Up until yesterday, you could buy an application for your iPhone that costs $999.99.

What does it do?

Nothing.

Not a darn thing.

It simply puts that red icon in your iPhone’s desktop so that people will see it and know that you are so wealthy that you can afford to waste money just for prestige…

Apple pulled the app, apparently on a moral basis…

You can read the whole story on the LATimes here.

but it got me think: what’s the difference between this app and, say, spending $100 bucks for a pair of jeans that you could get for $25 without the label that says ‘Diesel’ or ‘Polo’?

Any thoughts?

]]> http://zackriesland.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/its-like-air-jordans-for-your-iphone/feed/ 0 zackriesland http://zackriesland.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/i-was-a-photographer-for-a-day/ http://zackriesland.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/i-was-a-photographer-for-a-day/#comments Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:02:03 +0000 Zack http://zackriesland.wordpress.com/?p=504 ]]>

I braved a room with about 20-25 women for three hours and took 370-something pictures.

Then I went mountain biking to gain back my man points :0)

Photos coming soon…

We took our first major step towards getting our nursery ready when we bought a dresser/changing table/hutch thingy off of craigslist last weekend.

I spent most of Friday night painting the bottom half.

I’m a REALLY fast painter:

Me in the ruins of Alexander the Great's palace in Samarkand, Uzbekistan

I would give a lot to be waking up in Samarkand today. I would walk down the street to get break baked just a few minutes ago, and I would come home and eat it for breakfast with sweet milk and tea.

Or I would fast and walk around the city all day and pray against the demonic strongholds that make a miserable place to live.

Someday, Lord?

A few days ago I was driving home from work, and I heard this story come across the wire on NPR:

If you are a photographer with high-quality images posted on Yahoo’s Flickr service, you may soon get an e-mail message inviting you to become a paid contributor to Getty Images, the world’s largest distributor of pictures and video.

Yahoo and Getty Images said Tuesday that they had entered into a partnership under which Getty editors would comb Flickr in search of interesting images. They will then invite photographers to participate in the program and ensure that their images have the proper releases to be licensed legally. Those who are included in the program will get paid at the same rates that Getty pays photographers who are under contract with the company.

(You can read the whole article here)

This is really exciting to me for two reasons: 1 is that Stephanie is an awesome photographer, and I think that there’s a real possibility that she could get published. And 2 is that I think ‘professional photographer’ is like #5 on my list of best jobs in the world.

So I started a flickr photostream, and we’ve slowly been adding some of our most ‘artistic’ photos.

Check it out!

What do you think is the best photo you’ve ever taken?

This morning, on the way to work, I heard a short interview with a guy from Iraq.

He was really excited because this is the first wekk in at least four years when he feels comfortable leaving his wife and kids at home while he goes out to do something.

Hmmm…

Kind of puts my day in perspective…

So, yesterday I took a glance at the stats for this here blog, and they have become downright depressing. Like 60% of the traffic has dropped off in the last week.

And I ask myself, “Why, Zack?”

And then I realize, “Oh yeah. It’s cause I haven’t posted anything in like a week!”

So, for both of you who still care to know what’s happening in this red-headed world, here’s a quick catch-up post:

The job is going well. I really enjoy being back in the java world, and I like the vibe at my new office *much* better.

The main downer about my new job is that I have like 1% downtime. I used to have lots of small increments of time to kill while waiting for different things to happen, but no more. This is why you won’t see this blog updated very often for a while, or your emails returned quite as promptly. I say, ‘for a while’, because I’ll eventually be working in Raleigh and the I won’t have 2 1/2 hours a day of driving tacked on to my day.

Which brings me to my next observation: starbucks needs to hire me as a consultant. “Why?”, you ask. Because in my 78-mile drive, I pass 3 Cracker Barrels, 2 state rest stops, 3 Sheets gas stations, 2 malls, at least 2 counties, but NOT ONE Starbucks. Well, in fairness, I do pass two Barnes and Nobles, which have mini-starbucks inside, but they don’t open until like 9:00 am, which is way too late for me.

To further compound my frustration on this matter, I have discovered that there are *three* Starbucks within a couple of miles from each other on the road where I work, but they’re all way out of the way.

Why doesn’t the world revolve around me?

OK. I’m done being silly…

Steph and I had a great time camping this weekend. There are photos and videos from that trip coming soon.

And in the meantime, I have heard three of the best sermons in my whole life recently. Two are from the Doctrine series by Mark Driscoll. Teaching 12 on stewardship and teaching 13 on the Kingdom of Jesus are worth listening to a few times. They get me downright excited!

And the past several teachings by Francis Chan are also very good. The one called ‘Holiness’ from a couple of weeks ago is especially ‘Punch you in the face’ awesome.

Ok. More rational posting to come in the future…

Money got really tight for us around Christmas time. We put a few gift purchases on our credit cards, and fully expected that when our tax refund came, we would pay down our credit card bills and put a little money in the bank, and start with a positive financial momentum in 2008.
Trouble was, we came up owing almost $1,000 on our taxes. I re-did the numbers twice, and yet Turbo Tax was insistent: we owed the IRS money we didn’t have.
So much for a positive momentum…
But then it got worse.

I was working like a dog at the time, and fully expecting to get a raise that I was up for in December. At our company, raises will often come a couple of months late, but they’re usually retroactive to whenever you were eligible. So when I sat down in my manager’s office in March, I was expecting to get a good raise that would be retroactive to mid-December. Or in other words, I thought for sure that God would use this to help us pay our tax debt by the looming deadline.
But that’s not what happened.

I got the raise I expected, but my manager told me that it wouldn’t be retroactive. I was kind of puzzled, and I asked if I was being punished for something. He said that I wasn’t. That I was doing a great job, and something along the lines of “this is just how we’re doing it.”
That left me pretty discouraged.
So we put our tax debt on a credit card. So much for paying that thing down…

And then my brakes went out. So I put those on the credit card.
And then our home owner’s association dues came. Can’t pay those on a credit card, so I paid some other bills on a credit card so we could write a check for that.

And I started to carry some serious anxiety, and thought that surely if I trusted the Lord through this and was obedient He would come through in some supernatural way.

That’s about the time we got a bill for our baby. No, you’re right — the baby hasn’t been born yet. It was actually only 10 weeks in the womb when we got our bill. The doctor’s office informed us that they had negotiated with our insurance, and our portion of the cost would be about $2,000. We could feel free to bring it to our next appointment in 2 weeks.

At this point, I was pretty discouraged.

I was more than discouraged.

I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders.

1/3 of the year down, and we have spent more than we’ve made just about every week. Way to go, Zack. Don’t you deserve the ‘Provider of the Year’ award…

Then May rolled around. I got an extra paycheck in May, because I get payed every two weeks, which means that I get two paychecks a year that don’t fall into the ‘twice a month’ pattern.

Then, a week later, we got our tax rebate check.

Just like that, $3,000 that our budget wasn’t counting on. And God gave us some room to breathe.

But that’s not all that happened.

I got a call from a recruiter who asked me if I was interested in a job. This is important because I didn’t apply for anything (except a couple spots at SAS, but that’s another story). I didn’t put my resume on anything but this blog right here. Not on Monster or JobFinder or anything else.

He couldn’t explain where he got my resume except that it turned up in his database.

As it turned out, the position he described was a somewhat unstable, contractor position that seemed like a bad idea with a baby coming.

So I turned it down.

And asked God to stop teasing me.

But then he called back and asked if I would be interested in taking the same position as a full-time salary position. Good pay, but I’d have to commute to Greensboro.

Gas is $4 a gallon. And I have a baby coming.

“No thanks.” Hang up. “God, please stop teasing me!”

A week goes by and he calls back again. “What if you could have the same job, but work from Raleigh?”

So I drove all the way to Greensboro to interview… for 4 hours.

Came home, and waited for the call.

For three weeks.

“God, this really isn’t funny. I’ll gladly keep the situation I’m in, but please stop teasing me.”

But He wasn’t. The call came last week.

To be continued…

You know how pop culture has this idea that pregnant women have these really strong, random cravings? When Steph first got pregnant, everyone teased me that I would be making late-night runs to the grocery store to watermelon, ice cream, and pickles.

Well, two weeks ago, this jar had about 20 pounds worth of pickles in it, and I had like two of them…

I better stock up on watermelon and ice cream…

Amazon.com called this week and asked me if I’d be interested in doing a job interview.

I haven’t applied for anything with them, and I have no idea how they got my resume, but it got me kind of excited.

I’ll be doing a phone interview this Thursday. Please pray that the Lord will guide it and give me wisdom about this!