Michael Castellon

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Merry Christmas, from way out here https://www.instagram.com/p/DO4GdyOEvAE/ My #Maine squeeze 🦞🇺🇸 Happy birthday to the most amazing woman in my life. Your love, laughter, and kindness make every day brighter. Here’s to celebrating you and all the joy you bring to everyone around you. https://www.instagram.com/p/DE0AEGvPk0b/ After hundreds of hours in the Texas sky, I can say this: the quiet charm of small-town airports never fades. ✈️ #flying #aopa #eaa #aviation https://www.instagram.com/p/DC-lpVgtZg9/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DBXe_dsvXQ6/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DAOPYsOPboq/

  • WordPress hosting BBQ at SXSW tomorrow

    If you’re a WordPress fan attending SxSW (or you just happen to be in Austin), please join us for lunch after 12pm* tomorrow, Sunday March 14. We’re getting the BBQ from Rudy’s and the red velvet cake from Central Market. Yum! Come, eat, talk about the cool things you’re doing with WordPress, let us know what we can do better, gossip about Mark Jaquith’s new hairstyle, whatever. Think of it like a WordCamp without presentations. I’ll be there, lead developers Mark Jaquith and Ryan Boren will be there, core contributors will be there, plugin and theme developers will be there, and basically all the most intelligent and attractive people from SxSW will be there. You should be, too!

    via WordPress › Blog.

  • Attendee bags at SXSW [unbelievable]

    Sent from my iPhone

  • Dr. Neuroscience: Listen to Your Brain video #sxsw

    This video was just shown at the neuromarketing talk at SXSW. Was the hit of the session by a longshot.

  • SXSW day 2 with Mark Cuban

  • SXSW day 2

    Even though the first official talks didn’t start until 2pm today, SXSW has been in full swing since last night. I just finished a talk by Margot Bloomstein (link) on Content Strategies, which @hesnow gives a rundown of. For this afternoon I’m still deciding between a Cooking for Geeks talk or Revenge of Editorials.

    So far the AT&T network is holding up good despite the load of video and other data being uploaded by virtually everyone here. The Austin Convention Center is also managing its wi-fi nicely.

  • SXSW Interactive is about to kick off

    sxsw swag bagA few hours ago we went down to the Austin Convention Center to check in a little early for SXSW. We waited in line less than 30 minutes, picked up our badges, grabbed a swag bag, and walked around downtown and took in some of the visitors. The weather was beautiful today, so a lot of visitors from the East Coast were having an especially good time. It’s very hard not to enjoy Austin this time of year.

    The next five days will be a whirlwind of panels, talks, demos, core conversations, and more.

    Swag bag looks good. Got a copy of Linux Journal, some WordPress – Texas stickers, a t-shirt, and some other geeky stuff I probably won’t have time to sort through until after the conference.

    If you’re in town and would like to get together, check out my SXSW page, which contains my conference schedule.

  • Inside Ryne Sandberg’s home: Video tour

    This is cool. ABC7 in Chicago gives a video tour of Cubs Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg’s Chicago condo.
    http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/static/flash/embeddedPlayer/swf/otvEmLoader.swf?version=&station=wls&section=&mediaId=7297067&cdnRoot=http://cdn.abclocal.go.com&webRoot=http://abclocal.go.com&site=

  • iPhone repair at the Apple Store in Austin

    iPhone 3GI love my 3G iPhone. I got it on Christmas back in 2008, and it was one of the most exciting gifts I ever received. I had wanted one for some time, but we were locked into a contract with Sprint. The hassle of getting out of the contract seemed too great to bother. But Lauren worked her wonder and got us out of the contract on a technicality.

    I’ve carried the iPhone with me every day since.

    For that reason it was troubling when, two months after my Apple warranty expired the ear speaker on the phone started failing. This morning it went totally kaput. So this afternoon we swung by the Apple Store at The Domain and made an appointment to see an Apple Genius.

    After waiting for a little over an hour we met with an extremely friendly genius who, it should be noted, was a very dedicated baseball fan who was excited to see my phone’s MLB wallpaper. Like all decent people, she was a Cubs fan. We spent a few minutes swapping stories about the great bratwursts we’ve experienced at Wrigley Field over the last 20 or so years, then got down to business.

    I explained the problem and  she left to a room in the back to disassemble the phone. After about 10 minutes, she returned and told me that the internal wires of the device seemed Ok, but that she could tell there was damage to the speaker. She said because of that, and the fact that I had a two inch crack in the back casing of the phone, I should consider replacing it. I grimaced, certain that I was going to have to pony up $200 to $300 for a refurbished replacement phone since I was out of warranty.  Then she spoke the magic words:

    “I think we’re going to be replacing this for free.”

    After 10 more minutes and two signatures on a piece of paper I walked out of the Apple Store with a shiny new phone and a new 90-day warranty.

    That’s service with a smile. Kudos to the Apple team at The Domain.