A Pleasant Surprise

Are you about ready for a post that DOESN'T deal with/talk about my baby?!?! Probably so!

Unless you're my mom and then you'll be skipping over this post...

So...I think that people fall into several big categories in life. Sure, some people categorize by political party - Republican or Democrat. Some group people other ways - by religion, skin color, etc. Me? I go for the really important things...you know like there's the group of people that realize my greatness and the group of losers that doesn't. Just kiddding, I joke, I joke.

In all seriousness, in my opinion there is the group of people that love their Blackberries and they are at a constant state of war with the iPhone/Apple crowd. Me? I get to straddle that fence all day, every day. My work phone is a crackberry and my personal phone is an iPhone. (Don't worry, I'm only sort of cool, it's just a 3G one...)

I was in the BB camp hard and heavy, until Brent got an iPhone. (We like to pronounce it all snotty like, drawing out the "I" sound) I fell in instant lust. It was lust because I didn't have one myself and I really, really, really wanted one. But I couldn't admit to him how much I wanted one since I had made SO much fun of those that had one when I didn't and had loudly and boldly stated a forever love with my blackberry...

Yeah, it took about two months of him having his before I caved and got mine. And I've been in love ever since. At least, that is, until last week. When all of a sudden the little vibrate switch on the side started acting all funny. If you have an iPhone, you know how when you switch it to silent mode, it vibrates at you and shows you the little ringer sign on the screen with the big bar giong through it to say "no ringer?" Well, last week, when I would switch on the silent mode my iPhone would go nutso on me and just started vibrating at random every few seconds.

And it wouldn't really be on silent.

How frustrating is that when you have a baby in the house? And you want to be online playing games or emailing friends late at night? Totally annoying, let me tell you.

About the same time, Brent's phone speaker went out (it sounded like a broken drive-thru speaker whenever he talked on it) and we made a trip to the AT&T store since I wasn't about to purchase an expensive toy like an iPhone without the warranty and I had made sure to put that on both of our phones when we got them earlier this year. Unfortunately, they couldn't help us other than to say that we needed to go to the Apple store and it should all be covered by our warranty.

Do you know where the closest Apple store is to me? It's not close. At all. It's in the closest mall, which is only about 10 miles from where I WORK but I'm not at work. And since I work about 15 miles from my house, doing the math that makes the closest Apple store a whopping 25 miles away. And that's 25 Austin miles, with traffic and whatnot, so make that almost an hour away...

Luckily for me, the dude at the AT&T store was smart enough to warn me to make appointments before showing up at the Apple, store and when Brent got off of work early today, we called in and set it all up.

Now let me tell you how much I loved the Apple store.

#1 - they had all sorts of cool things out and about for you to play with while you waited, because take it from me - that store was PACKED! Played (and loved!) games on the iPad while waiting, so totally cool!

#2 - there was a greeter at the door who promptly asked if he could help us and he easily directed us to the guy standing in the middle of the chaos to check us in. That guy was up front and told us that they were running a little behind, but since we were early it would probably wash out in the end - first come, first served even by appointment. (So be on time, or 10 minutes early like we were and you'll be the first 2pm person they call of the 10 2pm appts that they made!)

#3 - the girl that helped us out? Really friendly and nice, and completely knowledgable about her products and what to do to help us with our problems. She ended up serving us both so that we didn't have to split up with two different reps and she was a doll to work with. Mainly I say that because she gave each of us a new phone.

Yeah, just like that, she swapped our phones out. No, we didn't get new, tricked out 4G phones - we would have had to pay for those! - but we did each get new 3G phones. Mine now works on silent mode, and Brent no longer sounds like a teenage working the Jack in the Box drive thru at 2am.

How sweet is that? Have you had a great Apple/iPhone service experience too? I'm curious to knwo if the Austin store is just super duper cool or if it's like that everywhere...