so i’ll never be a professional blogger

seriously

people talk all about the democratizing potential of easy publishing of your thoughts, but heck, sometimes you just don’t have anything interesting to say.

a quick update i guess, got my replacement nano, thinking of buying carbon offsets for the stupid fact that although the apple repair depot is less than 50km’s from my home they decided to ship me a brand new one all the way from china. i guess everything comes from china now, but it makes you feel extra guilty when you see the fedex tracking data on your individual bit of mass manufactured consumerism crossing the world just for you.

looking for a good skin for the nano, i don’t really think i want to have to post about a broken nano twice (and i somehow doubt that apple will replace one again [even though i still think it’s a design flaw that a portable device breaks so easily]). any recommendations? so far i haven’t even found any in stores, so if you spot a review for skins for the new nanos i’d appreciate a link in a comment.

oh and just to prove there’s no hard feelings between me and apple, i bought myself a new macbook… you know, just cause i’m nice like that, i didn’t want apple to think i was _really_ mad at them.

sad day – my nano is broken

sigh – tomorrow it’s off to the apple store to see if they’ll replace this. i measured, it fell all of 2 feet, a portable device should not suffer catastrophic failure from such a relatively minor fall.

i’ll post tomorrow with the results of my beg-a-thon at the apple store

d_c

UPDATE:

i went directly to the apple store today and was unsuccessful in convincing them to help me. i guess i shouldn’t be surprised, the folk at the store aren’t exactly empowered to fix customer relations issues.

i’m on the phone with apple support, the 1st level tech, after seeing this photo, told me “that should not happen with an ipod no matter how far it drops” and i’m currently on hold waiting for the 2nd tier support who has the authority to do something about this. cautiously optimistic that apple will fix this problem.

UPDATE 2:

need to call back tomorrow and get in touch with customer relations. =(

UPDATE 3:

Apple will repair my ipod, but i did have the misfortune of having to talk to the crabbiest person at Apple (Janet from customer relations). they’re going to ship me a box, i’m going to put the nano in it, and at some undetermined point in the future i should get my purple nano back… after which i will go out and buy myself one of those rubberized cases. in the meantime, i’ll use my first gen ipod nano, the one that is damn near indestructible. 

so, consider my story a warning, the new nanos are beautiful but extremely FRAGILE

interview with Andrew Lang

alright, another interview of a local candidate done! check out the post on democraticspace!

things that didn’t make it into my piece there.

1. Andrew had a blog before running as a liberal candidate, but even though he had a bunch of people review it and make sure there wasn’t anything crazy, once the main party saw it they wanted it taken down (to be fair, they didn’t say it was bad, just distracted from his main campaign message). Andrew is a smart cookie though, so he’s recycling some of his old posts into his new and official campaign blog on his site. =D
2. Andrew is a bit of an astronomy buff, which is of course cool to me. he talked about taking an astronomy course in university and how it has influenced his thinking. as a sci-fi nerd and casual astronomy fan myself, i respect that.

i’m hoping to interview the conservative candidate, but i have my doubts that she’ll make herself available. also i want to interview Jack, but i’ll settle for interviewing someone on his staff. but not until after the debates. i think i need to think up something else to blog about until after the debates, any ideas?

interview with Sharon Howarth (green candidate)

i interviewed Sharon Howarth, the green candidate for my riding today, the details are up at democraticspace

a few things that didn’t make it into that post.

1. we ran into the liberal candidate, Andrew Lang, as we walked out to the park bench where we sat and talked. was a funny moment in my mind. Sharon and Andrew seem like they’re on good terms from the .5 second interaction i witnessed

2. Sharon really does believe she can win, which struck me as commendable if unrealistic (would be really cool to be proven wrong on that front)

anywho, check out the post. i’ll be interviewing the Liberals next. i’ve been meaning to get in touch with the conservatives, but Christina Perreault’s website is conspicously missing an email address to contact and the days are too busy for me to find time to call (going to have to make some time i guess). if you’re from the toronto-danforth conservative party please get in touch with me! darrenc (at) gmail (dot) com

i guess i should try to get in touch with the NDP too, but really, what are the chances Jack has time for a little guy like me?