You're in your place and you know where you are in your Shangri-la

[austin_dern]

So, the shopping at the mall with my sister. She wanted to get a connector of some kind so her truck's audio system would talk to her iPhone and she could play podcasts over it. Fine motive, but she didn't know exactly what she needed, just that her husband knew. But he didn't know what it was offhand, since it depends on the audio system in her truck. We were at the mall, to which we'd gone in my car. So there really wasn't much point to our going to Radio Shack after all, other than to feel vaguely depressed. She did buy a new Otter Case for her iPhone. She had damaged the old one a little bit when her phone accidentally fell while she was mowing the lawns and she ran over the phone with her tractor. The case and the surface protector were a little scratched. Excuse me. The case and the surface protector were a little scratched after being run over by a tractor! I mean, wow.

We also discovered that the store which had been a pet shop until that closed last year has reopened as an adoption center for the county SPCA. They have a select group of dogs and cats there, which is adorable, although I admit I miss the cages in back with the guinea pigs and rabbits and mice and ferrets and whatnot. The dogs were sleeping and cats playing the first time we went past it; when we went past again, the cats were sleeping and the dogs playing. Must have been a shift change.

Also we had the chance to check out the new Microsoft Store, opened a mere six years or so after the Apple Store opened up there. The easy joke to make would be that Microsoft had duplicated the Apple Store and just made it look a little uglier, and ... ah ... well, actually, yeah, they mostly did. It's larger in square footage, but the basic concept is duplicated not quite slavishly. The big difference is they had a play area up front where you could fiddle with their Kinetix or whatever it's called motion-sensitive game play stuff, and Apple hasn't got anything to compare to that. They also had a big screen open with Skype chats to other Microsoft Stores, one of them in the other mall in the area I know to have an Apple Store. It's really a shame As The Apple Turns isn't around to cover this one.

Trivia: Johnny Vander Meer was the first pitcher to throw two consecutive no-hitters; he also won fewer games than he lost over his 13-year major league career. Source: The Jersey Game, James M DiClerico, Barry J Pavelec.

Currently Reading: The Sun And The Moon, Matthew Goodman. It's a pretty good read, although, I'd like to have seen more of the New York Sun articles describing the hoax, rather than just the summaries. Well, maybe not. What was lively hoax writing for 1835 is probably relatively dry these days. But, still.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Speaking of iPod cables, did you ever find...??

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I haven't yet, but I am narrowing down the places they can be hiding.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

If you don't, I know what I'm going to find on eBay at some point, so I can listen to music in your car on trips!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

For the record I haven't pinned it down yet, unless it's among the cables I put into a bag in a suitcase, but I'll have the chance to figure that out soon. Or I should.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

I've heard of good things about those otter cases. I guess you have to work pretty hard to keep otters out of something they want to get into.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I hadn't paid them much attention, but it's hard to ignore this testimony.

On the cartoon Brandy and Mister Whiskers I recall one episode where, as a running gag, the otter regular character was trying to break open a particularly stubborn clam. It started with rocks, then moved up to, like, auger drills and dynamite without success. Quiet but effective gag.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

AtAT's terribly drawn out closure was such a loss to the Mac community. ^_^; The guy was able to poke fun quite subtly, and justifiably - and that style of considered satire is quite an art. (The Onion may often be rather broadly played, but still, it's difficult not to feel respect for their writers also, particularly considering just how beyond satire some of their political targets appear to try to make themselves..) CARS was a welcome substitute, but they too dropped away after a while.

Ah, for another site along those lines, even if only weekly, or even monthly - I can certainly appreciate that trying to maintain a daily schedule would become quite wearing. Scoopertino does have some enjoyable stories, but, the few times I've gone over there, it's simply not quite worked in the same way, and The Joy of Tech rarely seems to hit me.

I've tried a couple cases for my iPhone, but they've never really felt quite right in my pocket, with the added bulk. Thus, most of its life has been spent naked.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised when I run across an old bookmark or an old copy of my main web page and find sites that I used to visit daily or so and now don't even exist. There's so rarely something where another site fills in the role that the old did. For example, the Miss Snark blog about an agent's perspective in the writing business ... I know there are plenty of other agents blogging, but, something filling that ecological niche? Not so much.