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I bought two 8GB iPhones at the San Francisco Apple store tonight. I got there at around 8:30 pm and there was no line to get into the store. I asked one of the store employees, “Can I get an iPhone?”, and he directed me to go either ‘upstairs and to the right’ or ‘to the left and towards the back’. I chose upstairs. There was hardly a line (just a couple of people asking questions) and there was a stack of iPhones piled behind the counter waiting for me. I paid my money and the device some people had waited the better part of week for was in my hands. It was pretty painless overall and the people who waited in line better have some very good stories to show for it.

My thoughts so far… garsh it sure is beautiful. We just took them out of the box and cradled them lovingly in our arms for awhile before even hooking them into the computer to set them up. Ok, not really. The setup process through iTunes is amazingly quick and easy and the phone is working pretty much immediately. I’ve never known a cell phone service to work so well. I’m gushing now…

I’ll have to use iPhone (it’s weird to refer to it as simply ‘iPhone’, isn’t it?) for a bit to see how it stacks up against my trusty (if a bit unstable) Treo. I think there are likely some things I’ll miss about the Treo (like just holding down ‘v’ for a couple of seconds to dial Vida), but the email and web on the iPhone are leaps and bounds better than anything I’ve had on a mobile device before.

I’ve listened through the Beastie Boys album “The Mix Up” once and it’s pretty good, but not really great. It’s all instrumentals and jazzy band music like some of the tracks on Check Your Head and more notably on Ill Communication. It sounds to me like they tried to capture a live feel in the recording and on some of the songs it works great but on others I think they should have done a few more takes. The best songs are good enough to justify listening to the album (especially if you have Rhapsody or another music subscription) and the rest of the songs are good enough to make repeat listens worthwhile. All in all, after one listen I give it a 6 out of 10.

I got an email from Netflix telling me they’re lowering my price and I don’t have to do anything but pay less. How nice of them!

Here’s the letter…

Dear Dallas,

Great news! We’re lowering the price on our 2 DVDs out at-a-time plan to $13.99 a month plus applicable taxes. Now you can enjoy Netflix for less!

You don’t need to do a thing - except pay less. Your membership will automatically move to the lower price and be reflected in your Membership Terms and Details. The lower price will take effect beginning with your statement on or after June 28, 2007.

Your $13.99 plan gives you 2 DVDs out at-a-time and you can also watch 14 hours of movies and TV episodes instantly on your PC each month - for no additional charge. Click here to check it out.

Enjoy!
Your friends at Netflix

If you attended school in the United States in the 80s or 90s there’s a pretty good chance you played The Oregon Trail video game at some point. The game was simple by today’s standards but it was still much better than class! You had to help a group of settlers through the Oregon Trail hunting, dealing with disease, and dealing with other problems that would come up.

A company called MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium) was the original developer of the game. It was started by the state of Minnesota and originally the game was only available to schools there. Eventually they branched out and offered it to schools nation-wide. The history of the company from the early 1970s on is pretty interesting and worth a read (it’s pretty short) if you have any pangs of nostalgia over The Oregon Trail.

A funny thing has been happening over the past couple of years. As DreamHost has grown into one of the top 10 web hosts in the US the reaction from the community has been interesting, to put it lightly. Our unique and fun way of operating has always brought us fans and there have also always been people out there that just didn’t seem to ‘get’ us. Lately, though, we seem to be downright controversial. It seems like anyone who has heard of us has some sort of opinion, positive or negative, and many people are quite vehement about it.

Discussions about us often become heated and people on both sides, yay and nay, have strong opinions. It sometimes even devolves into personal insults. We’re controversial enough that we regularly make it to the top of Digg.com and people now seem to be blogging about us specifically to try to gain some attention from their association with us. I guess it can’t be said that we’re boring!