Manlio Rules

about two weeks ago, i had a workplace accident. I was turning the corner of the office, admittedly moving a little fast in hopes of catching the elevator before it left. In my zealousness, i rammed my right leg (”righty”) into the corner of the desk. thinking nothing of it, i continued on my pursuit of the elevator. mission successful.

the real tragedy came about 15 minutes later, when i took out my phone to see if anyone had called, and found that i had annihilated my LCD screen on my n95 phone. this was bad for a number of reasons, the foremost being that these phones are not cheap, and i had no insurance on it because i bought it on ebay. bad news.

After bitching about it for a few days, i decided to see if maybe there was a local sf place that would fix my phone. in my online search i found several tutorials describing how to replace the LCD. I looked over some of them, and it seemed pretty easy, just a matter of having the right tools.

I took my search to eBay, in hopes of finding an affordable replacement screen. I found a plethora of options, everywhere from $40 to $60, including different bonus features. i found a package for $45 that included the necessary torq screwdriver and a little plastic tool for popping off the casing. It shipped from Hong Kong, taking a week to arrive.

Today, when it arrived, i went to this post, found on the n95 user boards, followed the instructions, and in 10 minutes had a working n95 again.

the moral of the story is that i’m awesome at fixing things, when they are easy to fix and i have all the tools sitting in front of me.

first thing i’ve seen in awhile that really got me geek out excited…

http://www.creationonthefly.com/

from metacafe

Robotic Beer Launching Refrigerator

I must admit, i don’t drink a lot of beer on my couch, but if i did, this would be exactly how i rolled.

or really, 10 of them.

Neil, start practicing

hi sports fans. so, here’s what’s been going on in my life since the start of the month.

1. Snowboarding. i went up to our cabin for the first time last weekend. the house is great, the snowboarding is great, i will be going back up there this weekend to get a few days in, though the conditions aren’t awesome, they’re much better than what i’m used to back east. my goal remains to get 25 days up this season. right now i’m at 2, but it still seems like it’s achievable. i hope. i might be making that up.

2. CES. i spent sunday-wednesday of this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, doing demo’s for the products that i built last year, and generally wandering around, gawking at huge tv’s. my main takeaway from CES is that everyone seems to be hawking HD camcorders, to let more of us make video blogs. maybe i’ll start doing a video blog on manlio rules, though i think i would lose almost 100% of the eloquence y’all have come to expect from me. but at least i could always have def leppard playing in the background.

3. Football. the pats are in the playoffs! go playoffs! i’m nervous about the SD game this sunday, but if anyone can stop LDT, it’s the Pats. I hope.

4. Trivia. Trivia nights have been pretty much my only social outlet since the start of the year. we keep winning, so that’s good. last week we somehow rolled with like 12 people. Lyandra and Amy were there as well, so my SF friends got to meet some of my NY friends, and vice versa.

and that’s pretty much it. seems awfully boring. i’ve got some shots of trivia 2 weeks ago that you can peruse, if you so desire. i’ll make sure to take ski cabin shots this weekend so everyone can drool at the awesomeness of wintering in Tahoe. wintering!

ok, so i keep forgetting to post this info.

the way this worked out: when i started at work, an “introduce yourself” email was sent to all the UED folk in the company. In it i was asked to talk a little bit about myself, and i mentioned that i liked theatre and wanted to find some stuff to do out here. A week later, Jim emailed me out of the blue and said: “i do theatre. let’s hang out”, or something to that effect. we had a few conversations about his show, and it turned out that he needed someone who was familiar with music, video, lighting, etc… sound familiar? so yeah. this is the show. it goes up tonight and 2 nights next weekend. people who have come have laughed, but beyond that i won’t make any claims to its entertainment value, other than i’m pretty sure Richard Foreman would hate it, which i consider to be a high compliment.

so come on by

FRI & SAT, July 14 & 15
FRI, July 21
FRI & SAT, July 28 & 29
All shows at 8:00pm

Lila Theatre @ Off-Market
965 Mission Street at 5th

{ Get Directions }

Tickets $15-25
{ Buy Tickets Online }
or call 1-800-838-3006

Any of you who have ever seen my powerbook know that there are some screen problems with it. for those of you who never have seen my powerbook, the screen problems are basically this:

It has been like this since i got it 2 years ago. i sort of let it slide for awhile, because that’s pretty much who i am, plus i was using it for freelance work and really needed to have it every day or else i couldn’t have gotten paid. But about 6 months ago i decided that i should take it in, and ideally they should replace it, cause it’s pretty annoying. So i went down to the SoHo Mac Store and spoke to one of their geniuses at the genius bar. We’ll call him New York Mac Dude (NYMD). the conversation basically went like this:

me: So, my screen’s damaged
NYMD: Yeah, that’s not our fault. that’s accidental damage
me: what do you mean?
NYMD: I mean, that happened cause you either dropped it or you’re putting too much pressure on the screen
me: well, i never dropped it. and it’s always been like this.
NYMD: well, why didn’t you bring it in when you got it?
me: i needed it for work
NYMD: Yeah, you should have brought it in then. there’s nothing i can do now
me: but… why on earth do i have applecare if you won’t fix this stuff?
NYMD: i’m telling you, it’s considered accidental damage
me: but it was always like this
NYMD: well, that’s just your story
me: if you ever meet me again, i will stab you and bathe in your blood.

ok, so i didn’t say that last line. i did say something cliched like: “i’ll never buy another apple”, which was a hollow lie, cause of course i will. But i made peace with the little white halo and decided that even with all its faults, it was my computer and had always done its best and i shouldn’t look down on it cause it was a little different.

fast forward to a month ago. my powerbook is having major issues. Kernel panics, failure to boot, lots of issues. So today i brought it into the SF mac store, and spoke to one of thier geniuses. we’ll call her SF Mac Diva.

As she’s booting up the machine, trying to bring it back to life (which was very cute, btw, she kept putting her ear to the HD and listening to it, like it was a patient), she says:

Diva: Do you want to fix these white dots on the screen?
me: yeah, but i was told that it was accidental damage and i’d have to pay
Diva: That’s ridiculous. they’re all over the place. this is a known issue
me: yeah, but my book isn’t one of the ones from that production line
Diva: Doesn’t matter, this is really terrible. who told you we wouldn’t fix it? Someone here?
me: no, someone in the NY store
Diva: Well, i’m really sorry about that. we’ll totally fix this for you. And i’ll fix the case too.
me: what’s wrong with my case?
Diva: see these little dots here? (i had never seen these dots)
me: whoa. what are those from?
Diva: Oil on your hand. no worries, we’ll take care of it.

So, in conclusion, if you ever have problems with your powerbook, come out to SF. I know just who to talk to.

the stuff that i usually like to talk about (drinking, carousing) isn’t really happening in full force right now, though i will soon have a post about the new theatre thing that i’m doing which goes up in a few weeks. should be fun. i’m writing music for it now, and it’s going great in a sort of black crowes “write the album in a week” workflow… some of the ideas are terrible, some are totally fetch.

first, the quick hits:

1. I looked again and found that shawshank was actually only given 3 stars by comcast. so it’s, in their eyes, as good as star wars 3. i just don’t know what to say about this, but the next time someone wants to know why i can be an elitist, this is why. other movies that are “just as good” as star wars III include: Anchorman, Ghostbusters, and The Last Samurai

2. Meetup.com needs to stop sending me emails every time someone joins a group that i’m in. it never did that before. now every time someone decided they also want to meet other NYC graphic designers, i get to hear about it. I would like that to stop WITHOUT me having to go visit their site.

3. It looks possible that i will be playing on 3 softball teams for the months of July/August. So if you’re wondering what i’m doing during those months, the answer is most likely softball related.

4. it appears that one of my favorite shows, futurama, is going to get 13 new episodes made, the same way that family guy did. i’m incrediblly excited about this. If you don’t watch futurama, and are interested in this, i highly recommend the dvd’s. sheer genius.

5. Here are a list of things i would like to purchase soon. if you have any recommendations about any of these, let me know.

a. HD large screen TV
b. portable drum kit
c. digital delay guitar pedal
d. new flatscreen monitor? (could possibly be the same as a)
e. Cleats for softball

ok. that’s all i got.

Music thing was talking about this stuff today. i think that i need to get both of these, and run them through a ton of effects.