Um, apparently my iTunes is very welcoming to guests…
I'm Andy Thompson. By day, I'm Creative Director at an awesome company called onebluebrick ™ (proof). By night.... well, same thing, but I also tend to waste my time tweeting absolutely worthless bits of information to a group of random people who for some reason like to hear that kind of thing. I used to be in a band, but now record mostly noise.
Sunday February 7
Saturday February 6
Is there a new beer import tax I haven’t heard about?
Friday February 5
GAME CHANGER.
Thursday February 4
Apple FTW!
About two months ago, I made a stupid decision. After being plagued with a non-working trackball on my Apple Mighty Mouse, I decided to call in and see if I could get a replacement (again, but thats another story). As usual, everyone I spoke to at Apple was accommodating and happily shipped me out a new mouse. I received it two days later, dropped the non-working one in the box, peeled back the shipping label, and dropped it into the Fedex drop box down the street from me.
Huge mistake. Apparently, drop boxes are, to Apple, the equivalent of drop kicking your package over the Hudson. The package was never scanned, so neither Fedex nor Apple could do anything about it, which means it was either stolen out of the box (nearly impossible) or a Fedex employee has a used broken mouse fetish (highly probable). My only outlet for frustration was to file a claim with Fedex, and in the meantime Apple took $75 dollars out of my bank account (how they can charge more than the retail price for a mouse they don’t even sell anymore is a different story). Throughout this, Fedex treated me like a liar and a thief, but there wasn’t much I could do.
This week (nearly a month after my claim was filed) I got a letter from the good folks at Fedex saying that my claim was denied, but if I had a “cash reciept to prove FedEx handled this shipment”, they’d be happy to talk. In the meantime, they said “hope you will continue to count on us for reliable, high-quality delivery services.” Ha.
So anyways, long boring story short, I just realized that I should give Apple a call back and see if, by some stroke of luck, the package got to them by some weird, back-channel pony express or something. I was put in touch with a repair rep, who seemed genuinely sympathetic. He told me he’d talk to higher ups and give me a call back. Literally two minutes later I got a call from an incredibly nice lady who told me not to worry, they’d reimburse my money, and “sorry I had to deal with this nonsense”.
So, thank you Colleen @ Apple, for not only refunding my money, but for also fixing a problem that was entirely FedEx’s fault. I’m posting this here now because, in this process, I’ve found countless websites and comment threads discussing lost Apple repairs. The solution for this is simple: NEVER PUT ANYTHING YOU WANT TO SEE AGAIN IN A FEDEX (or any other shipper) DROP BOX.
It’s pretty amazing to look back at how advanced the Apple Newton was for 1992. The handwriting recognition alone (and the fact that it adapts over time to your own handwriting) was so cutting edge. It’s a bit weird to me that Apple has reverted away from this natural input that they invested so much time and effort into, and instead replaced it with an artificial keyboard.
Tuesday February 2
Seth MacFarlane’s first attempt (in 1995) at a Family Guy pilot, then known at “The Life of Larry”
Monday February 1
Morgan Freeman teaches all the groovy cats how to read, or, something… from the 1970s PBS series “The Electric Company”
Saturday January 30
The man who invented the cash machine
“It struck me there must be a way I could get my own money, anywhere in the world or the UK. I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash.”
Plastic cards had not been invented, so Mr Shepherd-Barron’s machine used cheques that were impregnated with carbon 14, a mildly radioactive substance.
The machine detected it, then matched the cheque against a Pin number.
However, Mr Shepherd-Barron denies there were any health concerns: “I later worked out you would have to eat 136,000 such cheques for it to have any effect on you.”
Friday January 29
New teaser trailer created by Prologue for HBO’s The Pacific, the Hanks/Spielberg-produced follow-up to Band Of Brothers. The 10-part series based on books by Robert Leckie and Eugene B. Sledge follows the exploits of three US marines during World War II, and debuts March 14.
Really looking forward to this, I’ve been getting back into Band of Brothers in the meantime and it’s only serving to feed my WWII fascination. Plus anything Tom Hanks produces seems to be awesome these days (with the exception of the uber-frustrating-to-watch Big Love).
Thursday January 28
Brilliant. I always wondered how they did this…
