SOOPAH256

Last Friday my mom came to me with a sound issue on her iPhone 4. The phone was working perfectly, except for sound playback on the speaker. You could hear everything with a pair of earbuds plugged into the 3.5mm jack, but just nothing when you unplugged it. Not even the volume controls would show up. It was only after some fiddling around that my mom informed me that she had dropped it in the toilet at work. (note: the toilet was unused at the time of dropage)

Once I knew of the damage done, it was obvious to me that tinkering around with the settings would not resolve anything. A peek at the moisture sensor under the dock connector validated the claim, potentially putting the said iPhone out of warranty.

Moisture Sensor Locations (they are the same on the iPhone 4):

Luckily for us, earlier in the day at Apple's "Antennagate" press conferece Steve Jobs explicitly restated Apple's mission to keep customers happy. I thought that in the event that my mom's iPhone was out of warranty, I could try to push our "dissatisfaction with reception quality".

The following Sunday, my mom and I took to the local Apple store in Valley Fair to try for the swap. An elderly Apple employee helped us run some diagnostics and simple tests to verify that the issue wasn't able to be quickly fixed. It was at that point when he checked the moisture sensors to find that indeed it had been exposed to liquid damage, so he took it to the back for further inspection. After a few minutes he came out with good news and a brand new iPhone 4. Since the top moisture sensor (inside the 3.5mm jack) was not triggered, the phone was still under warranty and able to be swapped. Seeing as how the whole phone was submerged under water for a brief moment, my mom and I were curious as to how it avoided being activated. Anyway, the swap took 10 minutes and we were on our way.

So by now, you should know if you'll be getting the iPhone 4 on launch day (6/24). If you were patient enough on Tuesday to keep hammering the pre-ordering system, you were given the coveted reservation notice allowing you to pick up your brand new iPhone 4 next Thursday. It took me a good 90 minutes, but I eventually made my way through the AT&T account verification and reserved my pre-order.

Unfortunately my mom did not. She waited until Tuesday night only to find that the first batch of pre-orders had been spoken for. However, she noticed in one of the FAQs that it might still be possible to snag one on launch day. It's a little hidden away, but if you do some snooping around, you'll find a sort of "loophole" that customers have taken advantage of in the past, allowing customers to buy multiple iPhones/iPads.

With the increasing demand and limited supply for this latest iPhone, I wanted to find out if this policy will still be valid on launch. So I called up my local Apple Store in Valley Fair (the store where my reservation is placed), hoping I could get two questions answered. I spoke with a rep named Tony. According to her, there's no official statement from Apple whether or not a reservation will be needed for each additional iPhone purchased. But if the previous iPad launch is any indication, you probably will be able to with only one reservation. Additionally, it hasn't been stated yet, but there will most likely be a buying limit of two (2) iPhones per customer. I'll try following up later this weekend, in case any new info comes out of Apple HQ. The second question I asked Tony was whether or not there would be a line for overnighters, to which she responded, "only if there's people that line up." So basically...Yes.

So with all this talk surrounding the lost iPhone scandal, I've been thrilled that theres some headline tech news in my good hometown of Fremont, CA. That news coming from this past Friday, when Gizmodo's EIC, Jason Chen, had his home raided by California's Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team. You can read more about the story over at Gizmodo's own coverage. But one of thing that spectators (like John Gruber) took note of was how Jason Chen's personal details were pixelated out. While this is normal procedure and perfectly understandable when publishing documents on the web, many are angry with Gizmodo's decision to publicize Gray Powell's (the Apple employee that lost the iPhone prototype) personal info all over their site. With that being said, I've been curious to find out where exactly this whole thing originated, Jason's house. Not for any malicious use, but I think it's almost a historical landmark in the tech world. So I ventured to find out.

This morning, I was greeted with the following news report from Bay Area NBC:

In the report, you can see a few shots of Jason's home's exterior, with the house number "40726" in plain view:

After some quick Googling, I was able to find a matching property purchased by a "Jason Chen" in January with the same number. 40726 Greystone Terrace (part of the newly built Park Lane West community, which was previously occupied by Tri-City). Entered into Google Maps, I found an aerial shot of the neighborhood that very much resembled what was shown in the background of the news report.

So I took off to check out the Park Lane West community and grabbed a quick shot to verify that it indeed is the correct house.

In previous years, I've had a major problem keeping myself entertained for the duration of my gym time. Music definitely helps when I'm constantly moving from machine to machine. But when I'm running on a treadmill or Elliptical, I'd completely lose my motivation. Almost to the point where I just wouldn't be excited to go anymore.

But for the past 2 months, I've found that watching movies while running has rejuvenated my gym fun. I rarely get a chance to watch movies these days, so there's a huge backlog of movies I still have yet to watch on my computer. So I've been loading them on my iPhone to watch during my runs. By spanning them over several days in 20-minute segments, it's kept my attention span not only the duration of my run, but also between visits to the gym.

Screenshot watching 2012:

To convert my movies I use HandBrake 0.94, which has presets for every Apple product.

While I wait for my iPad to arrive, I keep checking my UPS tracking code for updates.

However one of the things that gets me frazzled is trying to figure out when exactly all these updates occur. Each update has a timestamp recorded according to whichever time zone the update took place. While this is pretty easy to figure out for domestic packages, I always have a hard time with international ones. I just can't remember how many hours I have to add or subtract, not to mention whether or not daylight savings is in effect. Blech! I Google it, which will normally bring me to the official time.gov site, where I have to wait for the 90's Java applet (below) to load, and then figure it out from there. While this works reliably well, it is definitely not a preferred method.

There's a much easier way, with the help of our geeky friends at Wolfram Alpha. In the equation box, type in the time and location of the update you're looking to convert. In my case  typed in, "4:10am april 2, 2010 china". And just with that, WA knows what to do.

Tah-Dah! My iPad left Guangzhou, CN on 4/1 @ 1:10pm local time.

My Tkaro Water Bottle arrived! It's not really convenient at all, but the design is sexy. Though I'm still hoping VOSS will come out with an all metal bottle top for their line of sparking water.