ok, yesterday was my last day of training – we were learning how to do LNP (local number portability – starting november 24th you’re going to be able to take your phone number and convert it from wireless company to wireless company, wireless to landline company, landline to wireless company, and landline to landline company (which you can already do now).

so we went over that, and it’s going to be a mess in the stores when that kicks in since nobody’s going to know exactly how to do some things (lots of details are still up in the air) and it’s going to be the holiday season and all, and we’re going to be ready for it by then infrastructure-wise but who knows if the other carriers will be.

anyways, so that’s what we went over yesterday morning until 11:30. after that we took a few quizzes on it online at headquarters, and then most of us (except one or two people, including the hawttest of the hawt chix *sniff*) went to jillian’s at arundel mills for lunch and to play. if you’ve never been to jillian’s, it’s just like dave and buster’s. if you’ve never been to dave and buster’s, it’s just like a chuck-e-cheese for adults – videogames, restaurant, bowling alley, dance club, pool tables, EVERYTHING. and bars all over the place!

we all migrated to one of the bars in the video room (the restaurant has a 40′ wall of lcd screens showing sports and news behind the bar), and since it was after noon by then we were able to start drinking, haha. i didn’t get anything, but this one girl got a vanilla vodka and sprite and let people try that – it tasted like flat vanilla soda, haha.

while we were eating lunch (it was about 15 or 16 of us sitting there at one table, with two guys that worked for nextel sitting at opposite ends of the table), the two nextel guys pulled out their phones and started push-to-talking at each other from opposite ends of the table, haha.

after eating a few people left, and the rest of us (about 10) went into the video game room and played some games. a few other people went walking around the mall and left after doing that. eventually we that stayed back and played videogames went for a walk around the mall and then split up to go home.

so that was a sad afternoon – we all got to be pretty good friends, and there were about 4 or 5 hawt chix in the class. *sniff* at least we all wrote down our names and cell numbers and what locations we’ll be at so we can all keep in touch XD;

i got my company badge yesterday too – now i feel special. ^_^

after that i came back to the dorm and sat around for a few hours before going up to towson. i ended up wandering the mall for an hour until 7:30 until a line started to form in front of the apple store, so while i wandered and stood in line i chatted with shoujonomori while i waited. XD

at 8 pm the store opened and we filed in. if you bought a copy of panther you could get 10% off anything else in the store, or if you got a computer you’d get 10% off of that, but i didn’t see anything that i wanted and would be able to afford – i want a g5, but i can’t afford it XD; so i went up to the register with my copy of panther and my student id – i had heard rumors that at other stores in the past if you showed your student id you could get stuff at the educational price, but the guy at the register (feisty_fitz – it was the same guy who couldn’t believe you liked the puck mouse) said that you could only get the education prices online. i ended up having to pay full retail price for it, but it was ok because i wanted to play with it that night instead of waiting until the next day. (later when i got back i told brandon about it and i’m letting him put it on his powerbook too and he’s going to pay me in $20 installments – this way he gets it for $60 and he gets it for $10 cheaper than academic pricing and it softens the blow to my pocketbook XD;;;).

so i put 10.3 on here last night – i installed it on my secondary internal drive since that didn’t have anything important on it, and once i got it on there i worked at transferring my old files over so i wouldn’t lose my email and stuff like that. that took a while, but eventually i got it working fine.

the biggest difference that i can notice is that it’s a lot faster and snappier and smoother gui-wise. it’s got a new way of organizing files that i’m getting used to (when i tried this single-window approach in the betas i didn’t care for it at all). the mail program handles junk mail and threaded mail a lot better now, and preview handles pdf files a LOT faster. O_O they fixed some bugs in ichat (long away messages scrolled off the entire screen, but now they’ve put in carriage returns in so it looks a lot neater), but you still can’t put in buddy profiles.

exposé is really nice – i used to set my middle mouse button to hide the current program, so i experimented with making the middle mouse button do what the F9 key does… maybe i’ll make the middle mouse button by itself hide the current program, and make shift-middle button do what F9 does… hm…

i haven’t fooled around with xcode yet, but i already really liked the developer suite for os x for when i was writing my programs for my computer programming class – os x has really spoiled me when i go to use those sgi machines and xemacs. XD;;

some other things i tried in the beta but don’t have a use for on this computer (maybe if i got a laptop) are filevault, fast user switching, and idisk. the effects in fast user switching are neat, but too bad my computer isn’t badass enough to really do them (it just switches instantly on mine – no fancy-schmancy effects for me ;_;)

the gui speediness is just about worth the price itself, and preview’s optimization makes up for the rest. everything else included is bonus. ^_^

even raptorhigh wants panther, and he doesn’t even have a mac. XD