blogwaffe

.update on the digital camera (see 1/7/04). .it hasn’t come yet. .a few days ago, i checked the ups tracking number. .”billing information has been received”. .that means, “we haven’t picked up the actual box yet, but we know a box will, at some point, need to be picked up”. .i checked again yesterday, and the tracking number was broken. .so i emailed the company. .no response. .going to the company’s site now, i find that the camera now ships in “2-3 weeks”. .grr. .i’ll let all my dedicated readers (i.e. me) know when it finally gets here.

.i’m already starting to burn out. .i’m not even in a lab yet; classes are just proving to be a pain in my ass. .my hope is that joining a lab will be a good muse for me, but who knows when (if) that will happen. .don’t even get me started on joining a group. .i don’t know what i want to do. .additionally, i don’t know who’s doing what i don’t know i want to do. .if you will recall, i thought i really waned to do quantum computation/information. .well, some of the stuff i’ve learned from class, group meetings, grad students etc. is super interesting. .sadly, a good chunk of that stuff is super not interesting. ?i may still decide to work that angle, but who can say? .and every time i think about professors, i always start thinking about why i went for a chem/math double instead of taking more physics classes (no clue – sounded good at the time). ?did i learn anything all that useful fom all those math classes? .only one or two of them. .bah. .a little deus ex machina would be appreciated right about now.

.continuing with the affluent theme, i’ve also tentatively decided to try and buy 3 or 4 cds and 1 or 2 dvds every month for the rest of my life (probably used). .i don’t think this will be particularly difficult (unless i get into some sort of budget crunch – but who needs car insurance, medications, or retirement funds?) except that i am in desperate need of ideas and recommendations, especially for music and pre-mid-nineties movies. ?any suggestions? .proselytizing your personal favorites is fine.

.i’ve purchased a digital camera: a minolta dimage xt. .got it online for ~$220, but it hasn’t come in the mail yet. .to go with, i also bought a bonzai usb flash drive and a 256 mb sd memory card. .i’m pretty excited to try the bad boy out. .pictures are supposed to be quite good (though not excellent) and it’s pretty freakin small (though not the smallest). .my only problem is that i have very little hdd space left on my 5 year old quantex laptop, leading me to really want to buy a new computer. .the ideal: a 15″ 1.25 ghz apple powerbook w/ superdrive. .the problem: ~$2230. .and a 20 mb ipod thrown in for good measure (~$370). .(btw, aren’t those ipod minis slick? You just know there’s going to be commercials featuring mini coopers and ipod minis). .after using and promoting pc architecture since the late 80’s, i am ready to switch. .apple’s always had a good interface, and the unix driven os x has finally made me change teams. .well almost. .too bad i’m poor. .my current plan is to splurge on a laptop as some sort of “reward” after i join a lab.

.went home to moscow on the 16th. .very wierd to be home so early and even stranger to come back to school so soon (jan 5th). .but an enjoyable break no less. .got to hang out with some hs friends and basically just be lazy at home. .after xmas, on the 27th, we (the fam) drove over to seattle to visit my gramma and the rest of my dad’s side (an annual tradition). .ended up spending new years with lincoln (though didn’t get to see chana). .good times all around

.i think the company i bought the digital camera (see 1/7/04) from is a front: never was able to contact them, and they’ve got about three different names (softwareprince, evolutiontek, computers etc.). .today, i looked a bit harder online for reviews of this company and managed to find some this time. .as far as i can tell no one has ever received any merchandise from them, so i broke down and called my bank. .they were super helpful: filed my claims and credited my account with the purchase price. .so presumably i’ll get my money back permanently and will just have to deal with some paperwork. .now i’ve got a nice sd card with no camera. .suck.

.so i was looking around on ebay, and i found a sweet deal on an apple powerbook (1.25 GHz, 512MB, 80GB, airport extreme, bluetooth, 15.2″ widescreen – the works). .he offered to sell it to me directly outside ebay for less than half of msrp. .the catch: i had to western union him the money. .well, i got a bit sketched out by that. .i didn’t think he had the balls to sell high-profile stolen goods on ebay, but there was no way in hell i was just going to wire him some cash. .i asked if paypal would be alright. .it’s just as fast (and, more importantly for me, traceable and accountable). .no response. .so i decided to keep emailing his ebay account with simple (but relevant) questions about the laptop. .eventually, i got a response from the real owner of the ebay account. .both her isp and ebay accounts had been cracked so that they would forward all her mail to him (she got suspicious when she no longer received any spam). .presumably, he didn’t have any laptops and was just trying to scam people out of a crap-load of money. .but i’m no sukah. .now ebay (and hopefully the fbi) is after him.