trupundit's Blog - 2old2play

It'll drive you crazy

Why are there so many horrible drivers on the roads? I used to think that I was just catching a bunch of people on a bad day, because Lord knows I occasionally do something stupid behind the wheel and then count my blessings for the next 5 minutes, but, the number of examples I see these days leads me to believe that a lot of people just don't follow ANY of the rules or courtesies of the road.

Yes yes, I know I sound naive. I know it's crazy to expect everyone to follow the rules while doing an activity that can kill large numbers of people. But, it's just getting worse and worse. We'll see if we can somehow blame our politicians before we're done here.

Some examples first though. Yesterday I am driving in a 45 MPH zone. It is very hilly there, so some people go flying through the "downs." That was the case here, but, there's more to this story. I had moved over to the left lane, as had everyone else, because a cop had someone pulled over in the right lane. Not this idiot driving a Mustang though. He not only stays in the right lane, but is flying down the hill and swerves into the left lane a few cars ahead of me maybe 15 feet before he would have hit the cop car. I'm sure the officer would have loved to chase him were he not already in the ticket-writing process. Then there was this great example. We have a few short one-way streets near my house. I was going the correct way when a car started coming towards me going the wrong way. Due to all the snow and cars in the street, there is no way to pass each other. We both keep coming. I look at this idiot and motion to him to back up or pull into a driveway. He makes the same motion to me. I open my door and mention that he is going the wrong way down a one-way street and he needs to turn around. He indicates he is in a hurry. I indicate that I don't care and that he's going to get wherever he needs to get a lot faster once he turns around because I'm not getting out of his way. He seems to believe the make of his car (Mercedes) and perhaps his size will somehow intimidate me. Neither do. He finally understand that I have much more time to waste on this then he does and so he turns around after calling me quite a few names that made me tempted to spend some insurance dollars by ramming his car.

Then there is the Yield sign. I am thoroughly convinced that no one in the greater Cleveland area understands the meaning of a Yield sign. I think they believe it means speed up and honk your horn at the car you almost hit (me) by not yielding. Oh, and there's also the guy on an on-ramp who is far too important to merge at the bottom of the ramp as everyone else is doing and who instead drives along the berm for awhile until he can force his way into the flow further up.

I know we have licensing for driving, but, for what I pay every year for plates, it seems like we could do better testing for existing drivers, or at least SOME testing of existing drivers. Or perhaps, just maybe, people could take some personal responsibility and make driving safer for everyone? Nah, it must be the politician's fault.

[0 Comments]

No one wants my business

It's astonishing to me how many different ways companies have driven me away from them in just the past few weeks.

At my local McDonalds, the manager took over a register, looked at all the people in line and said "I'm open, Come on people, get over here." My reply just before I left was, "you do realize I am a customer and not an employee, right?"

I bought a game at Gamestop, got home and realized there was no disc in the box. They were closed by then, so I called the next morning and got the manager. When I told her the situation, she asked if I had been helped by a young man with brown hair. I said yes. She said, "He's been doing that a lot lately. I'll talk to him." I asked how she could tolerate that sort of mistake "a lot." She said she would talk to him. I asked if I could just pick the disc up at my local GS, since that one was pretty far from my house and I'd just happened to be there. Nope - their inventory system doesn't allow that. I asked if she could ship the disc to my local store so I could pick it up there. Nope.

On the highway and need to get over to make my exit. I speed up to change lanes and the van next to me speeds up to block me. It was a van for a local HVAC company which I had used before. Won't use them again though.

There are other examples, but you get the idea. I keep hearing how bad the economy is. I don't doubt it, but I have to wonder how much of that is due to companies basically driving sales away with the way they handle themselves. And, at least two of the people I was dealing with were middle-aged managers, so not like I can blame it on "those darn kids."

I hear at my company all the time how hard it is to gain a customer and how easy it is to lose one. I can't believe we're the only company pointing that out. The good news is that I am now fiercely loyal to any place that actually seems to value me as a customer. The bad news is that that list of companies seems to shrink by the day.

I may sound like a grouchy old man, but COME ON world, do your work like it matters. Treat customers like their entire opinion of your company will be based on that single interaction. Think about what helps your customer, not what is easiest for you.

[/grouchyOldManRant]

[4 Comments]

My brain is filling up

I never, ever thought I would say this, but there's too damn much for me to learn right now.

Let's see, we upgraded all of the following software titles at work over the past month:

Captivate 2 to Captivate 3 (I am a SME for this and must become an expert)
ACT v7 to ACT v8 (This is a training delivery platform, and I am both a SME and an admin for this and must become an expert)
Swishmax to Swishmax 2
Photoshop CS2 to Photoshop CS3
Ditto for Illustrator CS2 to 3
We also added Adobe Presenter and Connect. These ones are fortunately not hard to learn, but I still have to learn them.

OK, so all that would keep me pretty busy. Bear in mind that learning all of these upgrades is in addition to my regular workload, which recently increased tremendously when 37% of my peers were "right-sized" 6 weeks ago.

In addition, I bought a new pocket PC wireless phone that I have had almost no time to play with or figure out, although I have figured out how to have a Halo ring tone and play the two games that came on it.

On top of that, going back and forth between COD4 and Halo3 is making me throw grenades when I want to reload in COD4, and making me throw a bubble shield when I want to reload in H3.

I must be getting old. I used to soak up stuff like a total sponge and have it all nailed on pretty much the first try. Not anymore. I was actually in Illustrator today trying to figure out where one of my panels was when I realized that the panel I was looking for was only in Photoshop, not Illustrator. I went to call my wife's cell phone today, and had to use the contacts list because I couldn't remember her number.

Did I mention I'm helping my wife out by creating all new forms for her to use in the Doctor's office she works in?

Oh, we also got a bunch of new software at work, or did I say that?

Anyway, I wonder if this is how my parents felt when we got our first VCR and I had it programmed in 5 minutes and they were still trying to grasp the concept of recording TV? Will I soon reach the point where my nephew will have to come over to make my holovision unit stop blinking 'Enter dilithium code," while I keep pressing buttons on the fridge remote and saying "I AM entering the damn code?"

Speaking of codes, at work we have something called a Universal Passcode. Only, we have three of them. Yes, I have three different Universal passcodes, each of which gets me into maybe 2 or 3 systems. I'm pretty sure my company doesn't really grasp the concept of "universal.". Luckily, each one must be changed every 90 days or it might get really complicated. I have found myself asking on many occasions "which universal do I use for this system?" Then there are the systems which have not yet been converted to a "universal" standard. Those ones I tend to neglect until I get an e-mail with lots of bolded words from my boss about it.

Fortunately, my new Pocket PC can keep track of all of those passcodes for me, if I ever figure out how to make it do that.

At least I still remember the square root of 7 to 7 decimals: 2.6457513 Man, I'm a freak.....

[0 Comments]

The Next License

OK, my first blog where I proposed making people pass a test and get a license to do certain things in life elicited a comment that indicated my moral fiber was missing a few threads. Fortunately, my ego is way too big to care about that, so here goes another blog, another topic, and another license suggestion.

I had really hoped to get out of the retail world for this next one, but I guess I'll just have to quit going into stores if I ever want to move onto another topic. The next proposed license is called "License to Shop in Grown Up Stores Where Adults Act Like Adults." This license is necessary because of a trip to Walmart and K-mart today. Apparently, there is a fairly large group of "a-dolts" out there who believe all the rules of common sense, common decency, and common courtesy go out the window when they walk into a store.

Now, it may have something to do with how they were raised, but I sure don't remember seeing stuff like I saw today when I was a kid, so, since they were kids at roughly the same time I was, I'm willing to bet the majority of them know, deep down somewhere, that what they do is wrong.

And, oh man, is it wrong. I needed some socks today, so, at Walmart, I went to the sock aisle. Now, those of you who are married are no doubt surprised that I was able to immediately go to the sock aisle without needing to detour at all. Before you begin to doubt my veracity, let me point out that my wife was not with me, so I was able to walk in and go directly to the item I was shopping for. Anyway, as I near the sock aisle, I see a worker picking clothes up off the floor and hanging them on a rack. I think to myself, "self, they really ought to keep those in the box until they hang them up instead of dumping them on the floor." But, as I walked into the sock aisle, I saw what looked like a looted-out store. Socks on the floor, packages of socks open and dumped on the floor. And, in the middle of the aisle, a woman had her cart sitting on several of the socks, was standing on some others, and just picked out a pair of socks and left, rolling over several other pairs of socks that were on the floor. It was then that it dawned on me that the worker had just been picking up stuff that people had thrown on the floor. Now, clearly, it's not my job to pick up socks, and I wouldn't expect anyone not getting paid to pick them up if they hadn't dropped them, but I did make an effort to not step on any that were on the floor, and I even pick up several pairs and hung them back up. That was when the worker from the other aisle came over and said thanks but that she would get them. So I asked her if a bunch of kids had come in and tore the place up. She said no, it's just Saturday.

So, to this worker, Saturday means people come in and trash the store. I suppose I'm the naive one. Maybe I just hadn't noticed it before. But, my mom worked retail for 25 years, and I can still hear her yelling at me to put things back, not just on ANY rack, but on the RIGHT rack.

Later, I stop at K-mart because they had their lawn and garden stuff marked down pretty well and we needed some mulch to repair an area of our yard that had had an unfortunate encounter with my lawnmower (the mulch put up a good fight, but the lawnmower won handily). This time, my wife was with me, so we went through pretty much the whole store on our way to buy mulch. In the women's clothing area, I found my wife picking up clothes. You regular readers know my wife is OCD, so messes like clothes on the floor MUST be fixed before she can move on. I knew better than to suggest that she didn't really need to be doing that, so I waited for her to finish. The only thing she said to me about it was that "people are pigs." I could tell she meant it.

Only, people aren't pigs. At least, they don't have to be. Once we get the license bureau set up (The Balanced Life License Commission, or TBLL-C (Table C) -remember?), we'll allow stores to hang up "Licensed Shoppers Only" signs. These will be great stores. They'll be clean. The paper towel dispensers in the restrooms will actually work and won't be ripped off the wall. The self-serve lines will move fast (because remember, you'll need a separate license to use them). The checkers will smile because they'll have a more pleasant working environment. (OK, I know that one is a stretch - cut me some slack).

Now, if this is kids doing it, it is far more forgivable, although their parents should be making them clean it up. But, it's not kids. While in K-Mart, I saw a man picking out some work gloves. He apparently wanted the pair 4 or 5 back on the peg, so he grabbed the first few pairs and...............dropped them on the floor. He grabbed the pair he wanted and walked away.

License revoked.

[2 Comments]

Pillow talk

So, we bought new pillows yesterday. To be wholly accurate, my wife bought us both new pillows and then swapped mine out without saying a word about it. I didn't realize it until I went to go to bed and found that my head was nearly perpendicular to the bed because this sucker is THICK. And fluffy! And some other descriptor of a good pillow. Once I beat it into submission and forced my head down into it, it's a darn nice pillow.

It made me think of all the things my wife does that I would never do. I would still have the pillow I had when I moved away from home 21 years ago if it were left to me. Same sheets probably too. But, my wife updates these items regularly. She makes the bed too, something which is completely foreign to me. I try to make the bed sometimes, to "pitch in around the house," but, when I do, she always looks at it like she would look at a clay ashtray built by a five year old.

Anyway, here are some more things that my wife does for us that I would never even think of doing:

Buys throw rugs that coordinate with the colors of the room.
Cleans behind large objects that are hard to move.
Dusts the glass on pictures on the wall.
Buys pictures that require frames with glass in them.
Puts out guest soaps.
Weeds behind the garage, which is an area no one else can see.
Wipes down the tops of the interior room doors.
Spreads out magazines in an orderly fashion on the coffee table.
Writes down things we need to do on the calendar.
Sweeps the street in front of our house.

Now, my wife is definitely OCD, and she does not work outside of the home, so she views all these things as part of her responsibilities as the Queen of the household. I sometimes try to imagine what my house would look like without her. A lot like my college apartment I am guessing.

Here's to all the amazing things our wives do for us that are not glamorous or possibly even necessary, but make life a lot better. We don't deserve you, but we sure appreciate you.

[8 Comments]

License to be ill

People are idiots. Well, not those of you who are smart enough to be reading this, and probably not some of those NASA guys, but a whole lot of the rest of humanity could write the book, Idiot's Guide to Being an Idiot. If they could write, that is.

That said, I believe it is the duty of the few of us reading this to begin to license certain activities. We'll call our effort the Balanced Life License Commission, because that sounds like the kind of thing that would gets lots of government funding from a Democratic congress. We will create tests that humanity will have to pass in order to engage in certain of life's possibilities. While there are many things that should probably require passing a test in order to do, such as have kids, get a credit card, and buy a remote control with more than 5 buttons on it, our first new license will be issued in the realm of self serve lines in retail/grocery stores.

I like self serve lines. I don't have to engage in any sort of fake banter with the cashier, I don't have to wait while they spend 3 minutes exchanging two rolls of nickels and two rolls of pennies for a five dollar bill (which they double count), and I don't have to wonder how clean the hands are of the person loading my watermelon into my cart (with my own hands, I KNOW how dirty they are).

Now, I have used lots and lots of self-serve lines. They all work pretty much the same way. If the store has some sort of "bonus card," you scan that first, then you scan your items, you place them in bags, you choose your payment method, you pay, you gather your receipt and you get on with your life. This is how it goes 99.9% of the time for me. On the rare occasion I have an issue, it is always because the machine ran out of register tape, or something scanned but was unrecognized. It would seem others could perform these same tasks with the same relative success rate I enjoy. Not so.

Here is an actual story from the grocery store that I personally witnessed over the weekend. A couple had about 15 things in their basket, so I chose their line. After all, they only had fifteen things, and there were TWO of them, so the odds of one of them possessing sufficient gray matter to successfully navigate the complexities of a machine designed to be understandable by a third grader seemed pretty high. Alas, it was not to be. They started by trying to swipe their "bonus card" on the credit card machine. Three times. I stepped in and let them know they needed to scan the bar code and kind of demonstrated what I meant. They got it and started scanning their groceries. All went well until they got to their fruit. Since they had bagged this themselves, they didn't know what to scan. Since I had wised up by then, I pointed to the "produce" key and suggested they press that. They did it and then seemed to be completely flummoxed by the visual they saw, which was two buttons. One said Fruit and had a picture of an apple. The other said vegetable and had a picture of an ear of corn. Since they didn't see a picture of the oranges they had, they were stymied. But, they did finally read the words and pressed the apple. Now they had two choices. They could punch in the item number for their oranges, which was on a little sticker right on the orange, or they could page through the visuals of the fruits, looking for oranges. They chose to page through. When I noticed they also had some bulk candy in their basket, I moved to another line.

As bad as that was, Walmart was even worse. If there was ever a store that should not have self-serve lines, it's Walmart. I buy cleaning supplies at Walmart because my wife is OCD, and I like to spend money on things other than cleaning supplies occasionally, so I buy them where they are cheapest. I also buy them in large quantities for the reason mentioned previously. So, I'm holding one of those monster-sized laundry detergents, some dryer sheets, some Lysol Floor cleaner and a bag of cookies (while not technically a cleaning supply, cookies are also a frequent Walmart purchase). There are two people in front of me in line. The other lines are all very long, so I am felling pretty happy with my choice of lines. The person at the front of the line made the grocery store people look like the founders of MENSA. She apparently had no idea that a connection existed between the UPC code and the scanner. She turned every item around and around and moved it all over the scanner. She seemed quite delighted when something actually rung up 'like magic." Anyway, several agonizing minutes later she does manage to pay with cash and go on her merry way. The guy in front of me steps up to the plate. To my mind, he looks like a regular guy, which I define as someone who looks like someone I would potentially go have a beer with. This classification as "regular guy," or RG, comes with an accompanying assumption of intelligence. I don't assume he is an Einstein, but I do assume he knows that Einstein is not just some guy who sells bagels with his brother. Bad assumption. First off, this guy seems to believe that he has to unload everything from his cart onto the the roughly 2X2 space next to the scanner. The creates several "Laurel and Hardy go to Hell" moments as he tries to stack everything from his cart onto one small space.

Many, many moments later, after the mostly-asleep attendant has helped him three times, he finally goes to pay with: A Traveler's check.

License Revoked.

[5 Comments]

Mind Control

OK, these are kind of long, and I don't normally stick videos in my blog, but, these are really really cool. They are by this guy named Darren Brown, who is a master at manipulating how you think and what you do. check him out on youtube - there are lots of cool ones, but these two really stood out for me.

This first one is about how easy it can be to manipulate someone's thoughts without them realizing it.

Embedded YouTube Video --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg

Really makes me wonder just how much I actually do like Doritoes.

OK, now this next one is really just clever as hell.

Embedded YouTube Video --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evZmpsl3jI0

Two bonus points if you had it figured out before he explained it.

[4 Comments]

Language

I like English. It's a baffling array of psuedo rules and odd pronunciations. I suppose that is why I love it so much. Anyway, here's some English language stuff.

Say this out loud: "There are no English words that rhyme with orange." While that is true, I am more interested in how you said that last word, orange. It's a two syllable word, but much of America, including me, pronounces it "ornj," with one syllable.

Now say this one out loud: "We had some orange sherbet." How many "r's" did you put in the word sherbet? There's only one.

What is interesting about this word? Unprosperousness Answer: it's the longest English word that repeats every letter at least once.

How about this one? Strengths Answer: it's the longest English word with only one vowel. That one will come in handy when you are playing Scrabble some day.

Here's one of my favorites, by which I mean it is one of my most despised. I could of had a Pepsi. It should be "I could've had a Pepsi." It means I could have had a Pepsi. "I could of had a Pepsi" means nothing really, especially if you really wanted a beer.

Here's a tougher one. "I could care less." This is really half of a statement that would go something like "I could care less if I was paid enough to do so." What you usually mean when you say that is: I could not care less. This means it is not possible for you to care any less than you already do.

That's it for now. I could of done more, but I could care less.

[3 Comments]

Binoculars or maybe Kenny Chesney

The plot or the subplot? Where to spend the time?

So, OK, we had tickets to go see Kenny Chesney's Flip Flop Summer Tour last weekend. This was good, because they had five acts, and both my wife and I had a favorite in the mix. I'm a a big Brooks and Dunn fan and she is in love with Kenny Chesney and may also know one or two of his songs. Anyway, this was a stadium concert so since I live near Cleveland, we were a-goin' to Browns stadium.

Now, we jumped on-line for tickets the day and time they went on sale. Does this get us in the front row? No. Does it get us in the first ten rows? No. if we go by lots of ten rows, this will be my longest blog ever, so let's safely assume that we did not get seats very close. Since it was clear we were not going to get up close, we went for "Club Level" seats. There are actually much nicer seats, with actual seat cushions, cup holders, and an entrance that the usual riff-raff can't get through. I have sat in the Club section for Browns games, and it generally rocks. You have your own concession stands which serve fare much nicer than the usual dogs and nachos (although you can get those too). They have a full bar available. They have people who will go get your stuff for you if you want them too and are willing to wait for that.

They are also, obviously, more expensive seats. But, having sat in the Club before, I assured my wife they were awesome seats are worth the dough. And, had we been going to a football game, I would have been absolutely right. But, this wasn't a football game. First off, our seats were on right about the 45 yard line. Unfortunately, the stage was in the opposite end zone. So, we weren't too close. This isn't noticeable when watching a football game because there is a whole field of action to keep up on, and the height and angle from the 45 yard line club section is a great boon to following the game. However, when your wife's primary goal in going to the show is to see how good Kenny looks in his tight jeans, 45 yard line club seats aren't exactly ideal.

Anyway, I knew that Club level seats wouldn't be right on top of the stage, so I told my wife I'd go out and buy some small binoculars. Now, I have some really nice, really heavy binoculars, but I wanted something small and light that we could wear around our necks for 6 hours without feeling the weight too much. So, I go to my local Dick's Sporting Goods store and I try out about 5 pairs of smaller binoculars. The salesman is patient considering all of them are locked up and I take each pair to the front of the store to look out at the parking lot so I can really see how well they work.

Well, I have it narrowed down to the ones I think are right - a nice 12X Simmons folding model. But, I want to compare the field of vision to my big, nice binoculars which I have in the trunk. So, I tell the salesman I'll be back (in my best Arnold impression which he thankfully laughs at) and I go out to my car and get my binoculars and start looking around the parking lot. This turns out to garner a lot of attention from people in and around the parking lot. This may be because I find a number of interesting sites around the area and end up looking around with high powered binoculars for maybe 7 or 8 minutes. Yep, when I put them down, I notice I have people from maybe 6 stores all looking out their windows right at me, as well as a number of people who are walking to their cars.

I go back inside Dick's sporting Goods, but, now I have a dilemma. I know the best ones to get are the 12X Simmons, but, they only have them in camo. I also know my wife will wear something in camo for 6 hours right about the same time hell freezes over. So, I call her and tell her that the best ones are 12X but camo, or they have some 10X that are in black. Well, since she is wearing pink to the show, you more fashion-conscious folks (I'm looking at you, tait) will recognize that the only possible response she can give is for me to get her the black ones. So, I do.

The binoculars prove to be very good ones, although you have probably guessed that my wife swapped with me once Kenny got on stage so that she could get 2X closer to Kenny's jeans.

The show was really, really good. Brooks and Dunn were awesome, Sara Evans and Sugarland both put on good shows, and Kenny's jeans did not disappoint all the drunk ladies. About 8:15 a water main burst at the stadium and so all the bathrooms and all the concessions were closed. This proved to be a bit of an issue, since much of the crowd was comprised of rowdy, hard-drinking country fans and women who were getting drunk hoping to make their way onto Kenny's Tour bus. The stadium had to bust out the port-o-potties, the lines were very long, and there were none in the Club section at all, so not only did we have to mix with the common folk, and the common folk's wastes, we also had to walk a long way to get there. So, we only made THAT trip once and then held it the rest of the night. From what I hear, there were quite a few "ladies and gentlemen" who came up with their own solutions. I will be forever grateful that I did not sit near any of them.

[2 Comments]

iDone

OK, iPhone finally launched. My project is done. The war room is over. The 15 hour days are over. I get to go home tomorrow.

iPhone has been the most challenging project I have ever worked on. The worst part has been not being able to really say much about it. Until now anyway.

In case you are not a regular reader (not that I have had time to be a regular writer lately), I work for AT&T. And no, that does not make me inherently evil, despite what you might have read on the Internet. Anyway, my project was to work on the team developing training for all 17,000 AT&T wireless retail emplyees. Now normally, this would be no problem at all for me. I do big projects all the time, and do them pretty well most of the time.

This time though, was difficult. I officially refer to the iPhone project as a Tale of Two Projects, for it was indeed the best of times, and the worst.

To begin with, I should never have been on the project in the first place. I work for the Wireline side of the house. Mobility (Cingular) has it's own training department and it's own training designers (not to mention it's own marketing, it's own Sales Ops, it's own IT department, etc etc etc). Anyway, just before we reached a point where the training needed to be under development (February), Mobility started one of it's largest training projects ever. Once they had committed to it, there was no going back, so, incredibly, they were short staffed to tackle iPhone training. Enter the monkee. I was loaned to Mobility. But, I had to accept the project without knowing what it was because, back then, it was pretty much verboten to even say iPhone aloud in a company building. You think I am kidding about that last sentence, but I am not. For the first four weeks I was on the project, I couldn't even list it in my time management program. I had to list it as Project X and only my boss knew what it was. Anywho, I accepted the project and found out it was iPhone. Let me tell you that that was a true high point for me. Not only was I the only person in all of (landline) AT&T training working on iPhone, I was close to being the only person from landline PERIOD working on iPhone.

So, I signed my NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), and entered the secretive world of the iPhone. Let me tell you, EVERYTHING was a secret on this project. Compounding that issue was Apple's reluctance to share all the details with us. So, while I knew quite a few secrets early on, like the self-activation, the price of the plans, and lot's of technical data, there were other things I found out at the same time you all did, such as YouTube. Since one of my training pieces was a wbt (web-based training) about just how cool iPhone was, it was quite frustrating to have some of the cool features held back from me. But, we got through it anyway.

And, there were some pretty cool moments. I had a meeting in Cupertino with none other than the infamous Bob who starred in all those demo videos. I was encouraged to spend time trolling the mac rumor sites. I have to tell you that some of the best times we had on this project was in reading all the theories and rumors that weren't even close to the truth. I also got to work with a number of folks from Apple. They are a pretty cool group and very talented, if a little paranoid at times. Good folks though. I also got to work with a lot of Mobility people I would never have otherwise met. They are also a good group of folks, although they work too **** many hours. Plus, Mobility HQ is a pretty doggone nice building.

But, there were also the not-so-fun times. I haven't had a complete day off since mid-May. I have worked well past midnight way too many times. I've had to tell friends over and over that I was sorry I couldn't tell them anything. Then there were the leaks. If you trolled any of the rumor sites, then you undoubtedly saw several different AT&T training manuals and whatnot shown on them. As cool as it kind of was to see something you'd contributed to become such a hot commodity, it was not cool at all to know that someone else had broken rules you had kept. Oh well, doesn't matter now.

So, to those of you who bought one, thanks for the business. To those of you who bought one and experienced any kind of trouble at all, please accept my apology and understand that we were all working very hard to avoid issues in the first place and also to fix them as soon as possible when they cropped up. Our work to rectify issues certainly didn't satisfy a few crabby bloggers, but believe me, it wasn't for lack of effort. I have spent the week at Mobility headquarters in Atlanta, and let me tell you that there were a whole pile of us there well into the wee hours of the morning every night this week.

Finally, the best thing about Project iPhone is that it's over and I get to go home. It was a wild ride at times, and I'm looking forward to some well-deserved R&R.

[4 Comments]

Geez

Just had to knock down one of Garbone's three immediate posts hogging up the banner.

[0 Comments]

HD vs. SD on the 360

OK, I've been playing on an SD TV since I got my 360. Today, with Live down, I hooked it up to the HD dowstairs for a bit. I played GOW, COD2 and R6V to see the differences in each game. Some folks playing on SD may wish they had an HDTV to play on, so I thought I'd research that wish list a little bit.

My SD is a 27" Sylvania. I am connected with a gold-plated S-Video cable I bought at Best Buy for $15.00. This exercise aside, if you are playing your 360 using the composite cable and your TV has an S-Video connection, stop reading this, go to Best Buy, and spend the $15.00. Makes a BIG difference.

I connected to my new HDTV (Panasonic 42" Plasma HDTV TH-42PX60U) via the 360 in-the-box supplied component cables. Here are my observations:

GOW: Looks a bit better/sharper and definitely brighter. The larger screen (42" versus 27") allows me to see things in the distance more clearly. Verdict: Looks a bit better, but not worth buying HD if you don't already have an HDTV.

COD2: COD2 looks fantastic on my SD, and it just gets better on HD. Very sharp picture. I had some trouble aiming at first because the picture was almost too big. Backing up helped a lot. Verdict: This game looks fantastic in SD already. No reason to go HD unless you already have an HD.

R6V: Ok, here's the one that made a good diference. Everything was way sharper. I can see HD definitely improving your game with this title. I was hitting folks much more easily. Now, some of this is attributable to a larger screen and therefore larger foes, BUT, this is the only game of the three that I was stopping and spinning around in because it looked that much better (yes, I died a few times satisfying this crazy twirl itch). Verdict: If you are a Rainbow 6 nut, go out and buy that HDTV!

Overall verdict: I am not seeing enough of a difference to warrant going out and buying an HD monitor. As you may recall from my world-famous 360 purchase thread, I was at one time considering buying a 22" HD monitor to game on. After this experiment, I will stick with my SDTV for the fore-seeable future until I have the extra scratch laying around to go with a larger HDTV for gaming. Alternately, if someone starts to really take advantage of the component connection, I may have to upgrade then. I won't go out and buy the new $469 XBOX 360 with HDMI, but that may make a difference - especially with newer titles where the developers KNOW that HDMI will be available.

Because of the size difference, I will start to play on the HDTV more often, simply because I can see targets better. But, to go from a 27" SD to a 22" HD would make the targets smaller, and the resulting sharper picture is not, to me, worth it at this time.

[0 Comments]

iName

With Apple recently settling it's lawsuit with Cicso over use of the iPhone name, I thought it was time Apple got down to business and just trademarked pretty much everything with an "i". Look for this next year:

Press Release: Macworld 2008

Apple announced a number of new trademarked product names this year. Here are the highlights:

iV - 3D holographic television (in white)

iStick - 10 terabyte thumb drive

iSuck - vacuum that is nothing at all like a Dyson

iToast - toaster that will eliminate the phrase "dumb as a toaster." Most of you will WISH you were as smart as an iToast

iDrive - car that runs on industrial wastes and emits Chai tea

iBurn - a completely clean and green coal substitute

iWrite - Apple has reinvented the pen (in white)

iPee - a vast improvement to today's Internet Protocols. What were you thinking it was? That's sick!

iCon - software that allows you to manage your very own "con" festival from a single iMac

iFell - personal alert system that interfaces with your iMac and your iPant (see below) to notify the authorities when you have injured yourself

iCrash - sorry, not a new product - that's just our internal name for Vista machines

iYawn - our official name for Vista machines

iPlay - our TRUE next-gen gaming console. All those other guys have been stealing our ideas for years. It ends now!

iTime - it's a really cool watch (in white)

iWatch - personal binoculars with night vision (in white - betcha thought THIS one was the time-telling watch. No, we're much more clever than that!)

iPant - robotic dog that interfaces seamlessly with your iPod, iPhone, iMac and everything else in this list. Oh and Windows Vista too, but only with the iSupposeSo dongle

iPants - TWO robotic dogs, no no, just my little joke. iPants are a gigantic leap forward in the high tech world of, um, pants.

iKnow - Steve Jobs collectible figurines

iAm - high-end Steve Jobs collectible figurines with patented Burning Bush data management

iWish - the first Mac to outsell the PC

[3 Comments]

Million Dollar Ideas

Well, I came up with my 23rd Million Dollar Idea yesterday. I've gotta start writing these things down, because I can never remember them again until someone else makes the million a few years later and I'm left standing there with my jaw dropping and my blood pressure rising. Of course, writing my ideas down would require two things I rarely have on me - something to write with, and something to write on.

It's not as though I don't buy pens. I buy a lot of them. I actually really like pens and often buy unusual ones to keep on my desk. I also buy boxes of them and bring them home and place them in the left-hand junk drawer. Of course, that drawer is clearly the portal to some magical land composed entirely of pens, scotch tape, thumbtacks, nail clippers and matches, because I buy a whole lot of all of those, AND I NEVER HAVE ANY OF THEM!

"Honey, where's the scotch tape?"

"It's in the junk drawer."

No, I'm looking in there and it's not there.

"Look again. I just put it there not 10 minutes ago."

I AM looking again - it's not there.

"Open your eyes, it's right next to the matches."

OK. Now we got a whole 'nother problem."

I picture this world as one comprised of chain-smoking big toes who like to tack up hand-written notices about the big tape sale going on at their place.

But seriously, where do the pens go? I mean, I know they are disposable, but they are not designed as single use, so it would seem that a box of them could last more than a week, does it not? Not in my house. Perhaps they disappear to the same place that all of my "extra" money seems to go each week.

As I recall, we were talking about million dollar ideas (seriously - go back and look). Here's some of the ones I thought of long before they made someone else rich.

The Clapper: Mine would have been called the Whistler I suppose, because it was intended to turn on the lights with a quick whistle.
The Itty Bitty Book Light: I actually made this one, with a pen light, some pipe cleaners and a rubber band.
The Shop Vac: Technically, I didn't so much invent it as I did foresee it by using the vacuum's hose on the dishwater when I was five.
Retractable dog leash: Also built this one by using the Pocket Fisherman. Remember that thing?

I think there are some others, but those are the ones I remember really well. My wife and I play $2 on the Mega-millions twice a week because we have the IQ of kelp - I mean, because it's a harmless little distraction that lets us dream of what we would do if we won. Of course, what we THINK we'd do, and what we would ACTUALLY do are probably very different courses of action. Although I do imagine I really would buy a new car with $10's and $20's.

But, back to writing down million dollar ideas. Since I like to write, I have several times tried to carry around a small pocket notebook, on which I can capture those fantastic random thoughts that would help to forever enshrine me in the annals of great literature. But, I can never remember to tote them along for more than a day or two. And, even when I do remember to bring one along, it generally gets filled up with stuff like:

Items my wife needs at the store that she keeps forgetting to get so if I could write it down in my little book then maybe she could remember the next time she is at the store.
License plate numbers of the various drivers I will repay when I win the lottery and enough time has passed that it could never be traced back to me.
Phone numbers for radio contests that I will never call.
The name of that guy from that movie that my wife and I were trying to remember that finally came to me as I was driving (Anthony Quinn).
The 74 passwords for my various systems at work (Ensure your password is no less than five and no greater than 12 characters in length. The first, fourth, ninth and last digits cannot be numerals. At least nine characters must be numerals. This password must not contain any string of more than 3 characters from your previous password. This password cannot contain any letters in your first or last name but may contain letters from your middle name. If the sum of line 32 is LESS THEN the sum of line 26a, the difference is the amount of your refund).
A reminder to pick up some scotch tape.

So anyway, if you think of any million dollar ideas, give me a call. I'll write them down. As soon as I find a pen.

[3 Comments]

Lunch with a non-gamer

Had a very interesting lunch today. It was with someone I rarely eat with because he rarely works in the office. We don't know each other very well, but we are in the same department, and much of our department is on vacay, so I invited him to grab a bite.

I don't exactly recall how it came up that I am a gamer, but, once it did, he was full of questions about things that I obviously take for granted. He said he quit gaming around the age of 15 (22 years ago) and has not kept up with it at all. He had heard of the PS3, but didn't realize there were two "kinds of XBOX." He had no idea about the Wii, but was pretty sure he'd heard of a gamecube. He definitely knew gameboy because he had bought games for it for his nephew before.

We discussed PC games as well, and I had to explain terms like "persistent world", MMORPG, avatar and Friend's Lists. he was astonished to learn that people make money by selling in-game items, power leveling other players, and buying and selling virtual real estate in games like Second Life.

He asked how expensive it was to "keep up," and I said it depended on how much you were addicted, what you could afford, and what you most enjoyed. He was absolutely floored that anyone would play a game on a $3000 TV, since "those games burn images into the screen, don't they?" He understood product placement right away from movies, but was astonished to hear that games were often buggy. His quote was,"Wait a minute, you mean you pay for the game, you have to see advertising IN the game, you sometimes pay a monthly fee just to PLAY the game, and it still might be buggy?" He was surprised to hear how wide-spread cheating was and how competitive gaming was and he had never heard of there being a pro circuit for gaming.

But, perhaps the biggest surprise for him was hearing about timmies and their behavior. he wanted to know why parents weren't all over their kids (he only has a 3 year old), and swore that HIS son would never be allowed to behave like that and continue to own the game.

Now, this guy is otherwise pretty hip. He surfs the web on his Nokia 62, drives an Escape hybrid, and has WiFi in his home (apparently just for web surfing and e-mail). He just doesn't game or know anything about gaming. Or care, really. He is a big golfer though, so we were finally able to come to some understanding when I told him that gaming is my golfing. THAT he understood. I may have even convinced him to pick up a PS2 or XBOX and give Tiger Woods a spin this winter. I think I just became a pusher........

[5 Comments]