If I were homeless...

...my ass definitely wouldn't be anywhere near Chicago during the winter. Or ever, for that matter, since it gets REALLY FREAKING COLD up here. Not to be a dick about it or anything, but the first priority in my mind if I were homeless in a big city like NYC or Chicago would be to get the hell down south to somewhere warm. I'm sure I could scrape together like $40 for a Greyhound ticket to Miami in a few days by panhandling, stealing from tourists, or selling non-vital organs on the black market. Get creative people!

I just got back from a (failed) downtown excursion, the sole purpose of which was to get my iPhone replaced because it doesn't ring anymore. It still vibrates but the ring is almost inaudible. This happened to me a few weeks back too, and it magically fixed itself after I did a restore on it. Problem solved? Nope -- just a few days later the same thing happened, so I restored it again. This time it took about two weeks before screwing itself up again, so I took it to the Apple store downtown and they said they had to do a restore on it before looking at the hardware itself for defects. Whaddya know, it worked just fine afterwards and they basically told me that it was a problem with iTunes and not my phone. So apparently uninstalling and then re-installing iTunes will solve all of my problems, which sounds like a bunch of BS to me. I told the guy I'd be back in a week when it stops ringing again, and he said to make sure I tried re-installing iTunes before coming back in. Obv I'll give it a shot, but I'm not optimistic...

On a side note, this was my first time inside an Apple store, and I must say I'm very impressed at how the company is run. Everything is well thought out, and it's a great sales environment; I can see why their stock is doing so well. They even have a big seminar area which runs their "getting a Mac will solve all of your computing problems forever" propaganda / TV ads on a loop between informative seminars on how to use various features in bundled Mac software.

Don't get me wrong: Apple makes some really great products. I came very, very close to buying a 15" Macbook Pro last month (on which I would have run XP MCE); the primary reason I chose Dell over Apple was because I could get a higher resolution screen with the Dell (1680x1050) vs the Mac's fixed 1440x900. Once you go to high-res monitors you can't go back, and I've been spoiled by my 24" LCD @ 1920x1200 for almost 3 years now.

So after failing at the Apple store, I headed to Filene's Basement to pick up some new corduroys, and they only had one pair in my size in the whole freaking store. I also needed to pick up some long underwear for my upcoming ski trip to Canada, but once again I sifted through the hoards of Large, XL, & XXL to come up short in my quest for a medium. God I run bad @ clothes.

...and the damn clothes manufacturers never learn either. There's *always* huge stockpiles of Large, XL, & XXL and rarely any mediums or smalls. I swear, if I didn't already have some great business ideas in the works I'd open a sweatshop and hire a bunch of Vietnamese children for $.12/hr to make nothing but clothes in adult small and medium sizes. I'd be a multi-millionaire in no time!

Time for a nap