Welcome to the Cult of Steve

I’m still a little astonished that I found this eMac just sitting by the road. It does kind of even out things as far as my electrical yos and woes tally goes. Yes, I had to spend out £81 on fixing my ailing laptop, but I have, over the course of roughly the same time period, managed to get a complete (save for mouse and keyboard) Mac. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that buying an iPod had almost turned me into a Macolyte (do you see what I did there. It’s a bit of a portmanteau, blending together Mac and acolyte. See, I can even do linguistic freestyling. I got the mad skills). Well, this eMac is making a pretty compelling argument to switch teams. It definitely looks a hell of a lot prettier on my desk than my old PC did, especially since I finally took delivery of my white Apple keyboard. The reason it took a whole week to arrive was that the seller didn’t bother to post the thing until Friday. Any time I’ve ever sold anything on eBay I’ve always made sure I posted it as soon as possible. I really don’t understand how somebody could put off doing it for almost a week. Anyway, so that was problem no. 1 with my apple keyboard. Problem no. 2 was potentially more serious. It had a wonky spacebar. I’ve started to get the impression that somebody up there wantsmetotypeeverythinglikethisforeverandever. Fortunately, I completely failed to remember that I’d pledged never to fiddle with things ever again, and promptly set about trying to rectify the problem. As luck would have it, the base of this particular type of apple keyboard is completely transparent, so I was able to actually see what the problem was before I started ripping keys off. Fortunately, this time, I didn’t completely screw things up, so I’m now the proud owner of a new and fully functional Apple keyboard. The thing is, despite the problems I had with delivery delays and disrepair, I was still pretty loathe to give the seller bad feedback. Why? Why could this possibly be? Essentially I got bad service. It took an age to get to me and was kind of broken when it finally made it here. The thing is, I kept thinking of perfectly valid reasons for the problems. What if there was some sort of family emergency that prevented the guy from taking the package to the post office? Besides, when they finally did send the keyboard it went first class, not second class as they’d said in the listing. Subsequently the postage actually cost more that they’d charged (and how often does that happen with eBay stuff). Of course, if they’d posted it several days earlier that wouldn’t have happened, but then I guess t hat wouldn’t have been possible owing to the dead Grandmother (I imagine the family emergency would probably involve the death of an elderly relative. After all, old people seem to die all the time). And as for the (easily repairable) damage; wasn’t it quite likely that the retaining clip for the space bar had come away during transit?

Actually, I haven’t I haven’t dispensed with my PC altogether. It’s still sitting in the integrated PC tower cubby hole on my desk. I’ve simply removed the old, beige monitor and swapped it over for the shiny white eMac. After that I hooked up the PC to my HD telly so that I can use it for downloads and streaming pictures from iPlayer and 4 on demand. Pretty neat huh? Or maybe it’s just a way for me to earn more geek points?

The place where I ordered the laptop keyboard was actually pretty efficient. At least that’s what I thought when the postman handed me a package on Thursday morning. That’s fast work considering the fact that I only ordered it late on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, once I opened the package my glee turned in to disappointment. Whilst the keyboard inside looked just about right, when I tried to fix it into place, it became obvious that they’d set the wrong one. None of the screw hole matched, so it was going to have to go back. I made a cal to the spare parts company and the guy on the other end of the line asked me to send back the incorrect keyboard and email him with some pictures of the one I needed, just to make sure they got it right this time. You’d think that would be easy. After all, all I’d have to do was take a picture with my camera phone, send it to my mini-laptop via Bluetooth, attach it to the email and I’d be done. You’d think that, (I know I did) but then you (and I) would be completely wrong. First off, for some reason, the phone wouldn’t connect to the laptop. I’m going to blame the phone for this. You’ll see why later. After that I tried to whip out the memory card and transfer the file through the memory card slot. Of course I couldn’t do that because I’d been forced to save the pictures onto the phone memory because the memory card was full. I’d actually bought a 4gb SD card, but that seemed to cause my increasingly pedantic phone to crap out, so I was forced to go back to using the 512mb card that came with it. Anyway, I erased some pictures, transferred the photos over to the memory card, shoved the memory card into the laptop, attached the pictures to an email, sent the email, realised that I didn’t have the right email address, called the company back, got the address, resent the email (in which I requested that thy reimburse me for the postage costs. So far they haven’t) and waited. In other words, it was a bit of a pain. After that, I headed off to the post office and handed my package to the typically incompetent staff who completely ignored my request to send it by recorded delivery. Anyway, once I’d finally sorted everything out I walked ou the pot office and set off home. Then I walked right back the way I’d come and walked into the shop neighbouring the post office. I’d pretty much needed a haircut for a fair few weeks now, but since I could never seem to find the time to make it to the barbers (when you have virtually limitless time you spend pretty much all of it doing very little that’s actually constructive) I hadn’t bothered. Now, since I was right outside, I figured that I might as well get a haircut. I think I’m actually starting to develop a pathological fear of haircuts. You’d probably have the same issue too if, every morning when you woke up, you left half your hair on your pillow. The truth is though, and this is going to sound kind of bizarre, I tend to look less bald once they lop off some of my hair. I guess it’s because the weight of the long hair, working in unison with the laws of physics, pulls down the hair from my scalp and opens up a gaping chasm of baldness. Short hair has more of a tendency to lie flat and patch up the gaps. Still, despite that, I’m still quite loath to do it. I just like having long hair. That’s why my Xbox Avatar still has the same haircut I had circa 1999.

On the plus side, they sent out the correct keyboard straight away, and it arrived on Saturday along with the Apple keyboard. No postage refund though, and I’m not sure I can be bothered to hassle them about it. After all, it was only £2.10. Is it really worth the effort? Isn’t my time more valuable than that? That was supposed to be a rhetorical question by the way. Even still I suspect that the answer would be no, my time really isn’t that valulable.

Some way back a couple of paragraphs ago, I bitched a little bit about my current mobile phone, the Sony Ericsson K850i. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve been all that happy with it. In the past I’ve been a bit fan of Sony Ericsson. My last five phones have been made by those guys and each model has been better and more useable than the last. That is, until I got the K850i. On paper, it seems great. Five megapixel camera, SD memory card slot (the old ones would only take the more expensive memory stick cards. The K850i does both), xenon flash…. the list of great features just goes on and on. Unfortunately, the phone is way less than the sum of its parts. Every time I take a close up picture requiring flash, the phone does one of two things. Either the flash isn’t potent enough and all I get is a series of indistinct, silhouette-ish blurs or the flash goes crazy and everyone’s facial features are wiped out by the blinding light. This didn’t happen with my old K800 with its supposedly inferior 3.2 Megapixel camera. Not ever. After a while I noticed a more serious issue. I use my phone as an alarm clock, so it’s kind of vital that it stays functional overnight. Overnight, the phone shut itself off completely. My alarm didn’t go off. Fortunately, through some perversion of nature, I’d got used to waking up in the morning (I’d much rather wait until the afternoon. Midday is a much more civilised hour and I’ll do whatever it takes to get businesses worldwide to recognise this fact), so after a bit of a rush, I managed to make it in to work on time (well, as on time as I ever was). The problem is, the phone keeps shutting itself down at random times. Now, I’m famed for always being contactable through my mobile. The only time I usually won’t answer the phone is when I’m on the tube, and simply because I can’t due to the lack of reception (I do hope they get that sorted out soon. I mean, if the French can do it…) or engaged in an intimate situation (there was a time when that meant I’d be having sex. Ah, halcyon days. Now it just means I’m in the shower or on the bog. Oh, or I could be engaging in some personal intimacy, if you get my meaning). Anyway, if none of that was going on, I’d answer the phone. Now, with this stupid mobile, I could be out of contact at any random time. It’s maddening. It’s completely spoiling my reputation for easy contactability. On the plus side, since I currently don’t have a job, I don’t have to get up in the morning, so there’s no need to worry about the alarm any more.
I’m eligible for an upgrade in February, so at least I’ll be able to pick out a replacement pretty soon.

I’d been thinking about maybe getting an LG Renoir (touchscreen, 8mp camera, gps. On paper it sounds great). Actually, I’ve been so impressed with my iPod Touch that I’m giving some thought to getting an iPhone, despite the woefully inadequate camera and the extortionate tariff (to get anything worthwhile you’ve got to sign up to an 18 month contract costing £35 a month). Under no circumstances would it be vaguely sensible to get another Sony Ericsson phone. Not after I was so badly let down by my current one. I’d have to be completely mad to do it.

Anyway, I’ve weighed up the options, done some extensive research and I think I’ve decided to go for the C905. If you’re curious about what that’s like, you should be able to find it on the Sony Ericsson website.

Oh, and just as a postscript to this… post, my life will get more interesting (hopefully) so with any luck my future entries wont focus so much on the mundane tedium of my existence. Personally I’m hoping to add a little bit more sex in the future.