iPhone 4s Weeks 5 - 7: It's been a long time...

The name of this post reminds me of my favorite Raekwon song, but I digress. It has been a minute though. I had planned on at least weekly posts, but work got in the way. New guy is helping me out by leaps and bounds, so hopefully things will ease up a bit. I also just took a week off, most of it spent on the Carnival Fascination, which took off from Jacksonville and had ports of call in Nassau and Half Moon Cay (Carnival's private island). I only checked the internet once, at the free wifi that I found on the beach in Nassau, and all I did was upload a couple pics to FB of the fam and I on the beach, and download Angry Birds. I was proud of myself for being able to unplug myself from the matrix for that long. I normally get the shakes after a couple hours. Wifey said I was more like myself than I had been in a while. Both boys seemed to enjoy themselves greatly during the trip as well. A cruise in my opinion is the best bang for buck vacation you can have. Pay once up front, and if you don't want to (or can't) afford to do anything else, you don't have to. I ate real well, and I kept my habit of hitting the gym on the cruise ship in the mornings. This cruise was a little disappointing though, as normally the "beautiful" people are in the gym, as opposed to the people who spend a little too much time at the buffet and still opt to don bikinis. In the gym this time were some older folks and a guy who I'm pretty sure has seen the inside of a prison. Oh well, better luck next cruise. It's almost Sunday and I'm already starting to dread going back to work on Monday. I don't feel like this vacay reset me completely like it should have, but it definitely kept me from going Wayne Brady and having to choke a bitch. I guess that should count for something.

Before the vacay, there was my Black Friday outing. My Black Fridays the last few years have consisted of finding one thing I need, and then determining the store that has it that will be the least crowded. This year's item was a digital camera. The old trusty Canon SD600 suffered a probably fatal fall off a speeding car as it was forgotten on the car roof by someone. I'll call this person "wifey" to protect their identity and spare them the embarrassment. I say it was probably a fatal fall because a truck going the other way went out of his way to run it over, which definitely killed it. I busted a hard U-turn to go retrieve it. Luckily the SD card was intact, which was really the important thing. After verifying that, I wished a hundred STDs and a couple flat tires upon that dude in the black Dodge Ram. Not sure what I would have attempted to curse him with if the SD card had been damaged, but he should count his blessings. Anywho, I did do a midnight run on Black Friday at wifey's request to get some things from Target. Never in my life had I seen a Target this full before. I had to park at literally the farthest corner of the parking lot, where I may have witnessed a dude getting some "thanksgiving" by his female passenger. That was a awkward exchange of glances by all parties as I walked by. I did manage to get everything on the list except one thing, which was in the Electronics sections, which looked like a human beehive, so I didn't even attempt to go near it. I then got up again at 6am to hit up an Office Depot for a Canon PowerShot 300 HS. There was a line in the store, but the smart people at OD had a line for the Black Friday super discounted items, and then a line for the rest of items. I did see a special for $60 worth of iTunes gift cards (6 $10 cards) for $45, which I bought as well. I redeemed two cards for myself, and haven't decided whether to sell or gift the other cards since I don't buy music that often and $20 will get me the apps I currently want.

The phone has been good. No random resets, nothing crazy going on. I learned on the drives to and from Jacksonville that running Pandora and Waze while roaming will reduce the battery to Palm Pre like performance. Even when plugged in, it was charging hella slow. With my new found wealth in iTunes credit, I bought QuickOffice Pro, Tapatalk, all the Angry Birds, and Fruit Ninja. I'm still waffling on iStatus, as I would like an app that can post to FB, Twitter and G+ as well as do pictures. Several people have mentioned wanting picture uploading, so hopefully the developer is taking heed. I'll also put in a plug for a few accessories. Thanks to a friend who also made the Pre to iPhone switch, she discovered the Pre chargers work for the iPhone. That was good to know considering I bought all those bootleg wall chargers that didn't work. I discovered that only the OEM charger cable will fit in the Palm Pre car charger. The head on my bootleg cords are too fat. The Pre wall chargers don't care about the USB head fatness, so they are paired with the bootleg cords. The next item is my TuneBelt armband. I had bought it for my Pre, but it fits the iPhone, although a little tighter than I would like. Still, nothing crazy happened and I was able to work out on my vacation without having to hear whatever craptacularness was playing in the gym or having to start conversations with random people while working out. The last thing I'll plug is the Aquapac. This too was bought for the Pre and fortunately the iPhone fits in it as well. It's a waterproof pouch. It has a lanyard attached and it floats. I usually throw the phone, my ID, credit card and cash in it when at a pool or beach. It also allows me to take pictures in and under water. Great for the shots of the kids frolicking in the surf.

A couple more things to mention. I claim to be illiterate as I do not read, but on the cruise, I started reading the iPhone manual. If you downloaded iBooks, it's the first book you have. I didn't learn much except a few one line "Siri" commands I could use in lieu of the two or three commands I had been using previously. However, it's a very easy read if you just want to have an overview of the phone. The second thing is that I have opted to transfer my contacts from Google to iCloud. I'm pretty sure having my contacts in Google as my main repository was causing some minor issues, including the phonetic spelling fields not used by "Siri" and the lack of relationships I could establish with a contact. With the Google/M$ Exchange setup, I could only set up "Spouse", "Manager", and "Assistant". In iCloud, I have spouse, mother, father, sister, brother, friend, assistant, manager, and a few more I can't remember at the moment. Now instead of me having to butcher people's names to get "Siri" to understand it, I can just say, "tell my mother blah blah blah" and "Siri" will say here's your message to <butchered Mom's name>. There is some setup I have to do in iTunes to get iCloud to sync my contacts to Google so I don't have to do it manually, as I'd like to keep a record in Google. Found this article, will mess with it later.

Ok, long ass post done. Let me get some sleep, as I believe He-Who-Wakes-When-Pin-Drops will have an early morning due to his late evening and lack of eating...