As many, or some, or a few, or none at all, of you may know... Friday was a very important day in the history of Mankind.
Why?
Because the new, and much ballyhooed, iPhone from Apple was released. I didn't know this. I did find out about it when I started reading news reports of people camping out in front of Apple stores and Cingular/At&T stores nationwide [in some cases, 4 or 5 days in advance]. I also heard tales of folks spending their last coin[s] on purchasing one or two [two being the limit set by Apple] with the plan to immediately put the phone up on eBay or Craigslist at some astronomical price to make some nice, meaty profit. Unfortunately there were many iPhones to be had [stores didn't run out of them]... so, the campers and the profiteers ended up with a biggish handful of nothingness over the average Joe who just happened in off the street and asked, "Hey, ya got an iPhone for me? I got money for it if you do", and walked out a few minutes later with said purchase in tow.
And then I read about AT&T not being able to activate all those iPhones, and how nearly all of NYC [or, 'all' of it... can't recall] wasn't getting any activation of their iPhones. Apparently AT&T didn't think folks would be so into their iPhones. **Note-you don't activate these phones the traditional way-via the phone and/or at your local service provider's brick-n-mortar locale. Nope, you plug 'em in, call up your iTunes on your 'lectronic box, and do it the New Fashioned Way: over the Internet.**
So how come I knew all this anyway? Well because as things would turn out... I bought a new phone over eBay a couple weeks back. One that featured a QWERTY keyboard [I text a lot... I mean a lot. A lot, like a 16 year old likes to. Mostly to my wife, Amy, but others too. It's a very nice way for me to kill two birds with one keystroke- 1. I don't like talking on the phone too much... and 2. I can text Amy anytime she's at work, whereas, much of the time I could not call her. Say for instance, when she would be performing an arrest on a patient: straddling their chest while pumping an airbag over their nose & mouth. Just as an example]. So...
long story shortened, I get this new QWERTY-based phone, it comes late no less. The next day, Friday, I need to go get it set up at my new-to-me, local, Minnesota, brick-n-mortar phone establishment... a 5 minute deal at the most. But, I show up and it's like I'm waiting on line at TicketMaster for tickets to see Elvis fucking Presley's corpse doing a Comeback Tour. Like a HUGE line of geeky-looking, underfed, undersunned techno-weenies... and yep, they're all waiting for that damned iPhone at 6pm on Friday [Apple decided that it would be available at 6pm, not really sure why].
So, I didn't get my new, ghetto-technology'd, QWERTY-based phone up and running because I didn't pay attention to the news of that particular day. Shit.
But then something much more strange occurred. I went home, could only use a couple features of my new-to-me but rather-old-technology, eBay-purchased, QWERTY-based phone, and started reading about the iPhone. After all, why not? I mean the release of this phone was big news and had killed my trip to the local AT&T place to have them copy a simple SIM card. What's a fella to do otherwise?
And while doing this, I had the radio on too. Some 'Net-based station out of San Francisco. 30 or so minutes into all this, the obnoxious DJ comes on and announces an 800 number to call, some contest. You gotta be the 20th caller and answer a "really hard" question for a new & amazing prize. Well... I have the time, and a new phone that can't do much more than make just calls, so I called.
Once.
I was caller 20.
The question I was asked, "If I were to roast a Poblano pepper, what would it then be called?"
My answer, "Ha, that's easy... an Ancho pepper."
BAM! Bells-n-Whistles go off, the DJ starts screaming at me-"OHHHH MYYY GODDDDD, WE'VE GOTTT A WINNNNNNERRRRR!".
Cool. What's the prize?
A voucher to take to my local Apple or AT&T store and get a free 8gig iPhone. Naturally I didn't believe him. They took down my particulars w/location + email address. The next morning I awoke to an email telling me to go to the Apple store near me with a voucher ID number. I did.
Be damned, I got an 8gig iPhone.
And then I went home and started the much talked about [in a bad way] activation process. Seems it's true. Not much happened. But then I read, earlier today, that if you called a specific 800 number at AT&T, waited on hold for hours [potentially], asked for a supervisor, you could get manually activated in a matter of minutes. I waited on the phone for 3 hours... and was manually activated by a cat named, Rob [extremely Nice guy too], in precisely 6 minutes.
Great phone, more features than I'll know what to do with...
never had any new technology when it was still deemed "New" so this is fun. My techno-speed has always been an approximate 3-5 year lag on techno gadgets, but Luck brought me up to speed on this one.
Yeah me. Go figure...
I'm Activated.
Keep Pushin' [and Texting]... Always
That is f'ing hilarious! Good job. The kids over at race.cx have been scheming to get an iphone but really, it is way too much technology for anyone!
Posted by: Molly Cameron | July 02, 2007 at 09:15 AM
That is a great story.
Posted by: Jumbo Rider | July 03, 2007 at 07:29 AM
Congrats on the phone. An awesome reward for everything you have gone through in the last while. It is so nice to see your blog back up. I've missed seeing how you are all doing. Glad to hear you made it to your new digs and are liking your new city. Cheers.
Posted by: Margie | July 07, 2007 at 12:54 AM
It couldn't have happened to a nicer fella. Text away and have fun.
Posted by: beth h | July 11, 2007 at 10:13 PM
3 hours on the phone? Waiting?! I couldn't...
Posted by: Frank Lores | July 16, 2007 at 07:35 AM