What’s In The Box?!

UPDATE! Check out this new shirt I made: THE PENTAPPLEGRAM! There will probably be stickers as well in the future.

Pentapplegram Shirt - Apple Logo Pentagram T-Shirt, Funny Apple Parody, Mac iMac macbook steve jobs ipad iPhone

Many of us more technologically inclined individuals have certain habbitual behaviors concerning the delivery, unboxing, first use and subsequent treatment of new toys. Josh has apparently found a way to monetize his. If you do good work, the audience will find you. If you do unspeakable things with brushed aluminum and glossy touch screens, Klaus und Deter und all der friends vil gladly pay $40 Euros per minute to vitness it.

Despite being quite the technophile, and always purchasing the newest Apple toy/game console/erotic defribulator/ etc on launch day, Josh is actually quite hard on his gadgets (NDJI – No Dick Joke Intended… oh wait… HARD! I get it. Yeah, dick joke definitely intended – YDJDI). He’s a no case, no screen protector, shit’s gonna get scratches, just freeball the phone in my pocket with my keys kind of guy. The only thing he’s treats worse than phones is cameras. He once tried to gift me his point and shoot digital camera which was barely recognizable as anything but a lump of plastic scar tissue with a couple of LEDs. It might have been a tumor removed from a robot. Robot cancer is a serious problem. Educate yourself, people.

COMMENTERS: Are you a ginger gadget grabber? Do you wear the kiddest of kid gloves with your phone/iPod/tablet/whatever or do you toss it around all caseless and willy nilly and let fate determine its… fate? Any particularly interesting stories about being too careful or not careful enough with expensive toys?

I’m a “put that shit in a case the moment it comes out of the box” kinda dude. When I got my 30gb iPod as a gift from my boss around 2003, I actually held a microfiber cloth in my hand when I used it as not to get finger prints on it. As soon as I got home with the new Ipod, mere hours after unboxing it, I pulled out my giant sheets of gadget screen protector that custom cut yourself to fit any device. I did my measurements, got one the right size, peeled back one edge and began to apply. I didn’t have a credit card handy, so I grabbed a sample of linoleum counter top left over from remodeling our kitchen and used it to squeegie on the screen protector. There must have been a chip in the sample because it gouged a trench across the entire face of that iPod deep enough to fill with enough “first world problem” tears to then drown yourself with. I hadn’t even loaded any music on it yet.

My daughter has been drawing characters from the Tiny Titans comics and I have been posting them on my Tumblr. They are, in a word, cutedorable.

A website called ComicMix is doing a webcomics March Madness with over 100 comics. I am on the list of competitors. I only know of about 10 comics on the list, and I don’t care about the outcome, but it’s neat to see your friends win stuff, even if it’s silly. Go vote or whatever.

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19 Comments

  1. I have a case on my phone. I dropped it so much that the battery cover doesn't like staying on, so I had to encase it.

  2. As a native speaker, I'd like to compliment you on your excellent German skills. Stellar work, my good man. Do continue.

  3. Your German was better than your English – "You're" in the first panel, "this this" in the second.
    GRAMMAR NAZI LALALA

    • The example in the 2nd panel is little know use of the double positive or super happy fun time. It's just like a double negative only the opposite.

  4. If my tech. can't survive me, I consider it a failure in design (on the part of the tech designers). However, I take better care of my technology than I do of myself. I own a laptop sleeve, and I'm sure the stickers provide some protection, right? Basically, my theory is that as technology cements itself as an extension of self, it should be designed to keep up with the varied and active lifestyles to which it may be subjected, that includes children, travel, and keys — to name a few. : )

  5. I spoil my gadgets until the newness wears off. I was overly protective of my first smartphone (acquired last September), never leaving it exposed and afraid to use it in public, but now as long as I don't drop it, I realize life will go on. Maybe I subconsciously want an excuse to get a newer phone, too.

  6. When I got my 13" Bamboo laptop, I left the plastic cover on it for weeks! If I demonstrated the 'feel' of the bamboo surface to someone, I'd peel it back a bit, and replace. The camera is still covered, after a year. (I will remove it when I finally attempt skype with my cousin. I got my Galaxy 7.0 tab, and put the gel case on it that I got the day before! Now I have a covered case. Waiting for the $25 indestructible film cover to arrive.

  7. For the first month I had my first iPhone, I held it like I was carrying the Declaration of Independence and touched it as if it was a delicate flower dipped in liquid nitrogen. That was a couple years ago. About a week ago I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and it slipped, bounced, and slid across the asphalt on its face and all I did was lean my head back and sigh a bit.

    In another case I had seen an Apple "Genius" used his car keys to demonstrate how much better the screen was on the iphone 3g than it was on the original, so when my buddy got the then new phone I performed the same demonstration. I, however, must have used a lot more pressure because I cut a deep groove across the face of his 3 day old phone. He was not thrilled but as a new soldier with a steady paycheck decided he had more money than you could throw a stick at and carelessly bought a second new phone.

  8. You're a comic or two away from a Hellraiser/Apple crossover. I want…nay, demand!…to see this.

    We have such sights to show you…
    your suffering will be legendary, even in Cupertino!

    And so on.

  9. My new camera lived in a plastic baggie for months to keep random dust bits form landing on it and desecrating the sharpness.
    Now, I just lay it down, lens toward the table.

  10. While otherwise my Nokia N9 is both beautiful and indestructible, I managed to drop it the other day and it bounced off of the edge of a table in such a way as to cave in the volume-down button on the side. My heart swells with sorrow. I mean, sure, just tapping on the top bar slides out the quick settings/info tab and I can just slide the volume up and down from there, in fact in a far more futuristic-seeming way, but still.

  11. I'm notorious for treating my phones like garbage. It could also be the fact that I've refused to enter the current century and still use non-smart, text-and-call-only phones. So the back is either permastuck or I can't get it back on once I drop it and parts go flying.
    My laptop is still in wonderful shape though, only hit it against the wall a couple times in the past year.

  12. I used to work in tech support, and for a few years after I was obsessively neurotic about all my gadgets– I think it's the tech industry's version of PTSD.

    Nowadays, I'm pretty neurotic about my tech stuff when it's shiny and new, but as soon as it gets that first scratch (or I spill coffee on it) I'm pretty cavalier with it. My poor laptop has been through hell, and it's still going five years later. I really should put the poor thing out of its misery, though…

  13. I use a cover on my iPhone because I like the feel of it, but it's not worth the trouble to use a protective sheet or stuff like that. Apple devices are more solid than we think. I've had my iPhone for a year and an iPod Touch for two years before that and I never scratched them. And I'm pretty clumsy. Same for my boyfriend (but he's not clumsy). I once dropped my iPhone on asphalt and another time accidently threw it on ceramic tiles. You just have to be smart about those things and not put it in your pocket with keys or other sharp objects. My first iPad is arriving probably tomorrow, and it'll have its cover thingy we bought from Apple, but I'm pretty sure it'll be fine.

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