My eBay sales went rather well! Let’s visit them:

• First Generation iPhone – I shed a few tears, but I eventually let it go to the market. I said goodbye to the vinyl The Scream parody sticker on the back I got in the United Arab Emirates, and the memories of me hunting it down after I had lost it in Bahrain. Even though I’ll miss my first iPhone fondly, I have to admit the $162.00 I got from selling it certainly makes the pain subside.
• Mac Mini - That’s right, I sold Igor; the old PowerPC Mac Mini with OS X 10.3. I won’t really miss that one as he was more trouble than he was worth. $170.00, however, makes him worth it I guess.
• Apple Aluminum Keyboard - I was using it on the Mac mini. I upgraded thinking that it was wireless but didn’t discover the fallacy until I had already opened it. Silly me. Good thing I got $41 for it.
• Motorola Wireless G Router. It was my first router I ever bought, and it worked wonderfully until I lost it in my move to Hawaii. I found it again not too long ago and sold it for $16.50.

Along with some other items I’ve sold for my roommate, I’ve hauled in over $500. I’m not done either! I still have a horde of items to get rid of. Which is a good thing because I could use all the money. I have traveling expenses to take care of. Not only is my sister getting married in September, but I’m going on a trip to San Francisco / Las Vegas at the end of this month.

Fun times!

Dear Microsoft;

I do not appreciate the irrelevant changes you’ve made to Office that belligerently destroys all things familiar to the user (as is par with you considering every other known version of Office). I was hoping that you would learn from your mistakes and stick with an interface that users could recognize instead of implementing wholly new half-baked ideas that leave everyone lost and groping for concepts like “Save As.”

Further, Vista (and Windows 7 by extension) are illegitimate brain-children and should be discontinued for the bellicose and knavish offspring that they are. We all know you’re trying to look better, but stealing visualizations and throwing former resemblances into the wind only make you look as foolish as you are disparate.

How about concentrating your energy in something that works before you make it look pretty? Function before form. American marketing has proven you can sell anything to anyone. And I’m sure that your 1 billion pc users are well on that trail of actualization no matter how many times they see Jerry Sinfeild making Bill Gates wag his fanny on camera. Perhaps if you had something worth buying, the internet community would stop wasting their time pirating you to get your services for free.

Thank you,
Raul

Dear Apple;

I don’t think anyone has had the guts to tell you this, because you are so wonderful and gracious to us peons, but… $700 is entirely too much for a phone! Further, price-cuts to your other products will not make it easier to sneak a $700 price tag under our noses. It’s to a point that I’m not entirely sure what market you are playing for, and it is really starting to show that you think we are dumb.

For example: the lovely OS 3.o software you just released for all iPhones. I have to tell you I am terribly disappointed in you for not including some of the other special features that should have come with it. How hard is it, oh masters of meticulousness, to include voice commands into a phone with a pre-existing microphone? Hmm? Or could you explain to me how I may use MMS (as wonderful as it is) if your carrier doesn’t even support it yet?

Which reminds me. Your choice in friends is also questionable. AT&T is ruining it for you, and you know it. I’m not entirely sure what backdoor-schemes you’ve been forging in your off-time but you should really reconsider bringing more people into your elite posse. Like T-Mobile. Or some other carrier that, you know… Works. Or at least a carrier that actually provides the services that you’ve been advertising.

Thank you,
Raul

Okay, so my last post was really long. I’ll try to keep things shorter, I promise.

I got a second phone call from my old publisher asking me if I wanted to stay. Seriously? Because I hadn’t made it clear before. This time, the conversation didn’t last long. I said no, and informed her where to send the check. Period.

What I wanted to say “wow” about was the new iPhone. No–not to its many new and nifty features; I just wanted to say wow that the 32 GB iPhone is

$699 for a phone. A phone people. I love Apple, but not that much.

Ugh… At least AT&T has a deal for those of us at the end of our contracts.