New Cell Phone

My Palm OS Treo 680 is failing. The case is cracked, there's dust behind the screen and it has lost its mind. Sometimes it just doesn't respond or takes a minute before doing anything. Sometimes it doesn't want to talk to T-Mobile any more. Also. It's a little shaky on letting me send text messages. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Weird. I used this Treo a LOT though. Every day for years. When I was working in San Francisco and commuting on CalTrain I used it for dial-up networking for my MacBook Pro. It's seen a lot of use. Still, it sucks that it's broken or breaking. It's a mess.

Now that I'm going to be so rich (see previous post) I bought a used iPhone 2g. I need a new phone and I'll use it for development too. I just unlocked it and it took a little under one hour. So now I have an iPhone 2g that works with my T-Mobile plan. Nice.

Highly paid expert consultant!

I got some email from someone at DeMatteo Monness a month ago. They're a "a boutique primary research firm and full service broker-dealer serving the institutional investment fund community." They were looking for someone with expertise in the things I know about (board games and porn?*).

I spent 20 minutes with my initial contact there talking about my experience, what I know about the things they were interested in etc. At that point I thought "Wait a minute, I'm not being paid and I want to get back to work!" So I interrupted the conversation to let the interviewer know I needed to get back to work, and to ask "How much will this pay?" As it turns out they pay $300/hour. I quit griping and said "No problem!"

The first call fell through because I didn't have the specific company experience that their client wanted. D'oh. Another of their clients was interested in talking to me. I joked with Kelly and our friend Alan about how I'd speak really slowly and make crazy references to drag the call out (more money!). "Okay, are you guys familiar with the show Seinfeld? Do you remember there was the tall guy and he would suddenly burst into Jerry's apartment? What was his name?" "Yeah, that was Kramer." "No, that's not it. The guy with the crazy hair." "His name is Kramer." "Was it Carl?" You get the idea.

Even with my excellent money-making plan ready-to-go I ended up skipping that and answering their questions. I didn't even mention Seinfeld once. Anyway, it was fun and went well. Although since I knew someone was paying $300/hour that caused me to speak really quickly without realizing it until later. I didn't want them to waste their money! Ha.

* What!? No, more like mobile apps and casual games. And porn. I'll be here all week folks. Thank you, and good night!

Kodak Zi6 (low-end) HD camcorder

Our old camcorder stopped auto-focusing. And it doesn't have manual focus. It's kind of "Random Focus" now. Theoretically we could run around and change the distance to what we're recording to put things in focus (or yell to the kids "Run, fast, closer!"). But then it would react to that and refocus on something random ("No, stop, okay go way back! Go go!"). Kind of a Schrödinger's cat deal. Well, I'm not sure that's true. But still, that's a good Wikipedia page.

Anyway, even though we're not really buying anything, ever again (. I bought a refurbished Kodak Zi6. It's pink. I'm going to say it's Kelly's. Besides, I'm red/green color-blind and it doesn't look pink to me. Ha. It was $87 with shipping (from geeks.com on eBay) and has a one year warranty. I also paid $18 (at Amazon) for an 8GB class 6 (which here means "fast") SD card for $18. The camera came with two rechargeable AA batteries and so far works. It saves QuickTime .MOV files to an SD card and it's easy to get them into iPhoto and then iMovie.

The idea is the next time we go visit our families we can videotape us visiting or doing things. That are funny. Or nice. The camera doesn't do so well with motion. I guess that's how it is with < $100 HD camcorders... It does great in sunlight and with things that aren't moving quickly. iMovie '09 has image stabilization so you can process your videos and make 'em look less shaky. I'll see how that goes.

I just checked the firmware version on the camera. And it's an old version. Whoever refurbished this didn't update the firmware. That's okay, 'cause I LOVE updating software. Seriously. It's like you get a better product for free. So I'm updating from 1.01 to 1.11. Wish me luck.

Update The 8GB Class 6 SD card arrived. I took some test video with it and it seems much smoother than what I shot before. I think the 2GB SD card I used from my cell phone was probably fragmented AND slow. So I'm a little more optimistic. With that said... the audio is crappy. It's got a high pitched hiss. I'm going to chat with Kodak online now...

Pandora is cool

When I'm working I listen to music with the web site Pandora. You create a free account, pick some songs or artists that you like and it makes music channels based on those. It's a cool way to find bands that you've never heard of or forgotten about.

I kept hearing that they were going to go out of business. Because it costs them money to play all these songs for free. They pay fees to the music industry, but beyond that I'm sure the web traffic costs them a lot too. Anyway, I'm bad. I never click their ads... I'm not interested. But I like the music a lot.

I just got email from them saying I'm in the top 10% of users at Pandora. Not like the top 10% bestest customers they love, but the top 10% in usage. As in "Hey, quit using Pandora so much or else start clicking our ads, layabout!" The email explained if I listen to more than 40 hours of music in a month I'll be asked to pay $1 for that month*. Otherwise it's all good times. We'll see when I hit 40 hours... The other option is to pay $36/year for unlimited music + higher quality streams.

* Surprisingly reasonable. Plus it's not a recurring thing. It's a one-off charge each time it happens and you approve it. It seems so reasonable I wonder if they're being super cautious about scaring away users.

Patchin' the pool, and lemon sorbet

We bought a citrus juicer, like this one. I think exactly this one. It looks like the Alien from the movie Alien... Or maybe like ET. It gets bad reviews on Amazon, but we paid $1 for it from a neighbor. It's been awesome for juicing lots of lemons. And since lemons are falling off our tree like rain it's helping a lot. We're drinking a lot of lemonade and eating lemon sorbet* between all meal courses.

Our neighbor, Alan, and his two kids stopped by yesterday. I mentioned to him that our pool has a leak on the top so it won't stay inflated. Subsequently we can't fill it enough to use the filter really. He said it's pretty easy to fix leaks like that and went right into action. He put all the kids to work with soapy water and sponges. I should have taken pictures. The kids were awesome although sometimes had to be reminded that the section nearest to the soapy water bucket was already bubbly enough and that they should move on. Anyway, we found three leaks and I patched 'em (This $30 used pool came with everything, including an unused patch kit!). Now it holds air way better. I found one last leak this morning when I filled it up. It was easy because air bubbles were just pouring up through the water.

It's Monday morning in Hong Kong... (but Sunday night in California) That means I'm looking online to see if Andy is around and if he'll be working on some solitaire art today. :) The settings control is ready-to-go and I cleaned up some of the texture loading code so it's much more concise. In the scheme things a customer would never know. But I know the code is a lot cleaner and that's worth something.

* You know, to clear the palate.

Cool art, settings, building a wall

Andy's done a ton more fantastic art for my iPhone Solitaire game. The game is starting to look really good. It's been cool working with Andy. He's in Hong Kong so we end up talking when it's morning there and dinner-time here in California. The coolest thing is I wake up in the morning and there's new art! Nice.

I'm working on the Settings screen now. It's all custom-drawn in Open GL instead of using the normal iPhone OS stuff. I normally like to use the built-in user interface features of the OS, especially with Macs, but I think our screens are going to look better and all feel like they fit together much better this way.

In other news... Cousin Dan and I started filling in an arch in the living room here. Well, mostly Dan. I'm the assistant. I'll post pictures soon.

Solitaire, lemons, pool

1) Kelly bought an inflatable (but kind of hard-core) pool for $30 used (it turns out it was $150 new + all the chemicals and more came with it). We set it up in the back yard. I thought it was an "8 foot" pool. But it's 13 feet. It's kind of huge considering our small back yard. Anyway, it's fun. I get to do all the cool stuff my dad did with our pool when I was growing up. Like use the cool water tester thing and put the drops in and shake it. And add chlorine. And yell at the kids to keep the chickens out of the pool*.

2) We have a lemon tree. We don't take care of it, really at all. It makes a million lemons all year long. I don't think it ever stops. Anyway, today I used up like 30 lemons and made a huge pitcher or lemonade (including simple syrup 'cause we're kind of fancy here about our lemonade) and also made lemon sorbet which is in the freezin' machine now.

3) Andy Fitzsimon started working on artwork for my iPhone solitaire game. He's already made some great art and has had a bunch of good ideas for the game. I swear we are going to beat the pants off the other solitaire games on the iPhone. Heck, maybe we'll beat the pants off of a bunch of other non-solitaire games. I have no idea if we'll make money though... Anyway, it's already looking better and the sounds from Michael at Magnetron Audio are great. I just paid $0.99 for Astraware Solitaire and it's not very good at all. They have like 400 other games and my guess is they're too busy with everything else or were in a rush to ship this game. It doesn't run in landscape mode, the frame rate seems slow, the graphics don't seem up to their standards.

* Okay, we didn't have chickens when I was kid. But we had a lot of apple trees. Also. No one even let the chickens near the pool here, but it's a funny idea.

Board Games With Scott

1. I'm a big board game geek
2. I don't like boring American games like Sorry, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit or Candy Land... I like designer/Euro games that are really good. Like Ticket to Ride, Diamant and For Sale.
3. Since I'm a board game geek I like to learn about board games.
4. I like Scott Nicholson's Board Games with Scott

. Check it out. Scott's really funny, plus you'll learn about some cool games. Also. He's a librarian!

Kindle, Pizza and Solitaire

Kelly's Kindle 2

Kelly's Kindle 2 (e-Book from Amazon) is broken. Well, the screen is broken. The upper-right corner looks all jumbled and there are some stray vertical and horizontal white lines too. I accused her like 7 times of dropping it or doing something bad. But she denied any wrong-doing. I googled around and the same thing has happened to other Kindle owners. I wonder if the screen is fragile or if it might be some other issue.

Amazon support wrote me back quickly and gave me a number to call. I called and the guy was very nice and they're sending out a replacement Kindle tomorrow. I wonder now if there was a defect in it, if it's really delicate, if a kid juggled it or what. And I wonder if the new one will have the same problem.

Save/Restore undo history in Solitaire (aka "Boring")

I'm adding "Undo" save and restore to Solitaire for the iPhone. So it'll remember your moves when you quit and resume later. It ought to be easy since it already worked for Palm OS...

Pizza Hut Coupons?

We just got a sheet of Pizza Hut coupons at our door. I don't like Pizza Hut, but I looked at these and I'm going. And we've even been making our own pizzas from scratch. Although they're only so-so. They'd be good except that the weird (tiny) European oven we have only goes up to 450 degrees. And there's only a top burner. So no crispy crust for us. Stupid oven.

The first coupon is $3 for a medium 1 topping pizza. That's like free. I mean, they don't make money on that do they? I thought that was so cheap that at first I didn't notice the next coupon. Now that I've studied it, it's my favorite coupon of all time:

Any Pizza
Any Size
Up to 3 Toppings or Specialty
$10

So what they're saying here is "OMG The economy is really bad. We really want you to start coming to our shop or we're going out of business. Here's the deal: You buy ANY pizza, small, extra large, large with a hole in the middle, whatever you want. We don't care. We'll put anything on it. ANYTHING. You want another pizza on it? No prob. You want a Tower of Hanoi pizza with 7 pizzas each a different diameter? It's in the oven now. You want to bring your so-so pizza from home and have us wrap it up with one of ours and then deep fry it? Done. Whatever you want, okay? $10. Please. Please, just come to our store. Look, we'll send someone over -- you show them the $10 and they'll pull you to the store in a wagon. $10. Any pizza, and you get a free wagon ride. Okay?"

My Favorite iPhone Games

I've tried a lot of iPhone games. Here are my two favorites.

The Creeps!

There are lots of Tower Defense games for the iPhone. This is my favorite. Cartoony monsters try to wake up the sleeping kid. You have to stop them. There's no scrolling or zooming, everything is on-screen. There are multiple modes and lots of levels for each that offer a good variety of game play. The best game design element is that the player doesn't just have to stop the bad guys to do well, they also have to clear out the trees/rocks/shells/whatever from the field. So there's always a choice during the game whether you should focus on shooting the bad guys or clear out some space for money and to make room for more defense weapons. The graphics and sound could be better but they're good. It's $0.99 and you should buy it.

Peggle

Peggle's a great game on desktop machines and they've ported the same game to the iPhone and did a great job. It's like super fancy pachinko. It has so many rewarding particle effects and random rewards that you'll want to keep playing and you'll be sure you're getting really good at it. I'm not convinced a player's skill at the game makes much difference... but it's still really fun. It's $5 as I write this, but it was on sale for $0.99 recently.

Eric's iPhone Solitaire and more

The casual game I was working on at PlayFirst, DinerTown Tycoon, finally shipped! I finished fixing bugs early and moved onto the web version of the game. Unfortunately I was done with the web game super early (normally that's good), but then it was canceled. I'm bummed they didn't cancel it before I did the work. It's sad to see your work thrown out. Then I helped out on the SDK and with other projects and when there wasn't more to do they laid me off. What does this mean for you, the consumer? Ha. It means I'm finishing Solitaire for the iPhone which, once I line up an artist, will whoop the pants off of the competition. I'm also looking for a job or contract with a company that's got good management, makes cool consumer stuff, and cares about making things good so the employees can be proud of them.

I found a great audio guy for Solitaire but I'm still looking for an artist.

So far I'm 0 for 9 on artists. They're either too busy, get hired away to NAMCO, are too far away, are too expensive, or don't understand solitaire. I added an animated Loading screen although the game loads so fast maybe it's a waste. The new iPhones are even faster. It's the right place to show the game's title etc though. A lot of apps just show their title screen with Default.png, the static image that's shown as an app is loading, but before its code is actually running. Apple suggests developers set up that image to look like the first thing a user will see once the app really starts though. The idea is that it'll seem like the application has loaded more quickly, and there won't be a sudden change that surprises the user. Some games put instructions on that static image. It's a mistake though... on a faster device users will never have time to read the info. Also -- it can't be localized (i.e. Translated into another language) since it's just an image and the text is baked into the image.

In other news: We still have five hens and combined they lay 3-4 eggs a day. Some squirrels moved in recently and one figured out how to open the gate to the chicken coop, let all the chickens out, and then go eat their food. What the hell? I thought the stuff I learned from Warner Brothers cartoons was all made up. But clearly those cartoons were based on reality. I'm going to set up an anvil-based squirrel trap next week.

Jonah (and I) finished ~90% of Lego Star Wars for Wii over the past year. It's a fantastically designed game. There are so many great ideas and really good gameplay. I didn't expect it to be 1/10 as good as it is. It's so well designed and they sell it for ~$15. I recommend it to anyone who has a Wii. And if you have a 5+ year-old-kid it's a great game to play together. Plus it's cheap and there's a TON of game play. Plus. It's Star Wars.

Also, we're growing some tomatoes upside down. Cousin Dan dug a hole to put the post in. Ari wanted to get in on the action.

2009

So far it's been a pretty stinky year, 2009. I won't go into the details onacounta who knows who reads this blog. Maybe I should password protect it? Sell subscriptions? Then it wouldn't be weird to cover what's what. Then again, maybe I don't need to. Most anyone who reads this (Hi Dad and Mom!) already know everything crappy that's happened this year.

I've been making progress on solitaire for the iPhone. It's starting to come together. I'm hoping to whoop the pants off all the other solitaire games. Unfortunately that doesn't necessarily translate to sales. My solitaire for Palm came out very well but it was hard to compete with like 90 other solitaire games. It was more of a marketing competition than anything else... and I'm a game developer, not a marketing weasel. Ha, that reminds me once when I worked for Catapult Entertainment long ago (1995?). I was talking with the marketing person and she didn't know I'd worked on Ultimate Solitaire. I think she saw the CD or something and we talked a little about it. Anyway, that was the conversation where I realized we'd sold WAY more copies of Ultimate Solitaire than Catapult had sold of their XBAND modem. It wasn't much later that I quit my job at Catapult and worked on a new improved version of Ultimate with Joe at Delta Tao.

I'm not sure who reads this blog. But if you're interested in helping test out solitaire for the iPhone and you're not some spy for one of the many other giant solitaire corporations... then send me your iPhone/iTouch UDID and maybe I'll set you up with a copy.

Solitaire, iPod Touch, Chickens

I finally gave in and ordered an iPod Touch. I had lunch with my friend, Bob, and he graciously offered to use his Apple employee discount. I had been holding out for a while because I like to buy used things instead of new for a bunch of reasons. But the deals on used iPod Touches (That sounds a little creepy) were not-so-good. So soon I'll be the owner of a brand new one with a warranty and everything.

I've got my solitaire game working, but need to add all the user-interface goodness. Well, most of it. Like preferences, statistics etc. Mainly a way for the player to switch between the games. There's all this indirection in how you can set up things that's frustrating. I just want to lay out a screen and tell it to display a la Palm OS. I'm not so sure I want to layout a screen, create a navigation controller, a view controller and a monkey controller as well as connect all the things graphically. It's weird.

One of our chickens laid an egg.

ONE OF OUR CHICKENS LAID AN EGG!

It was small, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't planted by a "funny" neighbor. But that was it, that was days ago and no more eggs. I don't know what it costs to take care of chickens for 6 months but that's how much that egg cost us. Kind of similar to our four-plant tomato farm. We ended up having more than one tomato, but at first that one was the $50 (not including time, water or fertilizer) tomato. I think we're up to a three tomato yield now though, so hey we're under $17/tomato. Nice. Next year we'll find a sunnier spot. Or grow them on the roof.

Plants and more

My phone says it's time to post to my blog. And if I don't then I'll snooze the reminder until it reminds me again next week. And so on. So instead I'm going to write some stuff. Right now!

I've been working a lot but just hit a big milestone for my game at PlayFirst so that's great. I can relax a little. Plus right now I'm working on a really fun part of the game.

Jonah's birthday is coming up. He'll be five. So far he wants a Ninja Turtle cake. That sounds a lot easier, but a little mainstream, compared to the crazy/cool TANKER TRUCK EXPLOSION cake we made last year. Still, I try to come through on his requests. Especially things like this that are easy.

I bought a game (well, in truth I bought a zillion games, but I want to talk about this one) called Pandemic. It's a cooperative board game where each player plays a randomly selected role and the players try to, well, save the world. Four diseases have broken out in the world and the players travel the world, helping each other, getting rid of disease, and trying to find cures together. It's cool. I really like cooperative games. Don't get me wrong, I like confrontational games too, but it's fun to work together.

Ari is starting to talk a lot more. It makes me laugh out loud when he says "No" now. He used to just say "unh uh" and kind of yell his anger. Now he has a real quick and subtle "No." He also say "Tink You m" (Thank you) which is crazy how cute he sounds.

He says a ton of other stuff too but those are some recent excellent ones.

I've been trying to teach Jonah that Ari wants to do everything Jonah does. "Jonah, if you don't want Ari to try to gouge your eyes out then you need to stop eye gouging, okay? No eye gouging." It's not working, but I feel like it's the right thing to teach him.

Okay, I've gotta get back to work. The stock market is plummeting, but I see it as an opportunity to invest. Just don't go spendin' all your money at once everyone.

:-(

I just heard the news from my friends, Mary and Joe, that my friend, Erick Wujcik, died. I'm really sad. Erick was so nice and smart and just so wonderful to talk to. He was always supportive. I wouldn't be at my current job, which I like a lot, if he hadn't given the company his seal of approval.

I ran my (grown-up) nephews through Erick's first published role-playing game, Sector 57, about a week ago. It was fun and brought back a lot of the memories I had of Erick from when I met him 20+ years ago. John Speck and I were 16 when we first met Erick. We would drive to the Detroit Gaming Center almost every Sunday night to play in role-playing games that Erick ran. His games were so fun and engaging.

I'm going to miss Erick's warm smile, big hugs and cool stories.

Here are some details from Kevin Siembieda

Mobile?

This is take 2 of trying to post to my blog from my phone.

Hey! It was "Crazy Hair" day today at Jonah's preschool. He was a
little worried and wanted to know what his friends hair would look
like. I explained the girls would mostly have lots of crazy pigtails
and the boys would have hair that was sticking out all over.

So Kelly made his hair stick straight up. It was awesome.

At school everyone loved his crazy hair. It turned out my prediction
was right about the kids and their crazy hair. One bonus thing is
since we hardly ever get Jonah a haircut his crazy hair was even
crazier than the other boys who hardly had any hair to make crazy.

Baby Signs

I just wrote a message about Baby Signs to some of my friends on dan&eric (a mailing list that, amazingly, is still around and grew out of a bulletin board from CMU made up of, well, me and Dan's friends and their friends long long ago). A lot of them are busy reproducing and this came up.

So here it is in case some person stumbles on my blog and wants to read about Baby Signs...

"Baby Signs" are cool and fun. The rule of thumb is babies can't do 'em until they're around 11+ months old. Your mileage may very. I'm also a little suspicious that when the babies know baby signs maybe they don't pick up speaking as quickly. Or maybe our kids are slow. :-) Anyway, you can start doing the baby signs to the babies any time, but usually the earlier you start the longer you'll be waiting to see your baby do one.

"More" and "All Done" are some great baby signs. And milk. That's a good one. Here are the ones that we taught Jonah and Ari. Good luck with my hilarious hard-to-understand descriptions of how to do each sign. Don't bother buying a Baby Sign book, they're a waste of money. All you really need is to pick like 10 signs to use, use them every time you say the word and there you go. Google "baby signs" and find text or picture descriptions of 'em. Or decipher mine. These are some good ones. :-)

More -- use one hand to point at other open hand and touch your pointer finger right there on your palm, like "Hey, put more right here already. okthxbye." (pretty much if they shove their hands together you'll know what they mean. Sometimes they might yell "MO!" like Ari or in Jonah's case "MA!" (short for Mas -- Got to love the Spanish!))
Milk -- Squeeze one hand a couple times like you're milking an udder
Cheese -- Twist both open hands together kind of like your hands are the bread of a sandwich. With your open hands parallel to the ground.
Banana -- Point one bent finger and pretend to peel it with other hand
Cat -- Hold fingers like an Okay sign and slide thumb and forefinger along cheek from mouth towards ear, like where your whiskers would be if you were a cat, or a furry.
Diaper -- Pat side once or twice
Mommy -- Stick out hand with fingers
spread, like you're going to say "nyah nyah" like that French guy in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Then touch thumb to your cheek under your eye twice
Daddy -- Same thing as Mommy but do it higher up, on your forehead.

Anyway, read a book to yer kid every day. Also, talk to 'em a lot. A running commentary of what's going on, what they're doing, what you're doing etc. Kids love that shit. Also. Singing.

Well, it's good for 'em so they can learn to talk and read and avoid being ne'erdowells.

Eric
* This is a cute one especially the first time they use it for a non-food thing. Like when you're tickling them and then stop and they do the more sign.

Four Months?

Sheesh. It's been four months since I posted anything. That's no good. So here's to not worrying about posting important things, and to just trying to post more often.

Everyone's been sick over here on and off the past month or two. It's ridiculous. Although mostly Kelly doesn't get sick, or she gets sick at other weird times, like when we're not relying on her. It's probably a special mother super-power.

We have six new baby chicks. We've never had chicks before. When we first got our chickens long ago from Joe and Mary they were already ~1 month old. So Kelly and I took a class at a little (sort of hippy) farm in Santa Cruz two weeks ago. With the class we got six baby chicks and the basics to take care of them. So they live in a box in the shower in the little bedroom in our garage. Which actually is now my office. I work right near them and check on 'em pretty often. I prevented a jail break last week. They now have chicken wire on top of their box.

Let me bring up these CHICKEN SECRETS since this comes up almost every time someone comes over and we show 'em our hens. Hens will lay eggs even if there are no roosters. These eggs are just eggs, they're not fertilized (unless there are roosters around) so they won't hatch and you're not eating a baby chicken if you eat one. Also. The yolk is not what turns into a fluffy baby chick, it's some sort of magical goodness that the baby chicks eat when they hatch (before they hatch?). If you want to hard boil your fresh eggs you need to let them hang out in your fridge for a week or two. Fresh eggs have almost no air inside them and when you hard boil them they are astoundingly hard to peel. Store eggs are pretty damn old by comparison (but that's fine, eggs last a long time), and already have a good amount of air in them and can be hard boiled right away and are easy to peel.

Passover is over. We had a tiny seder at our house that was fun. I'm glad the week of trying to figure out what kind of Kosher for Passover lunch to send with Jonah to preschool is done. "Okay, Jonah, how about another day of matzoh ball soup, macaroons, and an orange?"

In the interest of posting more and not worrying about how good or bad my messages are... that's it for today! No pictures either. We have some good baby chick pictures though.

MacBook Battery X

Another battery has stopped working on Kelly's MacBook. Apple replaced the last battery a couple months ago which had the same problem. It wouldn't charge any more. It just showed a black x in the battery icon in the menu bar. Great.

The good news is we paid for the extra two years of Apple Care. (Yay?) The new battery failed in just a few months... I suspect we will have two more years of replacing batteries and shitty times on the phone with Apple. The phone support guy was nice. And mostly I left him on speaker phone while I worked. But I was on the phone with him for 51 minutes. And it still wasn't resolved at that point. Supposedly he's going to email me. He said since they had already sent me one replacement battery their default response was that they would not send another battery and I would have to pay. I almost laughed out loud when he mentioned that.

FYI There are a lot of people having battery problems with their MacBooks. Maybe I'll add a link here. But if you Google for MacBook battery problem I'm sure you'll find a ton.

Eric
p.s. My old iBook had a similar problem. I doubt if was the same issue, but my iBook stopped being able to charge batteries. It's a much longer story that makes me mad to think about. Anyway, that iBook was the reason we paid for the extra years of Apple Care and I always recommend it to friends who buy Apple laptops. They're great machines... but very unreliable, at least in my family.

iSight Cameras

Apparently iSight cameras are worth as much as gold now. Well, sort of. Apple discontinued making them and now they're going for $200+ on eBay. I paid $100 for mine when I was an employee at Apple. Actually I bought two 'cause they were such a good deal.

Our MacBook has a built-in camera so we don't really need an iSight any more. And we definitely don't need two. So I put up an auction to sell one of 'em. Here it is: Eric's iSight Camera

I wonder how the market for 16 year old Mac IIfxs is... I got mine cheap when I was an intern at Apple. It was only $2600. Man.