The non-political entry

TRIPPING
I was just tabbing up my bike usage and I've biked 1553 (excluding the last two days) in the last almost 13 months. That works out to about 5 miles a day which actually seems low but then you figure that it takes into account the several months of winter during which even when I do bike, it's minimal. During the good weather season, it works out to 7-8 miles a day typically.

Perhaps more interestingly is that I've biked during 311 of the last 384 days. The 73 non-biking days (about 19 percent) is pretty good considering that it takes into account both the notoriously harsh upstate NY winters and rainy days.

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NO WONDER THE FORESTS ARE DISAPPEARING
I work at a media company. There is so much paper wasted, it's unreal. A sports channel will basically waste 300 pages of paper and countless printer ink to say what I can summarize in one sentence: "Will air our sports news program every half hour all summer."

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STEVE JOBS CAN LICK MY APPLES
I no longer have an iPhone. I was talking with a colleague of mine about my intention to get the new 3G iPhone when it came out. Not necessarily the instant it came out but shortly thereafter. He said he'd buy the old one off me.

There was a catch.

The new iPhone came out last Friday. He went on vacation last Wednesday. He badly wanted the iPhone to bring with him on his trip. He proposed lending me his girlfriend's phone for the few days until I got the new iPhone. Against my better judgment, I accepted. I had a gut feeling that it wasn't a good idea. Maybe I should've listened.

I got to the AT&T store at 9:30 on Friday. The place opened at 8:00 but I figured the line would be shorter at 9:30. By 10:00, they were sold out of their stock. The best part is that they had no idea when they were going to get more.

On Sunday, I went there again to try to see if they had a better idea of what was going on. They said the store would probably get another shipment "at some point" this week. But they added that they didn't think they'd last very long given all the phone calls they'd received about it.

They said if I wanted, I could special order one. This would guarantee me an iPhone... but it would take 3 weeks to fulfill... and I couldn't cancel the special order if a sufficient regular shipment came into the store.

In other circumstances, this would be a minor annoyance, not a big problem. Normally, I could just wait the few weeks. I'm not one of those guys who HAS to have every new toy the second it comes out.

But I'm using a borrowed cell phone. I'm sure my friend's girlfriend would want it back when they got back from vacation, not at some indeterminate point in the future.

The other, more serious problem is that, for whatever reason, I can't access my contacts or my calendar on it. I'd have to re-input them all on to the phone, which I'm loathe to do since it's a borrowed cell phone.

This is even more problematic since, again, I have absolutely no clue when I'd be able to get a new iPhone.

In fact, I even called every single AT&T store within a 50 mile radius on Friday afternoon and they were all out. The only exception was the Apple store in a mall in Albany but by Saturday morning (the earliest I could've gotten down there), they too were out. Again, none of them had a definitive idea when they were going to get more... or how many.

I decided to say screw it and ordered another phone instead.

It doesn't have the "cool" factor of the iPhone but it does most of the key stuff I need it and some other things I want that the iPhone doesn't. I would've preferred to stay with the iPhone but I was so pissed off at Apple and I didn't want to remain in limbo for who knows how long.

I love Apple as a concept. I love the edginess and their think outside the box mentality. But they also have a tendency to do so real dumbass things... things that make me think thrice about getting an Apple computer. And their idea of customer service makes the airlines look like paradise.

Apple is so maniacally proprietary that they often ending up shooting themselves in the foot. Their refusal to let anyone else work with the operating system is what led to the vastly inferior Microsoft Windows/PC model to become the dominant player in the computing arena and really made Apple almost irrelevant until the release of the iPod.

On a smaller level, the headphone jack for the original iPhone was slightly different than a regular jack, such that regular headphones would not work in it without an adapter.

Apple released the iPhone is something like 77 countries around the world at the same time AND released a major update for existing iPhone users... and were shocked (SHOCKED) that the iTunes server crashed almost immediately.

That combined with ridiculously low stocks for a product they had hyped massively and knew was going to be ridiculously popular is yet another example of piss poor planning on Apple's part.

And it cost them at least one customer.

Though I'm sure their too cool to care.

Actions, reactions

Newsitem: Regarding the iPhone... Apple launched the eagerly awaited phone exclusively on AT&T's network in June, and immediately faced criticism for how resistant it was to any modification.

Observation: Resistant to modification? Impossible to use outside narrowly confined systems? This is so unlike Apple.



Newsitem: Regarding author Ayn Rand... Who is Ayn Rand? More than two decades after her death, readers still debate the morality and cultural influence of the provocative Russian-born author whose "objectivist" philosophy culminated in her 1957 magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. The 1,192-page novel unapologetically fictionalized an individualist philosophy that praises selfishness, scorns charity, and turns monopolists into paragons of virtue. Biographies by spurned lovers and collections of her letters reveal Rand as a passionate, sometimes tempestuous, personality, a woman with devoted loves and sworn enemies, who relished sex and dabbled in swinging, and demanded absolute loyalty from her disciples.

Observation: Because nothing screams radical individualism more than 'absolute loyalty' to someone else.



Newsitem: President Bush has announced that the new war strategy in Iraq looks promising.

Question: Does this mark 25th 'promising' new war strategy in Iraq or 28th? I've lost count.

Followup: Bush says a US pullout from Iraq would make the country as bad as Vietnam after the US withdrawal.

Observation: Since 4 million (civilians alone) perished during the Vietnamese civil war, I think our esteemed leader should be more concerned that Iraq will become like Vietnam was BEFORE the US withdrawal.