In December, I sent an Apple iTunes gift card to my 12-year-old niece as a holiday gift. (I know - not the most creative gift, but she's 12 and I'm 45 and I was afraid that if I tied to buy her something, you know, cool, she would have ended up with a new Barbie doll or an electric toothbrush.)
I changed the shipping address in my iTunes account to her address and then never changed it back.
When I ordered my iPad in March, I never bothered to pay half a second of attention to the shipping address and sure enough, it ended up at my sister's house. Yesterday, she was kind enough to FedEx it to me here in Connecticut. She dropped it off around 1:00 PM and it has not been heard from since.
Tracking shows it was dropped off at a FedEx Office location. That's it. FedEx has no idea where it is or why tracking has not been updated. It was due here two hours ago, but that didn't happen.
My poor little iPad has traveled all the way from China to Pennsylvania and it was sooooo close to its new home and now, I fear, it has been kidnapped by a band of rogue Pennsylvania Dutch, who will no doubt be asking it to do unspeakable things like access the Bible on the Internet and display plans for a barn raising (thanks to my friend Todd Weiss for that grisly image.)
One can only hope that it will eventually find its way to my loving embrace, where it can take up its true destiny of surfing bicycle and porn web sites.
(Updates as they become available)
***April 7, 2010 UPDATE***
It's on the truck and heading for my front door. Apparently it ended up in the FedEx Ground system instead of the FedEx Overnight system. You would think that FedEx could figure that out pretty quickly, but it appears hat FedEx Overnight and FedEx Ground speak the equivalent of Mandarin and Serbo-Croatian respectively, thus the confusion.
***April 7, 2010 UPDATE #2***
It arrived and is now syncing with iTunes. It looks like I thought: a giant iPod touch. Can I send it back? I'm bored.