New Haircut

New Haircut, originally uploaded by theunabonger.

Courtesy of the work of my fabulous stylist Eric Pollard at Olympia’s
Jamie Lee and Company.

Political Halloween Masks

Checking out the Halloween masks at JoAnne Fabrics (Formerly Ben Franklin) in West Olympia, I noticed that there were no John McCain masks, although they had both Hillary and GW Bush, in addition to Barack Obama…. How odd.

Magical Mystery Tour, Iterasi Gnomedex Magic Bus Tour in Four Video Acts

Subtitled; Why I Love Gnomedex so much!!!

The Iterasi Gnomedex Magic Bus, in Four Video Acts

In the afternoon on day 1 of Gnomedex 8, Alex Williams had Chris Pirillo announce that the Iterasi “Magic Bus” was going to make a quick tour to an art gallery in North Seattle where KK had purchased a work of art from a friend of his that was on display, and he was going to pick it up. It turned into one of the best side-trips at Gnomedex, and was Legendary in it’s scope.

On the bus, we had bloggers (1,2,3), podcasters (1,2,3), photographers (1,2,3), writers (1,2,3), bon-vivants (1,2,3), hippies, and even a Cyborg Anthropologist!

To begin our journey, our virtual Cassady, who was channel proficiently by Nat, takes the wheel, and leads the Gnomedex magic bus (sponsored by Iterasi) on a mind blowing journey.

Part Two of the Iterasi Gnomedex Magic Bus Tour, people relax, enjoy the special magic bus atmosphere, and everyone enjoys geeking out on the bus, and many pictures that will end up on flickr are taken.

As the bus rambles north through ballard, we pass a city bus on 15th which is riding in the in Ballard, and head for Greenwood, Alex of Iterasi makes a few comments, and the bus passengers engage in much fun and frivolity!

after loads of good hospitality and good times at the Bherd Gallery in Seattle, the Gnomedex magic bus trippers get back on the bus, and get loose for the ride back to the Waterfront. On the way we got sidetracked by a drawbridge opening up to let a small sailboat through.

KK took this advantage to take some pictures. *check these out*

So a really big thanks to Chris and Ponzi Pirillo, who run Lockergnome, which is the host of this spectacular, unsurpassingly enjoyable tech event!!!

See you *all* next year, and thanks for all the fish!!

These videos are shared on blip.tv by theunabonger with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

If you were on the bus, and want a link above, leave a comment, I’ll add it! I enjoyed hanging out with each and every one of you!

Kick Steve Jobs in the Nuts

Okay, so I had to go the Apple Store in Tukwila this morning for my pre-scheduled iPhone repair/replacement appointment as ordered by the Apple iCare dude I talked to at length yesterday. He had made a big point of putting me on hold, calling the store in advance to make sure they had replacement stock; and he made an appointment (in the only available timeslot) , for me at 11:45, and I showed up about ten minutes early.

In true “Apple Weirdo Fashion”, the store was crowded with all sorts of strange folks, from grandmothers trying to get their 3G iPhones activated, to the goth dude sprawled on the floor with MacBook plugged into an A/C outlet meant for a display unit. I sidled up to the “Genius Bar”, and saw my name listed as number three on the list of iPod/iPhone appointments on the rotating flat screen, which alternatively displayed iTunes and Mac OS tips as well as flashy logos.

Since the only problem with my phone is the flat connector on the bottom came wonky from the factory, and when plugged into the dock or A/V composite cable, there is no “Right” audio channel, I sat and took pictures and compared location finding accuracy with a guy who had his 3G iPhone replaced due to a broken glass screen; (he also had a wicked case of big toe rot which should have been covered out of courtesy instead of ‘on display’ in his Birkenstocks.)

After waiting patiently (well past my 11:45 appointment, they finally call my name. I naively think that this means that they will just need to verify (duplicate) the problem and I’ll be out the door with a sharply boxed replacement.

Well, the first part was true enough, I explained the problem, my assigned genius “Larry” (who did a fine job), took the phone behind the hidden post-modern steel door, and came back out a few minutes later.

He says, “yeah, I’ll authorize a replacement,” .. it seems you just bought the 16gb (first generation) iPhone in March (to replace one that took a dive into my toilet while I was watching the Snoopy Easter Special,) *”but I’m afraid I don’t have any in stock.”* hello?

Great, the guy at AT&T/Apple iCare (?) basically lied to me, and now I’ve got to make another 130 mile round-trip to pick it up, whenever it arrives. Whatever, it would have been too good to be true anyway, if they had just replaced it right?

So to add insult to Apple’s injurious indifference, I get a call at 5:00pm tonight. “hi, I’m calling from the apple store, and you replacement iPhone is ready to pickup!” Ugh!

Do I drive back up tonight (probably), or wait until tomorrow when I’m bound to be über busy.

I still wanna kick Steve Jobs in nuts! Any volunteers want to help me form “The Committee to Pie Steve Jobs” ?

Blogging from the monthly democratic party meeting

As the title says… I don’t think I’ll get much battery life, so here’s a picture.

Testing iPhone WordPress app

Just sitting here at Applebee’s having dinner and a beverage to celebrate the fact I got my credit card processing Queue current and cleaned up. Now tomorrow I tackle the aging, which will help me clean out stale accounts in the billing system and allow me to concentrate on last few (large customer) account reconciliations.

Besides acting as treasurer for the Shrine Club Burger Wagon for Capitol Lakefair 2008, I also took over the books for my Condo association.

Next week, I’ll be Amazon EC2 boy, getting our Hosted Drupal and WordPress AMI’s ready for easy provisioning.

Productivity! FTW!