This is a really really great project
http://www.nazeeabbassi.com/blog/2011/04/self-study/
This was linked on facebook for me from a friend. I really love these photos, wanted to post about them here as well as in facebook.
Kelsin
Personal Blog
First half of the Blizzcon Trip: Five Car Stud and San Diego
So we're in Anaheim now, ready to begin the 2nd part of our trip. We landed in CA on Saturday and immediately went out to the Los Angelos County Museum of Art. The idea was to see the Burton exhibit which was pretty cool. I had no idea that he did his own art (which is just being naive) but they had a LOT of it. I had to admit that my favorite part was the room that had the catwomen suit, the edward scissorhands suit, the batman hats and the penguin baby carriage but that's because it was a room that was all about the movies I loved.
The best part of this art musuem however was definitely "Five Car Stud". If you are in CA please go see this before it leaves in January. Absolutely amazing piece that blew me away. I was not prepared for something so amazing on Saturday. Please go see it.
After this we drove down to San Diego. On Sunday we checked out San Diego (the Gaslamp district and the seaport village). On Monday we hit the zoo. Today we checked out San Clemente on the way back to Anaheim. San Diego is amazing in that there is NO TRAFFIC it would seem. LA has plenty (as we found on Saturday night going to San Diego) but we found none since getting to San Diego. It was a great couple of days. That zoo is too big for one day, so we saw what we could before getting too tired. We also saw Horrible Bosses on Sunday while wandering around. I enjoyed it (as I knew I would).
Everywhere that we ate was pretty good. I'll be making another blog post later detailing all of the places we ate while here :) We are mainly using Yelp to find places and so far it's been great. We also used Priceline to find a hotel in San Diego and it worked out great!
Phone Result
So I ended up buying a new iPhone 4s on the apple website.
I couldn't see myself paying upwards of $300-$450 for an iphone 4 (buying one completely new out of contract on ebay or through AT&T etc). That just didn't make sense.
What I would LOVE to do is buy a new phone completely out of contract so I wouldn't have to renew but then the cost becomes $500-600 for any new phone (iPhone or not). This is just ridiculous. I feel like I'm avoiding contract troubles by paying more money to the people I want to be avoiding anyway.
So in the end, I do the only logical thing... which is exactly what all of these contracts and pricing structures are setup to do. I buy the newest phone, out of contract which also RENEWS my contract screwing me for when the iPhone 5 comes out.
So it seems like until our government wakes up and starts instating laws that actually help people (not likely) AT&T will keep winning while providing shitty service.
Edit: I also looked into canceling AT&T and switching to another carrier but with my wife and I on a family plan that involves paying TWO canceling fees and stuff like that. It doesn't work out financially.
Phone Stolen
Just had my phone stolen out of my car while traveling in Ithaca. Accidentally left the car unlocked (didn't think I did) and accidentally left the phone in the car.
The worst part about this? Due to normal cell phone contract bullshit, to get the SAME PHONE I HAD I now have to pay 399.99... I paid $200.00 for the phone new of course. Complete bullshit.
Notes for others: always have a passcode on your phone. That way the people who steal it can't wipe it before you are able to use the location features to find the phone :-(
No iPhone 4S for me...
I would gladly throw my $199 for a new iPhone 4S but according to the apple store website it would cost me $450 currently due to my contract... I hate cell phone contracts. So I guess most current iPhone 4 users won't be able to upgrade at a reasonable price.
EDIT: Some other iPhone 4 users have responded via twitter with the same message. We all have to wait until Feburary if we want to upgrade :-(
Bye bye Lowes, Hello Home Depot!
So today in preperation for the hurricane I wanted to buy a new flashlight. When I went to Lowes the salesguy laughed at me and said "A bit late buddy huh?"...
Is that how customer service works now? On the way out of the store (I immediately just walked away from the dude) I hear 5 other people asking other workers the same question and none of them laughed at the customer.
I think from now on I'm going to Home Depot. No one at Lowes acts the way they do in the commercials. I want to be helped. I want to take your advice and I want to be treated like I'm not an idiot. Let's hope Home Depot delivers.
Serendipity Recording Studios
I think Serendipity Recording Studios is finally ready for action! For those that never saw it, here are a couple of photos of the room prior to any work.
I hired http://www.edenhomeimprovement.com/ to do the work and here are some photos after the first day.
Some photos of the room during work and after they were done preparing it for painting.
Now our work began! Caitlin helped me a ton on this project since I'm not good at painting trim at all! First was priming all of the walls and painting the ceiling.
After came painting the walls. I chose the blue and orange combination from our wedding combined with my favorite color: purple. Big thanks to Mark for helping put the final coats on!
And finally today I got to put stuff in it!
Hopefully I'll get some time in the next couple of days to hear how it sounds!
New Dog
So with Sadie's passing me and Caitlin wasted no time getting another dog. We want someone for Grubby to play with, and want two dogs in general so there was no reason to wait
Caitlin did make the fatal mistake of letting me name the dog for the second time. Our first dog is named Grubby after my favorite Warcraft 3 pro player. This dog I decided to name Tcl after the programming language that I've used a lot while programming at Berklee College of Music. Like the wikipedia page says it's pronounced "tickle". It satisfies our requirements of being incredibly geeky, while at the same time being incredibly cute.
So our new dog Tcl will be spending the next few days getting used to Grubby and our 3 cats!
New Blog
Finally getting around to moving my blog over to posterous. I will be moving some posts over to my coding blog at mx.kelsin.net but unfortunately I will be losing some information and making some long running google links no longer work. I'm generally ok with this since a lot of that data is so old it shouldn't really be relevant anymore anyway.
MBTA Fails Again
So after the horrendous delays we experienced on Monday the MBTA passed out these forms apologizing and saying that we can immediately get a refund for both Monday trips by filling out this form. The form stated that every customer can get a max of 2 refunds (inbound and outbound) and had a spot to fill in your monthly pass number, zone and how much you were getting back. We got this form Tuesday evening when coming home. On Wednesday morning another conductor tried to give us these forms and we told him that we got it last night, and he said "Ok" and moved on.
Fast forward to today. My wife and I filled out our forms saying Zone 5 and $12.50 each (each way is $6.25). When we got up to the ticket window the lady rudely asked why we filled out $12.50. We told her that we were delayed on the inbound and outbound and she then told us we needed two forms, not just one and that the conductor should have giving us two. We told her that he didn't and that the forms says we're allowed two and she just says "Not without two forms". Another employee came over to tell us the same thing.
Are you serious? Clearly communication is awful since the conductor didn't know, or didn't tell us this. Now tomorrow morning we need to ask for another form and see if the conductor still has it. This "bonus" is already a bit weird since you can apply for a refund everytime your train is 30 minutes late online. The only difference this time is the immediate money instead of waiting 4-6 weeks to get your spare ticket that you have to then bring to the counter to get a refund for. This is better but it's not like the MBTA is out any more money than they would be anyway without this apology. On top of that they make it very hard to get both refunds by requiring two forms even though the conductor doesn't know that AND the form doesn't say?
I wouldn't mind as much if other cities didn't have awesome transit systems. It's a solved problem guys. Improve service and stop acting like your customers are the enemy and maybe you'll see increased ridership?
