I knew that when my laptop went into service with Acer, I would be given a refurbished hard drive for replacement. I was right. Only 7 months in, and this hard drive is acting up already. I’m not sure what the cause of all this is though. But I’ve detected the first signs of the inevitable.

It first starts off with a very slow boot. Then from there on out, any sound coming from the laptop is very slow. Almost like playing a video in a rough slow motion. So far I haven’t seen the signs of CPU slowness, so I know I still have time to evacuate everything off this laptop.

I went out and purchased a brand new laptop hard drive from Memory Express. I was expecting to pay no more than $150 for the hard drive and enclosure. Nope…walked out $260 short. I wanted a 120 GB hard drive, but they had none. They only carried 100GB and 160GB both being 7200s. $150 for 100GB or $190 for the 160GB. I couldn’t help it but get the 160GB one. As for the enclosure, it’s eSATA and fairly small. So I can expect to carry it around with me using the soon-to-be-ripped-out hard drive from this laptop.

Once I’ve evacuated my hard drive of my prized processions, no not porn, more along the lines of projects and what not. Until I can get my new hard drive in, this will be my last post using this hard drive.

I just found out something really freakin’ cool. Google maps on the iPhone will cache.

I’ve tested this numerous times to be sure. Video soon to come.

Video of the activation and unlocking will be up hopefully by the end of the weekend.

39 MEGAPIXELS!!

I can image buying one of these beasts and being asked:

Would you like to buy insurance with your portable Hubble Telescope?

Just moments after my last post, reception called telling me that it has arrived!

I won’t be opening it up here right now, so pictures and videos will come later tonight.

So my predicted day of arrival for my iPhone was a bit off but for the better. I estimated that it would take up till this Friday to arrive. But to my surprise, I have been notified that it shall arrive today.

TODAY!!

So as I sit here with available time on my hands, I’m either refreshing my email box to see if reception has sent me a confirmation on the arrival of my iPhone in the office, or I’m photoshopping faces of people on our Blue Business Unit team.

I’m a tad bit excited I’ll admit. I went to The Telephone Booth last night to pick up a SIM card. The girl who assisted me was fairly cool. Not only was I choose pay-as-you-go, she said she’d help me out transferring my number from Telus. I’ve been screwed enough with Telus that I’m fed up with them and their support. So I’m seeing if i can get a better plan. And since my contract has been up for close to a year now, I can drop them anytime I want.

She was also half Filipino, which was cool.

Awesome, just when I was about to get cozy and go to sleep, the fire alarm went off. Not mine, I took out the battery in it because it kept going off every time I used the oven. This was the hallway fire alarms. I thought it was a very loud apartment alarm, but seemed too loud for it to be one.

At first I wasn’t sure what to make of the situation, but after I started hearing doors opening and people taking the stairs, I decided that it would be a good idea to leave too. You could smell smoke as you passed the 8th floor.

Nothing really big happened. Though I counted 4 fire trucks at the scene (4th Ave, 4th St SW). Stood around for 20 minutes before they let us back in.

But those 20 minutes of standing gave me time to think about one thing. I have a shit load a electronics to lose to a fire. I know it’s not as valuable as pets, but it’s still a lot of money. If I were to ever grab one thing, it’d be my hard drive of photos. Everything else I’ll weep about, but these photos of my family and my life are irreplaceable.

Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my camera with me to take pictures. And no…the above picture is no my apartment ;). There really anything to see anyways.

The worst part of all this was probably the climb back up to the stairs since everyone was waiting in line for an elevator. 28 floors…that’s gotta suck.

After debating if I should get a brand new iPod that Apple recently introduced, my friend Peter convinced me that I should wait till they have cheaper iPhones.

And within days, they’ve finally did it. I have to thank Geoff who gave me the brilliant idea of how to get my iPhone here to Canada since the Canadian store doesn’t carry any yet and the US store only ships to a US address.

The solution was simple. They needed a US address to ship. Why not ship it to our Chicago office? I swear, that light bulb above my head didn’t just lite up, it exploded. And there I was last night debating if I should pick a 4GB iPhone on eBay for $800, yeah right…

If all goes well, I could have it in my hands to start the unlocking process for the following weekend. Stay tuned as I take you through the unboxing and unlocking.

Today, Apple reveals their new iPod line up at “The Beat Goes On“. The 3rd generation iPod Nano, iPod Classic, iPod Shuffle, and the iPod Touch.

Now I can’t decide whither I should get the iPod Classic or the iPod Touch. I know, I know, I recently got my iPod Nano a couple months ago (which reminds me to finish part III), so what am I thinking of getting one of these? I guess that’s what I get for jumping on the band wagon too late. Should have waited, but the during the time I’ve gotten my Nano, I’ve been pretty happy with it.

I’m thinking of just selling my Nano for some relative price. But I’m still stuck between the choice of the two iPods. In one hand, I’d love to have the 160GB iPod classic. That would take care of me wanting to watch a movie while on the go. And on the other hand, the iPod Touch…I see it as the iPhone minus the phone and camera. This seriously would help the temptation of bring around my laptop. Most places I go to, I can find a hotspot to jack in. Having the Safari browser in this would help me out there. And alos, I won’t be bound to any dumb contract to use it unlike the iPhone.

Regardless, I’m leaning towards the iPod Touch. With our Onicom discount we get as employees at Critical Mass, I can save myself 17% of the regular Canadian price. I’m sure there’s people out there that would disagree with me on this, but you know what, I have the cash, and I’ve been good all year. I’m in no hurry in purchasing a brand new car either. So why not.

The world is one more step closer to opening up the world of holograms which seemed only possible in movies such as Star Wars.

I wish I could give you guys more details, but even I can’t understand most of the lingo. The only word I probably recognize is mirror or 360.

I do say check out the video also. It’s pretty damn impressive!