My favorite photo thus far from this Cubs season of 2008

This is Carlos Zambrano, Cubs pitcher. On his back is Mike Fontenot, Cubs backup second baseman, also known as "Little Babe Ruth." You can see why . . .

Photo by Nuccio DiNuzzo, Chicago Tribune.

UPDATE: Here is the story of this picture--it's part of an every-game routine.

Not much has made me laugh out loud lately . . .

. . . but this did:

Introduction

Hi, I just moved to Dallas from South Louisiana, and I was afraid that I wouldn't find any fellow Republicans to share my concerns and thoughts with. I am so glad to see that there is a group dedicated to those very things!

I have been perusing meet-up groups in Dallas and this was the post by a 30-something woman on the Dallas Republican Party Meetup Group site. She didn't think she would find Republicans in Dallas? That's like saying she thought the rodeo would be short on manure!

On a lighter note . . .

I bring to you this Justin Timberlake gem:

Timberlake
by bsap11

I cannot hold back any longer: DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO

Seriously. You will experience less pain if you pluck a fork from your cutlery drawer, heat it in the oven until it is very, very hot, dip it in jalapeno juice and then repeatedly poke yourself in the eye with it.

Last April, I bought a Sony Vaio notebook computer--the SZ440--that cost multiple thousands of dollars. I invested in portability and souped-up speed and memory so I would have a computer that travels well and would hold up under my frequent use.

Here's what I got instead:

• 10 months into my ownership of the computer, it experienced a sudden, completely unwarned, total hard drive meltdown (approximate time on phone with Sony about this: 4.2 hours)
  
• An onsite tech replaced the hard drive, but the data is still unrecoverable from the original hard drive
  
• just under 12 months into my ownership of the computer, the fan became freakishly loud and stopped cooling the computer (approximate time on phone with Sony about this: 1.2 hours)
• The onsite tech sent to repair the fan managed to somehow burn out the hard drive while repairing the fan, and was so incompetent he wasn't even able to reassemble the notebook without pieces bulging out of the back (approximate time on phone with Sony about this: 3.8 hours)
• Sony then insisted I send the computer to them for repair--they installed another new hard drive and, presumably, a fan, then sent the lemon back to me
• Less than 2 months after that repair, my laptop experienced its third hard drive meltdown
• Sony refused to permit onsite repair and insisted I send the laptop back to them--I wanted an exchange, but they said there was no way they would exchange it, so we wrangled over that topic for quite some time (approximate time on phone with Sony about this: 2.2 hours)
• I returned the laptop to Sony and--miraculously--they proclaimed after 2 days that they would exchange it for an SZ680. However, they have had my old Vaio for 10 days and haven't ordered the exchange computer, haven't shipped the exchange computer, haven't provided me with its specs, as I have repeatedly requested, and have not returned to me the hard drive from my old computer (so I can try to retrieve data from it, including the photographs of my mother's first major league baseball game and first trip to Wrigley Field) or provided me with any information on when I will receive it (approximate time on phone with Sony about this so far: 1.9 hours)

The lesson?

DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. DO NOT BUY A SONY VAIO. v

i am in love

Note: I'm sorry I have been absent . . . my Vaio melted down yet again and has returned to San Diego (yet again) for servicing. I will confess that at the moment of this latest meltdown, I had unclean thoughts regarding what I would do to Sony if it was standing in front of me. Not sexy unclean thoughts--the other kind. So here I am typing on my trusty "old" Vaio that--thank goodness--I kept as a backup. If I had not just dropped a ridiculous amount of money on the new Vaio one year ago, I would have already given up and purchased an Apple notebook. Anyway, I have been computer-impaired and am trying to catch up now. So, on to my new post:

***********************************************************************************

Not with a boy, silly! With my new iPhone! Yes, I have been freed from the chains of the Palm Treo, stepping into the light while blinking and wondering how to live on this other side that is free of technical errors, user unfriendliness, my phone dialing people from my purse at the precise moment when I am talking about them, etc.

I did not suffer through yesterday's craziness of the "Launch Day." I had an early (7:30 am--yikes!) doctor's appointment and afterward, thought I would just hop on over to the AT&T store and take my place in line. Yeah, right . . . so, seeing 80+ people in line at a tiny store that would not open for another hour and a half, I turned around, walked back to my car and drove to work. When I read about how Apple's system responded to thousands of new log-ons in 22 countries, I felt relieved that I had been spared that agony. But hearing that many stores would receive new shipments this morning, I thought I might see how my luck ran with a Saturday morning purchase attempt.

Despite my being an early-morning-challenged person, I sprang from my bed at 7:00 am today, dressed, popped into Starbucks and was in line at the AT&T store near me by around 7:40 am. I figured either there would be no one or I would have lots of company--I was wrong on both counts, as I was the third person in line. By 8 am there were 13 of us in line, and I'm guessing there were around 40 in line by the time the store opened at 10 am. Just before the opening, the store manager assured us that at that point, there were iPhones for everyone in line, so long as we did not want the white model. But I have jumped ahead in the story . . . here is the story of how my iPhone and I got together:

I had come prepared with a book to read: Ann Patchett's "Truth and Beauty," which I read and loved before and wanted to revisit. Concrete sidewalk notwithstanding, I thoroughly enjoyed the all-too-rare experience of uninterrupted reading time with no pressure to be somewhere else.

The store is in a strip mall near the lake, and its parking lot was really busy early this morning, with lots of people who had apparently taken part in a group walk or training run of some kind. I tried not to think about what it meant that I chose to be the person sitting on the sidewalk, in line to buy a phone at 7:30 am, rather than the person walking next to a beautiful lake. Some of the runners/walkers passing by looked at our line as if we were wild animals of a species they had never seen before, and others wished us luck at buying our phones.

Speaking of a different species, a 20-something girl wearing a hot pink t-shirt, jeans and metallic flip flops walked up just before 10 am and appeared confused by the line, and surprised she couldn't just walk into the store. She kept looking from the locked door to the line, and back at the locked door. Finally, she asked the first guy in line what was going on. He looked briefly stunned, then said, "The iPhone? We are all waiting to buy the iPhone." She gazed blankly at him, and it appeared she still did not understand but did not want to admit it. She paced back and forth a few times, then left.

Shortly before the store opened, an off-duty police officer arrived for his shift. He stopped at the front of the line and told us, "Now, I'm about to walk over to that doughnut store to pick up breakfast for these people, and I don't want any comments when I get back." We looked at him innocently and being the smart aleck that I am, I said, "What kind of comment could we possibly make in that scenario?" He laughed uncomfortably and we all tried not to look when he returned with a large box of doughnuts.

One woman joined our line with a baby, which seemed odd. Thankfully, the baby was relatively quiet. The guy to my right is apparently some sort of technology guy, as he told his friend who called from London that he had helped build the 3G network the iPhone uses. He also provided more than an hour of tech support to his London friend, sometimes so enthusiastically that I was forced to subtly plug my ears in order to maintain focus on the book I was reading. The girl to my left was studying for the MCAT exam; she had taken her parents to the airport at 5am and thought she might as well wait in an iPhone line because she was up anyway. A father and daughter duo to her left fetched their laptop from their car and watched a Transformers movie on it, with him seeming more intensely involved in it.

The MCAT girl saved a spot for me when, seeing all the spaces left by the departing walkers and runners, I stepped away briefly to move my car closer. But I needn't have asked her to do that, as everyone respected the sanctity of the line and one could freely leave and regain his/her spot at will.

And then, in the blink of an eye, I had been "pre-qualified" and let in the door. There were glitches in the cash register I was assigned to, but I was still out of there by 10:25 or so. Whenever I started to feel annoyed by the glitches, I dove back into my book.

The rest of the day?
(1) car wash/detail--badly needed
(2) Cubs game
(3) iPhone setup, which included an iTunes upgrade, the loading of unloaded CDs and downloading of 2000+ songs to the iPhone

What a wonderful weekend in Chicago!

Lunch at Italian Village
Millenium Park
Taste of Chicago
Vance Kelly at B.L.U.E.S.

Lunch at Schaller's Pump
Cubs v. Sox at Sox Park
Dinner from Taste of Chicago
Drinking wine while listening to folk music at Millenium Park
Sushi snack

Brunch at Bongo Room in Wicker Park
Failed attempt to visit Chicago Botanic Garden
Successful visit to Lincoln Park Zoo
Coffee
Airport
Cubs v. Sox at O'Hare

And lots of time spent with friends . . .