Busy weekend

This past weekend went well. Mom and Dad arrived around 6pm, but I was still at the Apple store getting a replacement iPhone. Wee! Oh Friday morning, I picked up my (2nd) iPhone, a black one that I ordered on 7/13. I was headed into a meeting that afternoon and flipped the little switch to put it into vibrate mode, and the switch fell off. It comes down to being a design defect. On some phones, the button is hard to slide...that coupled with the fact that it is a little piece of metal that is GLUED onto a plastic switch inside the phone, caused it to break. I made an appointment with a "Genius" at the Apple Store and they swapped out the phone for me. He was cute too.

Rhett, Jennifer and Madeline didn't make it in until about 9:30 p.m. They were in traffic for three hours because some no-talent-ass-clown decided to hold himself up in his trailer in Crystal City and start shooing at people. They shut the interstate down. What a punk. But since it was Rhett's birthday, I took him to the 11:20 showing of The Dark Knight. It was just a good the second time around. Heath Ledger's performance was amazing! I really hope he gets nominated for an Oscar. If he wins, I would be okay with that too. Rhett and I got home at 2:30 a.m. to an entire house, asleep. So we joined the ranks.

On Saturday, we removed the last two remaining cabinets in the unfinished basement and studded the entire west wall; built a cantilevered work bench (hangs from the wall, not standing on the floor) and wired some electrical outlets.

Meanwhile, dad was installing the molding we had copied, in the upstairs bathroom. We couldn't find molding to match the rest of the house so he took a piece to a carpenter and had a die made. It matches perfectly! Hey, it only took a year to get it finished...but I still have to paint so it's not quiet done yet. Ugh.

Saturday night, Rhett, Jennifer, Dad and I had planned on going to see The Dark Knight again (Rhett and I went by ourselves on Friday). I didn't really feel like going again, as I was at that point where if I was sitting in a dark movie theater, I would totally fall asleep. I thought about skipping the movie and making an appearance at Chris' housewarming/birthday party...but didn't. Mom, Madeline and I started watching Ratatouille instead but we all ended up passing out about half way in. So we hit the sack.

Speaking of Madeline...she's a hoot! She's talking up storm now, very polite too. At one point, mom was doing some ironing (love her!) and Madeline decided to put on one of my shirts. Cute isn't it? Rhett and I taught her to do the "Redrum" thing with her index finger, and mimic the little boy's voice from The Shining. Jennifer was not amused.

Anyway, we did some other small crap around the house and they finally left yesterday around 5:30..at which point I took a shower, made dinner, and took a nap. I then watched the rest of Ratatouille. Not a bad show, but not Pixar's best either. The storm we had last night totally rocked too! I didn't loose power for too long, which was nice.

That pretty much wraps up my weekend. I'm sitting here at work, wishing I was at home...in bed.

The ole switch-a-roo

As much as I like the white iPhone, I've decided to switch to a black one. I know, such a sucker, right? Anyway, I went into the AT&T store today to place an order for a black 16GB model. The phones are sold out nationwide and AT&T is doing direct fulfillment. (When I bought mine, James was about 10 people behind me in line and had to go this route). Anyway, I was able to buy the new black one for the same price as the white one...with tax, $328. I asked the sales woman what my options were for the old one. She said I could return it for a 10% restocking fee, or just sell it on EBay. (They are going for $800 or so on there).

Carrie is intersted in one of the phones, but she's not eligable for an upgrade and would have to pay full price. I'm thinking I'll sell her my white one when the black one comes in. Hey, they didn't charge me extra for it. Why the hell not?

BTW, did I mention I love this phone? Heheh.

iPhone Mania!

So, today, I did something I never saw myself doing. I stood inline for an iPhone. I got to the AT&T store around 7:45 a.m. and ended up being about 45 in line (or so). After waiting for an hour and a half, I walked out with a brand new 16GB white iPhone 3G. I would have preferred a black one, but I got the second to last white one they had. Maybe I'll order a black one and return this. Not sure yet.

It took me a while to get it to activate. It seems that Apple didn't plan on a million people across the planet trying to activate their new toy. The phone turned itself on around 11 a.m. this morning and I was able to activate using iTunes around 1 p.m. Needless to say, I'm playing with it when I should be working. But hey, it's slow around here because people don't know what's going on with the whole InBev purchase. This is a nice distraction.

4th of July Weekend

I spent this past weekend in Cape. I was originally going to go down there on Thursday, but then decided Friday morning sounded better. But as fate would have it, I didn't leave until about 3:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon. I spent most of the morning doing some yard work, after I finally woke up, talking with my neighbor across the street (not the asshole neighbor). I was going to put on the primer coat of paint in the basement, but decided I had procrastinated enough and should head to Cape.

This weekend was great. I got to play with Madeline a bunch...she's now 2 years old and is becoming less "breakable" with each passing day. Guess who she ran to when her dad, grandpa, and I all walked in the room at the same time. Yeah, that's right...it was me. She was running across the family room yelling "Uncle Rhyno!" and stood in front of me with her arms stretched and said, "Up Uncle Rhyno!" It was the first time she has done that, especially upon seeing me for the first time in a few months.

Friday night we all went to Jackson to see the fireworks. They sucked. But on Saturday, we had a birthday party for Madeline. There were tons of people at my parent's house, way too much food consumed, etc. For a couple hours, my father and I sat in their family room watching his new Plasma TV with the HD Cable I installed for him. We were making snide comments about the History Channel's "Unexplained-large-animals-that-drunk-people-misidentified-as-bigfoot-etc" program. It was a blast.

On Sunday I helped dad re-install all of the home theater components that had to be removed so the bookshelves could be rebuilt to allow for a HD TV. We went to Best Buy and bought a new stereo receiver, cables, etc. It was all working fine when I left, but mom was able to hose the system before I even got home. Diagnosing new equipment over the phone is such a pain in the ass. I'm going to have Rhett scan the remotes and send them to me.

Today, I'm sitting here at work. I'm the only one in my department here today. The phone has rang twice this morning. It's such a weird atmosphere around the building these past few weeks. The mood keeps fluctuating with the news reports. It's a roller coaster of emotion.