Category: The Vault

Where Old Stuff Goes to Die

The Apple Retail “Experience”

On Wednesday of last week I was forced into another Apple Store visit. I have never, EVER had a pleasant “experience” at an Apple Store. I buy all my stuff online. I hate “shopping”… I have both an X AND a Y chromosome, so therefore I don’t “shop”… I just buy. I don’t wait until I’m at a store to decide. By the time I arrive at a store I have already decided what I want and all I want to do is just pay, and LEAVE. I hate retail establishments. I hate dealing with salespeople. Car Dealerships are my worst nightmare (but I have my secret weapon: a wife who is a lawyer, which is most car salesman’s worst nightmare… I pick the car, she tortures the salesman) but any store in a Mall comes in a close second.

Please understand all of the above before you read this post.

Tragically Hip

We needed a new laptop at work, something of an emergency. The perfect weapon for the task at hand was an Air. The problem was, we needed it that day, which meant our ONLY option was the Apple Store down the hill from us at the mall.

I tasked one of my staff with it, since I would rather get my teeth cleaned with a Dremel wire brush than subject myself to the “Apple Retail Experience” again (after my PowerBook repair from hell) and I had a very important meeting with our CEO that was going to consume a large part of my morning. I come out of the meeting 90+ minutes later and we have no Air. He’s called and made sure they have them in stock, but balked at expensing it on his CC. I asked him if they would take a phone order, so I could run down there and just pick it up… “no phone sales” Grrrr. I was stuck… FORCED into an actual visit to the damn store. 🙁

I hopped in my car for the run to the mall, park, and walk in. I enter the Apple Store and it appears that staff outnumber customers by at least 1.5:1. I head for the desk in the back and am waylaid by a pair of Hip Chicks: Perpetually Grinning Bobblehead Asian Girl With Skunk Stripe Hair and Groovy Greener With Hip Rectangular Glasses And A Diamond In Her Nostril. The latter asks me if I need help.

“Yes,” I say, “I’d like to buy a MacBook Air and an external optical drive.”

She cocks her head diagonally (must be the weight of the rock in her nose) and says: “Do you want the one with the solid sta…”

“No, the one with the hard disk drive please.”

“Oh-Kay!”

A creeping feeling of dread is overtaking me like a gamma ray pulse eradicating all known life on a planet.

Instead of grabbing said item for me to buy, she steps to her left and gets the attention of some other Apple Store staffer, Non-threatening Hip African-American Dude (NHAAD). Groovy Greener (GGWHRGAADIHN) flashes her sparkling schnozz-rock at NHAAD and says “This gentleman would like to buy a MacBook Air with the 80gb and an external Superdrive. Could you help him out?”

Well, at least she nailed the order, maybe this will be easy after all.

NHAAD walks over to me and says: “Hello sir, You’re interested in the MacBook Air…”

I could tell that he was accustomed to selling, that is, throwing the pitch at a reticent customer, soothing them with his knowledge of the product line, and explaining how it would enrich their lives. I didn’t need to be sold. I wanted to BUY. I wanted to BUY NOW, and LEAVE. I delivered a curt “Yes” to cut him off at that pass.

“Would that be the one with the solid stat…”

My brain is saying “JESUS H. CHRIST ON A POGOSTICK, what does it take to just buy a goddamn computer and walk out of here! Is ANYONE listening?” My impulse control is starting to slip and despite my attempts to maintain a calm demeanor I’m sure my eyes are rolling and NHAAD can tell I want to throttle every Apple Store employee within reach, which would be easy since this store is the size of a dorm room and all these hipsters like to stand so damn close to you that my 44 year old eyes can’t read their nametags but I can still divine what they’ve had for breakfast.

Needless to say, if I had eight arms 16 eyes would be bulging out of eight tragically hip skulls at that moment.

“No, the one with the hard disk drive.” I say … an absolute pinnacle of self-control.

NHADD pours a drum of gasoline on the smolding embers of my ire by replying “Well technically it is a hard drive…”

Perhaps the reflexive jerk of my hands inside my coat pockets and the sudden shrinking of my pupils lead him to swiftly turn towards the stock room and retrieve the objects that would distract me from killing him slowly while explaining the history of the Winchester Hard Disk Drive Mechanism and the fact that there is no ” hard disk” inside that solid state “drive”…

Groovy Greener Diamond Nose Chick, who had been standing within easy strangulation range throughout this exchange shouted to NHAAD’s back as he ventured towards the stock room “…and the superdrive too!” Sensing my impatience she pretends to see another customer and scurries away. I back towards the wall to put some distance between myself and the malingering hipsters all just standing around aimlessly looking for all the world like baristas who find themselves suddenly dematerialized out of a Starbucks and unexpectedly clothed in black t-shirts and surrounded by brushed metal, but without their tip jar. The smell of overpriced hair care products was overwhelming.

I longed for a Molotov cocktail.

Scratch that, I would gladly call in an airstrike with a Daisy Cutter. “Affirmative! ON MY LOCATION!” DO IT!!!!!

After what seemed like several lifetimes, but in all likelihood was about 5 minutes NHAAD emerges from the back with the little fashionable purse that doubles as a case for the Air. He’s holding it up in the air, stiff-armed at head height with his thumb and forefinger like a new husband holding his very first dirty diaper. He asks me to come over to the brushed metal wall that serves as a counter-less checkout … um… counter. It is so stylish as to be completely useless. I’m reminded of the bent metal rod “chair” in the movie “Sleeper” that Woody Allen’s character falls out of every time he tries to sit in it.

At this point, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m going to hand this guy a credit card, grab the merchandise, and exit. Escape! YESSSS!!!

Just as I’m starting to feel a sense of relief, a 36-car locomotive mows me down.

“Sir you would like AppleCare with th..”

“No.”

“AppleCare is a…”

“No, really, I’m fine.”

“You have…”

“No, really… we operate as a self-service Apple repair shop…”

My brain is saying “STFU and ring up the damn purchase already!” But no, the train has 36 cars, and I’m going to get rolled over by each and every one, in series. K-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk!

“Do you work for the State?” (k-thunk!)

“No.”

“The Computer Stores Northwest??” (k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk)

I point to my logo’ed cap “I work for digital.forest. We mostly deal in Xserves, but we’ll be fine without Applecare, really.” (was that the caboose?)

“What printer do you want with your computer today?” (k-thunk, k-thunk! No cabooses anymore pal!)

“None”

“It is free…” (k-thunk, k-thunk)

I stare at NHAAD blankly. (k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk)

“…well, $99 but with a rebate.” (k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk)

“No. I really. All I want is the computer.”

(My brain is screaming “I have no problem paying for it, I’m *happy* to pay for it, I DON’T NEED ANYTHING BUT THIS DAMN COMPUTER! I DON’T WANT YOUR EXTENDED WARRANTY, I DON’T WANT YOUR PRINTER, I DON’T WANT A BUNCH OF PAPERWORK, BUT IF YOU DON’T RING THIS DAMN THING UP AND LET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE I’M GOING TO RIP YOUR SPINE OUT WITH YOUR SKULL AND GRAB THIS COMPUTER AND EXIT WITHOUT PAYING … THEN MAIL WHAT’S LEFT OF YOUR CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM TO STEVE FUCKING JOBS!!!”)

(k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk)

NHAAD kept talking. I think he was asking about other accessories or iPods or something. I didn’t hear him because my brain was smiling while it watched imaginary security cam coverage of my murderous rampage. k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk.

NHAAD breaks me from my reverie with the magic words:

“blah, blah, blah CREDIT CARD?”

In milliseconds my Visa is out. But (k-thunk, k-thunk) he needs to see my photo ID, and (k-thunk) I sign on some odd and distinctly non-Apple PDA thing, and (k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk) NHAAD asks if I want my receipt emailed to me… or (k-thunk) printed out? (k-thunk… was that the last car?)

I grab the receipt and exit as swiftly as possible. Why is this so difficult?

My April Fool’s Day prank.

I love practical jokes, but most years I forget about the license to do them on others that is the 1st of April. It just escapes my mind until it is too late.

This year however I was inspired by something that happened back in December. My friend (and client) John Welch posted something of a love letter to my employer on his website. Basically it said “You’ll never see a “bandwidth quota exceeded” page on my site because my hosting provider doesn’t do that sort of thing.”

That is true, but when I saw it I thought to myself, what a great practical joke this will make! 😉 … and made a note in my calendar to do this on 4/1/2008.

So when people went to John’s site today this is what they saw:

LOL

That “(reference)” link on the “bandwidth exceeded” page goes right to John’s post that inspired the prank.

I actually wanted to make the joke more John-specific… like “This user has expended the maximum number of input keystrokes allowed” or “this user has been suspended for excessive profanity” or something… Unfortunately I spent the day yesterday at our facility in Vancouver BC replacing a broken switch, and fixing a broken server, so I didn’t have the time to write up the HTML. Bill Dickson however, whipped up the PHP code required to pull off the stunt, and wrote that HTML page. Without his help, this one would not have been pulled off.

I hope John liked it.

How many geeks does it take…

…to move a 6800lb (~3000kg) UPS?

Thanks to the amazing Hilman Rollers, only four and a half.

This is our new UPS at digital.forest. It is an MGE EPS 7000, which is a very cool unit. As purchased it is a 300 kVA system, but as we grow we can scale it up to 500 kVA. The battery cabinets arrive tomorrow. You can read about the UPS arrival on my blog at work.

I just got pushed…

…over to the Anti-DRM side of the debate.

Chris is compiling a Christmas gift package to send to his Chilean host family. He wanted to include a few DVDs for his host parents. He asked me to help him buy some online. I vaguely recall that DVDs might have some sort of region-based anti-copying bit in them… something that would make a DVD bought in one part of the world un-playable in another part of the world. I look around and sure enough, it is true. Not only is it true, but South America is a completely different region with regards to DVD. Oh well.

Ironically the only way we could realistically send them a DVD is to copy one on my computer, remove the region encoding, and rip it back to a DVD… basically PIRATING IT. Go figure.

Has this anti-pirating technology stopped any video “piracy”?? No. You can go online and find software copies of any movie you would ever want to see, available for download. Even movies that are currently in theaters! But here is a scenario where we’d like to legitimately BUY a DVD, but because the Studios/MPAA/whoever are so damn paranoid of piracy they’ve made it so we can’t… so the only thing we can resort to is piracy! What moron thought this scheme up?

Up until today I had never really had a real stance on the whole DRM debate. Mostly because it had not affected me yet. Yes, I’ve bought many songs from iTunes, but have never had a situation where I could not use it the way I wanted. Gifts are not an issue either because Apple has made it easy to give iTunes data away as a gift. Too bad the bozos who make DVDs haven’t figured out how we want to use them.

Oh well. Our online search came up empty, so we went to a store and scoured the racks for something interesting without the region coding hard wired into the disc. It was damn near impossible to find anything!

The morons in Hollywood really need to reverse their cranial-rectal inversion.

ah, the weather…

Heard from several folks over the past few days asking if we’re under water. We’re fine… high and dry… both at home and at the office. Ironically the office park where digital.forest lived from 1997 until 2005 DID get severely flooded, and at least one of the datacenters in that area (T-mobile) suffered an outage. I’m SO glad we left North Creek Parkway. I miss the paths, and I miss the salmon in the creek, and I miss Teriyaki Etc., and more than anything, I miss Hobin-san and Sato-san at Hana Sushi… BUT I’m so happy to be at this amazing facility in Seattle. (But I digress)

Despite what the news media says, these things happen every year in the Autumn. Usually in November, but it can happen anytime from Mid-October until Christmas. Low pressure sits off Vancouver Island, pushing the jet stream south, pullling cold air down from the north… we get snow all the way down to sea level, and the mountains usually get DUMPED on… several feet of snow in a matter of a day or two. Then just as suddenly, the low moves on and the jet stream snaps back north pulling warm, very moist air from the Pacific. The traditional term for it is a “Pineapple Express.” All the snow melts in a matter of hours, sometimes minutes. It takes the better part of a day for it to come down out of the mountains but if it continues to rain while that is happening the lowlands start seeing floods.

Last year it happened in early November.

This year the temperature change was swift and dramatic. Sunday night I was up late brewing a big batch of BioDiesel. I was acutely aware of the temperature (in the mid 30s F) because I was wearing my big winter coat and I also have a big temp dial on the processor. When I pumped my waste oil into the processor from the settling tank it moved like molasses. I looked at the temp gauge and it read about 34°F (or ~.5°C for my worldly Metric readers.) There was frost here and there around the barn as well, and the gravel of the driveway made that crunchy sound like ice when I walked up it to the house. I awoke and ventured out to the barn at 5 AM to shut off the processor… throwing my big winter coat on as I prepared to leave the front door. As I stepped off the front porch my brain registered something odd. Half way down the driveway I realized what it was… “damn, it is WARM out here.” There was a light rain, and some wind, but the temperature was way up from the night before. Close to 60°F/15.5°C. I shut off the processor (temp gauge there read ~100°F/38°C… about right for a batch of BioD that had processed for several hours) and walked back to th house with the coat in my hands. Checked the weather widget on my OSX dashboard and it reported 58°F/15°C… so my guess was right.

10-12 hours later the floods began down below… like clockwork.