You can see where the clear coat is scratched off, and that’s going to take me alot of time, and money to fix… I’m not pleased about that one bit.

As for the hub-caps… well, luckily I have one spare that came with the car… but to purcahse another? Well… that’s going to set me back a bit, but I didn’t spend all this money on this car to have it look like a pile of shit… I’ll do what it takes.

And for reference of how ghetto my car now looks… here’s some photos.

Those are clickable and lead to my Flickr page if youer’ interested in seeing them larger, for any reason.

As for anybody who might know anything about this, I’d ask you to please E-Mail me as soon as you possibly could. Thanks.

Needless to say I’m pissed off.

I called the police, they came out and took a police report and did what they had to do… But we all know it’s going to take them ages to do anything.

So I’m asking you for help… If you know ANYBODY who might do something like this to anybody’s car… please let me know, and keep an ear out for me, if you hear anybody bragging about what they did, make sure you get their name and let me know as soon as possible.

As for GPS, I’d LOVE to have that, but do you know what else I love? The Maps application that is already on my current iPhone, especailly the fact that it can give directions… I really don’t NEED something to tell me to “turn right in 15 feet”… I’m perfectly content with looking at my phone and seeing the next step in my route.

Now, all that stuff is amazing for people who are just now buying an iPhone, but I feel there is absolutley no need to upgrade, if it was free, or very very cheap, I would upgrade, but I’m not spending all that money over again for features I won’t use that often, really.

Now, about iPhone firmware 2.0, that’s where the really exciting things happen, You’ll forget all about GPS and 3G speeds with these new apps. You can already see there’s going to be a Twitter app, which excites me, and Jake Marsh is working on a MySpace app already. The possibilites of apps for the iPhone are really endless when you think about how it can integrate into your contacts, calendar, photos, camera, maps, and just everything.

I’ll be excited to see how things roll out in early July with the App Store.

I’m excited, to say the least, I feel proud to be a part of the shift team at my store, I absolutley love my store, and all the partners that work there. I can go to work on any given day, and have a fantastic day, everybody there is amazing (with one exception…) so I look forward to my practice close tomorrow, and running mid and close shifts next week by myself!

Other than that, recently I was also asked to be a learning coach, and my first “trainee” is doing awesom, I must say! He’s also just generally a really cool guy too.

This summer’s going to hopefully be a blast, I can’t wait to do community events with Ang again this year, Royal Oak Aids Walk, and hopefully there’s another Clinton River Clean Up to do, that was fun last year for sure.

I just really am hoping that all these extra hours don’t interfere with my directed study this summer, nor my calsses this coming fall…

Gameplay Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
The gameplay in GTA IV has been overhauled over the past GTA’s, there’s some new elements to the game, such as the “cover system” and multiplayer, without going into too much detail, I’ll just say the cover system works AMAZINGLY, and the multiplayer is fun for a good laugh, there’s some issues with it right now, but those should be addressed in a patch or something fairly soon. The new Euphoria physics engine is stunning as well, doing the same thing in game twice will surely produce different results, each human model in the game reacts differently to a stab, bullet, or being hit by a car, which looks stupendous, especailly in the game’s “bullet-time” mode.

Story Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
The story in this game is quite intriguing, you start off without too much of a backstory as to why you’ve came to Liberty City, but that’s what makes the story what it is… it develops deeper and deeper as you go, and by the end of the game, it gets downright… emotional. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that the only downfall of the story is the fact that characters come in and out of the game quicker than you can murder hookers for your money back.

Graphics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Simply stunning, if you’re playing this game on anything besides a 1080p TV, you’re really missing out. The immense level of detail on the cars alone is to be marveled at for such a vast game. City lights, buildings, roads, debris, and everything have an astonishing level of clarity for a game that focuses on people and cars. I’ll say it again and again, if you’re a gamer that plays more than casually, you NEED to invest in an HDTV, games like this don’t reveal their full graphical potential until it’s on the big HD screen. I can tell you first hand that I played through this game on an HDTV, and tried to play it (at a friends house) on a SDTV, and I just couldn’t do it… once you go HD, you’ll never go back.

Sound Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
I like a lot of different music personally, and GTA usually tailors to that aspect of me very very well, in previous GTA’s, I could get into a car and just leave the radio alone. In GTA IV, I constantly find myself getting into a vehicle, and immediatly switching to Liberty Rock Radio, or the Electro Choc, and those are the only two I fully enjoyed, th new “chatterbox” style station gets old… fast. In a game that takes 30+ hours to complete, hearing the same jokes from that station just get really old. On the other hand, “Weasel News” in the game’s radio stations reports on recent activity in the city, and it’s always cool to hear about the crimes you just commited on the radio!

Replay Factor: Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
I won’t spoil the game for anybody, but I’ll just say that there are a LOT of decisions to be made in the game, which will reflect the story later, especially the end-game… The story missions are just fun to replay as well, I’ve found myself finishing a mission on the first try and saying “man, that was awesome, I wish I could do that again…” so a replay of the game wouldn’t be hard to imagine, especially with all th decions you could make differently the second time around.

Well, I picked it up on Friday with Angela and my mom, everything went over extremely well, except to get a license plate, you have to pay 6% sales tax on the car… and it cost over $800 to get a plate on it… Other than that, I’ve been driving it a fairly decent amount, getting used to everything, and I must say, it is WONDERFUL. The gas mileage really is awesome, and just about everything in the car is still brand new, I don’t think the previous owner ever had passengers in the back seat, it even SMELLS new still.

I’m extremely happy with my purchase, and I know it will last me for a long time. As for those who don’t like the look the xB’s… that’s okay, thats why I bought it, because I like them, and it suits ME.

The pictures are from the first day I test drove it, but it obviously still looks the same today.

Considering the fact that my MacBook is NOT under the one year warranty, and that I opted NOT to buy the AppleCare plan, my original idea was to scam Apple, and bring in my girlfriends newer MacBook (still under warranty) with my power adapter, and just hope that they would switch it out… I never thought the power adapters would have serial numbers (turns out they do… but I just found this out today, and had no influence on my choices) But to make a long story short(er) I just decided to give AppleCare a call, and see if there was anything they could possibly do for me.

After spending some time speaking to some female in an outsourced call center (probably India) I finally got to talk to somebody local… What it took to do this, was to simply REMAIN CALM with the first person, even if we could barely understand her, I answered all of her questions, and she said that its not under warranty, but she’ll transfer me anyhow!

Next I got to speak to a male, who was just as upset as I was that this had happened! He put me on hold for a while, to try to get a hold of a specialist who could further assist me. We ended up getting disconnected somewhere through the hold-time… But he promptly called me back, and said that he just needs a few more minutes to have me on hold, and I was fine with that. He then came back, and told me the name of a female on the other line, and he was transferring me to her.

The female came on the phone, and explained to me that she’s very sorry, and asked me some simple questions about how I used the adapter, and if I was harmed in any way. I answered everything truthfully, even telling her that I sometimes yanked the adapter out of the MacBook, and she said that its “best” to just grab it and unplug it instead. She continued on to tell me that I’d be getting a free updated (to avoid this fault) power adapter in the mail, in about 7-14 business days, and it would be no charge to me, but they did need my old one back.

TWO DAYS LATER , I woke up and there was a box from Apple of California on my doorstep, with a return shipping label attached, and instructions to place my old adapter in the box, call DHL, and tell them a day and time they could come pick up the bod from my doorstep.

And that was it, it took about 30 minutes on the phone, and a two day wait to get a brand new power adapter in the mail.

Below are the comparison pictures between the old (charred) and new adapter, notice the increased length of the “guard” over the wire at the top. Click them for larger, more detailed images.