prod & ponder

Here’s my favorite snippet so far from among the myriad of live blogs being done at iphone lines:

AT&T store, Montague St. Brooklyn, 12:42PM EDT - Some dude just drove by in a car shouting “iPhone sucks!” at everyone in line. Yes, but does Dumbledore die?

One woman came up to the line here in the mall, shook her head, and remarked that, “you know, there are places in the world where people stand in line just like this, just to get food.” Now, there’s an interesting conversation to be had there, but this was done in a condescending tone and was coming from a woman wearing designer clothes and draped with bags from Nordstroms. Since I just happen to have returned from working in an extraordinarily poor country, I replied honestly that actually, no, the lines for food look absolutely nothing like this. She didn’t hang around long enough for me to elaborate.

Apple stores are allowing two iPhones per customer, and there’s been a lot of discussion in line about how profitable it might be to purchase an extra phone and sell it on Ebay or Craigslist. The three people just in front of me are betting on profitable: three day-workers who speak very little English and who plan to sell all the phones they buy. When they saw I was surfing the net, they asked if I could find any painting or drywall construction jobs in the area.

On the other end of the privilege spectrum, John Street, the Mayor of Philadelphia, has camped out for an iPhone. He’s third in line in Center City. (via TUAW).

At least one other mall merchant was clever enough to get in on the act. Someone from JavaFresh just walked down the line passing out ‘iPhone Special” coupons for $1 off large coffees. Apple store employees have also walked the line a few times passing out free bottled water, but tech folks do love their caffeine.

And no, no iPhone profiteering for me.

Sure, I go on a fascinating trip doing conflict resolution work in Tajikistan and I’m quiet as can be. But the mundane act of sitting in a mall for eight hours straight, and I’m all over live blogging every (not so) thrilling moment of it. And so begins…

iPhone blogging mania!

I’m camped out in Montgomery Mall. Arriving at 10am scored me a spot around 30th in line, so prospects look good. Apple Store WiFi permitting, more will follow, because really, what else is there to do?

I was a fan of Google Answers from its start and was sad to see it close shop at the end of last year. I spent two years as a social sciences reference librarian as one of my GRA gigs early on in my PhD studies, loved the work, and Google’s site was like getting to hang back out at the reference desk. Happily, I just discovered that several of the more prolific researchers at Google Answers have moved over to a new site that recreates the Google Answers fun: Uclue.

I never had any illusions about darning together some grand narrative about my recent travels; it wasn’t going to happen. But I had at least hoped to have some short stories to share, and that doesn’t seem likely now either. So, instead, I’m going to post sections of my travel notes, a mut collection of short observations that I wanted to remember.

Here’s a first, with more to come:
* All sorts of Soviet ghosts reside in Tajikistan’s bureaucratic machine. But the most Soviet moment of this trip isn’t strolling by Lenin’s statue in the park, or driving through Dushanbe’s archetypical Soviet urban planning, or even the routine stops by the traffic police stationed at almost every block with little substantive mandate or pay. No, it’s come down to this: a few folks in our hotel, faced with travelers’ stomach and what appears to be toilet paper rationing by the hotel’s staff, have resorted to squirreling away tissue paper and have raised the prospect of bartering the microfridge’s Vodka for additional supplies.

After a whirlwind couple of weeks, traveling to New Jersey, Delaware, Mexico, and Tajikistan, I’m finally back home. The nomadic adventures have all been wonderful, but home is good. I’ll be posting photos and pondering from the trips, likely in no particular order, over the next few days.