Ten Tentacles - So many arms, so little time.

Ok, I’m going to keep this short because it’s dinner time.

Yes, there are people reporting activation problems with their iPhones. Most of them are porting numbers from other carriers. This requires the other carriers’ cooperation. Were there other scattered issues? Certainly. Was the release botched by Apple and AT&T? Hardly. Most people have reported activations in less than an hour. Most of those got their phones working in less than five minutes.

Good news doesn’t sell papers, or draw hits to a website. Read the comments, though, when they are available because there is often a lot more truth in them. There is no such thing as a perfect release with a product of this magnitude. Anyone remember World of Warcraft’s go-live? Today, I don’t think 8 million customers can be wrong.

Get a clue people. The phone is amazing and the release has been incredibly painless given the anticipation and volume. There’s only so much that can be done at once.

This article over on Yahoo! cracks me up. It seems to me Mr. Auchard went to the San Francisco Apple Store with an agenda. His agenda seems to have been to show the world that no one is interested in iPhone.

He quotes five people, who he introduces as a “… handful of opportunists who have camped out until the iPhone goes on sale,” to argue that the people in line aren’t there to actually buy the phone. It turns out, according to him, that these “street-smart capitalists” are there to either buy the phone for resale, sell their places in line, or entertain the crowd (does anyone else feel a sudden light go on with that last one). If they are so “street-smart“, then clearly there is a market for those things.

The fact is that these people he quotes are a handful, in a sea of real customers, that make his point. The last two he quotes, two street performers, utterly destroy his argument in my opinion.

“I saw all these people online, on blogs and on Flickr and stuff, and they all look bored. I said, this is San Francisco, we have to do this right!” says Levkoff, who sports an upturned waxed moustache in the style of Salvador Dali.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t know any buskers or street-performers who camp out in places where they aren’t going to make good money; the more people there are, the better. And with so many people in line, why is it Mr. Auchard only quotes a handful who are there to, in fact, capitalize on the demand.

Nice reporting, Yahoo! No wonder Google is kicking your asses.

I used to think, up until about five minutes ago, that the mullet occured by accident. At most it was, in my mind, something seriously disturbed men and bull-dykes did to themselves with scissors and a Flowbee.

I am sitting in a Great Clips in Mt. Airy, NC, waiting for The Boy’s turn to get his hair cut, and I just witness a man ask for, receive, examine (as though he might possibly have gotten a bad one … or a good one), and pay for a mullet. He asked for it and then paid for it.

People worry me.

Apropos of noithing, I’m posting this from my Blackberry on a WAP version of the post page for Wordpress; so cool.

I threw together this little video from some snippets I shot the other day with my camera. It’s not the best quality video, but I’ve been promising goat movies for a while and I thought the new kids were a perfect opportunity. Hope you enjoy! If you’re having trouble getting the video to play, here’s a direct link.

Last Friday night we lost a chicken. Any loss of life is tragic, but our chickens have lived good, long lives for chickens; we haven’t lost a single one of the original chickens we bought a few years ago to disease or any sort of reason relating to their care. We’re good husbands. However, this chicken had injured her leg (or more correctly had it injured for her by the rooster, no doubt, in the throws of passion). There wasn’t much we could do about it but let it heal on its own; there was no visible wound. It seems, though, that it slowed her down enough to make her easy prey for a passing fox or bobcat. Whatever got to her wasn’t very efficient, though, and left much of the carcass behind which I buried to keep our dogs out of it.

Last night we lost two healthy chickens to a more efficient predator; all that was left were some feathers. I’m not sure what’s going on, but we have never had predations before.

This morning, though, we had two new goats born. That’s them pictured up there. It seems things always seem to balance out around here. Only, we’re still down one animal. My concern now is for these kids. They’re small, not much bigger than a chicken. We will have to consider options for their safe housing.

For those who want them, here are close-ups of each one. We are tentatively naming them Chrysanthemum (Thing 1), and Blix (Thing 2).

Here’s to hoping we can keep them from becoming fox or bobcat food.

So, I’m running around killing Defias Bandits, like you do, and trying to kill The Collector when I realize that I just can’t take on three mobs at once; Rogues are bad ass, but not so much at level 11. I put out a quick message to the General channel, asking for help, and within a few minutes I have a couple other players who also need to finish the quest and we decide to kick some brigand ass together. Pretty standard fair for a night in the Elwynn Forest.

After the skirmish, as we basked in the afterglow of the dying screams of well run through thieves, the conversation went something like this (I am paraphrasing, but also trying to be as accurate as my memory will allow):

[Party][Me] Hey, he’s dead. You guys can come and collect the ring if you like.
[Party][Priest] wow look at all the gramarz they are hurting my eyes
[Party][Druid] i dont think i can red that
[Party][Me] Yeah, that’s what school does to you.

Ok, for those of you not paying attention: I got made fun of for using punctuation and capitalization. Let me repeat that with different words. I got made fun of for typing a legible sentence.

Say what you want about RP servers, but at least there people type legibly. This was a PvE server, and the PvP servers are almost worse.

Niños pendejos …

It’s been about a week now and there has been no noticeable change in the level or frequency of communication with those I am in contact with on a daily basis. In case you hadn’t noticed, I have not been on AIM or Yahoo! or ICQ for a bit, though I have still retained my fondness for the conjunction or.

“Why oh why have you done this,” you ask? Well, the answer is, simple. No really; simple. It makes my life simpler. I originally shifted from one instant messenger to another, retaining all previous accounts, either following the latest, greatest feature or because this or that client wouldn’t run on whatever particular flavor of operating system I was running at the time. With the advent of multi-protocol instant messenger clients like Pidgin (formerly GAIM) and Trillian, the later became less of an issue, but there were still some differences between feature sets that made having multiple accounts worth while. It’s occurred to me recently, though, that it’s no longer worth the hassle of remembering all the passwords and maintaining all the buddy lists.

So, I’ve picked one and, for now, I’m sticking to it. Since they are already poised to take over the world, I’ve gone with The Google. Many of you are already using Google Talk, and a large segment of you who aren’t have Gmail accounts, which gives you an automatic Google Talk account. There is, in fact, a built-in Google Talk client in the Gmail web interface. If you’d prefer to use a desktop client (and let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to do it on a desktop), here are some instructions for setting up Google Talk in iChat, Pidgin (if you’re still using GAIM, stop … really … slow poke), and Trillian. Those wishing to find me on Google Talk, can find me at [MARIO dot DELGADO at GMAIL dot COM], which also happens to be my main email address (see how handy that is).

All hail The Google!

I’ve started yet another character (I have ten I am actively playing and leveling now). I really like the Gnomes and I’ve been liking playing Rogues lately, so I went with a Gnome Rogue. Having a female Gnome already (Mibbiwicket), I decided to go with a male this time. His name is Olffwick. I spent a great deal of time picking a face for him, during character creation. I wasn’t really happy with most of the male face options (is it just me or do none of the males in WoW smile). I am somewhat disturbed by my final choice; it was the lesser of several evils.

Can some one explain to me what the deal is with this Uncle Pervy grin on his face? I swear it looks like he is thinking Very Bad Things. Add to that the Gnome Dance, and sheesh.

The packet arrived on Monday. I am officially accepted to this year’s United States Fencing Association Coaches College for coaching instruction in Epee I. This will be the second year I’ve attended Coaches College, and I am really looking forward to it.

This year will be somewhat different from last year. Last year Foil I was taught by Maestro Alex Beguinet, whom I knew pretty well before I arrived at Coaches College; Epee I is taught by Zoila Palacio. I have never met her, so there is the apprehension that always comes with meeting a new instructor along with the uncertainty of new expectations.

There is also the additional apprehension of not knowing anyone else attending this session. Last year I went with my club mate, Jim, so I had a built in partner. Jim isn’t able to attend this year, and, though Henri is attending Foil I, that is in the second session. Thankfully, Dr. Robinson (our head coach) will be there, as she is every year, to teach first-aid and sports safety. I’m sure I’ll see Maestro Beguinet around campus as well. I won’t be entirely alone.

These fears and uncertainties are all normal, though. I’m not letting it get to me. I will go and I will either succeed or fail. I have the advantage of knowing what to expect as far as the over-all program is concerned, having done it last year, and so that does create a certain comfort level.

My biggest issue right now is getting my knee back in shape. I fear I will be one of the old guys, this year, that I saw last year icing their knees down every night while pouring over the manuals and lessons for the next day. I really need to find a good brace that will not cost me the leg it is meant to support.

So, the end of last month was Children’s Week in World of Warcraft. It took me a little while to figure out why every other player I saw running around either had an orc kid or a human kid running around behind them, depending on faction (bare with me, I’ve only been playing a few months), but when I finally asked someone I laughed my ass off and ran to get my very own orphan.

I won’t go into exactly what is involved in participating in Children’s Week; a lot of you play and already know and those who don’t can follow the link above to learn more if they like.

I did it with all of my characters except Kootti, who wasn’t tenth level in time. I’m looking forward to hopefully being 60th level with at least some of my characters next year; the baby eleks and beholders were awesome looking!

In the mean time here are some shots of my various characters and their orphans during my runs. I didn’t remember to take screenshots of all of them, so there’s only these few:

The coolest thing about this whole Children’s Week thing was that it has made me aware of all the other periodic events that Blizzard runs in World of Warcraft. I’m really looking forward to the next Darkmoon Faire, which I think starts tomorrow. Wee!