Testing out the WordPress iPhone app, the better with which to post drunken impromptu bitch sessions I will later regret from locations far and wide.

Looks as if I still have to figure out how to add categories, but otherwise, it’s pretty damn slick.

I was on my bike, sitting in the left-turn lane on my way back from the gym this afternoon when a guy in a brand new red Mini convertible flicked his lit cigarette onto the ground right in front of me.

I was about to express my displeasure with his action when a guy pulled up behind him in a black Audi S4, shouting, “It’s called an ashtray, dickface!”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. And thanks to him, I didn’t have to. Thank you, my anonymous, foulmouthed friend.

Took me about a week, but I got my metric tonne of pictures from the Gay Pride Parade last weekend up on Flickr. The slideshow (make sure you mouseover the “notes” thing to see my notes):

The sun wasn’t out for about the first 2/3 of the parade, so some of the pictures are sadly flat, but overall I’m happy with how these turned out. Everything was taken with my 70-300mm lens, so I couldn’t get some wider shots, but some of the detail I got instead made it worth it.

Having scraped change out of the couch, sold off my possessions on eBay, and been given some extremely well-timed birthday gifts of cash money, I finally broke down and bought an iPhone.

Part of me wanted to wait until I got an actual job, but the Sprint network in my neighborhood was crapping out so badly that my crackberry would drain at least once a day. It was damn near unusable, so off I went to the Apple store at the crack of dawn yesterday to fulfill my iNerd destiny.

The iPhone is predictably awesome. Substantially easier to use, save for needing to get used to the virtual keyboard. Apps (and I’ve downloaded nothing but free ones) are a great enhancement to the included programs. Having the full internet, and having it at a damn fast pace, is a substantial improvement over the primitive Crackberry browser.

Making ringtones in GarageBand is a fun time killer. Trying to figure out exactly what little snippets of a song will be fun rather than annoying, then trying to time the loop exactly right so the rhythm holds up over repeated rings is an entertaining challenge. Current ringtone: The first eight seconds of Cake’s “Opera Singer.”

There are a few things that bug me: The iChat outgoing text message noise can’t be turned off and bugs the shit out of me on the phone (oddly, it doesn’t bother me as part of iChat); I really, really wish there was a 64GB version so I could have my entire music library on it; for some reason it refused to mingle contacts I’d initially synced from my computer with MobileMe and I had to hand-delete several hundred duplicates; and the glossy back is the slipperiest thing I’ve ever touched short of a live fish.

Overall, however, I’m mighty pleased with my decision so far. I love that I now only have to carry one device for phone and music, and I’m very, very happy that I have a phone that gets decent reception at my apartment.

As a sidenote, the most ridiculous aspect of this entire process happened when I called Sprint up to pay off my final bill. Their billing system bills a month in advance, so I wanted to pay off my final bill since I was only about a quarter of the way through the month.

Sprint’s rep, of course, told me that I had to wait until after my billing cycle rolled over on the 12th. Which is all well and good, except my payment is due on the 6th. She swore up and down that I wouldn’t get dinged with a late fee unless I was more than 10 days late, though she didn’t seem too surprised when I expressed some skepticism towards that promise.

So we’ll see what that final bill winds up costing me, but frankly, I was ready to pay just about any price to get the hell away from Sprint’s craptastic service.

I went to the L.A. Pride Parade in West Hollywood today and took a bajillion pictures, which it’ll probably take me a solid couple days to upload. I’ll be putting up a slideshow when I’m done. In the meantime, please enjoy this preview of things to come:

Recently, I have:

• Turned 28, to relatively little fanfare. Which is probably appropriate, because it’s not a terribly significant birthday. Drinks at the friendly local “We have a ton of awesome beer” establishment were fun, though.
   
• Found a surprisingly viable backup employment plan if I can’t get on anything for the fall season (which I’ll go into at some point later on if/when it happens). But the good news is that I am relatively confident that I will not be boiling my own shoes for dinner. At least not until after Thanksgiving.
   
• Had my phone deteriorate to the point where it’s going to take a lot of restraint for me to not smash the thing with a ballpeen hammer between now and next Friday when I get the new iPhone. Thankfully I have kept a dedicated phone replacement fund and have decided to say “Screw unemployment!” and just get the damn new one.
   
• Gotten new neighbors after 5 months of the apartment next door being empty because the landlord refused to face reality about the way rents are falling around here. They seem nice, but their cigarette smoke seeps into my apartment on occasion, and they let their cats roam about, which tends to freak Chaplin out in the middle of the night from time to time.
   
• Broke down and finally gotten myself the “Hooray, I lost 80lbs!” reward I’d been planning to get for months: An iPod shuffle/waterproof headset combo which will keep me entertained while swimming long distances. I’m now doing 2 miles with no problem, and I’m considering bumping up to 4km when I can get away with it.
   
• Watched an absolute fuckton of TV. Rewatched entire 4th season of BSG, now working through Netflix discs of Big Bang Theory (more geekily amusing than I recalled it being, since I dropped it after the pilot) and re-watching Band of Brothers, probably going to go through all of Deadwood next.
   
• Received a sternly worded letter from the landlord to the entire building that the toilets are ONLY for disposal of human waste and toilet paper. I’m not sure whether or not I want to hear the story behind that one.
   
• Have fought the good fight against my body’s natural instinct to stay awake ridiculously late and then get up mid-morning. Generally won, though this week I’ve mostly lost (as evidenced by the timestamp on this post).