Category: Technology

Two years ago when I purchased my MacBook Pro I was interested in getting some sort of case for it.  My colleague Jeff had this awesome sleeve for his Powerbook that I was in love with.  Jeff and the other guys from the office all pitched in to get me the sleeve as a graduation present. 

About a month ago the zipper broke.  🙁  I used this sleeve daily and always took great care when zipping it up.  In fact it was almost always stored in my book bag, for added redundancy. 

I thought to myself, “Crap.  I’m going to have to buy a new one.  No way there is any sort of warranty.”  

Just to make sure I contacted booq, the makers of this great sleeve.  They have a 5 year warrany!  Since the sleeve was a gift I asked Jeff if he still had an copy of a recipt, invoice anything.  Luckly he did.  I sent off the sleeve, waited a few days and recieved a very polite email saying they recieved my sleeve.

They noted that it appeared to be defective and were going to replace it free of charge!  The best part is that this apparently is a newer model sleeve.  It is much more sturdy with a thicker foam insert.  

I was impressed with my original sleeve*,  impressed with thier customer service and the fact that I ended up getting an even better product is just icing.

I highly recommend booq if you want a great product and great service.

 

*So much that once my wife got her Mac we bought a sleeve for her as well

Last night while the wife was out shopping I thought I’d play some Ace Combat 6 (great game, btw).  Before I started playing I set my Macbook Pro up in the kitchen to download some files for me.  We have this awesome kitchen with some swank under-the-cabinet lighting.  After setting up my Mac I had left the lights on for my wife so when she came in the kitchen wouldn’t be totally dark.  I went into the living room and quickly became oblivious to the outside world.  Now we have 3 cats and they’re often bumping into things or knocking stuff over.  So when I thought I heard a small crash coming from the kitchen I thought nothing of it.

A few minutes later my wife came back from the store and I helped her put groceries on the kitchen counter. I took a look over at my Macbook Pro to check the status of the downloads.  On my keyboard was the cap to one of the under-the-cabinet lights.

 

I picked it up laughing to my wife that it had fallen off.  How strange.  Apparently the heat caused it to warp just enough to fall off the little clips that hold it in.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I looked down at my Mac.

 

ZOMG!  The light cover was so hot that it had melted some of my keys!

 

 

Luckily enough the only part that was damaged was the plastic keys themselves, the underlying hinges and scissor mechanism was untouched.  Even the little rubber buttons were fine.

 

So for the short term I’m missing a few keys.  Luckily they’re not keys I use every day.  I checked out a few shops online and replacing these 4 keys is going to cost me close to $40, which is much cheaper than a) Having Apple repair it or b) buying a whole new keyboard.

I’m now concerned with the safety of these lights.  What could have happened if they had fallen on some paper or other more flammable items?  (Not that I have a lot of these things laying around, I’m just saying)

I use quite a few services to update friends and family about my life.  I often use a combo of a few different tools.

Moodblast to update Facebook, Twitter, Pownce and Adium (for Gtalk/AIM status messages) all at the same time.  Very hand free app that keeps me connected to friends as I work.

I use a ‘post to del.icio.us’ bookmarklet to share interesting sites and links.  Which, when working properly also cross posts to this blog.

I use flickr to share photos as well.

iScrobbler to track my music playback on Last.fm.

Unfortunately not all updates go through all services.  And you may not know where I’m updating and when.

Which brings me to my newest tool that hopefully will help coalesce these various tools.

I just signed up for FriendFeed.  Which allows me to collect all my updates in one location.  Now when I update one of the various services I use they are all aggregated to my FriendFeed.  So, instead of trying to track me down all over the internet you can simply stalk me find my updates here!