My 2012 iPad Story (updated)

Last Wednesday I was working during the event but throughout the day, I followed the news through gdgt's awesome feed. Eager as always, I wanted to know when (Mar 16th), what the specifications were and if I should do Wifi only or add 4G cellular capability. After a 20 hour day, I arrived home and my wife and I made our pre-order. It would my wife's delayed Christmas gift to me.  I told her that I chose a Black 32GB Wifi-4G version.  Surprisingly, she asked why I didn't get 64GB and I told her that I didn't want to spend her money but I also didn't want to change it just in case I lost my spot. The last detail in the order was that I wanted to do a store pickup in Miami (I live in San Diego) because that's where I'd be the morning of iPad Day. You see, there's a bunch of us in Miami celebrating one of my best friend's Match Day. It's a time to celebrate right? I swear it was the longest week and half of waiting. I skipped the iPad 2 after selling my iPad 1 prematurely and this was it. I woke up, dropped of my friend at his breakfast ceremony and proceed to Lincoln Road Apple Store. I found some easy parking, arrived at the store and got right in. The sales representative was more than helpful and the whole process was one of the best purchasing experiences I ever had. Interaction and everything, A++. My order was easily modified exchanging my previous pre-order to the Black 64GB Wifi+4G Verizon LTE (with the wife's permission) and I even added a Black 16GB Wifi-4G Verizon LTE for my loving wife as a surprise AND an Apple TV for the Match Day celebrant. It was to be his gift for finishing an awesome 4 years at the University of Miami Medical School.

I checked out while making a new friend, grabbed a Cuban coffee + 8 guava pastilitos and even gave my 2 hour parking ticket to a guy who parked in front of me who was looking for his wallet. Paying it forward right? I'm in a GREAT mood!

I received a request from my wife to buy some Tylenol and on the way to the pharmacy, I passed multiple gas stations but ultimately made the decision to go to a CVS. It took almost 15 minutes to find parking, and the machine also didn't want to spit out my ticket after inserting $1.00 cash. I used my credit card and ran into CVS. I bought two bottles of Tylenol (buy one get one free) and picked up some Visine too.

I got back to the car, started the engine, and curiously turned around because I was hearing the car's exhaust louder than normal. Low and behold, both iPads and the Apple TV were stolen! Not even my friend's brand new Macy's Long Sleeve Shirt was grabbed or anything else but the Apple bag full of the latest goodness.

I called 911, they directed me to a local police station, they came, wrote up the report, which I have to pay $1 for a copy in 10 days, and took off. Someone was going to come and take fingerprints but it started raining so they canceled that. All this was happening around 10:30am off of 3rd and Biscayne in Miami. I needed to be at the Match Ceremony by 11:45am. Now my friends' Toyota Tacoma has a broken rear passenger window ($150 part + $100 labor) and I have no iPads or Apple TV to give him.

The emotions that I'm feeling: Hate, forgiveness, frustration, stupidity...I really don't know what to do. I can't afford to buy all that again and the saddest part is that my wife doesn't feel like having one now. That's what makes me cry. In the end, it was about her joy, my friend's joy and now I'm nowhere but in $1900 in debt w/ nothing to play with.

64GB // DLXH96K5DNQV 16GB // LXH60L7DNQR aTV // DY5HC843DRHN

Answering some questions:

1. Yes the bag was covered
2. There was a Macy's bag that was exposed with a long sleeve dress shirt that was left behind
3. I live in San Diego and it's my own ignorance perhaps that I feel safe
4. Visa Signature will NOT cover stolen items in an automobile
5. GEICO will NOT covert stolen personal items in a vehicle
6. The perpetrators only stole the Apple Bag
7. The police are saying that I might have been followed or targeted
8. My wife's NEEDS comes first so the Tylenol was necessary before coming home but maybe I could have dropped the items off first?

Flying part 2: 4th Week in July

Of all the randomness in flying for the Delta Connection Carrier, Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA) based solely out of Atlanta, my four day schedule had an assignment that was to operate a Cincinnati to Miami roundtrip.  New to me and apparently pretty new to the system I might add.  Last summer, I got to fly the Miami system through Tallahassee, Florida and that was a blast, so I was really looking forward to this trip.  I would have loved an overnight in MIA but I guess we won't be doing any of those in the near future. Flying towards Miami, we noticed that the normal summer cloud build-ups were in every quadrant.  It was going to be all about the quick turn.  Looking at our schedule, we also noticed that we had more than ample time to grab some Cuban Coffee and a sandwich.  Coffee was a success but the sandwich place closed I guess.  Massive fail as I was left to eat a Meat Stromboli from Sbarros.  Definitely not the Cuban Sandwich I was hoping for.

I did my walk around and of course it stated to sprinkle a bit.  Just enough to get me a little damp but not dripping.  Flying out of Miami was a lot of fun though.  Departing 8R we made a turn to the north and was vectored toward the northwest in order to get around and through some cloud build-up.  Fun stuff!  Check out the radar and the cloud picture of the cavern we flew through!

An of course after we landed in Cincinnati Airport which many of you might not know is 1) a ghost town since Delta has slowly changed all of its routing and deleted many flights from the CVG system 2) is actually located in Northern Kentucky. Check it out on this map:

View Larger Map

We made our way to one of the nicer hotels we stay at, Hilton Airport, and then we headed out to celebrate my birthday. Happy hour at Applebees has become the common theme with overnights lately just because the deals are too good to pass up and there's nothing else nearby! We had a couple of drinks, great appetizers but I chose the liquid diet last night. Fun times! On the walk back to the hotel, we hit up Rafferty's for some of there fine honey butter croissants the called it a night. Good times guys and thanks for the great night!

Flying part 1: 4th Week in July

Flying the CRJ700 has been definitely more exciting than the CRJ200 and this week was just another example.  I guess it might be the mere fact that 1 more flight attendant / stewardess adds to the mix during dinner or that I'm just getting lucky being paired up with great crews.  With that, this was a rather enjoyable week. The first night was an overnight in Quad Cities, Illinois which I have already blogged about... great food!  Check it out here. (http://www.elijahnicolas.com/wp/2009/07/26/overnight-in-quad-cities/)

The next night exposed me to the true horrors that Newark, New Jersey is.  Rudeness was in the air but friends were around to pick me up and create a lightened atmosphere.  We headed to the Shorthills Mall which was pretty high society status.  Too bad it was an indoor mall but shopping around is always fun when the weather outside is humid, muggy with a chance of thunderstorms.  We ate at a great place called All American Joe's Bar (something like that) and concluded the night with a drive through a ritzy neighborhood w/ average home sales of $2-4M, stroll through it's local town full of boutique shops that had tennis outfits in the windows.  I can't remember the name of the town but there was an theater playing Public Enemies and that was what we were watching.  For a two and half hour movie, it kept me going.  I enjoyed it thoroughly but I have to admit that 500 Days of Summer (trailer) was more entertaining.  Johnny Depp had a great roll, Christian Bale looks a little skinny and didn't convince me so much, but overall it was a great biography on John Dillinger.    Albeit more appealing I guess in it's very unique story telling.  Go watch it already if you have not!  It's playing in select theaters so make you scope out the local area for show times.

I'll write up part two tomorrow starting off with some good MIA weather story and capping it off with a fun night in Cincinnati...er Kentucky...that one place that we stayed at last night.  Here's a picture of the morning sun rising over Manhattan skyline as seen from the Newark Airport.  You can see the Empire State Building too if you take a close look!  Check it out!