are you smarter than a miss teen contestant?

so everyone probably saw the numerous versions of miss teen south carolina's response to "why 1/5th of americans can't locate the US on a map"... which is just sad, by the way. it included references to "US Americans" and "South Africa" and "the Iraq". Hmm.

this is my favorite thing that has come out of it: Maps For Us . the best by far is the map of Sparta.

please. just go there.

NYC

oh how i love new york city.

i love...
the big buildings that tower over you

people watching... and how it's easy to walk down the street, rock out on air guitar, and go completely unnoticed by most

s'mac and the other niche restaurants in the east village

azuki and all you can drink wine with sushi

walking everywhere

conversations with homeless people in Union Square

iPhone Unlocked

First off... If you don't know me, I'm a pretty big Apple fan. If you do know me, this is pretty obvious by the way I talk about Apple and about my love for my MacBook Pro.

I came across this article the other day about a kid who logged about 500 hours trying to "unlock" the iPhone so that he could use it on his own service provider.

Who didn't see this one coming?? I just didn't think it would happen so soon after the release.

While I love Apple, and I totally understand why they would make it available on only one provider, I think this goes to show that when there's a will, there's a way. I know that sounds cliche, but really... when you don't make something readily available to the mass, there's usually someone who will go above and beyond what is normal to make it work (whether it's for money or personal reasons...)

So what does this mean?

First of all, it means you can buy the code on ebay for about $3,000 and unlock the phone yourself if you want to use the iPhone with Verizon.

But what it really means is that you can bet iPhone 2.0 will probably have extra security measures built in so that it is more difficult for a (not so typical) consumer to "break the code".

Why

I have a couple blogs for various New Media classes, and a funny thing happened. Once I started writing for those, I realized I had so much more to write about.

So here I am... not a blogger... just your (a)typical sorority girl who enjoys rock climbing, pop culture, and long walks on the beach. Half the time, I have no clue what I'm doing, but I'm really good at pretending I do. The other half of the time, I like to think I'm pretty on top of my shit.

I'm not really doing this to share myself with the world, or even to share my inner most thoughts and turn all emo. I just think it would be cool to look back in a couple years and see what I was thinking my Senior year of college and what was going on in pop culture.