Tag Archives: apple

once you go black


Pet sponge a.k.a. wonderboy a.k.a. intern / “Lee” is preparing to leave for school in Chicago soon.. Part of his preparations was buying his first Mac.

He walked in yesterday with one of the new Black MacBook Pros.

I put some antiquated software on there to get him started till he can get to his university’s book store and take advantage of the REFUCKINGDICULOUS discounts on software afforded to students. While doing so I had to mess around with the questionably useful but undeniably cool built in webcam / PhotoBooth software. (see lead silly photo)

I caught a news headline whir past about these the other day with one journalist hailing it as “maybe the worlds best notebook computer”… *source

My mom’s even bought one.

So while I may be feeling plenty up to date with my foam shoes – I’m having a horrible case of ineedanewlaptopitis.

I know – I know… My two bread-n-butter programs, PhotoShop and FreeHand aren’t threaded for the new processor and won’t run any faster…. (for now).

oh.. but it’s black….

it finger prints REALLLY easy.

but it’s black…

the screen is a little small and would probably require you to get an external for doing any heavy-duty layouts or working with a pallet-happy program like Flash.

ooo… mmm… but it’s black…

I heard it runs pretty hot too….

doh… but it’s black.

I’m sure if I wait a faster / cheaper one will come out before the year’s out.

mmm……. but it’s chicken.

it was all frosty’s doing


Doing a lot of crawling around with my camera in the “transitional neighborhoods” which are the opportunity playgrounds for developer folk like my employers.

Noticed little curious details like the old snow route indicators… They haven’t changed since I was a child. Before I could read – I was convinced it was a conspiracy with Frosty no doubt at the helm.

I don’t even know if the city uses these tags anymore… It’s been a long-long time since we’ve gotten any serious snow.

The era when I was wondering what those signs meant, winters meant going outside and playing in snow drifts taller than I was.

Speaking of… if you haven’t gone to see An Inconvienient Truth – please do…. Not for the beyond-gratuitous Macintosh PowerBook placement…. go see it for the info.

Remember the Apple ad campaign when the movie Independence Day came out?
“Apple – the power to save the world.”

Now here we are a decade later and look what’s in the hand of the man who’s going to spearhead the new ECOnomy? A PowerBook….

Who’s he workin for now? Yup.
You guessed it.

Doesn’t anyone else find that a creepily chicken?

jukebox(es)


Chad has gotten most of our CDs put into “Mother”, (the big as my butt firewire drive Santa brought him).

11,402 songs occupies 86.95GB of space. I wanted good quality that still had sensible space savings… and I don’t trust Apple’s Lossless format so I set Chad’s iTunes to import music as 256kbps MP3s).

With a couple of trips saved to the Smoke shop – we now had the extra cash to buy an AirPort Express.

Setting it up yesterday afternoon drove Kevin nuts… Not necessarily because it was difficult – he was just trying too hard….

Once he hit postal stage – I took a whack at it and had it all running in ten minutes… Of course… I don’t know what I’m doing. Apple stuff seems to be like that… Don’t fight it. Just click the pretty button and let it do what it does – don’t over think it.

Nonetheless – I can now sit in the front of the house, access Mother in the back room on the old G4 and listen to my selections broadcast on the stereo…

friggin Buck Rodgers.

Eleven-thousand songs on random is also a real mind-trip…. Songs have been coming up on the playlist that I haven’t heard in years.

Nothing like sitting down and listening to a set that goes from Erasure, to Van Halen, to RENT to Aboriginal music.

Nothing like not blogging about pedestrian consumer technology like it’s some great breakthrough.

somosas as currency

the apple store or a kubrick set?

Friend Danny came by today to snatch me out of the office, take me to his salon and cut the hairs on my head. I design Danny’s business cards once a year, and in exchange – I abandon the clippers for the colder months and get actual “haircuts”.

Danny’s one of those friends I feel like I don’t spend enough time with. He’s a rugged, handsome man with manners of royalty and a mouth like tinkerbell. Regardless, it’s hard sometimes to picture him as a buxom red head shimmying down a runway with pumps on. Danny was the reigning Miss Gay Missouri, (A Drag Title), throughout the late 80’s. Up until recently, he has organized the pageant and countless other fundraising events. More impressive than being one of the city’s “drag elders”, Danny was the founder of the now muliti-milion dollar NFP: St. Louis Effort for AIDS.

You’d never get the sense from Danny that he’s the city’s biggest drag-elder, nor the creator of one of the first AIDS related organizations to in the US. What you do get a sense of is that this is a man who’s dedicated a better part of his life to charity. His eye’s have the scars, as so many men in his nearly whiped out age bracket, of loosing a lot of loved ones. It’s a reminder that there was a time when the Virus wasn’t treatable. When I was contemplating Duran Duran imports – he was watching everyone close to him die.

Danny asked me to play personal shopper today for him. He needs a new computer. So, working on that toaster oven, I took him to The Apple Store.

We lucked out and got a sales attendant with a personality.

While the sales guy was doing his schtick I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew him from somewhere – until… It finally hit me.

“Are you from St. Louis?” I asked.. “And how long have you worked in retail?”

“Yes” he said rolling his eyes, “I’ve been in retail wayyyyyy toooo, . . . wait a second. . . JIM?!?!”

I had worked with the the guy 16 years ago when I took one of my first jobs at the mall in a mens clothing store called “His Place.” It was one of those terrible 80’s hip-clothing stores like Chess King or Oaktree.

heads unlimited business cards

“Oh my god, I didn’t recognize you… Wow you look so different, you’re so old.”
He caught himself saying that and started stumbling to correct himself, “I mean, you’re older, or… uuhhh.. I uhhhh”….

“We’ll take the 14″ ibook please”. I interrupted not really phased by the inadvertent insult.

I figured: Sure – I’ve done some hard living and I’m no where near as well preserved as this guy was (he looked nearly the same). But you know what? Here it is 16 years later and I still don’t have to put on a name badge when I go to work, so I’ve got nothing to be bent out of shape about.

My compensation for assisting came in the form of a tray full of Indian food from the mall’s food court.

If Danny only knew I’d paint his house for a couple of samosas.

If I could spend more time with ALL of my friends.

If I could have the presence of mind to blog.