“To kids today, the Internet is what rock ‘n’ roll was to another generation and TV was to the one before that and swing dancing was to the one before that,” Paul Boutin, contributing editor for Wired magazine, said in a FoxNews article, “Evangelism Catches Up with the Times”.
Somehow the image of sitting in front of a computer late at night, surfing across sites or pondering the next expansion of my own web site seems strantely akin to a kid cradling a guitar and creating some noise.
We bought 4 20-ounce Pepsi’s at Target last night, and I checked the two remaining unopened pops, and sure enough, the low-tech hack works. Both were losers (making me pretty sure someone picked over Target — that would be 0 for 4).
All of which makes me ponder the merits of this giveaway. Let’s compare:
A) I buy three 20-ounce Pepsis for a total of $2.97 (assuming $0.99 each, which is rare).
Total Pepsi: 60 ounces
iTunes Songs: 1 (assuming an average of 1 out of 3 wins)
Cost: $2.97
B) I buy one 2-liter of Pepsi for a total of $1.19.
Total Pepsi: 67 ounces
iTunes Songs: 1 @ $0.99
Cost: $2.18
It seems option B is significantly cheaper and you get more Pepsi. You almost save enough to buy another song (of course it’s enough at Wal-Mart).
Of course the low-tech hack changes things:
A) Buy three 20-ouncers again, this time checking them for winners.
Total Pepsi: 60 ounces
iTunes Songs: 3
Cost: $2.97
B) Buy that 2-liter and pick up three songs for comparison’s sake.
Total Pepsi: 67 ounces
iTunes Songs: 3 @ $0.99
Cost: $4.16
Here the cheaters prosper, saving enough to buy another Pepsi (and a fourth free song). Even if you assumed a 20-ounce cost of $1.09, which is more common, it’s $3.27 for the cheaters, still cheaper than the 2-liter route.
All of which makes me wonder. The Pepsi/iTunes Giveaway works best if I cheat, otherwise I’m better off paying for my music. But is it really cheating to exploit an oversite in packaging? I’m not opening the product, I’m not damaging it anyway. It’s not like I’m opening Pepsis and stealing the winning bottle caps. While some store clerks would certainly stop you, there’s plenty of places where you could sneak a peek at the cap. It’s kind of like holding your Christmas presents up to the light to see if you can see through the package. You’re not technically opening your present.
It’s a moral quandry. Perhaps I should opt out and use Kazaa.
Just kidding. Maybe I should just stop drinking so much pop and spend my money on iTunes then. And thus I’ve caught on to their little game. It works pretty well, doesn’t it?
It seems there’s a low-tech way to hack the Pepsi/iTunes Giveaway simply by trying to peer under the cap.
I considered doing this in the store tonight (before spotting the article) and realized at the time that if I could figure out the visual difference between a winner and a loser, I could pick the right one every time. Apparently someone decided to verify my hunch. I couldn’t help but wondering if the Pepsi’s at Target had already been rifled through — several rows of 20-ouncers looked out of whack.
At any rate, I’m 2 for 9 in the whole Pepsi/iTunes Giveaway, which means I’m losing against the advertised 1 for 3 ratio, and I drink too much over-priced 20-ounce pop.
I’ve been out of town, I’ve been sick, and I just haven’t had a lot of time to play with my new Mac. But what I’ve seen, I love. iTunes and iPhoto have to be the coolest applications ever. I didn’t even realize what a revolution iPhoto is proving to be in my conception of digital photography. Amazing.
Of course I’m still setting up a lot of things, and the slowness has little to do with the Mac/PC switch. A lot of it has to do with simply trying to figure out the best way to work. So I’m grappling with age-old questions, like POP vs. IMAP, Mac Mail vs. Microsoft’s Entourage, ICQ vs AIM, massively nested e-mail folder archiving vs. a massive ‘read mail’ folder. So many choices to be productive, so not productive yet.
Well, I haven’t had the time to get the smart media card reader working, but I couldn’t resist posting the picture anyway (I e-mailed it from the PC to the Mac – eh, it works).
In 12 minutes I take off for Michigan. Well, take off for the bus that takes me to the airport that takes me to Chicago that takes me to Michigan. I’ll be helping my parents move. I realized late last night (I never sleep well before big trips) that this will be my last time to go home. This is the house I grew up in. It’s as old as I am.
And I wanted one last chance to say goodbye to my new toy. ;-)
As of this sentence, I am a Mac user.
So far it’s been enlightening. My old PC and new Mac are sharing the same desk, sitting side by side, and it’s kind of funny. The Mac definitely kicks the HP’s butt, and not simply because one’s new. My 17 inch display is a work of art. The 17 inch HP monitor is, well, just a monitor.
While the aesthetic experience has been amazing, the practical side of things is going to take a little getting used to. I haven’t had much time to play with anything yet, but I’ve run into two problems.
1) While my e-mail was set up before I even realized it, I haven’t been able to get the message rules to work so Abby’s e-mail is moved to her own folder.
2) I took a picture of my PC/Mac desk and hoped to post it here today, but no luck. The direct approach, plugging our Smart Media card reader into the Mac and accessing it like another disk drive didn’t work. I tried installing the drivers, no luck. I tried going to Lexar’s web site, and discovered that the Smart Media card reader is discontinued, and that the only drivers available were for OS 8.x, which might be my problem. There are other solutions, including putting the pictures on my PC and hooking up my ZIP drive and transferring the photo that way, or networking the PC and Mac and transferring that way, but at this point it will all take too much time. It’s late and I was just hoping for some quick fun.
It’s nothing I’m chalking against the Mac — after all, I’m dealing with a lot of old PC peripherals. You can’t expect them all to work seamlessly. Though it would have been really cool if they did. As for the mail thing, I’ll just have to figure that out.
And I would access my many sources of free Mac help, but time is against me. Alas, tomorrow I go out of town for a week (!) and my new Mac will sit lonely and unused (at least by me — after leaving it alone this evening for a few hours I came home to find it already in use. Hmm… perhaps this is a perk worth raising the rent?).
So come back next week for the continuing saga of Kevin’s Switch story. So far there have been a few bumps, which is to be expected, but all in all, I’m going to need to invest in a drool rag.
Addendum: My wife and I are now surfing the same web site and the same time side by side. How goofy is that? (of course I’m on the Mac! hehehe)
Despite my earlier whining, I still didn’t get much done today. Sometimes you just have to give in.
I spent this afternoon converting my old entries to the new Movable Type system. It’s not exactly glamorous work, but it does give me a chance to read through some of my old entries.
I went through a curious period, but in between all the narcissistic and self-absorbed rants about the church, faith, society, and patriotism, there was a lot going on. This was a period when my grandpa died, I found out a good friend was anorexic and had attempted suicide, I learned of the death of a high school classmate, and my parents remarried, among other things. For part of that time we held our breath whenever the phone rang.
While I blabbered on about wanting to write a book every few months, I stumbled across some interesting fiction writing, much of it based on what I was going through. Much of that fiction hits me now in a much deeper way. Those fiction exercises worth noting include one inspired by my grandfather’s death, an older one written in response to my ex-girlfriend losing her mom, and a plethora of writings about anorexia (1, 2, 3, and 4).
This is why I write. Not for you, but for me.