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February 27, 2007
NOOO! NOT SMITTY!!
WHY LOWE?? WHY???
Labels: Sports
I <3 Apple
I was pretty disappointed with the service that Corel had provided when I had asked a question. It felt like the person responding didn't really take the time to read and understand what I was asking.A company that I feel has customer service right is Apple. As a caveat, I've never had to deal with them for any major crippling technology issues, but for the items I have had issue with, the response has been stellar.
My most recent example is from a download from the iTunes Store. A friend had told me about the audiobook version of John Hodgman's (I'm a PC) book The Area of my Expertise. My friend also mentioned that the audiobook was free download from the iTunes Store. I checked the store and it indicated that it was indeed a free download. I clicked to add to my shopping cart. What puzzled me is when I looked in the cart to see a price on the item. I assumed that there would be a credit or some other price cancellation after going through the purchasing process. I really didn't see anything of the sort after downloading so I decided to contact Apple.
It took me a few clicks to find a method to contact them, but eventually I found a web form to fill out. After completing and clicking 'send' there was an immediate message to let me know that my question had indeed gone though - nice to have some feedback to know the form works. The next day, I received a follow up from an actual person that told me a number of useful things. There was a statement identifying that I had actually been charged and an apology for being charged. Also included was a timeline for expected resolution and some info on how to figure out account information for myself in the future. Not only had someone read my e-mail but he had also given me some useful information! Because of it, Apple will get more and more of my money.
On a side note, The Area of my Expertise is hilarious! The audio download is an abridged version, but it's over 6 hours(!) long. The humor is similar to that of McSweeney's, another favorite of mine. Pick up the book or download the audio version today!
February 26, 2007
Some London Logistics
Thanks to RusGirl for the link! I'm looking forward to meeting more LBS classmates in a scant 6 months. Feels like an eternity away though!It's nice that the time is punctuated with some local get togethers. A number of the Toronto admits are getting together again this Friday. There are 6 of us that are confirmed. For some reason, I think there has to be a few more admits in Toronto.
Further on the school front, I've been checking more into actually affording to go to school while managing to live in London in the manner to which I have become accustomed (i.e. a place to keep my stuff and food enough to survive the day). Some days I worry that it will come down to having to make the difficult choice of one or the other.
It's going to be tough burning through the my savings acquired over the past years. I like that I can draw on my RRSPs in Canada, under the Lifelong Learning Plan. The terms are close to the plan offered for Home Buyers. Maximum of $20000 withdrawal without taxation.
Looking into funding options, HSBC has a loan scheme partnership with the school. I don't think I'll be taking advantage of it though, as I should be able to set up a line of credit in Canada with a better interest rate. I'll still need to set up a bank account in the UK external to that.
There are also a few scholarships in the LBS portfolio. Each student is only eligible to hold one scholarship from the school at a time, good to help spread the wealth. I should be writing essays for all of them, just to hedge my bets. I'm having a tough time finding inspiration as for the essays though. Most of the questions are to the effect of: Tell us why you deserve this scholarship. I'm having issues coming up with things that aren't too cliché. I found the same true of the Stanford app question asking "what is important to you and why?" If one is actually passionate enough about something, I suppose it should come across as non-cliché by pure virtue of that passion. What do those of us who are a bit more cynical do?
Labels: MBA
February 21, 2007
Dear Ticketmaster
Your verification word system sucks goats.I don't know how you expect anyone to interpret a Rorschach as actual letters.
Sincerely,
Wincent
PS - I am perfectly willing to accept an apology in the form of Oilers tickets.
PPS - Maybe someone out there should set up a company to commercialize on Captcha.
Labels: Rant
February 16, 2007
Think Small
Interesting design article from the New York Times by way of Lian.Labels: Interest
February 15, 2007
Look for us on Sportsnet
We're braving our recent snow dumps to root on the Oilers in Buffalo tonight.Go Oil!
Labels: Sports
February 09, 2007
Figurative Sculpture (Piece 2)
Pictures are up for the relief I sculpted. It's not the finished piece, it still needs to be cleaned out a bit more, some holes should probably be patched and some bumps sanded, and there should be a finishing coat of some sort on it. This piece was more of an involved process than the last one, spanning over four classes - roughly 12 hours of work. We started with a clay base on which we sculpted our model. I thought the pose was great because her body was slightly twisted, with her left side closer to me than her right. The twist makes the left slightly higher on the relief. On top of that, the protruding arm was interesting to do as well. I found I was constantly looking at her sides to make sure the depths of different landmarks were correctly proportioned. I also picked up a new technique of using burlap to run over the clay to add texture to the body. Something about the texture works to pull the piece together better than it was when the clay was just smooth - It looked much more disjointed then.
Once the sculpting was finished, the next step was to make a negative. We used plaster of paris for the rest of the work on the piece. We started by making an indicator coat, mixing the plaster with some paint so we could identify where the mold ended. (That's the rust color that still needs to be cleaned off the piece.) From there, we built up the rest of the negative till it looked like a cake covered in icing. The clay was removed and we were left with our negative. It was at this point that my cast cracked slightly. You can see it on the bottom left corner of the piece - there's a slight crack running across and some pockmarks on the left butt cheek. I actually like the added feature - it adds character to the piece.
After cleaning out the mould, we coated the inside with Vasoline and Murphy's Oil (to act as a releasing agent). We then filled the inside with plaster and a layer of plaster coated burlap for strength. Once that hardened, we used chisels to chip away the negative, which left us with the piece.
I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. It's surprising how well the finer details of surface texture transfered over. I like the shoulder blades, the little flex of flesh above the right hip and the overall shape of the butt and hips.
Labels: Art
February 05, 2007
Ewe of A
As if my cousins (the 121st Street Laus - my family being the 119th Street Laus) didn't impress me (read: make me green with envy) enough already with their artistic ability, cousin Norm has gone and made a comic for the Gateway (the U of A student newspaper).There's no real webpage for it yet, I suppose Norm's waiting for a larger collection before making one, but a quick search gives all the comics published to date:
Gateway search for "Ewe of A"
I think the strip is pretty darn good and it features the wit that Norm is known for.
And Now I Can Go To Bed
I'm slightly anal about certain things.This attention to detail manifests itself in many aspects of my life: how I lay out documents, how work processes I invent flow, the right punctuation for a blog post are just a few examples. It just has to feel exactly right, otherwise I'm completely unsettled. The worst for me is that I'll even stay up thinking about it.
One particular thing that bothered me since I've gotten my Mac was the lack of date indication on the menu bar. I was content at first, to leave it as a little cross to bear. That was until my RSS reader pointed me towards MagiCal. It seemed reasonable and was pretty much what I was looking for (I like the little icon that they use). The only problem that I had with it was the placement of the icon. It sits to the right of the system icons based on loading order. It's location was unacceptable to me! It doesn't seem like it's in a logical place – right next to the time. Slightly disappointed by this, I followed the other link in the TUAW post, that of MenuCalendarClock for iCal.
I thought MenuCalendarClock would be better. I thought there were two good things about the program right off the bat. I really liked one of the icons that they used for the menu bar date (the one drawn in the same style as the power icon) and I liked that I could choose which side I'd like the indicator to show – far right or far left. Both options, though initially positive didn't make the cut. The icon only showed the day and not the month, and the placement to the far right caused the power indicator icon to separate the system time from the date. I settled on doing away with the icon and using other functionality in the program to indicate time and date. I also turned off the system clock to keep from having two clocks in the menu bar. This change bugged me as well. I didn't like the font of MenuCalendarClock because it didn't match that of the actual system time.
My neurosis over the imperfections have kept me from sleeping tonight. They've been gnawing away at me slowly. I had to get up and do something about it. So after a bit of searching I found this explanation of how to display date in the OS X menu bar. It's perfect! The grouping of the date and time together, the matching system fonts, the spacing – It's all nice and neat!
Ah... relief.