A few years ago, my friend Bryan helped save a little boys life by donating bone marrow [post].  It made me intend to register as a donor myself, but I never got around to it.  It was one of things like, “I should exercise more” or “I should learn a new foreign language.”  Probably a combination of laziness and needle avoidance.

This week I learned that a friend’s newborn child is desperately needing a bone marrow transplant in the next 5 weeks.  I also learned two amazing facts about bone marrow donation:

1. The registration to become a donor no longer requires a blood sample.  Now they only need a swab from the inside of your cheek.  It must be CSI technology that’s filtered into mainstream medicine.
2. If you are selected as a donor, it’s possible to donate marrow without surgery — they just extract some blood stem cells from a blood donation.

Here’s the website with full info: http://www.savejonah.com/.  It looks like they have an extended family and church community looking for bone marrow donors in California.  Here in Boston, they are taking cheek-swab samples this Sunday 9/30 between 10AM – 2PM, at BCEC, 249 Harrison Ave. [map].  The chances of matching are higher if you are of Asian descent, so please consider registering.  If you can’t make it on Sunday, you can order a free home cheek-swab kit here: http://www.aadp.org/pages/register.php.

It’s true!  Bank of America has raised their ATM fee to $3 for non-BofA customers.

So if you withdrew $20, you’d be paying a 15% surcharge.  That’s like a restaurant tip!  To mitigate that percentage-wise, I always withdraw a hefty amount.  June asks, “Why do you want to have that much cash on you?”  And I say, “So I can be our own ATM for a while!”

Full story in the first comment below: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/money/14104141/detail.html?rss=bos&psp=money

This last weekend June and I went to the mall to see if she could get a free upgrade to her Verizon phone.  It turns out she couldn’t because she’s not the primary account holder.  One free phone upgrade per account, apparently.

While we were there, I stopped by the Apple store to browse the web and get some phone numbers of BBQ places for dinner.  I stopped in front of an enormous 30″ LCD and a sleek 1/4″ thick keyboard, and fired up Safari.  While I googled for Blue Ribbon BBQ and Redbones, I noticed a docked iPhone.  I pulled it out and admired its shape and heft.  And lack of buttons.  Having never touched one before, I tried the first thing that caught my eye: the Maps function.  The touchscreen button took me straight to Google maps, where it began to download.  I put it down and continued my googling on the big screen.  I found Blue Ribbon’s phone number, called, no answer.  Then I found Redbones’ number, called, and got their store hours.  During these two minutes, the iPhone was stuck at loading 1 tile (1/9th) of the map.  The phone showed 3 bars of connectivity, so that wasn’t the problem.  Why does Apple demo something that works so poorly?

Later I googled “slow browsing iPhone” and found similar complaints blaming AT&T’s EDGE wireless data network.  Whatever — I don’t really follow 3G standards.  I just think that if I ever paid $600 for the phone and who knows how much for wireless internet, I’d expect it to be faster than a 600-baud modem.  Hope they improve it with the next generation.  Edit: today’s NYT has an article on the iPhone: apparently they’re dropping the price to $400, but no news about the browsing speed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/technology/05cnd-apple.html?_r=1&oref=slogin (registration required)
Full article text in the first comment.

Using google, I can’t find the source or even this exact quote.  Does anyone know?

“The difference between men’s movies and women’s movies is that men’s movies involve many deaths and little crying, while women’s movies have one death and lots of crying.”