iPhone 5s Day 23: Ice ice baby

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 mobily mobilely mobile-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...

iPhone 5s Day 22: I just want to hold you

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!

iPhone 5s Day 21: Boredom and Flickr-ing

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...

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 19: Go Siri, it's your birthday

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...

iPhone 5s Day 18: The err of my ways

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...

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...