Starting to get back into work and my projects after going out on Paternity leave. Our first Child was born on May 9th! 5 Pounds, 15 ounces. He is awesome and all of the grandparents can’t wait to spoil him.  I should hopefully be back to blogging more regularly in the next few weeks!!

I had an issue with my Iphone where it wouldn't receive phone calls or voicemails for about 60-90 minutes at a time. Normally, I would welcome a little bit of quiet in my day, but unfortunately my wife is 8 months pregnant.  So being out of touch for any amount of time is completely unnacceptable.  My first stop to resolve this issue was the AT&T store where I had picked up my iphone, unfortunately they were only allowed to swap my SIM card. Unfortunately this solution didn't work either, and I scheduled an appointment at my local apple store.  This is where I was impressed: 1. There is an amazingly simple form that needs to be filled out on the apple site, you select the time, you get a confirmation email. 2. When I ended up having a conflict a few hours before my appointment, I pulled up the confirmation email and followed the link to change my appointment. Another Plus in my book! It was a little hazy when I got to the apple store on what I was supposed to do, with the wall to wall people and lack of signage I just headed towards the Genius bar. I was approached by an employee in an Orange shirt, who asked if I had an appointment, she checked me in on her Iphone app and told me a technician would be available in a few minutes. I wandered over to an Imac and checked my mail, and noticed I could check my status in the queue to see a genius, and there was also a TV above the bar that mentioned I was next to be seen. The personalized service was a nice touch, and was completely unnecessary but does give that feeling of "your important to us".  When I was finally escorted to my "genius" I expected I would have to convince him that there was something wrong with the phone, instead he listed to my issues, plugged my iphone into his macbook, ran a diagnostic, and said "did you back it up?" which I had, had me wipe the phone and presented me with a shiny new Iphone.  That was it, painless, simple and only about 15 minutes of my time. Kudo's to Apple for making the process simple, seamless and low stress.

So i've been looking for a used Imac for the last 2 months on Ebay. My wife really wants one for christmas for her ScrapBook room and with the new baby on the way it will be a good computer for her to mess with photos, printouts and page layouts while being in close to the baby. I'm pretty familiar with Mac's as my first computer was a Mac SE when I was a kid and my family had Mac's until they did away with the powercomputing clones. A new shiny Imac is a bit tight for the budget these days with the economy and so i'm looking for a used unit. On ebay I see apple products going all the way back to Apple G4 units which are Pre-intel days. I've already decided it has to be intel, as it allows me to dual boot into windows, just in case my wife hates it. I've had great success on ebay buying used items for what I considered a fair market price. However, i'm just amazed at the price used Apple equipment goes for on Ebay. For instance this lovely 24" imac with 3.0ghz intel chip: http://cgi.ebay.com/iMac-24-3-06-GHz-Core-2-Duo_W0QQitemZ280279277990QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item280279277990 On ebay, current bid is $1,975 dollars, an equally configured unit on the apple store is $2200 dollars!! Why buy used? I almost wonder if Apple is scowering ebay and making sure they jack the prices up on these things, and then buy them and sell them on their refurb store which is overpriced as well. A more suitable unit for us would be the 17" imac with a 1.75ghz processor, but i'm even seeing these units go for $900 dollars, and this unit is easily 2 years old. Try to sell your used Dell computer for that price on Ebay! Its not going to happen. I'm not giving up on ebay yet and i might get this 17" imac for a price less than $600 bucks, but i'm not holding my breath at this point! Or maybe Pystar won't get sued into oblivion by apple and will continue to sell a very reasonable configuration for about $600 bucks.... which would be way better than paying $2000+ for an official unit from apple for the same specs. But i'm not holding my breath for Pystar to win their case against apple.

Well after two years of drooling over the Acura RL, I finally have one. Its a blue with black interior 2005 model. My wife is relieved that i'll stop mentioning how I want one, and my hour and a half commute will be in much better style then my Ford Mustang I used to own.