dW

I think I Need to Update This Thing

Lately I haven’t had much to say, so I haven’t updated this log. That’s the hardest thing to do for a log, always having something to talk about. This isn’t intended to be a journal or diary, so I’m not going to go into detail about my day-to-day activities and say how many sheets of toilet paper I used to wipe my butt this morning. Truthfully, lately I’ve been busy with work and my own personal projects. I did take time off to go to Houston for Thanksgiving, my first vacation in… how long? I think it’s been six years.

We left home the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and drove back home that Sunday, so I got quite a bit of time off. I’ve been to Houston numerous times, and I really enjoy it there. It’s quite a bit different than it is here in a small town where we’re lucky to have one of any store, and there are numerous stores we don’t have. Well, one store many probably take granted is Best Buy. Technically we went to Katy which is west of Houston travelling down I-10.

We mostly just spent the time there with my aunt and cousins. On Thanksgiving we ate and watched some football (American Football to all you foreigners). That night we had an interesting situation of trying to get food. Of all the restaurants in Katy there was only a Jack in the Box and a Denny’s open (neither of which we have at home)… heck even Waffle House was closed. On Black Friday my sister and her best friend went shopping and that night we went to see a Houston Aeros AHL hockey game, my first hockey game. For most of the day I relaxed, letting my body turn the food I ate the day before into another layer of succulent fat rolls.

Earlier this year we planned on making a trip to Branson to just get away, neither of us having taken a vacation in some time. We decided to go to Houston instead, so instead of blowing my money on corny shows in Branson I decided to spend some of the money I saved up in the Apple Store that Saturday, having never been to one.

There are two in the Houston area, one in the Memorial City Mall and the other in the Galleria Mall. We decided on the Memorial City one as the Galleria, being a more popular shopping destination would be more full of people. It was an interesting experience, and the store was full of people who were mostly crowded around the MacBooks and the iPhones. What mostly interested me was that there was not a single checkout counter in the store. Instead each employee had a handheld scanner capable of taking a check or credit card. They’d swipe the check or card, hand you the scanner to sign, and it’d print out a receipt. When I walked in I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but I wanted to get at least something even if it was a simple t-shirt (if they even had them). We looked around, and my sister had a fit over the new keyboards. I wasn’t too interested in them, having seen one before. I’m not about to buy one unless I know I’m comfortable typing on one. I could have tried it out then, but I wanted to look around, not sit in front of a computer, something I do most of the time anyway. About 10 times while I was in there a different employee asked us if we needed any help, and most of the time in any store you have to play hide and seek with an employee. After looking around I decided on getting an iPhone as they were on sale that day, $100 off and only in Apple retail stores apparently.

To say I enjoy the phone would be a serious understatement. That’s all that counts in my opinion. Many will love or hate the iPhone either on principle, idiocy, or personal preference just like anything else, but if the iPhone just had a phone and an address book I’d have bought it as many other manufacturers fail to notice the most important feature of their phones is the phone itself. The only thing that would make it better is if there was an Opera for the phone. Perhaps after the API is released this coming February that could be possible. If not that’s fine with me.

The worst thing about this trip is that while I carried my camera with me I didn’t take any pictures. I had such a good time.