Category Archives: blogging

Live… From beautiful Newark, Delaware…

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As promised, I’m coming to you live and in person from the Apple Store at Christiana Mall in Newark, Delaware. At 3AM EST, I’m estimating a line that’s a ragged 250-300 deep. Not surprisingly, the crowd is very subdued and there is a heavy presence of Delaware State Troopers already on hand. Good times. With doors open in five hours, I’ll be back when things start picking up.

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3:35 AM – I’ve been the last person in line for 20 minutes. Does that make me the least dedicated of the early adopters or most dedicated of the regular consumers?

4:17 AM – According to one of the nice people beside me, the line is 254 souls. Glad to see my power of estimation is still pretty accurate.

4:46 AM – Just got an email from Apple. Apparently they’ve started selling some kind of new phone today. Who knew?

5:00 AM – Lots of NY license plates coming onto the lot now. The line is stretching around a corner and out of sight behind me. Best guess is that it’s probably 2x longer than it was at 3AM. After starting to read reports if shipping times slipping into October, glad I didn’t decide to wait and try sneaking in an order online. Three hours to doors open.

5:17 AM – The inevitable asshat with a boom box just showed up playing what I think is called “dance” music…. Although at quarter past five in the morning it may prove to be “get your face smashed to a bloody pulp by tired people in line” music.

5:46 AM – The mall is opening their doors at 6:00, so the line is preparing to schlep inside. Those who brought chairs are now losing their places in line as they dump them back in their cars. Suckers.

5:52 – My little corner of the line before heading inside.

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6:22 AM – Lies. Damnable lies! Still standing outside.

6:45 AM – And still outside. Not sure if it’s an issue with Apple or the mall security set up. I’m guessing the latter just from observation.

7:15 AM – Still outside. Blue shirts came by asking the line if anyone was buying only the 5c so they could form a delegate line. So far, 500 people asked, zero 5c sales. Not surprising, but a fun fact. Also, no availability on the gold model from any carrier.

7:32 AM – All silver iPhones, all carriers are sold out. My level of confidence in getting hands on today is plummeting.

7:52 AM – No more word on stock outs. The line, however, is getting restless.

8:01 AM – All 16 GB AT&T iPhones are out of stock.

8:33 AM – Line hasn’t moved in 20 minutes. Blue shirts claiming the still have AT&T and Verizon availability in space grey.

8:36 AM – 32 GB AT&T is out of stock. Confidence in making this happen today is almost zero.

8:40 AM – stock out of AT&T. Bugger me.

9:25 AM – 2nd in line at a Best Buy that didn’t open early. Crossing my fingers.

9:34 AM – Mission success @ Best Buy!

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12:46PM – Well, that took more effort than I anticipated. The short version: I have an iPhone 5s in hand. I’m back at the house and once I get some coffee and chow into my system, I’ll give you a “first impressions” review. Stay tuned.

Skipped out…

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So yeah, I skipped yesterday. It doesn’t happen very often and while I make no apologies for taking a day off now and then, I like to think I’m delivering you some great old posts this morning by way of making up for being a lazy sod yesterday.

This week’s archive posts include one of my favorite rants – one about economics, freeloaders, and expectations. You might be able to imagine that it’s a topic about which I feel rather passionate. The good news is that while so much of the world has changed since May 2008, my own opinions have remained remarkably stable. There’s just something to be said about consistency over time.

The other four posts are entertaining in their own right, of course, but the rant on May 6th is the one you’re going to want to read if you don’t have time to look them all over this Sunday morning. So go forth, enjoy, and be back tomorrow evening when we once again go live with fresh material and I do my part to be a voice of sanity in a world gone mad.

Old school Sunday…

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This week’s posts from ye olde MySpace blog come to you from April 2008. All things considered it must have been a pretty average slice of life. By that I mean I wasn’t ranting and raving about anything in particular – although I should point out that there was a fun little piece about the ridiculous complaints we were hearing on the news way back the. Think stock market, gas prices, etc.

Every Sunday I see the number of posts waiting in the queue dropping and I’m almost a little sad that these Sunday posts will be coming to an end sooner rather than later. We’re under 10,000 words in the unpublished archive as of this morning. It looks like we’re down to another 12 weeks of these Sunday posts before I’m going to need to come up with something new and interesting to say on Sunday mornings. There look like enough posts to carry Sunday’s through the end of the year at this point. After that, the field of topics will again be wide open. I guess the new year is as good a time as any to kick of in a new direction.

Until we burn that bridge, I hope you’ll continue to enjoy old school Sunday.

A few extra…

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This Sunday’s archive posts were a little light on content and a little long on lack of sleep if I don’t miss my mark. These were all from the week or two immediately after Winston joined the family, so puppy patrol was the order of the day and the blog definitely suffered as a result. Since I’m a good guy, I’ve added a few extra posts to the usual Sunday Five this week. Hopefully you’ll consider volume a sufficient substitute for lack of depth this week.

Posts from March and April 2008 are up and available for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy this week’s no-strings-attached trip down memory lane.

Traditions…

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In keeping with my now long-standing Sunday tradition, I’m pleased to present this week’s installment of Sunday morning archive posts. Today’s selections come to you live and unedited via tape delay direct from March 2008. From Spring snow in Memphis to contemplating the end of a major stage of my career, we’re covering a lot of ground this week. There weren’t any epic rants in mid-March, so apparently most things were right with the world. I guess even I have weeks like that now and then. I suspect I’ll look back on more recent posts in five or six years and find that I’ve gotten more jaded an cynical over time. Some people would argue that’s a bad thing. I’d argue that it just makes for more entertaining writing.

Check back tomorrow when I’ll be blogging in the present day. I haven’t picked out a topic yet, but I’m sure someone, somewhere will do something ridiculous that will need commentary. One of the great perks of being an observer by nature is that it leaves you with an almost limitless supply of material. Even though I avoid people as a matter of principle, I do appreciate them as a source of content. I’ll be waiting for my Humanitarian of the Year award.

Picked up…

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Like a television being picked up for another season, I got my notice from GoDaddy this morning that the domain registration for http://www.jeffreytharp.com was renewed for another year. Assuming the blood keeps flowing to my fingers, I suppose that means the posts will keep on coming.

A new season often means new characters, a new story arc, and sometimes a completely different direction in an effort to breathe fresh life into a well worn formula. Rest assured, I won’t stand for that kind of foolishness here. You’ll keep getting the same surly, sarcastic, barbed, and vaguely misanthropic posts that you’ve come to expect when you point your browser at my small slice of the internet.

There are currently no changes, no specials, no 2-for-1 bargains planned in this seventh year of blogging. I’m just going to be over here doing what I’ve been doing since 2007. Hopefully you like it… but if it’s not quite your cup of tea or doesn’t live up to your expectations, feel free to bugger off at the earliest opportunity.

Defining “normal”…

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I’m glad I’ve got this backlog of old posts to work through on Sunday mornings, because quite frankly I’m nowhere near caffeinated enough yet to be all that coherent. Loading you up with old posts from MySpace is a convenient crutch for a brain that’s probably an hour or two from firing on all cylinders. That won’t last forever, but I’ll lean on it as long as possible.

This week’s archive selections feature posts originally made in February and March 2008, a time when I was contemplating getting a dog and changing career trajectory. Honestly it’s so far from today’s “normal” that it doesn’t even feel like the same life… and of course that leads to the inevitable questions about if life five years ago was so different, how different will life be five year from now. It’s a fun question in theory, but let’s just say I’m not ready to spend alot of time pondering 2018 and life after 40 just yet. I’m not sure there’s enough caffein in the country to get me to go there yet.

Enjoy this morning’s archive posts and I’ll be back with a “live” tomorrow for your reading pleasure.

Blink…

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I’ve been staring at this blank screen for the better part of the last hour. The only interruption was watching the cursor. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. BlinkBlinkBlinkBlink. There is no more infernal form of torture for someone who pretends to be a writer on the side than a blinking cursor, an empty page, and a brain that refuses to give up even the barest of thoughts about what should be there.

The fact is my brain turned to mush sometime around 1:30 this afternoon and I haven’t had much luck at making sense using the written word since then. It’ll pass. It always does. A cold beer, a good night’s sleep, and hopefully less of an assault on my editorial abilities during the day tomorrow and maybe I’ll be able to string a few coherent words together. Maybe. That’s how it’s always worked in the past, so I’m taking it as an article of faith that the ability to be snarky in print doesn’t just evaporate in an afternoon.

I guess we’ll find out around this time tomorrow.

Pretend…

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I like to pretend there is some kind of art or science to this whole blogging thing. I review the metrics, watch the traffic and hit counts, and imagine that I have some kind of idea what people might be interested in reading. At best it’s a 50-50 proposition most of the time. Fortunately, I’m mostly writing for the sake of writing and working out my chops, so the individual hits and misses aren’t really all that important. Lucky thing, too. If you tied much stock to whether you stats are up or down on any given day you’d drive yourself round the bend in no time.

Sundays are probably my slowest, least read day. I don’t know if that’s because I’m the only one who finds these archival posts even remotely interesting, or because everyone’s gone to church when I’m posting, or that you lazy jerks are still lying about in bed while I’m here slaving away at the keyboard. Not that it’s really important. I’ve been having a blast looking back at how the blog evolved over the last six years. The stuff I’m pulling in now from 2008 is far more personal/day-in-the-life than what I’m posting on a typical day in 2013. I like to think the writing has gotten better and the threads a little more coherent along the way. I know I’m more confident in my voice now that I was in the past, so even if practice doesn’t make perfect, it still makes for a better story.

I think everyone that lives part of their life online has some kind of performance fetish. We all want attention in one way or another. We’re all looking for the next “like” or comment or share at least on some level. For me, it’s the writing it all down that really feels important. I still find it fascinating to see what I thought was important the better part of a decade ago. Some of it holds up to the test of time and some of it just leaves me shaking my head and wondering what I was thinking.

Don’t forget to check out this morning’s archive posts from February 2008!

Winter in the archives…

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We’re well into winter in the jeffreytharp.com archives. This Sunday’s update comes to you from January and February 2008. Grad school was wrapping up, home improvements were happening, it was before things went off the rails for me in Memphis. It’s so strange to read these old posts and relive the experience, especially when I’m looking at it through hindsight’s lens and knowing that a few years later the neighbor’s questionable approach to lawn care would drop precipitously down the list of things I cared about. Early 2008 was still good times in the Mid-South. And if this little blast of nostalgia is any indication, apparently I’ve added enough distance now to start looking back on some of that time a little fondly.