“Every man should approach fitness this way, especially as he segues from his 20s to his 30s and then into his 40s. Shape up once and stay there. It’s so much easier than stopping and starting ad nauseam. With each passing year you become further removed from the high school stud who can eat all summer at Del Taco and then burn it off during Hell Week. The after-30 version of that ritual—developing a gut and then training for a marathon with your buddies—is hardly a prescription for long-term health and fitness.”

There was quite a weight to this whilst reading as seeing as I’m nearly 30, I need to get back and into prime shape. I want the option to drink, eat and be merry without it feeling like it’s posing a consistent risk.

For more on the Ryan Kwant article, click here

I hate Facebook. Point blank. Well no, I’m lying, I love it. I hate that I didn’t come up with it first. Now having followed Mr. Zuckerberg loosely from a distance through articles, his rise to complete financial freedom is no surprise.

Watching The Social Network also re-affirmed that and solidified what I thought, the man is a conniving genius. Or if the film was based more in fiction, he’s just a clever bastard!

How ridiculous is that notion? Sad thing though (at least in Canada) is that it’s true. I just purchased my iPhone 4 after having to wait months because of poor planning on the behalf of Rogers and Fido. Still to this day, nearly four months after it’s release, Rogers and Fido stores are only getting a handful of phones each week.

As a result, like many other Vancouverites. I was forced to get mine through the Apple store. Now I’ll get intothr tediousness after I’ve gotten to my point about the process in getting the phone from Apple**** but to get to the crux of my post let me explain the process. After finally winning the call Apple for an appointment to pay $350 for a locked 3 year contract phone contest, I headed down go Pacific Centre’s Apple store. Bypassing the hordes of complaining customers who bombarded the lone Apple employee outside who had to deal with endless “Why cant I get a phone today?” questions, I spoke to another Apple employee and told him I’d gotten an appointment. It felt like I had a secret password or knew the owner of the club, quite a surreal feeling.

Anyway, another employee grabbed me after I had been left to browse the new Mac Airs and took me over to an iMac where the phone setup began. Needless to say we went through the usual bs exploring terms and the like, until we had to set up a new smaller micro sim for my phone. It was at this point that he said, “I know, You’re probably wondering ‘Why windows?’ well that’s because for some reason Rogers won’t work through Mac browsers, only Internet Explorer.” I couldn’t help but chuckle on the Apple store requiring that Windows ran in order to get their partner company to work through a sim card registration, nice one Rogers, good programming Apple!

****the ridiculous process of getting an iPhone 4 through Apple required that if you wanted an iPhone 4 upgrade and not to purchase one outright, you had to phone and make an appointment at 10AM. Now there were only so many activation slots per day and so of course, x were allotted on a daily basis. The issue was that this turned out to be more like phoning in for free concert tickets as you were entered every day into a lottery to get through. Hundreds of people phoned in from 9:30AM to get through, however if it were 9:59AM or anytime before you would be anal retentively denied until exactly 10AM on the dot.

This of course caused many arguments and issues, and huge frustration on my part. From 10AM to 10:30 the phone lines were jammed and if you made it through afterwards you weren’t getting a phone that day. A ridiculous system, they should have just gone with waiting lists and if you missed your call to get your phone they could just continue down the line.

I’d never really noticed that paragraphed box which Canadian credit card statements now have, the one that details exactly how many years and how many months it will take you to pay off an acquired balance. After years of spending without thinking, and I actually truly don’t mean splurging, the debt had mounted up.

My efforts had been concentrated on poorly starting and running an independent corporation with zero knowledge on how to do so (solely the help of my uncle to pay for the incorporating fees), running an online magazine with no clear revenue stream and paying for it all myself, as well as spending money on groceries and expensive birthday/christmas presents. I also suffered from a delusion expecting mountains to move themselves without my deliberate involvement.

Many jobs had potentially fallen at my feet, but unless I truly had an interest in them, it felt pointless to bother with them. I willingly took poorer paying jobs because of the experiences I encountered and social situations… Not the wisest method of generating income.

After nearly six years of this idiocy, reading what my Visa and Mastercard statements told me, I had a significant epiphany.

Summarized, this isn’t happening. Not in a denial sense, but in one exclaiming that I will not accept it. I shall ensure that I pay off all my debts years before they’re supposedly scheduled to be done with.

Now Air BnB was recommended to me by a good friend, and it seemed too good to be true. It was. We had a place for $25 a night that was a 30 minute bus ride from our aimed location; downtown Seattle for Bumbershoot. After a lengthy search, walking up and down hills in the blazing sun, we reached a driveway where a male nurse was getting into his car, headed to work. My girlfriend asked for directions, and after realizing that it might be a fair distance he took us in his car to our destination.

The destination didn’t seem too ominous from the outside, a standard suburban brick house. However after getting the keys and entering the home, seeing a shirtless tattooed man smoking kind of turned us off the positivity we had in our minds about the room we were looking to stay in. After looking around the place for a good 10 minutes (our host wasn’t there), we made it to our room. Down in the basement, we found our dingy, damp sheeted, stained bed in our dusty room. After overhearing some of the other house tenants bicker about how they didn’t have any money, how the other should purchase them some beer and how they should just rob someone, we were getting quite ready to leave. We peered up to the ground level window which as we were in the basement was only half a foot in size and saw a man running around the building, crouching so as to seemingly avoid detection. At that point, we were done. We grabbed our belongings and left, noticing the scum and grime covered bathroom on the way out.

We grabbed the first bus we found and headed back into the city. The driver was remarkably friendly, trying his best to help direct us and from then on the Seattle people we came across began showing their true side. Sitting in Starbucks and checking every hotel we could, we continued on to the free downtown bus and finally the convention centre. By the time we’d reached there, the information desk had changed, but that didn’t prevent Jake at Fed Ex/Kinkos from helping us by advising us where to go and setting us up with another internet connection to check wherever we could. He kept checking in on us to try and help more and suggest where to head to. After half an hour there we continued on to The Sheraton to check if there were availabilities and also to use their Sheraton courtesy phone.

The women there provided us with a list and did their best to recommend places, they kept joking about the places “Not being The Sheraton” because they were full, but they were extremely pleasant and accommodating.

This is some ridiculousness right here. The iPhone 4 comes out this Friday on both Rogers and Fido (Rogers owns Fido for those still in the dark) and for some unknown reason, neither company are allowing or announcing pre-orders and judging by the fact that we’re a mere 3 days from the iPhone 4 being released in Canada, my money is on the fact that they’re not going to bother to do anything about setting that up.

As a consumer, I’m very much of the belief that if you make things simple, they’ll work. Now regardless of whether you take pre-orders on the phone or not, avid fans of the phone will queue up for it on Friday so they can have it first. The issue is, and this mainly relates to myself, that if I don’t know I’ll get my iPhone 4 in a 32gb size for the right price, I’m not getting in a fucking line. All Rogers are managing to do by not setting up pre-orders is ensure people like myself not going down on Friday (I don’t particularly want a photo of me in a line up on the front of the Metro or 24) to purchase a phone then and there, but to call and find out and wait longer.

Nice one. So now you have people like myself and my friends chanting how the corporate identity you try to look after is actually ridiculous and poor at planning their pitch and business efficiently with regards to keeping their customers happy.

Rogers and Fido, glad you have the iPhone 4. I’m hoping your competitors sell more of them.

And just in case they change this tomorrow and allow pre-orders (such as you’d assume given that as of last month both sites had people sign up for mailing lists for more information… information that never came), this was the case as of 9:18pm on July 27th

My friend, lets call her Miss Cruz, informed me about Air BnB, a site which acts as an agent for people with rooms to rent in their homes. It’s often comparable in price to a hostel (and depending on the area maybe some hotels), but offers the comforts of a home like environment and from the hostel perspective, more security.

I’ve yet to actually try out the service myself, but I intend to the next time I travel. Which, I’m hoping, should be within the next couple of months.

For more information go to their official site: http://www.airbnb.com/

Kanye West – “Last Call”

Last year shoppin my demo, I was tryin’ to shine
Every motherfucker told me that I couldn’t rhyme
Now I could let these dream killers kill my self-esteem
Or use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams
I use it as my gas, so they say that I’m gassed
But without it I’d be last, so I ought to laugh