Kristin's Playground » Stuff I Like

Apple Customer Service

beautyredefined — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:59:52 +0000

As you may or may not know, I’m a big fan of my apple laptops. I had a 12″ Powerbook that served me very well throughout the beginning of grad school, and I recently upgraded when the aluminum Macbooks came out. At that point, it was clear that they were not going to release a 12″ Macbook Pro, and the new macbook looked like it would serve my needs quite well. And so it has so far.

Unfortunately, it’s happened a few times now that my laptop did not properly sleep when I closed it. This isn’t really a problem if I notice it before it goes in my bag, but on Thursday, I didn’t notice, and it sat in my bag – running – for over two hours during glee club. When I discovered that my bag was quite warm I became concerned. It didn’t properly recover when I opened it and had to force a restart. The system seemed perfectly fine after the reboot, but the fan did not fare as well. Ever since then, the fan made an unbearable noise whenever the laptop was on. I couldn’t even use it. So, this morning I brought it into the local Apple store, fulling expecting them to ship it out and to be missing a laptop for awhile. After talking to the folks at the Genius Bar and them hearing the problem, I was quite happy to find out that they would simply remove my hard drive and place it in a brand new machine for me. I had hoped for this outcome, but honestly didn’t expect it. Now, however, I’m sitting here, blogging on my shiny new laptop, and it makes me very happy.

Apple’s done this for me once before too; I got an iPod for Christmas last year, and earlier this fall it began having some apparent hard-drive issues. Songs would skip in the exact same place, consistently, even when the same song played perfectly on my laptop. I brought it in, and they simply replaced it – no questions asked. Shiny new ipod after many months of use.

So, yeah. Apple customer service makes for a very happy Kristin. Thanks, guys.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

beautyredefined — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:00:51 +0000

“It’s about destroying the status quo, because the status is… not… quo.”

This past week the internet got to see Joss Whedon’s new project: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. A musical, or a musical parody, featuring Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible. He is an aspiring super-villian trying to get into the Evil League of Evil. Unfortunately for him, Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) is always on hand to foil his plans. Throw into the mix Felicia Day as the innocent love interest, add songs that I can’t stop singing, and I’m addicted. It’s hilarious, and now that the free preview is over, I had to go buy them on iTunes; it’s only $4 for the three-act set. Definitely worth it.

Enjoy the trailer:

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Brian Vander Ark

beautyredefined — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:39:30 +0000

Brian Vander Ark is coming to The Ark on April 19th. He’s the former lead singer of The Verve Pipe, which had the hit song “The Freshman” awhile back. While I liked that song all right, I thought it was a bit overplayed, so I never really paid much attention to the band. However, when my favorite radio station here played Brian’s single, “Survival,” last year, I wanted more. I finally got the chance to hear more last summer at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival where he played for free. Unfortunately, it had been a rainy afternoon, so there was almost no crowd, but I went anyway. It was great. I loved all his songs, and bought his CD. Since then, he’s played in Ann Arbor a couple of times, and Logan and I went to go see him at his last show at The Ark, and again at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival this past January. We just bought his newest album, and are really looking forward to his next concert.

Besides having great music, he seems like a really nice, laid-back guy, too. He allowed flash photography at his last concert at the Ark (so I’m definitely bringing my camera this time), and during the summers he’s taken to doing Lawn Chairs and Living Room tours, which I think is awesome. Anyway. He’s worth checking out, and if he comes on tour near you, I think you should go. You can go here to download a free copy of his song, “Lily White Way,” which I think is quite good, myself.