W@AL: the Party Animal reveals all
Over the years, I’ve heard some wonderful stories from CTV drivers about having to pick up guests and on-air personalities who were, well, a bit in the bag. They’d been up really really late, or partying, doing what journalists on expense accounts like to do, and they’d almost miss their pick-up time, or look like a sack of shinola, or both.
Anyway: this morning, I was awoken by someone loudly knocking on my door. “Your CTV driver is here! Wake up!” they said. You’ve never seen a guy get dressed that fast.
Here’s a little video done in the car, post-Question Period, in which I confess what it was that kept me up so late. It’s shocking.
Eeeeeeearrrgh (updated, with happy ending)
Quite a few of you are going to laugh about this, I suspect.
On my brand-new shiny iPad, when I tap on the “Apps Store” – where I was promised untold delights awaited me – I get this:

So, um, now what? I can’t create a US iTunes account because I’m in, well, Canada.
So what now, Team Propellerhead?
Also, if I throw the iPad like a frisbee, will it bounce?
UPDATE: By purchasing a Vanilla MasterCard at Shopper’s, and creating a US-based iTunes account, the thing now works just tickety-boo. Here, then, is a W@AL vid on the stuff I like about it:
The iPad cometh!
Apple sucks lemons
Lots of people getting really, really upset with Apple here in the i-lineup: most of the folks who haven’t purchased an elusive iPad are still waiting to get in – and the stores opened more than an hour ago!
A little boy behind me looks like he’s getting ready to cry. Way to go, Jobs.
i-Funny
I just saw this bit in one of the kabillion iPad-related stories I’ve been reading since 5 a.m., here in the i-lineup. It got me and a couple other guys laughing. It also got them to stop talking about operating systems, however briefly.
“…Late-night TV comic Stephen Colbert proved as much earlier this week, skewering our gadget-obsessed zeitgeist as he pulled the world’s most coveted computer from beneath his faux news desk and proceeded to use his iPad as a blade, slicing and dicing a tray of tomatoes into a pulpy mass, all with a triumphant grin that would make grill-shilling George Foreman blush.
“Never mind how I got it,” Colbert said of his rarer than rare electronic prize. “I had two kidneys … Luckily there is an app that filters urine…”
In the Land of Nerdlings, who is the King Nerdling?
Some people near me in the iPad line-up outside the Apple store are talking about the different types of fibre optic cables.
Pause.
You know, I think no jury would convict me for what I am thinking about doing right now.
Words fail
Okay, now they are talking about the many uses of the “F1” key.
Fortunately, I am in the United States, so I can readily purchase a firearm to shoot myself with.
Sweet Jesus
A guy from Burlington just showed up with a knapsack with solar panels on it.
Pray for me.
In the i-line
I’m in a line-up with about 20 hardcore Apple nuts at the Galleria Mall in Buffalo. There are actually two line-ups – one for losers like me, who didn’t “reserve” an iPad, and one line-up for losers who did.
A guy beside me, an engineer, asked a guy in the reserved line why he was lined up three hours before the store opens, and the guy shrugged and said: “Now we’re guaranteed guaranteed.”
I have fully, completely stepped into The Land of the Nerdlings. God help me.