One of my techs just sent out an email requesting that a piece of equipment be “over knighted” to a customer’s store. All I can picture is a guy being knighted 217 times in a row, just to make sure the ceremony sticks.
It’s all good, though. We also offer “tool-free support” 24/7.
it's like this, but done 85 times
I never thought I’d say this, but this vibrator is too damn powerful.
Okay, that’s not true – I’ve said it plenty of times, about actual vibrators. The vagina does not need to be shaken like a Polaroid picture, and my teeth shouldn’t hurt afterward. Jackhammer all you want, but things designed to pleasure yourself when no one is looking should not be powerful enough to tear up concrete when dropped on the floor.
Ahem. I’m talking about my iPhone, anyway. This new phone’s vibrator mechanism is on overkill, and I’m kind of worried my phone is going to vibrate right out of existence and/or through my pants. It’s almost better to keep the sound on low instead of mute, because the vibration is so loud and shocking it lends very little to the idea of discretion. I’m honestly concerned that the phone is going to break before long; it doesn’t sound right at all. There’s not much I can do about it though – I’m not going to get all Nostradamus in the Apple Store about my phone that sounds as though a warp core breach is imminent. So, I wait. And make a mental note that I need to replace certain things in the third drawer of my nightstand. Just sayin’.
I spent the majority of yesterday afternoon stressed to the balls because of various electronic devices.
For the past week, I’ve been having charging issues with my phone – it wouldn’t charge on a dock. Yeah, I could still charge via cable, but I have a clock radio charging dock thingie and multiple Apple docks and this just will not do. I’ve never had an issue with any of my iDevices before, but this was something I needed fixed – so I made an appointment for the Genius Bar, and prepared myself for the inquisition by restoring my beloved and removing any signs that it had been jailbroken.
At least, that was the plan. There’s a bug in the Make It Mine tweak I use to change my provider from “Rogers” to “Kimli”, and it remained after restoring my phone. At this point it was close to midnight, and I was tired of caring – so I left it alone and hoped the Genius would not notice.
He did, of course, notice. I arrived early for my appointment and made use of the time trying my phone on all 8 docks they had on display – my phone would successfully charge on 2/8. Then it was time to talk to my green-hatted Genius, who was a) impressed at the number of games I had installed on my phone, b) tickled by my phone’s name of “Atomic Broccoli”, and c) admonishing because of my jailbreak. He insisted that my charging issue was likely due to my illegal software hack , and made me do a hard reset of the device, giving me a naked phone. After this long process, I tried charging the phone again – OH LOOK, IT STILL DOESN’T WORK! He made noises about insisting that it might be my dock that was the problem, but after repeatedly showing him that my phone will not charge but Ed’s will, we wore him down – and I got a new iPhone. Hooray!
Oh, but no. In my relief at getting a new phone with only an hour of (polite) arguing, I forgot to ask the most important question: was this phone unlocked? I did have the wherewithall to make sure the phone was 32GB – I need for all 240 apps, damnit – but that was it. Since there’s no real way to tell an unlocked phone from a locked one, I figured it was probably fine but I’d call in the morning just to make sure.
If you follow my Twitter stream, you already know how this gripping tale of triumph over adversity turns out: according to Apple Support who ran the serial number this morning, the phone is indeed a locked Rogers phone.
Why no, I don’t mind setting up my phone – a 4-hour process – for a fourth time in three days. It’d be an honour!
I might cry.
Or, I might not. I called the Apple Store immediately after getting off the phone with the national support center, and they swear the phone IS unlocked – their computer says so. Who to believe? Obviously I’d rather believe the option that gives me my evening back, but I’ve been burned too many times to trust again. My only option at this point is to swap SIM cards with Ed, who’s on Bell. If my phone – temporarily dubbed Subatomic Broccoli – works, then it is indeed unlocked. If not, I am back at Square One (which was an awesome math show on PBS – Math Net was so cool). FRUSTRATING!
Oh, and I also spent most of yesterday afternoon writing angry emails to the camera repair company that has my Pentax – they kind of lost my 50mm f1.4 lens. Oops! Fuckers.
Maybe the Amish are onto something.
My problems are so incredibly first world that I actually feel kind of guilty. I think I’ll go donate something today. Also, you should watch this video for MC Frontalot’s First World Problems because he is awesome and my very favouritest nerd rapper (I actually have two favourite rappers, so I must differentiate between Nerd and Indie even though both my favourites fall under both):
I have to take my iPhone in to the Genius Bar today – it’s not charging on docks – and in my panicked search for my receipt, I unearthed almost 20 years worth of concert ticket stubs. It’s not as impressive as it sounds for two reasons: I don’t really go to that many shows, and I tend to stalk the bands I like over and over again. Also, I just realized that I didn’t find them ALL – I have many Captain Tractor and Great Big Sea stubs that aren’t in this pile. Still, it was a shock to look at the tickets and realize just how expensive shows today are:
Current day Lollapalooza tickets are $215, but it’s a 3-day festival – no more trying to cram a year’s worth of rock into one long day. Single day tickets are $90, though, which is three times the cost of the entire festival way back in the stone ages. Contrary to all this, the very most favourite and awesomest show I’ve been to was Me First and the Gimme Gimmes in Seattle 5 years ago – my ticket was $15.75. Amanda Palmer at Richards on Richards? $12. The Dresden Dolls at the Showbox? $18. It’s probably a good thing the bands I like don’t tend to tour the west very often – I’d be poor and deaf, but oh what fun there would be!
Speaking of The Dresden Dolls, they’re playing San Francisco on New Year’s Eve. I’m trying to convince Ed it would be an excellent idea for us to go. I have no Major Events lined up at all; this would be a good placeholder until I conquer the globe.
Every time I see a movie, I have to do the dance – so if you’ll bear with me for just a second:
omg, I totally saw a movie! This is, like, rilly becoming a habit! Before the end of the year I bet I’ll see another, and like totally be up to FOUR MOVIES which is more than I’ve seen in the last 5 years combined! Hee hee hee!
Okay, done. This afternoon, Shan Heather Gillian and I went to go see Easy A at Metrotown. It was really cute and I enjoyed it a lot, but it did what the previous 2 (or 5, if you count individual showings of Scott Pilgrim which I clearly do) films I’ve seen this year hadn’t managed: remind me why I hate seeing movies.
They make me dissatisfied with my life! For example, right now I’m utterly disgruntled with everything because I am not a smoking hot movie character living a well-written and pithily commentated existence accompanied by a catchy soundtrack. It’s not fair! I want to be awesome and hot and get the guy in the end!
Isn’t that stupid? I have an awesome life that I routinely gush about on a regular basis. Real people don’t live movie plots; things don’t usually happen over the course of 120 minutes and wrap up with a neat little bow over the end credits. Still, it makes me wish that I had that kind of life – relatively easy, filled with gorgeous people, with a good underlying message. Even if movie characters have to get up and go to work in the morning, they’d get a a peppy montage filled with wardrobe changes, a cute pet, taxi rides in New York and an awkward encounter with the hot guy in Marketing. Instead, I’ll get too little sleep, will hate my clothes because everything makes me look fat, take a traffic-lined obstacle course through the poorest part of Vancouver, and an awkward encounter with everyone because I am the office freak. That’s not fun at all – I mean, it kind of is, but it’s not movie fun. It’s “make the best of the situation” fun.
I thought about this on the scooter ride home, and I think I know why this feeling that something is missing didn’t come up from the depths of my psyche when I saw the other two movies. With Eclipse, it’s because there’s nothing I want less than that life – for starters, I enjoy expressing emotions. I’m also not big on abstinence. With Scott Pilgrim vs. The World .. well, my life is actually already like that. Sure, Ed didn’t have to battle the League of Evil Exes to date me, but he DID have to come to terms with my rather colourful online personality and the myriad of people who had claimed me for their own. Video game references? Yeah, my days are filled with more of those than you can count. A hilarious life in a major Canadian city with a cool cast of characters? I have all that, plus a few extra – so no, Scott Pilgrim didn’t make me wish my life was more awesome; it was more like a documentary with the names changed to protect the people who didn’t sign the release form. To avoid feeling like this, I don’t normally watch coming of age movies – Shan and Heather were going home to watch Say Anything; I just wanted a ham sandwich – so this time, I got caught by my wishful daydreams of a fanciful, impossible life.
I know this’ll pass, and I will go back to knowing how great my life is. For the next few minutes though, I’m going to mope because I’m not starring in a movie. Then I’ll get up and make tacos for dinner, because tacos > ham sandwich. Tomorrow is a new day – and who knows what that’ll bring, but whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll be pretty awesome. How can it not? I’m the star of my own epic saga, and the happy ending is just an extra $20.
This is really cool – they reshot the original Back to the Future trailer scene by scene with a 25-years-older Michael J. Fox:
click to view yo
Michael J. Fox will always be awesome.
Lillian Alling kicks ass. I know I’ve been telling people to go to an opera since Carmen popped my opera cherry, but if you’re in Vancouver you really, really need to check this show out. It’s my new favorite opera – given the reaction I had to the last in-English “modern” opera I saw, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it quite so much. The story was compelling – especially since I didn’t know what to expect – and it was truly creative in fantastic ways. I won’t give away the ending, but here are some things you can look forward to:
I really enjoyed it. I won’t lie – there were tears. It was cool to see city I love so much depicted on stage, and the set designer did an incredible job – the story doesn’t take place in one or two locations; it covers North America AND Europe. It was a pretty epic treat to see, and I’m thrilled to have been invited to ninja it up for the Vancouver Opera.
So hey, Shan and I checked out the new Joe store on Granville yesterday. They’re running a special promotion – if you spend over a certain dollar amount, you get a free down jacket thingie. The jackets are pretty cool and all, but most of us have a lot of coats already – I know I certainly do. I’m going to donate mine to the annual coat drive, which starts next month. It’s getting chilly out there, and people need warmth. If you don’t need yet another coat, maybe think about spreading the love to someone who does!
Jeez, what’s with all the charity and culture up in here? Did I wake up as someone else again? I hate it when that happens. I need to do something unseemly, stat – anything to bring back the real. Anyone need any laws broken? Porn? I have porn. Do you want some porn?
student housing on dunsmuir
Tonight I will don my ninja gear (which is giraffe-patterned for some reason; I’m not big on stealth) and track Lillian Alling on her journey of revenge and singing: I’ll be tweeting once again as the Opera Ninja live from the floor of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Follow @operaninja to get the Kimli-flavoured scoop on this newborn baby opera!
The Vancouver Opera’s 2010/2011 season starts on Saturday with a bang: the first performance is actually the world premier of Lillian Alling. Ooh la la! Sure, Nixon in China had a Canadian premier as part of the Olympic going-ons, but this is a world premier – of a locally commissioned piece of work – that happens to (partially) take place in BC. You can’t really get much more home grown than this .. unless you consider that the opera was both composed by and stars Canadians. Yeah! GO TEAM!
I’m looking forward to this. It’ll be my second stint as the Opera Ninja and my second English opera. Plus, it’s about revenge and looking for things. I do both of those on a near-daily basis – perhaps someone should write an opera about me. It could be based on my best-selling book, Drink Fuck Fight. Naked opera! Has that been done before? Who cares, let’s do it. Naked!
Hey, it’s time for taco salad!
free from desire (of taco salad)
Last night, I SEWED. On a MACHINE.
The class was SO MUCH FUN! I had a blast picking my fabric – I could have spent hours and hundreds on dollars on cute fabric, but I will settle for learning first.
I was terrified to begin – when we powered on our machines, mine beeped at me (probably to imply that my mother is a prostitute). Apparently this was supposed to happen though, and Thea (our instructor) and Lili (Mistress of Thread) assured me I hadn’t broken anything. We walked through the parts of the machine, loaded up our bobbin with thread, and got the machine all ready to work. Before we started in on our bags, we practiced stitching on some scraps until we were comfortable, and then it was time to begin.
We laid out our fabric, pinned our patterns and began cutting. I was surprised at how many steps there were, but each step was easy to do and made sense in the end. To my utter surprise, the act of sewing via machine was not difficult – I had instinctively chosen the one machine in the shop that was a) different from the others, and b) idiot-friendly: instead of a speed dial, I had a slider that went from tortoise to hare. By the time the night was over, I was almost a quarter of the way to hare; such was my confidence in my new abilities. It was amazing! I bought a punch card for ten hours of machine time at Spool of Thread – I am itching to go back and practice some more. Tote bags for everyone!
I’m still a little bit afraid of sewing machines, though – it’s the act of bobbining and threading that scares me to no end. I’ll practice a few more times at the shop before I attempt to use my own machine, and then I’ll be off – I’m already starting to make modifications to the tote bag recipe in my head. So much fun!
So, how’d it turn out?
Friggin’ awesome.
My bag is made of mushrooms:
feed your head
The bag is reversible, too:
hedgehogs !!!
And because I had to be different, I chose a third material for my straps:
my tote bag is all about woodland creatures
It all came together nicely:
it's so totey!
It looks great to AND fro:
just me and my hedgehogs, totin' around
Why did I choose hedgehogs, you ask?
The whole thing was so much fun. I want to take more classes, and I totally recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to sew – our instructor was great; walking us through every step and providing help any time we needed it. My bag looks amazing – if not for my slightly crooked strap seams, you’d never know it was made by a total idiot. I MADE A THING! HOORAY!
so pleased!
This ends now (or more specifically, tonight by 9:30).
Very soon, I will stand proud and no longer be paralyzed with fear when I think about using a sewing machine. Tonight at 6:30, I’ll be taking Sewing 101 at Spool of Thread – and once and for all, I will cast off the shackles of terror and conquer my fears like a man learning how to make a tote bag with squirrels on it. I’ve been planning on overcoming my fear of sewing for some time now, but simply buying a sewing machine wasn’t enough (especially since I pawned it off on Heather because I was too afraid to touch it). No, I need someone to force me to confront the very core of my phobia, and much like an arachibutyrophobe being forced into a singalong, I WILL OVERCOME! Viva la sewing revolución!
The prophecy of Saturday has come to pass, and I was indeed asked to relocate this morning by my new boss. It’s not so bad – my new desk is big, and with the help of some stolen furniture, I’ve built myself a toy-covered Fortress of Solitude. People keep stopping by my new desk and marveling at the sheer amount of crap I have, and how quickly I’ve moved in and made myself at home. I can’t work when I’m only partially set up, so I just dove in and got busy. Sure, I haven’t done any actual work today – but at least my gnomes are in place and my internet is good. That’s about all you can really ask of me.
these are business-related gnomes, okay
delicious juice dot com 