Netfrost

So the lemon car saga continues.

For those not in the know… My Santa Fe, which has been running great since the day I got it 5 years ago (barring it getting totaled 2 months after getting it) was about to out live it’s warranty. About 5 days before the expiration, my power windows, locks and mirrors stopped working. I took a look and found that all three systems were all under the same 30amp fuse… that had blown. So… I went to Canadian Tire, bought a new one, put it in and everything started working.

The next day, it blew again. So I called the dealership and booked an appointment… for 2 days before the warranty expiry. Bring it in, and get a call later that day stating that the cause was a badly insulated wire in the door.

So I pick it up and drive home. The following day, I’m leaving work and all those power systems stop working again… Look under the hood and the fuse is blown again. So… back to the dealership.

They look at it all day long and call me, telling me they can’t figure out what the cause is, so they placed an order to get a new fuse box. I get to the dealership… I don’t even get out of their parking lot before it blows again.

A week goes by, nothing from them, so I call them… they tell me that the part hasn’t arrived. An other week goes by and still nothing… so I call them again, oh it’s in, you can bring it in on Friday (it’s Monday).

Friday arrives, I drop it off at 7:30am… ask them if I should just wait, or take the courtesy shuttle back to work. They tell me they won’t get to it till the afternoon… I go outside and see them bring the car in. I ask them again… No no, they’re just making room in the lot. I’m about to get on the shuttle and see them opening the hood… ask one last time… again, they tell me to just go… The shuttle drops me off and they call me to tell me it’s ready…

The weekend goes by and all is working… starting to get my hopes up, until I’m out at lunch yesterday and can’t close the windows… I had a spare fuse, so I pop it in… it blew.. so I’m stuck with the windows up and it looks like it’s going to rain.

Call the dealership and get an appointment for 1pm… I drive it in, they had closed the case… After blowing up at them, they agree it’s the same issue and should still be covered.

So I get a call from them a few minutes ago… and they now think it’s the ETAC… but they don’t have the part in house and have to order from overseas… so I’ll be an other week without windows… Now, they assured me this is the cause, but mentioned that if this isn’t it… they have NO IDEA what it could be.

I HATE CARS!

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So in 23 days Ange and I will be in Hollywood!
For someone as immersed in movies as me, this is a dream trip.
As I mention the trip to friends and co-workers, the standard question (other then asking if I’m going to a job interview at Pixar… Pixar’s in Emeryville people, not Hollywood) is, what do I have planned down there… Well, here’s the current plan.

We’ll arrive on the Thursday at around 1pm… get down to the hotel which is iin the same block as Mann’s Chinese Theater, the Kodak Theater, the walk of fame and Hollywood Highlands… After checking in and what not, we’ll be visiting those theaters, we then have reservations at Musso and Frank’s, Hollywood’s oldest restaurant… If there’s time somewhere in there… we’ll also check out Madame Tussaud’s (then collapse from jet lag)

The next day, our day will start off with a walking tour of Hollywood, it’s small groups and they go into lots of details. Later on in the day we’ll be going on a Home of the Stars tours. Ange has always wanted to go on one of these… so why not. We’ll then check out the Hollywood Museum and then in true Disney fanboy fashion… we’re going to see a movie at the El Capitan Theater.

The El Capitan is a movie theater, owned and operated by Disney, located literally across the street from our hotel. They tend to go all out and decorate the theater based on the film playing there… if ONLY we were going a week earlier, we’d get to see Toy Story 3… but no… they had to read Ange’s mind and pick something SHE would love… *shudder* Tinkerbell 3 :P

Saturday will be spent at Universal Studios… We’ve been to the one in Orlando a few times, but this is the actual Universal Studios, so I’m looking forward to it. We had also originally planned to go to the Hollywood Bowl as well to check out a show based on the music of the films from 20th Century Fox… however due to some issues with Ticket Master… (grrr) we won’t be doing that.

Sunday will be spent at Venice Beach, shopping, walking around and taking it easy… we may also have to find a way to get to Sprinkles, a cup cake shop that Ange has been dying to try for ages now.

Monday will be a tour of Warner Brothers Studio… again, something I can’t wait for… they offer 2 different tours, a 5 hour VIP tour… that costs a small fortune, and a 2 hour tour, that we’ll be taking. Later in the evening we’ll be taking a tour of the Egyptian Theater.

Tuesday we’ll be packing up and heading to Anaheim… again, due to circumstances out of our control (DAMN YOU Disneyland Hotel check-in Time) we won’t get a chance to go to the Disney California Adventure Park… I was actually really looking forward to seeing it (and yes, go on the Pixar Inspired rides), but I’m not paying 144$ only to visit the park from 3:30 pm to 8pm :P, so we’ll probably just slum it at Downtown Disney.

Wednesday will be spent at Disneyland. This should be interesting… I’ve been to Disney World more times that I can count, both as a kid and with Ange… I’m pretty sure I’ll find it odd, finding the rides I’m used to, located in different areas, and the small differences.

Then we leave to come back here and start planning our trip in march… on the Disney Wonder Cruise ship (more on this later)

So, as I started saying, everyone asks me what I plan on doing down there… once I give them the list… most people then ask… and are you going to take a vacation to relax from that?

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I ended up losing my last apple iPod/iPhone charging cable last week thanks to a hole in my pockets. Instead of going to Best Buy or the Apple Store and buying a new one like any normal person… I went out and bought an iPad. Ok, it’s no big secret that I’ve been a Mac Fanboy since the mid 90′s when I first started doing graphic design work and bough a Power Mac 7200… I instantly fell in love with Mac OS 7.2… from there, I had bought an iMac, 1st gen iPod… then went on to getting a Macbook… eventually upgrading it to a Macbook Pro… upgrading my old iPod to an iPod Touch… and eventually getting an iPhone 3G.

So… it’s no surprise to anyone who knows me that I’d take the plunge and buy an iPad. Plus I really needed one (let me believe it)… First, I lost my charging cable and would have to rely on the charger in my busted car… or rely on iws’ cable at work… then, there’s the fact that when I go home on Friday, Satan Dog, went on a rampage and destroyed several things, including my PSP, which I was planning on bringing with me on my trip to Cali to keep me entertained on the plane…

So, there you have it… justification. Ange and I headed out Saturday morning, and bought a 16Gig WiFi only iPad, and a case for it.

Now, before all you haters out there start bitching about the iPad… yes, I’ve heard all of the complaints and issues with the iPad… that it’s basically an oversized iPod Touch. Yes, there are some issues I’ve found with it… but all in all, I think it was a great investment for me. Especially for what I use it for… basically a way to check my email, and surf the net when the wife is watching something on TV that I’m not a fan of. And then there’s apps like Air Video, that in itself makes it worth it. And then there’s the other main reason I wanted it for… Comic Books! Disney/Marvel released an app a while back, that allows you to buy digital comics and read them… which is great… but I’m a DC fan… well they just released one too!

As I mentioned, there are some issues that annoy me with it… first and foremost… Smudging! This is something I had said back when the iPhone first came out… but when you make the screen several times bigger, it’s several times more annoying. Then, there’s the issue of non native apps… Since all my iPhone apps are synchronized with my laptop… when I hooked up the iPad for the first time, I had the option to upload all those apps to it… well… any app not specifically designed for it, show up as the size of an iPhone in the big screen. There’s an option to double it’s size.. but everything gets blurry. Other then that.. can’t really complain about a first gen product.

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So Apple released the new iOS 4 yesterday… and like the good little jobsian drone, the second I got a chance, I upgraded… or at least I started… then waited, and waited… and waited some more. Finally a few hours later (literally) it completed… All right! Now, I have an older 3G iphone… not a 3GS or a fancy (yet to be released) 4G… so I knew I was gimped out of the box… no multitasking… no camera features… but the feature I was looking forward to the most (being an artist and all) was the home screen wallpaper…

So I start looking around… oh k… the changed the calculator icon… big whoop. Oh, the way the icons shuffle around when it’s turned on is different… like I care… Wallpaper! There it is… errr I see nothing different… Awww crap… we don’t get that feature… Only noticeable features… the unified mail, which I honestly couldn’t give a rat’s ass about… and the folders, which is cool, but not my wallpaper!

So the reason Apple gave for not giving us dinosaurs the wallpaper is that the processor is too slow to support shadows on the icons, and that you would loose flat icons on a wallpaper… :P

Oh, did I mention I find it slower now? Guess i have to wait for my 4G :(

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Just got back from drooling over myself for 2 hours. Lee outdid himself, this was even better than I expected. I won’t give anything away as I’ll be posting the review in the morning, but wow.

I’ll also be posting a review of Day & Night… which was also way better then I expected. Teddy Newton is a visionary!

Stay tuned for a review in the morning.

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Tickets in hand… and just waiting… less then 12 hours and I get to see the masterpiece that is Toy Story 3.

I was showing Ange some pics of the new characters last night, cause well was never a fan of the Toy Story franchise and wasn’t exactly looking forward to this movie… other then the fact that it’s in 3d… As soon as she saw Lotso, she fell in love with it. Which doesn’t surprise me, since her favorite Pixar film is Monsters Inc… (guess I should really pick up “Shave and a Haircut” 5.0 and model some fuzzy creature for her.

Anyway, or tickets are for pretty much smack center seats at the IMAX for the late show. Expect a review later tonight!

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Interesting news tidbit, Pixar has bought the first Promoted Trending Topic on Twitter.

If you log onto the web service and look in the right hand column you’ll see that ‘Toy Story 3′ appears in the ‘trending topics’ list with a button that says ’sponsored’ next to it.

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So I’ve been goofing off with the Wacom Cintiq, since I’ve been really lacking the time to start work on anything significant. Ange had asked me to draw her a few things, and she tends to like a more “kid’s story book” style… so here are Murtle the Turtle and Goobie the Dragon.

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So 4 days left till Toy Story 3.

Most of you know that I’m borderline obsessed with Disney and Pixar (shush! yes.. borderline), but to be honest, I’ve never been a real fan of the Toy Story franchise. I do admire it for what it is, the first full feature 3D film. Yes, the story is cute, but I never found anything about it mind blowing, like say Monsters Inc… or Up. But Toy Story 3 really has me excited… it looks fresh and full of cool new stuff.
Can’t wait for the weekend to arrive.

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ZOMG! My Cintiq arrived finally!
So, I rushed to the store once it opened this morning to get my new toy…
They get the box from out back… it’s HUGE.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t rush home, cause Ange and I had some errands to run… Those out of the way… I lug the big box up to the studio… only to be called back down to go back out and buy a new lawnmower… Get the mower, lunch, and a few other things… we get back… I have to start dinner :(
Dinner’s over… run up and unbox the behemoth…

The thing takes up almost half of my desk… (I’ll add some pics tomorrow). Just as I’m about to try it… time to take destructo and dumbdumb for a walk…
Ok ok… get back… go to use it and my main app.. no worky worky no more… so I have to reinstall it… and now I’m honestly too tired to draw…

Till tomorrow… errr no.. later today… it’s 2:15????

EEK!

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