Older blog entries for vladimir (starting at number 1)

So I suppose at some point I'll actually get decent at this. The work here that I'm part of at Helix is coming along nicely; it's going to be a nice product. (Intentionally vague comment ;-) Side note: grip is so damn cool. Making mp3's has never been easier.

It's 3am again, I get a full night's sleep every other night, and that's okay, I guess. Nat "Suck" Friedman decided that it would probably be a good idea if we nuked Quake off people's computers, but then just went down to not playing and especially not dragging him into any Quake games. That's fair enough. He can't seem to resist. :-)

My latest online shopping screwup: I order a camera from mpsuperstore.com. They have a great price. I ordered on monday night, took overnight shipping, expected it here wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon, no camera. I call them. They say, "Oh, did you order on Monday?" "Yes." "Our oder download was corrupted on Monday, we lost all the orders for that day, we're really sorry. I can connect you to a sales associate and you can place your order again." I said OK, since she was being nice and polite. Anyways, I place the order, and I have it firmly in my mind that I will get them to ship it overnight, and I will NOT pay for it. So, I'm talking to the guy, he asks me if I want the 5yr warranty for like $350, I say no, we keep going, and get to shipping. I tell him again what happened, and ask him to get me overnight shipping and waive the shipping charges. He checks with manager. Manager says no, but they will give me the warranty for like $280. I tell him I'll take the warranty if they give it to me for $200. He checks with manager, manager says yes.

So, the events went kind of like this: I order camera on monday for delivery on wednesday, just the camera, still $100 shipping (+insurance). On wednesday I discover order was lost. I order again. I still pay $100 shipping. Plus I pay $200 in warranty. I'm still trying to convince myself I didn't get raped.

Okay, that's it for now.. we'll see if anything else exciting happens.

I could be doing lots of things right now; I could be working on the GVidBox thingy, I could be working on data models, I could be making this world a better place to live in.. instead, what am I doing? I am playing QUAKE. Quake 1. In fact, I had no intensions of playing Quake. I came in yesterday at 6pm (after having slept from 6am to 5pm, having played Diplomacy during that night), and it is now 9am. And I just got done playing Quake.

Plus both this morning and yesterday morning we ate at one of Boston's most seedy diners, and it wasn't even IHOP.

I blame the following people: Jacob Berkman, Ian Peters, and Nat Friedman. In that order. I think.

Anyway, I also came to realize that while an idea like Kozmo.com in Boston is really cool, I've had 2 bad experiences with it so far. Both times, it let me spend time putting stuff in my shopping cart, only to discover that they're broken at the moment. So that sucks.

And my sleep schedule is now completely out of whack. On the bright side, I won a million dollars yesterday. Or, at least, I got a telegram-lookalike thingy saying I did and to call a 1-800 number. I did. They tried to sell me magazines. Then they transferred me and tried to give me magazines for free. Then they transferred and tried to give me free long distance. Then they tried to transfer me and give me free plane tickets, but I hung up. I'm still entered. I hope my checks start arriving soon.