Here’s my map for just the northeast:

I think the tracking works by bouncing signals off cell towers or something, so there are some inaccuracies (I haven’t been to New Hampshire, Massachusetts, or central New York State off the I-87 corridor recently). But as I mentioned last week, I’ve gone on an abnormally high number of trips in the last several months, so there’s a lot on here. My map reflects vacations, airport transfers, my Amtrak trip to Charlottesville, Virginia, my NJ Transit commute to and from work, our car ride to Montreal, etc.

There are two weird things, though:

(1) It shows my phone as having been in Las Vegas. I haven’t been to Las Vegas in years. But when I press the time-lapse arrow at the bottom of the screen, I see that my phone was in Vegas the same week that I bought it at an Apple Store in NYC. It must have been in Vegas before being shipped to NYC; there must be a warehouse in or near Vegas where they store and test new iPhones before shipping them around the country.

(2) I was in Alberta, Canada last summer, but that’s not reflected on the map. I think that’s because I had my phone turned off or didn’t use it or something, because I didn’t want to roam and use data. But I was in Canada again a few days ago (Montreal), and I still had roaming turned off, but that data still shows up. I must have done something differently but I can’t remember what.

Anyway… creepy, but cool.

A friend/co-worker of Matt had reserved new iPhones a couple of weeks ago at two different places: a Best Buy and an Apple Store. Best Buy got a new batch a couple of days ago and contacted him, so he went there over the weekend and picked up his new phone.

Then today the Apple Store contacted him to let him know that his reserved phone there was ready to be picked up. He no longer needed a new one, and he thought that I might want one, so he emailed me late this afternoon and asked if I wanted to go there with him and buy the phone.

I decided… what the hell. Despite my annoyances and qualms and my protestation that I didn’t really need one (and I don’t)… I gave in and said sure.

So tonight Matt’s friend and I went down to the Apple store and I bought it using his reservation. They didn’t care that one of us had the reservation and the other one of us was buying the phone.

And now it’s syncing up.

I guess a little materialism now and then isn’t a bad thing.

And why? Do I really need this new phone on June 24? Not that I can get it on June 24 anymore, because they’ve sold out. Isn’t my current iPhone perfectly fine for a while?

I feel like I’m a rat pressing a metal bar over and over again and expecting a different result. I’m so fucking angry that I’ve spent hours trying to order this silly piece of electronics that I don’t even need and I’m annoyed at myself for being angry about it and I’m annoyed that I’m still persisting in trying to order it.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR.