iPhone 5s Day 20: Back that thang up

I got a dig bick,.....


you that read wrong.

that awkward when you read that wrong too.

And said "moment" after awkward.

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...

iPhone 5s Day 17: Sorry for the wait

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 first second third 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...

iPhone 5s Day 13: Delay of game

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.

iPhone 5s Day 11: Cradle robbing

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!

IPhone 5s Day 9: Better late than never

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!