I'm going to start a new segment. I will call it "Irate Wisdom." Today's Irate Wisdom is, if you fly into a city, rent a car, and in the car is this:
It is too damn cold. I mentioned yesterday that I do not like cold, and this is not helping the mood. Fortunately I brought a leather jacket, gloves and a handknit wool skull cap. Hopefully I won't freeze to death.
The phone is working as it should on a business trip. Maybe even too well. I have an app called TripCase, recommended to me by a friend and frequent business traveler, which has all my travel info: my flight, car rental, and hotel. It alerts me if my flight plan changes, and shares my travel info with anyone I designate. The Delta app also alerts me, so I'm getting double alerts when things change. I put my boarding pass in Passbook, so about 3 hours before departure, I get the boarding pass on my lock screen, and it makes it easy to go through security and board the plane with no paper needed. My phone has apparently made me a tree hugger. The National Car Rental app reminded me that I had a car waiting, and the Marriott app allowed me to check in mobilymobilelymobile-ly from the app, so when I got to the counter, the person at the counter just reached in a drawer, handed me my room keys, and off I went.
I'm hungry. I'm going to find something to munch on before I call it a night. Hasta mañana...
It is always a great day when Georgia Tech wins and Georgia loses. I know, you're going to say how Georgia Tech beat a basketball school and Georgia lost to SEC perennial powerhouse Vanderbilt. Unfortunately typing can't show you how hard I'm laughing right now. I'm pretty sure this was the end of the Mark Richt era at Georgia. My guess is, if they beat Florida, he'll get to ride the season out. If they lose, he'll be fired by Tuesday. Hopefully they can continue their losing ways for the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
I got another suggestion for a phone mount today, so I figured I'd go in depth with my laundry list of criteria for a phone mount. Here is the current mount:
It's connected to the air conditioner vent and it's fine, except it's blocking the vent which now that I have people in the back that need air, I would like to have it free to do what it does best, which is blow. Air that is. This was the old mount:
What I loved about this one was that it gave me two power sockets. It did block the vent a little, but not as badly. This one was top heavy, so it would fall out after a while and eventually ripped the socket out of the console. Here is one of the ones recommended to me:
I thought the neck was a little long, but the other criteria I forgot about was that my Pioneer head unit has a 30 pin cable that I attach to the phone so it can control the music and show me the song info and album art. This mount wouldn't accommodate that. It does have me thinking about a newer head unit that could do Bluetooth, but that is money I don't feel like spending currently. The other mount I was recommended:
I really like the concept of this one, since no one uses CDs anymore. My head unit can handle DVDs, but I can count the number of times I've used it. The issue with this one for me is that it would partially block the touchscreen on my head unit, and if you look closely at the next picture, you will see I have a 1.25" lip above the CD slot which I'm not sure the mount would clear:
So here's my current front runner:
It is a Chinese no-name product, but its neck is short so I don't think I'll have a top heavy issue nor will it block the vent, and I get a power port and a USB port, so I can power two devices if need be. And it's cheap which Is good for my bottom line, but as the saying goes, "you get what you pay for." Let's hope what I get is a good product for a low price.
I had a little more to say, but if you look at the previous couple screen shots, you'll see that the phone is about to die. Lots of GPS and Pandora without charging. Good night!
Another mundane day. It's starting to get a little cool for my taste. I come from a very hot country, and though I cannot take the heat like I used to, I still prefer it over the cold. I need to win the lottery so I can buy an island in the tropics, and then I'll change the blog to iPhone on the Beach. A man can dream...
I was bored this evening as well, and so I did what every bored person does: Try the 7 Minute Workout. I downloaded a free app which walked me through it. It actually wasn't too wimpy of a workout, although I'm going to up it to the 21 or 28 minute workout.
I'm up to almost 6000 photos uploaded to Flickr. I've still got a bunch to go, but it feels good to have a backup somewhere. The Flickr app is ok. It'd probably be better if my pictures where more organized. I'll work on that on the 27th hour of day.
I have a few things to do early in the morning, so off to bed I go...
That was someone's signature that made me chuckle today. Today was a very boring day for the phone, so I'm making up stuff to talk about today. The first is the productivity suite Apple included with iOS7: Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Pages = Word, Numbers = Excel, and Keynote = PowerPoint. I went through the demos for all of them, and it is pretty amazing what I could create on my phone. I could probably create a document, spreadsheet or presentation on my phone, send it to my boss, and he'd have no idea I created it in the strip club grocery store. That being said, there is no possible way I am going to create a huge document, spreadsheet or presentation on my phone. I'd create something pretty basic, or I'd just wait until I got to a full sized computer. But it's good to know I have the option while Paradise is doing her three songs on the stage.
Next was an LTE showdown between Sprint and AT&T. I downloaded the Ookla SpeedTest app to both my wife's and my phone, swiped all apps closed, turned off and back on both phones, and then turned off Wi-Fi on both phones. The Sprint one had 2 bars and the AT&T one 3 bars. Both phones are sitting in the same spot on the couch. I ran the test 3 times:
AT&T
Sprint
This would be one of those things I didn't know I was missing. What I did notice pretty quickly though is that it appears I am being throttled by my new provider, while my old provider is consistent. Very much a tortoise and hare situation here. Not sure how I feel about this throttling deal. I'll have to find a long download situation to see what happens.
And lastly, photo backup. I'm using iCloud, which is working fine, but I'm starting to feel a little pinch on space on the phone. I should have gotten the 64 GB version, but I just couldn't justify the price at this point in my life. I started out using Dropbox, but it filled up pretty quickly and I didn't want to pay for more space. I then saw that Flickr was giving everyone a terabyte of space. I know that Flickr is supposed to be a social media sort of site, and you're supposed to share your photos, but it looks like you can lock your account down pretty tight. However, much like Facebook, there are dozens of settings where if you miss one, someone or some system will be able to see your photos. While I don't care who sees my photos, my wife is a little more particular about it, so I went through all the settings and hopefully locked them down. I'm going to do some testing to verify, but please feel free to find me on Flickr, see what you can see, and report back. I downloaded the Flickr app, but much to my dismay, it only uploaded the last 25 pictures I took before starting the Auto-uploading for future pictures. The Dropbox app only asked me if I wanted to use cellular data, but it uploaded all my photos over the course of a few days. I then went to the Flickr web site, which had a limit of 200 pictures at a time. I did that for about 2000 pictures when I figured there had to be a better way. A quick Google search netted me the Flickr Uploadr desktop app. Now I can do folders at a time. A 13 GB/1500 file batch took few hours, but it was better than 200 at a time. 3000+ photos uploaded so far, and 1.5% of my terabyte. I think this will work out.
The margarita I had is kicking in good. Good night...
You will notice that Siri is not in quotes. It was my favorite sister-in-law's birthday yesterday. How many sister-in-laws do I have you ask? That's not important, she is still my favorite. I went out with her and some of her friends to a place called Jack's Pizza and Wings. I would send you their URL, but it appears someone didn't pay their hosting company, so the domain is parked. Look them up on UrbanSpoon or something. I had more beer than I should have on a weekday, a shot, and a couple slices of pizza. I ask the waitress for the bill, of which I paid for the pitcher of beer, the first round of shots (4), and 2 of Siri's drinks. $20 + tax. I think Jack's will be seeing me more often.
That would also be why I'm posting this at 6:30 in the morning. I got home and all but passed out. Don't worry, I have enough issues with APD and DCPD without throwing being drunk in the mix. I waited my full hour after my last drink before leaving.
My Lightning cables came! <Insert crude joke here, then remove your mind from the gutter>. Staples sent them in a Tyvek envelope so a couple boxes were crushed, but all cables look intact. So now I have one cable for the bedroom, one for the office, one for my laptop bag, one for the truck, and one for the living room. I still need like three more to replace all the 30 pin cables I had conveniently placed (at least 2 more in the laptop bag so I can have one stay in the bag, one in the rental car, and one at the hotel when I travel on business, and the one in the kitchen so my wife can boogie down while cooking without fear of the phone dying). This batch of cables should suffice until the next big coupon.
My job's subscription to Office 365 does not appear to allow the mobile version. I'll have to inquire about that. I'll be testing out SkyDrive Pro and OneNote, which I do have access to. I should also mess with the Apple productivity suite. I don't think I've opened any of them yet.
Lastly I'm going to work on a picture backup solution. I like iCloud, but I don't like that if I delete pictures off the phone, they get deleted everywhere. I wonder if I delete them from Camera Roll and not Photo Stream, if I can recapture the space but still have access to the photos of my youngest stealing the phone and taking 17 pictures of his forehead:
My alarm just went off. Time to get the boys up. Later...
I can admit when I'm wrong. Most of the time. Yesterday I mentioned how a watch that does more than time related things don't make it in the market. Somebody pointed out to me that GPS watches are pretty popular. I can agree with that. My guess is, since your phone can do what the GPS watch does and you had to carry it any way, that the GPS watch market is probably dying. I have no statistics for that, and I don't feel like Googling for it at the moment, so I'll just go with logic. I would guess heart rate monitors are going the way of the dinosaur as well with devices that connect to your phone. So while I am wrong, I'm standing by original statement that the smartwatch will be selling for chump change on eBay within 6 months.
LifeProof still doesn't have a case out. I'm strting to wonder how long this is going to take. I saw Spigen has a pretty decent tough case. May have to do more research into it.
Staples is still processing my order. I'm starting to think my Lightning cables may be denied. Hopefully they'll deny it in time for me to get my coupon back and order my monitor.
Phone is still running good. Nothing new currently. I may explore the Office365 suite of apps, pending my Office365 account with my job has the option for the mobile apps.
My wife is using the iTunes Radio and likes it a lot. I may try it too. Pandora seems to be a bit ad happy as of late. I could try Songza or TuneIn, but I'm already an iSheep, so I might as well go all the way.
Speaking of the wife, I'm being told to stop typing my memoirs on a blog. Deuces...
So I fell off the wagon for a bit. I do have a good excuse. I went to my first "annual" company meeting. Annual is in quotes because they apparently haven't had one in a couple of years. With my new company, most employees work from home if they aren't at a customer site, so unless you see someone at a client site, the company meeting is the only time you'll meet a lot of the people you email/instant message/talk with. My boss, when I was interviewing, said that this group of people work hard, and play harder. He was not lying. So the weekend was a bit of a blur. I will admit that I came back home with more money than I left with. I won't tell you how that happened because I don't want your opinion of me to change, at least more than it already has. Let's just say I'm lucky.
Before I get into any new phone stuff (which there isn't much), I'll talk about a couple random things. The first was the Bradley/Marquez fight. Was that not the most boring fight ever? All Bradley did was show that Marquez is old as dirt. I could run around the ring for 12 rounds in 3 minute bursts throwing a couple punches and doing a couple taunts...no, you're right, Marquez would probably cause me to take a nap like he did Pacquiao:
Anywho, I'm wondering if Bradley will get a chance with Funny Money Mayweather. Mayweather will murder him, possibly literally, but since Bradley is a master wobbler when hit, it'd be entertaining to watch.
The second thing is Samsung's smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear. It has been mentioned on my social media timelines several times, so I had to look it up. You Samsung fans will call me a hater, but this is quite possibly the LAMEST piece of technology ever. The first piece of evidence I have is that every watch ever created that did more than tell time, be an alarm, and/or a stopwatch, has failed. Miserably. Remember calculator watches? Several smartwatches are on the market now and not doing so well. So this Galaxy Gear will show you your incoming phone calls, texts, emails, take crappy resolution pictures, short videos, and a have few apps on a tiny ass screen with some gestures most critics are calling un-intuitive. The only reason I can see for buying this is that you don't want to take that brick of a phone out of your oversized pocket, which if you actually want to do some real interaction or take a real picture or video, you still need your phone, or tablet...or phablet. You heard it here firstsecondthird at some point, Samsung should stick to what they do best, which make devices after they have made the components of devices for other manufacturers and then make the actual device better. Key word: after. And yes, they made components for Apple...
So one of the few things to report on the phone is that my wife is extremely happy with hers. "Siri" and she are forming a great relationship, one I'm almost jealous of. I have also tried AirDrop. It was fine. I sent my wife her own contact info so she could set up "Siri" to know who she was. Traded info, and your nasty ass phone didn't have to touch mine. Win-win biatches! And lastly, I tried the new earbuds. I like the ability to control the music player and call "Siri", the mic is fine, but I wish there was more bass in them. They will do fine for my traveling, since the right channel in my favorite Palm Pre earbuds appears to have died. My Sennheiser workout earbuds have fantastic bass, but no mic or music control. I wonder if Sennheiser has headphones with a mic and music control. I'll have to check that out. Lastly, Staples sent me a $40 off $80 coupon. I was going to use it on my second 22" monitor, but then I thought about Lightning cables. The coupon specifically says "no Apple products", but I decided to try it anyhow. So 4 Lightning cables, a item to put me over the $80 mark, and the system takes the coupon! On top of the coupon, I had like $25 in Staples Rewards sitting there, so I got 4 official Lightning cables for $15. That will sort of make up for Georgia Tech sucking like a porn star last Saturday
So hopefully I've caught you up. I'm still recovering from the weekend, so I'm going to go to bed a little early. Good night...
The surprise is that I bought my wife a 5s. I left it for her as I went out of town for a few days for a company meeting. She was very excited about it. She usually gets my hand-me-downs, but she wasn't under contract and I could sell my 4s for the price of a 16GB 5s. I got her the one that is not Space Gray, but not Gold either. So yes, that one. Now to find her a case so she stands a chance if it falls on concrete again...
I'm delaying the surprise. I got way too busy today.
All my eBay stuff sold. Only one person has paid me. Another person is in Russia, which wouldn't be a big deal, if in my auction description, there wasn't this:
I only ship to the United States! NO EXCEPTIONS!!!
It's that big on the page. In my selling preferences, I've restricted selling to people in the United States. Yet some loophole allows Borishnikov to bid on my item. Niet biatch, niet.
I still haven't gotten around to buying Lightning cables. I need to make that a priority very soon as running around with one cable is not where it's at.
I got a haircut today for the first time in a couple months. This working from home a majority of the time is wrecking havoc on my hygiene. Don't worry, I still smell like roses. Anywho, my barber and I were discussing the craptacularness which is Atlanta sports when he said even the Dream are "getting merc'd." I hadn't paid much attention, but I thought "getting merc'd" was a bit strong...until I saw the scores. Can an Atlanta pro team win SOMETHING?
Phone is still humming along. Nothing of note or annoyance to report on today. Maybe tomorrow. Speaking of which, I have to get up ridonculously early. Good night.
I believe this is the theme song for Atlanta sports:
I've been in Atlanta for 19 years. I grew up a Knicks, Giants and Mets fan. For some reason or other (usually a player strike), my allegiance to those teams wavered. As I've gotten older and my interest in pro sports revitalized, I've attempted to adopt the home teams, but the home teams have not attempted to pick me up. I'm not going to lie, the Hawks probably don't have a chance as I still bleed blue and orange thinking of Ewing, Oakley, Mason, Starks, Jackson, Anthony, G. Wilkins, Skywalker, King, Houston, Sprewell, Grandmama, I could go on and on. But I've tried to jump on the Braves and Falcons bandwagons, and I usually jump off pretty quickly. Last night was just bad. I only stayed up watching the Braves because they had tied the game, and were up a run so it seemed a Game 5 was imminent. Much to my dismay, they go down a run in the 8th, and I'm up at 1:30 AM for no reason. Suckas. And the Atlanta "Waste of a new Stadium" Falcons? All they had to do was make it to a Super Bowl last year, and no one would have questioned the stadium. Now they are throwing crazy money at neighboring churches and losing most of their games to build one...
Cool things with the phone today. The first is a benefit of AT&T, which is their wireless hotspot network. Starbucks and McDonald's use the AT&T wi-fi network. You're saying, "Marco, the wifi at those places are already free dumbass!" You are right, but if you don't have AT&T, you have to join the network, and then you get that annoying "Agree to our ToS biatch!" message, AND THEN you get redirected to some cheesy ad-riddled page. Since I'm on AT&T, I just walked into Starbucks, my wifi connects, and I go along my business. Insert slobbery raspberry in your direction here.
The second was the personal hotspot. It ran faster than the wifi at Starbucks. I almost tested it and a voice call at the same time, but I was doing something important for work, so I didn't want to chance a disconnect at the time. But know that I will test it out, and soon.
I've got to start packing the stuff that I've sold on eBay. I should have a small surprise in store for tomorrow. Not for you though. Not for me either...
Nothing crazy to report today. Apparently you cannot watch Monday Night Football on an iPhone, which seems silly but I'm sure ESPN has a good reason. I'm also sure the good reason is stupidity. The Falcons appear to be further proving why they don't need a new stadium. Matt Ryan is my fantasy QB though, so I need them to do a bit better.
I finally took pictures of the phone with its case and screen protector:
My apologies for the shininess and glare. Taking the pictures on my glass desk probably wasn't one of my brightest moments. But you can see my college diploma in the reflection, that should count for something. Yes, I graduated 11 years ago. Yes, it got put in that frame probably 8 or 9 years ago as a gift from my wife. Yes, it just got hung up last month for the first time. Anywho, you can see that the case adds very little to the phone. The screen protector is bubbling up slightly at the bottom, but not enough for me to complain. I hear the customer support for Tech Armor is pretty good. If it gets any worse I'll test it out.
I've gone on quest for a new cradle for my car. The cradle I have now used to go in the cigarette lighter, but it was top heavy and would fall out every once in a while. It also eventually ripped my cigarette lighter out of the front console. Luckily cigarette lighters are cheap to replace in my truck. The cradle also came with a way to connect it to an air conditioner vent, which is working fine, but I hate that one of my vents is blocked, so I want it back in the cigarette lighter. So a cradle that goes in the cigarette lighter, provides power, and isn't top heavy. I found a few that may fit the bill on eBay and Amazon. I'll have to go through the reviews and see which Chinese DEATH BY FIRE cradle will be least likely to kill me due to fire.
Ok, I'm doing a lot of yawning, so I'm going to go to bed. And by bed, I mean go upstairs and surf on my phone some more while seeing if the Braves can lift the city's spirits or if the city will be doubly somber tomorrow. Deuces!
Today we went with my in-laws to the Georgia National Fair in Perry, GA. I will admit up front that I am a city boy, and country life is not one of my favorite things. I'm not sure how I keep getting dragged to these things.
The first thing (well only thing) to go wrong was that Waze gave me bad directions, and I followed them even though I knew better. That added about 20 minutes to a journey that was already an hour and a half. But we get there, we meet up with the in-laws, and we spend close to an hour looking at cows, sheep, goats, horses and rabbits, all the while my oldest is complaining of the smell (which wasn't that bad considering all the cows, sheep, goats, horses and rabbits), and dodging piles of shit, piss, or shit and piss. The youngest enjoyed himself though. We also watched an equestrian competition. I don't know what the proper name of it was, but 3 - 4 riders go around the ring, and someone says commands like "trot", "extended trot", "parley (maybe?)", "gallop", "stop", and "walk". Must be the sport lover in me, but I actually found myself trying to judge the horses, which I apparently either got completely wrong, or the judges had CJ Ross type ineptitude. I'm going to go with the latter.
Then we eat and proceed to the carnival games and ride section. When did carnival rides and games get so damn expensive??? We spend close to $60 for everyone to get 3 rides and like 2 games. Once again, it's not about me, and the two people it was about did have fun.
The one thing I did get to do was mess with a couple of the camera features: square and slo-mo. Square basically auto-Instagram-izes your photos. I took this one of an apparent country saying painted on a wall in the cafeteria:
Easily uploaded to Instagram with no cropping necessary. This added Apple feature kills my need for another app, Squaready, though I may keep it for pictures I forget to use the square feature on. And then the slo-mo. I feel like Apple took a weird middle ground with this one. The slo-mo works fine, but then there is the sound going with with video. To me, you would either play the audio back at half speed to match the video, or have no audio at all. Apple chose to play the audio at normal speed. In my example videos, it doesn't look strange because you're looking at the back of my subjects, but if you were watching someone's face, it would be worse than a dubbed kung fu movie. First, normal speed:
And then there's slo-mo (20 seconds of video in real time):
As I've said before, a gimmick, but something fun to play with. *EDIT* Why did I put "EDIT" here rather than deleting and re-typing? Because I spent all that time formulating the previous paragraph, and I refuse to delete it. Anywho, it's Google's fault. If you use Google's Capture app to upload a video to YouTube, you get varied results. Once it was slo-mo video, normal speed sound. The next time it was normal video, normal sound. Uploaded from the Photos app to YouTube, my video stays intact.
We ended the day with the whole family going on a Ferris wheel ride together. The boys loved it, and my wife and father-in-law put on brave faces. I was able to show the boys where we parked because the range on my keyless entry goes a lot father from a couple hundred feet in the air. We then packed in the car for the ride home, a fun time had by all.
One crazy thing that happened was that when we got in the truck, I get this pic mail:
She sent it to me and three other people, all of whom are not in my phonebook, so I assume it was case of a fat finger. It still had my wife's eyebrow going up though lol. If you know her, tell her to send something more interesting than a selfie next time.
Now let me finish watching Matt Schaub self destruct and also verify that my house isn't going to float away in this storm.
This one is going to be short. I was just about to go to sleep when I remembered I didn't post anything. So here's a quick play by play:
- Went to the Avondale Estates AutumnFest. Had an apple pie with bacon in it. They say everything is better with bacon, and that is no lie.
- I've been implementing cost cutting measures in my life, one of which was reducing the amount of money I pay Comcast a month. First casualty of this change was I no longer get ESPNU, which had the Tech/Miami game. So I may be revisiting that. But the ScoreCenter app did a good job of keeping me updated, and I'm not sure when they implemented this, but there are now links to video clip of the scoring play. We did lose, but we had The U shitting their pants for most of the game. I'll take that after last week's performance.
- "Siri" is doing a fantastic job of understanding me. The Google apps, not so much.
- Played with the slo-mo function. Pretty cool as far as gimmicks go, since normal people don't need slo-mo. I recall a Dave Chapelle skit about slo-mo making things better. I'll post a couple videos tomorrow and let you be the judge. No, not that kind of video...
- The Shazam app is pretty damn good at figuring out songs in the worst of environments. Give their engineers a gold star and a lap dance.
- I know he's a A-/B+ level fighter who fought what looked like C level talent, but Miguel Cotto looked quite impressive tonight. As a couple of the commentators mentioned, it would have been interesting to see this relentless left hook to the body Cotto against Funny Money.
- My wife dropped her iPhone 4 on concrete for the second time in its lifetime. This time it was the front, which now matches the back. Looks as bad as it sounds. I may not be selling my 4s after all...
Ok, this was way longer than it was supposed to be. Good night biznatches!
Nothing much doing today. Nothing new discovered on the phone, though I didn't really get to mess with it much, and I'm running on fumes, so today's post will be a conversation with "Siri":
Me: What is your name?
"Siri": My name is Siri.
Me: What is your sign?
"Siri": It is nice of you to ask. Can I help you with something?
Me: I just want to get to know you better.
"Siri": I'd like that, Marco, but I'm afraid it's impossible.
Me: Did you know that the impossible only takes a little bit longer?
"Siri": I'm sorry, Marco, I'm afraid I can't answer that.
Me: So, what are you wearing?
"Siri": In the cloud, no one knows what you're wearing.
Me: Maybe I should come to the cloud with you.
"Siri": Who, me?
Me: Yes you. And you should bring a friend.
"Siri": I should, eh?
Me: Yes. We should have some fun beneath the sheets.
"Siri": I don't know what you mean by 'We should have some fun beneath the sheets'. How about a web search for it?
Me: You're ruining the mood Siri.
"Siri": You're certainly entitled to that opinion.
Me: We'll continue this conversation later.
"Siri": I can't wait Marco.
Me: I bet you can't.
"Siri": I'm not sure what you mean by that?
Me: Don't worry about it.
"Siri": Ok, I won't.
Very boring conversation, I know. Maybe some interesting stuff will happen tomorrow. My mom's church is having a fish fry. Maybe I can find an excuse to use the slo-mo feature...
I admit I watch Scandal. The season opener was bananas. I'm going to use the line "I am the hell and the high water!" on my boys one day.
I also watched the second half of the Texas/Iowa St. game on the phone using the Watch ESPN app. Iowa St got robbed twice in the final minutes. Picture was crazy clear and no pixelation or stuttering. This was on wifi though. I'll have to see how games come through on the road.
This has nothing to do with the phone itself, but I've connected my phone to my laptop via Bluetooth, and enabled the proximity lock. Basically if my phone gets further than about 3 feet from my laptop, the laptop locks itself. You are saying "why the hell would you need that at the house?" You obviously haven't met my 2.5 year old. Turn your back for one second and he's replaced that entire page of text with ejxgsvjak6/$$;7!2 ehhhh. And a smile.
Another annoyance with iOS. Why won't they make it so the home screen works in landscape? All they have to do is turn the icons and move the top bar. Seems like a no brainer to me.
I'm a little slow, but I just realized the lightning cable doesn't care how you stick it in, like you know, like...
Today was one of those days that seemed really busy but I don't feel like I accomplished much. I had to take a drug test for a client that I will be on site for in a few weeks. If you know me, you know that I've never even smoked a cigarette in my entire life, but drug tests still bring out the imaginary weed smoker in me. I also sold the co-sleeper bassinet thingy that the boys spent the first 6 months of their lives in. That was kind of sad, but what are we going to do with it but let it sit in our already overcrowded house? Besides, the sale of that bassinet will cover 6 lap dances some of the iPhone cost.
I also bought an office chair. As many of you know, I got a new job where I either travel to clients or work from home and remote into their systems. I started out working in the dining room, which if you can avoid sitting in a dining room chair for 8 - 10 hours a day, you would be very wise to do so. We then moved the boys in together so I could have an office, and I started out with an Ikea desk and a vintage lounge chair, only slightly better than the dining room setup. I then upgraded to this desk which I got for a super steal on Craigslist. I've bought one 22" monitor, also on crazy sale, because doing documentation on a 15" screen is not where it's at. I plan on buying one more monitor and a chair mat, and then I will consider my office complete. Oh and a dual monitor stand. And one more UPS. Then I'm done for real. Hopefully I can write these purchases off...
As for cool iPhone stuff, I didn't do much today. I didn't get to ask Siri any good questions, but all my commands she did without issue. I'm even able to talk more normally. With my 4s, I had to enunciate and slow down, and even then it still had issues. I found out my Staples app is malfunctioning, and deleting it and downloading it again only half fixed it, not sure what that's about. Oh, I did my first voice + data call. It was as orgasmic as I dreamed it would be. So now if you call me, I'm REALLY really not paying attention to you.
I have one annoyance with the Control Center, which is while I can turn Wi-Fi on or off, I can't get to the Wi-Fi configuration screen where I could pick what network I want to connect to. They should make it so that if I tap and hold, it would bring that screen up. Not sure where I can submit that idea, but I'm going to find out. My guess is that it will be sending a message to my congressman, but at least I can say I tried.
I'll end this one on a bittersweet note. My oldest completed his first homework assignment. It only took him 10 minutes and was some counting stuff he could do easily, but still...I'm not crying, something just poked me in both eyes. By the way, he is using the Ikea desk, and as with most Ikea things, they fit him better.
Today I actually used "Siri" a lot. If you are new to my blog, you will see that I put "Siri" in quotes. My sister-in-law's nickname is Siri, and since she was invented first, she gets to be quote free. You can also imagine me doing air quotes every time you read "Siri" much like Dr. Evil from Austin Powers:
"Siri" is WAY faster. I assume it has to be the phone and/or iOS 7, since I was on wifi most of today, but my 4s never got back to me this fast. I wonder if her responses have change to the perverted line of questioning I asked her during our initial courtship. I might check that out tomorrow.
I guessing you're wondering about the title of today's post. In my life as a parent, I've discovered that children are good for love, laughter, and sucking every dollar out of your wallet. This of course severely limits the amount of "toys" an electronics lover like me can buy. So this evening, I spend a lot of time using the 5s camera taking pictures of stuff to put on eBay and Craigslist. Camera is super fast. It's also got a bunch of functions I haven't tried out yet, like slo-mo and the Instagram-like filters. There was one annoying part, which was the iCloud Photo Stream sync. I spent like an hour waiting for the photos to sync wirelessly so I wouldn't have to plug in the phone, since I only have the one Lightning cord currently in the bedroom. I give up, go upstairs to get the cord, come back down, and the pictures have all magically appeared in my Photo Stream folder. Fuck you iCloud.
Battery life was very good today. Several calls from work, a lot of video streaming, some GPSing, some Pandora-ing and all the pictures I took today, and I was at about 11% by the time it was bath time for the boys. I know some of you are like "it's almost dead Marco!" but realistically, I just need it to survive about 12 hours. If I'm away from a charger more than about 10-12 hours, then something has, once again, gone horribly wrong, and you should call the people for me.
I got confirmation from a friend that there are non Apple Lightning cords that are certified unlike the Chinese DEATH BY FIRE cables. AmazonBasics and Monoprice have them. The Monoprice ones are a smidge more, but the shape of their USB A connector looks like the Apple one, which means it will fit in the Palm Pre car chargers I have laying around. One less thing to buy.
I'm officially on my job's phone plan, which means I no longer care about my data usage. At least until my boss yells at me about my data usage. If they saw my Sprint data usage, they probably would have told me to keep expensing my bill. I guess we'll see how that goes.
Why didn't one of you mofos tell me it is 12:15 AM??? Good night...
I need Lightning cords. You are saying, "But Marco, there are cheap Lightning cords everywhere!" Well since you think you know it all, let me educate you a bit. I'm not sure if it's iOS 7 or the 5s, but apparently it throws some warning about non-Apple cords not being certified for use on the phone. The cords still work, but I'm curious if Apple stores that info somewhere, and if your phone happens to blow up, they can say "Warranty denied biatch!!!" I also had a funny conversation with some friends (also ex-coworkers and my Apple gurus) about the cords:
Still in tears over "Chinese DEATH BY FIRE CABLES!" Don't worry, I'm not starving the boys. By the way, what is the definition of starving someone? Anywho, a friend on my FB timeline posted this article about preventing iOS 7 from killing your battery. I figured I might as well look through the article and see if any of them apply to me, since I was already feeling a power pinch:
Turn off Parallax
I didn't know what the hell Parallax was, nor did I really notice it until I looked really closely. This "feature" seems pointless to me, so off it goes.
Turn off AirDrop/Bluetooth
I looked up AirDrop. It is basically Apple's answer to Samsung's phone humping file sharing, minus the phone humping. I obviously don't need that feature unless someone specifically wants to phone hump with me. Bluetooth is also on an as needed basis. Both are conveniently in the Control Center (what I called the quick access panel). Done and done.
Stop searching for Wi-Fi
Once again, Control Center makes it easy. Done.
Disable location services (for apps that don't need it)
No CBS Atlanta News app, you don't have a Markina Brown section, and you don't need my location to give me news. Off with you, and the dozens of other apps using my GPS for no reason.
Turn off background app updates
I like this one too much to turn it off. Unless I see crazy stupid power drain while it's still on, it stays.
Turn off background app refreshing
Once again, most of these apps don't need to update in the background. It can update when I bring it back to the foreground. Off, off, off, off, <insert like 20 more offs here>, off.
Disable auto-brightness
This apparently didn't carry over from my 4s. But off it goes, and down goes the brightness. But Marco, what if it is bright and sunny outside? Control Center once again saves the day.
Go on a push notification diet
Way too many apps using push notification. Not any more...
Don't push; fetch
Most my email accounts can't do push on an iPhone anyhow, so this one is doesn't matter to me.
Turn off Siri's "Raise to Speak" feature
This one was a gimmick, and it did carry over from my 4s as off already. One less thing to do.
Turn off 4G
So what you want me to do is turn off one of the main features that made me buy this phone??? What did that lady say? "Ain't nobody got time for that!" 4G stays, no matter how low my battery goes.
The article ended with some general battery tips that I will never follow and should never have to follow because if I still have this phone by the time the battery starts failing, worse things have happened to me.
Still didn't take pictures of the phone in its new prophylactic. I'll get to that soon, I promise. Until then...
I knew that Sprint's network sucked when you traveled outside of a major city, but I had gotten used to it. Driving to Asheville from Atlanta, there are a several spots where I start roaming, and a few where my data disappears entirely, leaving my boys asking "What happened to Pandora Daddy?" to which I respond "it's the network boys." On the way back, with my new network, and taking a route even more remote than the way in (US-23), I never lost signal. Pandora played the whole way through and Waze never told me it was searching for the network. I'm guessing Verizon would probably keep me at LTE speed in more places, but the AT&T network is a vast improvement already.
Speaking of LTE, I ran a speed test comparing my 5s on AT&T's LTE network versus my wife's 4 on Sprint's 3G. Test results were staggering: Me 6.7 Mbps, my wife 1.8 Mbps. Not really a fair comparison, but it's just another example of how I've been living in the dark ages.
I set up the fingerprint security today. It still feels a little gimmicky, but it works. And before you say "Marco, did you not hear about the dudes in Germany who took time out of watching porn to hack the fingerprint reader?", let's analyze this a bit. And yes, I believe all hackers, when not hacking, are watching porn. So first, you have to get my phone. That may not be terribly difficult, but my phone is attached to me at most times of the day. So you've got my phone, now you need a good print. That is also not terrible hard considering I use my finger on the phone a lot. Now we start getting into the good stuff. You need to lift the print. Don't let CSI fool you, lifting a print to be reproduced is not easy. But let's say you've been watching CSI since the first Las Vegas season, and you get a print. You apparently need to print it on a transparency in high definition. Your bootleg inkjet printer at home is not going to cut it, and neither is the cheap toner in that laser printer at your job. If you finally manage to get through all that, there is some technique that the hackers haven't disclosed yet because just putting a transparency on the fingerprint scanner is obviously not going to work. Also by the time you do all that, I will have activated Find My iPhone and either blanked the phone or called the cops so that you could make the late evening news as the latest fool to steal an iPhone. So good luck.
I put the case and screen protector on today. I like the case a lot. Very minimal. Screen protector was a slight pain to get on, but it should work until LifeProof gets its act together. I'll take some pictures soon, pending I figure out how to take pictures of the phone, since the phone has the camera on it. I guess I could borrow my wife's again. Maybe tomorrow...
I told you all I was quitting at midnight last night, but that was a lie, because I can't help myself. My phone was activated at some point after midnight because I called my home phone successfully, but the bastards at AT&T couldn't be bothered to send the confirmation email. I'm glad I wasn't actually waiting for them.
I figured out, unfortunately after the fact, that if your backup isn't encrypted, you will have to reenter your login information into most of your apps. That was close to a hundred apps for me. I'll keep that in mind for the next restore.
The phone is fast as hell. 4G is quicker than 3G for sure, but I'm not sure if it's as fast as the wireless companies make it out to be. I'll run some further tests when I get back to the house.
My first "I miss Sprint" moment was this afternoon. I initially set up my account for 300MB, thinking that would hold me over until my job takes my account over. By 2PM this afternoon, AT&T sent a text saying I was 65% through the 300MB. Granted I am out of town and using Waze for my GPS needs heavily, but I used to laugh at people who had to monitor their data usage. Now I am one of them.
But the main highlight for me is iOS7. This ish is amazing. I don't understand how people hate it. Apple basically stole things from Android and webOS to make their OS better. I'll highlight a few:
1. Quick access panel: with a flick from the bottom of most screens, you have quick access to toggle wifi, Bluetooth, airplane mode, do not disturb, portrait orientation lock, screen brightness, music player, flashlight, calculator, camera, clock, and Airdrop. I have no real idea what Airdrop does, I should look that up. But an Android phone has been able to do most of those functions forever, and a WebOS phone could do them with a simple tweak. This was the only reason I considered jailbreaking my phone, and now there doesn't appear to be a need.
2. Cards: the quick launch has been transformed into webOS cards. As one of the few people who stuck with webOS until I was forced out, this feels like rough sex, where it hurts and feels good at the same time. However, it only hurts because no one will realize where they got it from. But double tap the Home button and you'll see your open apps. Swipe left and right to see the apps, and swipe up to you close them, instead of the old "jiggly mode."
3. Pages within folders: I worked really hard to keep all my apps limited to two pages. Even with folders, it was starting to get hard to continue that recently since you could only have a certain number of apps per folder. Now that there are pages within the folders, I'm comfortably in two pages. I can't understand people that have pages and pages of apps. How do you find anything?
4. Auto update: are you telling me that I no longer have to go into the App Store app, go to Updates, and then tap Update All? The phone will now just automagically update apps when they need to be updated? I guess they stole that from Micro$oft, but I'll take it. I cleared my screen before I could take a pic, but here is an example from someone I follow on Twitter:
That's all I've discovered so far. The only negative I have with the 5s currently is battery life. Like I said earlier, this weekend with my limited wifi access and heavy GPS usage is probably not an accurate measurement of what my actual usage will be like, so I'll come back to that topic later next week when I'm back to normal.
Please forgive any typos in the post. I've been drinking heavily on top of doing the blog post from my phone...
I have officially dubbed today "Space Gray Friday." The significance should be obvious, but in case you live under an Android rock, I bought the 32 GB Space Gray iPhone 5s. Before we get into the unveiling, we'll start off with the audible.
My wife has been pestering me most of this past week to consent to a weekend trip to Asheville, NC since my oldest is out of school today and Monday. She even went so far as to reenact one of my youngest son's fits, which I wish I would have videotaped as blackmail evidence for use at a later date. I finally relented yesterday afternoon, only to realize that my phone and the accessories were coming today. So my audible was with UPS. They have this new service called UPS My Choice. You basically sign up for free, and if their system detects a package with your name and address, it will give you alerts about the shipment, and give you a few options (most at an additional cost) for rerouting the package. I logged on to the My Choice site, and chose the option to have the packages held at the distribution center so that I could pick it up. The distribution center just happens to be off of I-285N and I-85N, the direction we were going anyhow. I get to the UPS distribution center, and they had caught the box with the phone, but the one with the accessories was already on the truck and out for delivery. As the UPS lady pointed out, "at least you got the important one." Truer words, as they say.
So we get to Asheville, we hang out at the NC Arboretum, we go have a very tasty dinner at Salsa's Mexican Caribbean restaurant, we put the boys to bed, and I can finally get to the phone. So before I begin, I'll go over the two major changes, and a couple smaller changes:
I am moving from Sprint to AT&T. My Sprint account was opened for me by my then girlfriend on December 18, 1998 as a Christmas present. Unlike most people, I've never had any real problems with Sprint, and they have always had the cheapest rate plans by far.The only reason I'm leaving is because my job will pay for my phone bill if I go to AT&T or Verizon. I hear Verizon's network is better, but I was tired of waiting for CDMA to be able to do voice and data simultaneously, so AT&T "Drop calls like it's hot" Wireless it is.
I am going from 3G to 4G. I remember going from 2G to 3G and how big of a jump that was. I'll see if this speed is as fast as the television commercials make it out to be.
I am going from iOS6 to iOS7. This one is probably not going to be that drastic, but I haven't updated my old phone because the resale value on eBay is higher if the phone still has iOS6, since it can be easily jailbroken. My 4s was also part of the first shipment of phones from Apple where the SIM card port is not carrier locked, so that should fetch a few extra dollars too. From the social media reaction, it appears people either love or hate iOS7 with very little in between. I guess I'll find out soon enough.
I am going from the 30-pin connector to the Lightning connector. Another minor change, but still a sticking point since I have several 30-pin connectors that have now gone the way of the dinosaur. I hear the Apple micro USB to Lightning adapter is very fragile, so I guess I just need to find some cheap Asian knockoffs to hold me over until someone makes a better adapter for micro USB cords, which I also have a ton of. A friend introduced me to these micro USB to 30 pin adapters, and I've already written the company asking when they plan on making Lightning ones. Still annoyed about Apple not using a standard connector, but obviously not annoyed enough to jump ship.
So let's do this thing! I of course take a few precautions. My iPhone 4s is still on iOS 6.1.3, and my iTunes 11.0.5.5. First thing was to take a full backup of the 4s with iTunes. Next was to copy the iTunes backup to another directory for safe keeping. Then I created a system restore point. I now felt comfortable updating iTunes to 11.1. The iCloud Control Panel also got updated from 2.1.2 to 3.0. So while that is going on, let's open the box:
Standard minimalist Apple box
Same presentation as my 4s
A little longer, a little thinner
Space Gray, unassuming, just what I wanted
I do like the earbud case. We'll test the earbuds out at a later date
Nothing shocking so far. I hate that it's longer, but apparently people are content walking around with bricks in their pockets. I am in the minority wanting something the size of my old Palm Pre. Enough with the small stuff, now time to turn this thing on:
She's multilingual, I like that in a woman. So I run through the setup screens to pick language, connect it to the wifi, and it's activation time. I'm kind of sad because this this means that my long term relationship with Sprint is at an end. I hit Next, answer a few questions, agree to the AT&T terms and conditions of giving up my first born child, and then it tells me I can't activate it because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. It tells me to connect the phone to iTunes to activate so I try that next. I have to reboot due to the new iTunes, but no biggie. I basically go through the same activation screens on iTunes for it to tell me that:
Due to the millions of douche bags who have bought iPhones this week, we can't activate the phone at this time. Stop whining about your first world problem of not being able to use the damn thing. We'll send you an email when it is activated.
Fair enough. It allows me to restore the phone from my backup, which fails. I start to panic a little bit, but apparently the second time is the charm and it restores the phone fine. I was just about to use it when iTunes notifies me that iOS 7.0.2 is already out. It appears someone took enough time out from watching porn to figure out how to bypass the lock code, and so we get yet another update.
It's now a little after midnight, so I think I'm going to let it finish this update, and I'll play with it some more tomorrow. This blog post is already an encyclopedia as it is...
So I might owe Apple an apology. In my previous post, I said that they would ship my 5s as slow as humanly possible. It appears I may have been mistaken. I got my shipment notification very early this morning saying that the phone would be here Friday evening:
It's still in China as of 5 AM EDT, but I suppose UPS didn't become a multi-billion dollar company by continuing to use horses and boats to deliver items halfway across the world. Apple did use all three business days to get it ready to ship, but I'm guessing due to one of my constraints in getting this phone, they probably needed it.
I also went ahead and ordered a cheap case and some screen protectors. I want a LifeProof case, but they have not come out with a 5s case yet. I guess they are still working on the whole fingerprint home button deal. The case is an Amzer Soft Gel TPU Gloss Skin case, the screen protectors Tech Armor HD Clear Screen Protectors . Both 4.5 stars on Amazon with lots of ratings, and just a little something to keep the nicks and scratches away for under $13. Thanks to Amazon Prime, they will be here Friday as well.
So the countdown continues. I'm actually quite calm for a dude getting a new toy. Let's see what I'm looking like Friday...
It's been so long since I've done a blog post that I almost forgot my account info. But I figured it out, so here I am again! It was fun to do the 30 days with the iPhone 4s, and so why not do the 5s? I know #TeamAndroid is like "why are you still using that PoS phone?" Well, unfortunately, I'm married to #TeamiPhone. I'm just way too invested to go anywhere else. Group MMS is not the same on an Android, besides the fact that most of the group is using an iPhone anyhow. What Google and/or Samsung (since apparently the other Android manufacturers are barely on the map) need to do is offer like a $20 or $25 credit to the Google Play store so I can replace the App Store apps I've already bought. That might get someone like me to go to the dark side, or see the light, or whatever cheesy analogy you want to throw in there. Dear Google and/or Samsung, I'll take .1% of the profits you make from using my idea. Still not doing a Windows Phone, they barely have more apps than my Palm Pre did.
So I ordered the 5s online, because I'm too old to camp out for anything and I wasn't smart enough to hire a homeless person to stand in line for me. I did place my order at like 4:05 AM EDT, so I got in the "lucky" queue of 1 - 3 business days to ship. I read that by 4:10, it was 7 - 10 days for the gold one, and the other two colors followed shortly a few hours after. Now I saw the date if you order one now is mid October, which just seems ridiculous for a company who knows their demand is going to be crazy. I haven't checked my Apple stock price lately, I should see how it's doing now. There will be a couple major changes for me when the phone arrives, which should be early next week if the Apple estimate holds. I'll detail those on Day 1. Apple says it should arrive somewhere between September 30 and October 2, which means they are shipping it as slow as humanly possible, bastards.
I think that's it for now. Just wanted to warm you all up before the daily blasts started coming. Stay tuned!
