easy to use (and load. read: no flash) and the page real estate wasn’t occupied with 85% advertising. To do this, I’ve discovered a wonderful site that runs a javascript (actually I think it’s CSS) that will script strip away all that crap that you don’t want to see: the dancing baby promoting credit card debt consolidation, the whirlwind of yearbook photos of people you don’t want to communicate with ever again and the chicks being “surprised” by the camera as they dance in their cubicles. How stupid do these advertisers think we are, that anything in motion will catch our eyes? I digress. Deep breath.

Arc90 has a site that deletes all that crap. Here’s what you do: set your prefs, drag that button icon to your browsers links and then when you go to a site or article you can click on that link in your browser and it will strip away all the crap and give you only the words you need. Simple. Beautiful. Fuck you advertisers!

In a similar vain, to ease viewing and making it cohesive to view on iPhones, I’ve installed a plug-in on futurejunkie that will change viewing from a fully-rendered page to more simplistic, easier to navigate panels. It goes from this to this , breaking each entry into its own panel. (This will affect the 0.00001% of you that have stumbled here on an iPhone.)  There is a dropdown that gives you a preview and a link to fully expand it. You can review and leave comments. Simple.

I present these three screenshots.

These originate from the iPhone game KERN, which is kinda fun to play. It’s a speed/timing game that possibly draws more on your eye+hand coordination than it does actual kerning letters but it’s still fun to play. And the game looks great too, obvy built with a designer’s eye.

There was a grammatical typo in the Rules page (1), for which the update was issued. The update (2) says “Fixes an errant apostrophe which caused a fair amount or (sic) typographical embarrassment for our designer. Please accept this upgrade as our apology.” First of all, don’t apologize for having a typo in a sentence where there is a typo. Second, back to the point: as you can see in (3), the apostrophe from “it’s” in line two has been removed to its correct spelling, “its”, after the update. But a typographical problem still remains. Can you spot it in (3)?

Not having Internet access is really killing me.

First of all, it’s frakking boring as hell when you’re home all day, every day. Especially if you’re used to hopping online, checking news and blog sites, the general surfing around stuff that most of us do these days.

Secondly, it’s aggravating. When you’ve got bills to pay, or train tickets to buy, using dial-up on a phone that gets shoddy reception at best in my apartment is not the best way to navigate through a seven-page secure sign-on/purchase process.

Third, it’s frustrating. I am looking for jobs and filing my unemployment online weekly. Again, it’s possible to do this on my phone, but it would be very tedious. I also can’t email out my resume to anyone, as it is now isolated on my hard drive.

Verizon I supposed to be out today to figure out what is wrong with the modem. They have a ridiculous arrival window of 8am-7pm. That’s eleven hours long and can’t they narrow it down any closer than that? Imagine if you had that kind of leeway with your clients. Phone companies have such a scam going on.

And if they don’t come out today and fix it (something tells me they’re not going to, just my luck) then I’ll need to go to the public library or somewhere that I can use a computer to go online to at least do some job researching and file then file my weekly claim. Do public libraries still have free computers? Rephrase: Have DC public libraries ever even had free computers? Luckily I’m able to write this post as a local draft using WordPress’ mobile app and then post it all at the same time, instead of having to be online the entire time that I’m writing this.

So, if I did have proper Internet access I would be writing about such riveting things as this:

Yesterday I did a grocery store run mite out of necessity of getting outside of the apartment than anything else. I don’t think I’d been outside since Friday. It turned out to be a convenience run more than any kind of investigating what else was on sale: milk, deli turkey, cheese, bread, eggs, etc.

Purchase: $31.14
EBT Card Balance: $89.81
Club Card Savings: $9.77 (24% of purchase)

Update: Interwebs is back online! (Heavy sigh of comfort.)

When I wake up early on these unemployed mornings I check the time and compare it to what I would have been doing a month ago.

Right now it is 6:25am, and I’ve been lying in bed for about 45 minutes reading news of what’s going on in the world through the AP and the New York Times applications on my iPhone. A month ago I would have been hitting the snooze alarm for the last time before getting up.

Later, I’m sure I’ll look at the clock again and think “I would be at the bus stop right now” or “I would just now be arriving at the Braddock Road Station and waiting for the shuttle”.

As a rule of thumb I usually like to stay in bed until at least 8:30, knowing that the Grafik workday has already started before I get up and put the coffee on. Don’t know if that will happen today though; that’s two hours away. Let’s see if I can fall back asleep…