glitterfish.com

Ever since I was a little kid I’ve fantasized about getting in shape. Usually it involves some sort of long vacation or absence from my friends and family over which I work my gangly arms into thick man branches. When I return everybody is blown away by incredible transformation and visibly frightened by my awesome hulk.

Alas, I’ve never had the discipline necessary to stick to a strength program. Many times I’ve worked out a complete month only to gradually quit. A gym membership would be helpful, but I know it doesn’t even need to be overly rigorous; a daily habit of push-ups and sit-ups would go a long long way.

ABC-of-fitness.com is a free website with lots of cool animated tutorials on the proper way to do simple exercises like push-ups and sit-ups. The little flash animation of the man doing a push-up makes it look so easy! His tousled orange hair and muscle shirt are really inspiring.

I can’t tell you where this came from, but I assure you it is real.

Dear [redacted],

I know that at this point in your search for an assistant you might have encountered prospects that are more experienced and perhaps even more qualified then myself. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to share with you what sets me apart from them, something that in retrospect I may have failed to do at our last meeting. In response to your looking for someone who’s job it was to make your life easier, I would like to offer an addendum. I would also dedicate myself to helping you do your job better. I am ready and eager to commit myself fully to helping you make the most of your career and your art. I see this opportunity to be your assistant as more than a job, I see it as an apprenticeship to a professionally successful artist, and I can assure you with utmost confidence, that you have not met with anyone who will work harder for you then I will. These words might of course ring hollow in your ears seeing as how that last statement has become something of a cliché, nevertheless it is as true a thing as I am capable of communicating to you through this barrier of professional anonymity. Also I would like to touch upon one of my more unique skills in order to better represent what it is I can offer you. As you might recall I have developed quite the working relationship with the company I interned for last summer (references I urge you to call), most notably because of my ability to quickly master new tasks through observation. You who are no doubt a practical man might find the concept of paying for a dog masseuse for your two aging dogs laughable, however should you commission these services just once from a professional and I were in a position to observe it, I could acquire this new skill in order to provide it for your animals in the future, and perhaps make their trips up and down the stairs a bit less painful. A little strange? Yes. But I feel myself forced to make an impression after the “cold read” that was our first meeting. If though, you are simply looking for a run of the mill assistant to handle odd jobs and office work I doubt I am your man. If however you are looking for one whose skills are a bit more expansive I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

[redacted]

Tarantino lost his temper momentarily, then got back in control.

Mark Khaisman is the artist.

I was at a party last night and I ran into a guy who works for another “Macintosh Authorized Dealer” in Century City. He told me that his shop usually charged a 1.5X markup on their parts and $75/hr in labor. That would make replacing the fan cost $75 plus another $75 in labor = $150 total.

That’s significantly better than MacService.com who quoted approx $195 but still a whopping 50% more expensive than DiNo computers (who charged me an at cost $50 for the part and $50 for the labor).

According to the guy this price was actually very competitive and wayyy less shady than the Mac authorized deal he formally worked at. Finding a decent computer shop is as bad as finding an auto mechanic!

We saw MGMT at the Echo last night. The band’s riffs rocked me infinitely harder than at their last LA show with Of Montreal. The band was nice enough to perform the original “Karaoke” version of Kids off their EP claiming that they hadn’t done so since 2005.

I’ve totally enlisted in the MGMT army. I haven’t gotten all worked up about a band in years but MGMT has me drinking their kool-aid.

Since quiting my job, I’ve been doing nothing but working on a short film that’s to be shot in February. I updated my Facebook status to reflect that:

Andy is not working for somebody else. Only himself.

Right on cue my Mom chimed in with a loving reality check.

Jeri sent you a message.

——————–
Subject: Self Employed

Hi Andy:

Congratulations on being your own boss. When do you cut your paycheck and what are the revenue sources for your new enterprise?? (just kidding - hope you have lots of fun in the next few months and get all revitalized, etc.)

Love you,
Mom

It’s the word “revitalized” that cuts so deeply into my bones. During Christmas all my siblings were making fun of me because I was taking so much time off after only working a year. I guess hearing your snot nosed little brother complain about what a grind 9 to 5 is when you’ve been slave waging for decades just doesn’t create a lot of sympathy.

Tonight I went to the Cha Cha lounge and Mr. Boston was there sargin.

Right on.

Oddly enough, this is the very first time I’ve ever really seen Romney where I thought he came off as genuine. There’s something honest about a white as Wonderbread politician telling black kids to say “who let the dogs out, wuff wuff” as a form of “cheese” to the camera.

@ 2 Spare

MacService.com is a total rip. You can buy the fan yourself for $50 but installing it yourself looks like more trouble than its worth. Di-No computers in Pasadena, CA said they would do it for $100 and was very upfront that the fan was $50 and the labor was $50. Sounds like Amber at MacService quoted me for replacing BOTH fans but that would still be $95 dollars more than Di-No. Rip!

Hello Andy,

The cost of replacing the fans is $245, including installation. We do not
have the fan listed on the website. I recommend sending your MacBook Pro in
for a complete diagnostic. Once we see the unit we can let you know exactly
what¹s going on. To send in your machine for service you may place an order
over the phone by calling 877-622-3473 or online at
http://www.macservice.com/diagnostics.html

If you have any questions, my contact information is below.

Thank you,
–
Amber L.
MacService
3034 Scott Blvd
Santa Clara, CA 95054 USA
toll free: 877.622.3473
phone: 408.855.0010
fax: 408.855.8101
amber@macservice.com
www.MacService.com

Right now the fan on my MacBook Pro is making this terrifying whirring noise. It sort of sounds like putting a stick in your bicycle spokes. This happens to be the most critical issue with my MBP at the moment but it’s not the only one: the case is a little warped so the display doesn’t close exactly right, my “mouse click”" is wonky, and there is an ever present buzzing noise (unrelated to fan) that stops when I engage the second processor by either turning on PhotBooth or running another processor intensive application.

If you Google ANY of these issues you will see online forums flooded with customers suffering from similar problems. Considering how supposedly magical–and expensive–Apple products are it feels pretty unfair that my machine has so much personality. Nevertheless, I love my MacBook Pro and don’t remember fondly the days when I had to click through five or six error messages every time I booted up Windows. I wouldn’t really ever consider going back to running daily spyware sweeps or feeling lucky that my computer only had one virus on it rather than the usual two or three.

For the past year I’ve been working at a production company where I was in charge of the maintenance of multiple Apple computers. Here’s what I learned:

1. Buy AppleCare - This should be a given on any Apple computer purchase. It’s inevitable that your machine will start acting weird after the one year warranty period ends. Apple products are too expensive to consider disposable and too fragile to assume you will upgrade before you need to fix them. Unlike many computers, Apple machines also tend to retain their value somewhat. At my office we sold a three year old PowerBook G4 for $800 dollars. That’s a lot of money for a computer that old and a solid chunk of the $2000 MacBook Pro we replaced it with. If you have AppleCare you can guarantee that your machine will both stay in working order while you use it, plus be suitable for resale when you upgrade.

2. Find someplace to repair your machine that isn’t the Genius bar - You have to make an appointment at least a day in advance at the Genius bar and it’s not always staffed by the most knowledgeable of computer geeks. Worse, chances are they can’t fix your computer there but will rather pack it up and mail it in to Apple for repair. This takes a long time and means you have to make an take a trip to the Apple store, usually in some god awful mall, just to be told they can’t fix your machine.

I’ve had good luck at the independent authorized apple resellers such as Di-No computers in Pasadena, CA. One thing about Di-No is that you have to schedule an appointment about a week in advance before they can look at your computer (there’s a $100 rush fee if you’re desperate). This makes the turnaround time similar to the Apple Store but the techies are a lot smarter and their customer service can’t be beat.

Another option, though I haven’t tried it, is to send your computer into MacService.com. They send you a pre-paid shipping container that you mail your computer to them in. Once it’s at their place turnaround is 24hours. I’m thinking about using this service to fix the fan on my MacBook Pro.

3. The “Power Management Controller” - About a month ago my computer wouldn’t start up correctly. It took a long time and once it did start up, the finder was so unresponsive the machine was mostly unusable. I ran disk utility etc and eventually was forced to reinstall the OS. This didn’t correct the problem so I was forced to wipe the hard drive and perform a clean re-install. This fixed the startup issue but oddly my iSight camera wouldn’t work plus there were some other funky things still going on. My girlfriend was recently the victim of a painful full on hard drive failure so of course I was paranoid thatApple’s shoddy hard dives were now striking me. However, after a detailed Google search I found something called the “Power Management Controller”

Over time, the settings in the System Management Controller may become unusable, which can result in operational anomalies with the computer. Examples include not turning on, not waking from sleep, not charging the battery, or not recognizing the AC Adapter, among others.

I tried resetting the PMU and what do you know, all the “anomalies” disappeared! I bet I didn’t even really need to reinstall the OS let alone erase my hard drive.

4 - Buy a Laptop Sleeve/iPhone condom - I had been in the market for a laptop sleeve for a long time but every time I went to an Apple store I just couldn’t bring myself to drop $40 on a little padded bag. Meanwhile my laptop got more and more scratched eroding the resale value. About two weeks before my girlfriend bought we a sleeve for Christmas, I dropped the messenger bag the computer was traveling in and now it has a big dent in it. Stoopid!

5 - Apple Computers are way better than Windows computers - Despite all my annoyances with Apple computers, the truth is I’ve been very happy with my MacBook Pro. I like knowing that my computer is not part of some giant botnet and there is nothing I can do about it. I like that I don’t have to spend hours updating virus definitions and chasing mysterious “cannot be found” .dll files. I like that every time I install some piece of shareware it doesn’t fill my browser up with a bunch of ancillary software that I can’t get rid of. Most of all I’m glad my computer manufacturer doesn’t think I’ll buy something just because a super model is straddling it:

I’m much more intrigued that my computer could fit in a manila envelope. That’s impressive!