iphone 3g ( and why it’s my new best friend)
I received my iphone last Friday. To be honest I was hesitant to get one. I didn’t think it would be as good a device for work as it ended up being. I can’t live without the damn thing already!
So here’s an ad hoc review
Internet Speed
-The iphone seems to have a much better net speeds than my Tilt. In both EDGE and 3G the iphone wins.
Phone Performance
Switching between applications is much faster with the iphone compared to the Tilt. With my Tilt I usually had to reboot once every other day or so to clear up performance issues or to reset the carrier signal. As well I had to perform quite a few registry hacks to get the Tilt’s battery life to go past half a day. At best use I would get 3/4 of a day on the Tilt before I was forced to charge it. With the IPhone I did have to turn off WI-FI as well as change my exchange mail to fetch from push. Push was just to much of a drain on the battery, I’ve set the iphone to retrieve new mail every 30 minutes and have noticed no depreciation of the battery life.
Music / Video
IPhone wins, hands down.
GPS Navigation
Again, props to IPhone. Using the maps application is a draw on batteries but no where near as bad as the Tilt. Using the Tilt I would get about 2 hours of constant GPS use before the batteries died. On the IPhone it still depletes the batteries but no where near as fast!
Applications ( default and otherwise)
I have had my Tilt for over a year. There were many applications i purchased and I’m sad to state it was money misspent. The Apps store from Apple is a godsend to IPhone. Nuff said
now the choice material, Exchange integration and work environment.
The only place the IPhone does not win out on is with Exchange. The Tilt was able to sync tasks as well as the normal PIM stuff, the IPhone cannot. The Apps store saved the day on this one. I grabbed a free to do list application and I find it so easy to use it’s replaced my use of Tasks in outlook. I do have one aggravation with the mail sync on the IPhone. It will only keep the inbox synced automatically. To sync the other boxes I need to go into them and select the update icon. If you are like me I store very little in the Inbox. I get so much mail I sort them so as to keep better track of what’s going on. I wish that future updates will make this possible.
For applications on the machine I am using the following:
-Stanza ereader, pulls ebooks from the Project Gutenberg folks
-myTo-To’s, to replace tasks
-Crash bandicoot game, just cause
- and Phonesaber, lightsaber on your iphone. again, just cause
it’s my new geekgasm.
Changes and times
There has been some things achangin in my neck of the woods recently. The biggest and best change of all has to do with my oldest son.
He finally has his hearing aid. I truly and deeply wished I could of been there but it wasn’t to happen. My wife called me after he was fitted crying. She told me how amazing Kelton was right after it was turned on. She told me how he just looked all around him with a grin to beat the band.
He kept pointing in general directions saying, “I hear something over there. What is it?”
When they left the audiologist’s room the door slammed shut. According to my wife his eyes about bugged out of his head and he stared at the door. The Audiologist laughed, Kelton smiled, and he proceeded to open and close the door a good half a dozen times.
Right after they got outside the building they called me. Kelton’s first words to me were, “Daddy I can hear now. I can hear everything. Did you know the wind makes noise?”
I felt like crying after that, more from the frustration of not being able to be there than anything else. I can’t wait to get home this afternoon. I wonder how things will be for him going forward. I’m not trying to sound like I am ego tripping or like a typical parent but my son is very very smart. I mean smart in a way that he is far beyond the other kids his age. The kind of smarts where the doctors, teachers, other parents, and strangers remark on it. His grammer, skills, logic, and knowledge outstrips pretty much any kid I’ve met from 10 and under. With this slight handicap removed I wonder if that will accelerate his love of learning even more.
The reason I couldn’t be there is I spent yesterday afternoon buying a new car. Yes the Jeep’s going to have to go. I just can not afford to drop $90+ a week in fuel for the thing. It was replaced with…. (drum roll)
It may be small but the thing is faster than what I am used to. It’s also a damn bit smaller. I had no idea what color was waiting for me at the dealership, seriously glad it was red and not pale blue!
The other good bit was I finally got my boots. I’ve wanted these boots for a long time. It was made possible by a very long story that ended with a zappos credit.
Doc Marten’s Triumph 1460’s.
LOVE
How much are you worth?
Symantec also reports prices seen for the following:
U.S. credit card with verification data $1 to $6
Whole identity package (including birth date, US bank account, credit card info, social security number) $14 to $16
Online banking account with $9,9000 balance $300
Valid Yahoo and Hotmail cookie info $3
Compromised computers (zombies) $6 to $20 per machine
Phishing sites $3 to $5 per site
Verified PayPal account $50 to $500
Unverified PayPal account $10 to $50
Skype account $12
World of Warcraft account (one month) $10
That information above is how much people can pay the internet underground for illegal personal account. So if someone wanted to get a stolen credit card it could be had for the price of $1-$6 dollars. That is very scary.
Now the insane part is the World of Warcraft account. I play WoW and a lot of other people I know play. It amazes me that playing can be so lucrative for farmers.
Because of this Blizzard is looking into selling ID tokens to people for 2 step account verification.
sources:
BBC News
C|Net Security Watch
airplane sickness?
Turns out I have a ear infection in BOTH ears. The right ear is the worst of the two. I can’t hear a damned thing out of that ear. Hurts like the devil to. Things are muffled in the left ear but I can generally hear people if there isn’t a lot of background noise.
Also was on the starting end of a bronchial infection.
ugh is all I have to say.
Quick update
I got home from Ireland on Saturday night, hell it was almost Sunday morning when I landed! My entire trip home took just under 18 hours. Between evil layovers, flight changes, in flight re-routes, and weather it’s a day that will live on as “THE DAY OF A WHOLE LOT OF NO FUN!”
Course the kids woke me up at the crack of dawn since they hadn’t seen me all week. We heavily used skype’s video IM thing but staring at a computer screen isn’t the same as real life. When I finally had a chance to relax last night I ended up doing school work until about 12:30 am. Then I spent the entire day today in hell!
I didn’t know if I had picked up a bug from someone on the plane or was getting the jet lag from the depths of evil. I left work early and slept. It’s 10:30ish pm right now and I’m forcing myself to stay up for a few hours. I am convinced now it’s just a vile case o jet lag. Sore throat, achy, tired, and feeling like I am living in a state of thickness. That state of thickness is sorts of like walking in a river against the current.
After about 5 hours of off and on sleep I am feeling better. I feel bad for Daph as it’s a fitful sleep that I know is keeping her up. So I’ve relegated myself to sleeping in the basement. As much as I’d love to make a nice tasty alcoholic beverage to get me to sleep I don’t have any alcohol. I do have a bottle of some REALLY good rum in the office but I always forget to bring it home. So right now I am sipping on hot water with generous amounts of honey, lemon juice, and mint from the herb garden. It’s very soothing on the throat.
Drinking Can be Terrible Fun
For some reason my head asplodes. The explosion , i remember why this was better friday
I wrote that for some reason about about 9am today and emailed that to my team. Last night was Devil’s night for me. We went on a pub crawl of Temple Bar and Grafton Street. The night started at 7pm with drinks, then dinner, and then the binge.
I didn’t get back into my hotel room until 5am. The last pub to throw us out was at 4am. My poor body didn’t get the desire to get up until around noon today so i called out at work. Discovered when I called that a large portion of the team took off today and the rest were hurting or leaving very early.
I have a TON of pics of last night, however they are all muck cause there’s no flash on my camera phone. So I’ve 30 pics of the black.
I was supposed to go down to Kilkennytonight but that fell through. It’s a shame cause I was REALLY looking forward to going there for the pub crawl round two. So I’m chained to my hotel tonight. Can’t afford to burn anymore money and I fly back tomorrow at noon. So I’m grabbing my ipod to watch Torchwood and heading to the bar to drink much Guiness, Dinner, and enjoy my show.
hungryDublin, pictures 1
I was wrecked when I got to the hotel last night, I had been up at that point for over 24 hours. I took a shower, talked to Daph and the kids on skype, and promptly fell asleep.
I got a call a few hours later for work, as I am still supporting the US when I am here. I took care of that and realized I was starving. I didn’t really go anywhere so drank and ate at the hotel. Many Guinness’s and Ireleand’s idea of BBQ later I called it a night. Just about 10pm and was still bright as noon.
Anywhoos here’s some pics from my room window.
(lj folks will need to follow the linkback)
Dublin
So, here I am. It’s about 68F here, slightly overcast.
My plane ride in was a direct flight from Dulles with Aer Lingus. Enjoyable for the most part except sitting next to a dude who was so big his side stomach flowed over into my seat. I so hate cattle class!
I’m beat and the check-in at the hotel isn’t until noon. Also looks like AT&T is a bunch of wankers! They assured me that the international roaming was set up on my phone but guess what? Can’t contact them until noon as they only post toll free numbers which I can’t call from overseas.
This trip I’ll take pictures, I’m usually very bad about that. Forgot my real camera so phone pics will have to work.
chat laterz.
tiredYou tube again?!?!
World of Wifecraft FTW!
More Braeden
Just found these on my phone. Seems I am in a pic posting mood today =)