blog.bradjward.com

I earned my evangelism wings.

// March 12th, 2008 // 6 Comments » // Apple, Brad's Life, Mac

One thing I’ve always wondered… how someone becomes an ‘evangelist’. No, not this evangelist. This one.

(more…)

MacBook: 1 year later

// March 11th, 2008 // 11 Comments » // Apple, Mac, Technology

It’s officially been 1 year since I’ve had my MacBook, and it’s been a great laptop. It’s been well traveled and well-used (and well-abused), but it’s as solid as ever and has no signs of slowing down…. like my previous PC laptops that were practically choking to death at the 12-15 month mark.

And I guess it’s true that once they get you in, you’ll slowly start converting. 2 iPods, an iPhone, multiple accessories, and a Mac Mini later, we’re pretty much an Apple household. Nice work, Mr. Jobs. Now stay out of my wallet for awhile.

And in other news, I’ll go over 6,000 blocked spam comments with Akismet today. That’s a lot of spam. But not as much as what is in my FusionCash inbox:

Got my Mac Mini!

// February 27th, 2008 // 6 Comments » // Deals, Great Deals, Mac

They laughed. They said it couldn’t be done. It was a waste of time. A rip-off. I was screwed. But I did it. And 5 weeks, $54, and 3 hours of work later….. I have a Mac Mini.

Thanks for the heads up Justin and Brett! Hope you’re enjoying your MacBook Pro and Toshiba Tablet PC.

Full write-up to come. Leave a comment if you want in on the next opportunity, as this one has closed.

Can you DIGG it?

// February 23rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Apple, Brad's Life, Mac

On my way to work yesterday, I got a Google Alert that my name was on… www.digg.com/upcoming.   First thought: crap, what did I do?  But it ended up being pretty cool.

Someone saw my interview on The Zinch Report and thought it was good enough to submit to digg.com.  By the time I saw it, there were 20 diggs.   Now, there are nearly 100 diggs. Pretty sweet.  I’ll obviously never make it to the home page, especially coming out of the ‘Educational’ section, but it was flattering to see that people actually enjoyed the article.  I’ve self-submitted several things before and they get about 3 diggs… my wife, my brother, and Brian.

In other news, the Macbook is back in my hands.  It broke back in August (when I dropped it), and they forgot to hook the mic back up when they fixed it.  I waited until less than a month before my warranty was up (naturally), and they fixed it and turned it back around to me within 16 hours.  Wow.   AND, they replaced my battery with a brand new one. They sell those for like $100+ in the store, so that was amazing.

And, again, I was in the right place at the right time. CompUSA is going out of business and had AppleCare warranties at 70% off. There was one Macbook one left.  I got it.  $75.  Now I have the same awesome warranty for a few more years (bonus points for resale too).  While I was checking out, a few other guys asked if they had any.  “Sorry,” the cashier said, “we just sold out.”  I smiled, I paid, I left.

Approaching 1 year…

// January 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // Apple, Brad's Life, Butler, Indianapolis, Mac, Politics, Running, Springfield, Travel, YouTube, eBay

We are coming up on the 1 Year Anniversary of blog.bradjward.com, and it’s been pretty fun so far. Let’s reminisce.

(more…)

MacWorld keynote… notes.

// January 15th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Apple, Mac

Looking forward to seeing what Apple has up their sleeve over my lunch break. You can keep track of all the coverage right here on the Engadget’s live blog or just read these notes.
Just released 1TB hard drive/router.  $100 more than iPaid for mine, so I’m happy with what I have since I have the built in iTunes server already.

NEW UPDATES for iPhone!!!! These look great.  Semi-GPS features, multi-person SMS, making the home screen look however I want.

mail, stocks, maps, and weather for new iPod Touches.

iTunes Rentals launch TODAY.  $2.99 for old movies, $3.99 for new releases.  Watch within 30 days, have 24 hours to watch.

updating appleTV.   hmmm… appleTV or macMini for TV?

GUY ON USTREAM IS GETTING SHUT DOWN FOR TAPING NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Need to hear about 4th item!!

Apple TV take 2.  Looks like a competitor to Mac Mini for my TV.   HD RENTALS for $4.99.   You can pull in photos from Flickr too. That’s pretty hawt.

Twitter still going in and out.  Still cant get USTREAM to initialize.

Ah, heck with it.  I can’t get anything to load.   I’ll check back later.

A lofty project

// November 28th, 2007 // 4 Comments » // Brad's Life, Mac, Photography

I have a project in mind, and it’s going to take some work to get done.

I want to put 10% of my digital photos into my Flickr account by Jan. 1, 2008. Not just put them there though. They will be captioned, tagged, geotagged, Creative Commons licensed, and organized into sets and collections.

So now you’re saying… ok, 10%. Not bad.  Well…. 10% = 7-10,000 photos, depending on how many duplicates I have across my hard drives. I’ve got 1,185 uploaded to my account already. Think I can do it? I’m going to try.

I certainly will not be putting 100% of my photos online, too much junk and repeats in there. I think my 10% goal will allow me to go through every folder for every event I have ever shot and pick out 10-100 of the good ones, and then Flickr becomes an archive/online backup for my favorite stuff in case all of my hard drives and backups simultaneously crash some day (magnetic field swoops through the house?).

Here goes nothing.

A great weekend at home

// November 5th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Brad's Life, Mac, Sports, Travel, UIS

As expected, the weekend was great. Here’s how it went down. Seriously, if you don’t care about my life stop reading now. Let’s do it. (more…)

Apple does it again.

// October 27th, 2007 // 6 Comments » // Apple, Brad's Life, Mac, Technology

Yes, they have done it again. Leopard came out yesterday, and it looks amazing. It will certainly appeal to those who are considering the switch from Windows. I went to the release party at the Apple store yesterday, hoping to be one of the first 500 so I could get a free shirt. The line basically wrapped through the mall. I hopped in line though and easily got a shirt.

But what I saw once I got IN the store was what amazed me. Sure, I was basically there for the free shirt, and sure some other people were too. But 1 out of every 3 people were buying Leopard, and 1 out of 5 were walking out with a new computer, and another 1 in 8 were getting an iPhone. It was insane.

I put in a call with my stock broker (aka my Dad, lol) from the line for 25 shares of AAPL. It’s at $185 right now, and I fully expect it to be around $225-250 after Q4 earnings are announced. I’ve moaned and groaned about not buying at $80 last February for long enough, it’s time to hop on the train and give it a ride. If it makes it to $275 by March then we’ll sell our shares and have an extra $2K for a house downpayment, which will be nice. Here goes nothing. We’ve got this money sitting in a boooooring 3.5% interest rate account, while my retirement picks in my UIS account are up 23% this year and my Butler retirement fund is already up 50.5%. Time to make a few adjustments.

BOOM!!!!!!!! SDK for iPhone in February.

// October 17th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Mac, Technology, iPhone

The iPhone just got 2000000202302059029% more awesome. 3rd party apps starting in February. Thanks for listening to us, Steve.

Sobering fact of the day: If you would have purchased $50,000 of Apple stock 4 years ago today, you would have $1.2 million. If you would have purchased $399 of Apple stock instead of a 3rd Gen 40GB iPod, you’d have $11,000 today.

Wonder what the “if you would have bought (x) stock instead of an iPhone 5 years ago, you would have $xxx) will be.