I miss Dad sometimes.

I miss dad a lot. Every single goddamned day. Every minute. I miss him for all the time we didn't get to hang out. I miss him during the camping trips where I wished I could ask him what to do.

I miss dad because I'm embarrassed that sometimes, I, the First Class Scout, have no idea how to tie something.

Dad was the victim of an AVM three weeks after our wedding, in February 2006.

Dad has recovered to the best of his ability so far; he has good days and better days, which is a blessing - he was home alone when his event occurred. I couldn't ask for more, but I have wished for it.

Love you, Dad.


Photograph by Terrance Reimer.

Cluelessness Aplenty

Boy, the folks at News.com really have outdone themselves this time.

In an article about the iPhone's solidified feature set, supposedly revealed by the three :30 commercials aired Sunday night, News.com's Kent German dissects some things we apparently didn't know about Apple's new mobile phone.

Be patient; there's a lot of crap to wade through here. From the article...

Let you fingers do the walking:....On the other hand, we're unclear if locking the iPhone again then turns off the phone and data connectivity. Yes, iPods have always lacked a dedicated power button but this will be a new thing for anyone who doesn't use a Treo. Also, it looks like the Talk and End buttons only show up when you place or receive a call.

Nevermind that Jobs demonstrated all of this functionality on the still available MacWorld Keynote - it seems pretty sure that Apple will have the ATT Wireless folks do a quick demo. But if watching all 90 minutes of the Keynote is too much work for German, we can understand - he works at C|Net, the Fox News of Tech Journalism.

Making calls: After placing a call, you'll have a static onscreen menu for a variety of commands, including mute, hold, speaker (nice!), phone book access, keypad, and add call. .....

Voice mail: Much has been made over the iPhone's visual voice mail that will allow you to choose from a list and go directly to the voice mail you want to hear. It all looks quite nifty, and considering it's the first such feature, it should be one aspect of the iPhone that will be worth its hype.

Wow. German watched the commercials and summarized them. Did he go to the New York Times Judith Miller School of Journalism?

Texting: Like many smart phones, the iPhone will display text conversations in their entirety rather than displaying messages individually. We're not sure if it will support instant messaging, though.

Oooops. I guess he didn't watch the keynote. Jobs clearly demonstrates using an AOL IM and Cingular account to IM other users.

More on mapping: Thankfully, Google Maps are integrated as part of the iPhone. That's a huge step above many cell phones that treat Google Maps like a troublesome third-party application. What's more, you'll also get the satellite view of an area. For map geeks like me, that might be the phone's coolest feature of them all.

Boy, 90 minutes of research could have saved German a lot of embarrassment. He missed the part where Steve talks about using the Google Maps API to create a rich, unique client on the iPhone instead of the normal browser-bound Maps interface.

Did German think those animated red pins came from outer space?

He also forgot to mention PDF services on the iPhone. And the Yahoo-provided push e-mail - like Blackberry e-mail services, but without the expensive Exchange server. And he forgot a few other things, too. Split pane view e-mail, visual voicemail, weather widgets, and Apple's pledge to allow third-party development on the iPhone.

Oh - and the satellite photos on the maps. And the rich HTML e-mail on the phone. And OS X. Three sensors to simplify usage.

Still other things we know, some of which you've heard already:

Yeah...we knew this stuff already. Because we watched the keynote in January.

Nimrod.

Geek of the Week

This You Tube" contributor made his (her?) own gas turbine.

Remember 50 years ago, when only whole countries could muster this kind of technology?

A picture of Steve Jobs' Jet, N2N

All Things D:5 - Jobs and Gates Podcast

Video.

Audio.

I really think that as grizzled old technology veterans, we're gonna look back on this as the falling of the Berlin wall after 1997's Microsoft-Apple Galsnost.

I've heard...

That Microsoft is working on a Zune phone that will allow you to record something and send it to someone else with a Zune phone. But they'll only be able to listen to it for three days unless you pay Universal Music Group a dollar.

This new product will be called the "Zone". Microsoft's marketing message will be "Welcome to the Zone".

This "record and recall" feature should be added to the Zune within a year, but look for C|Net to buck the trend and to annoint the "Zone" it an "iPhone killer" for the next six months.

Also, the Zone is slated to be compatible with Windows XP SR2 and Windows Vista only.

Retrospect music spending

It's a little hard to believe, but I've spent upwards of $700.00 over the four-point-five years ITunes has been around. All of it legit - and about 347% higher than my previous music buying habits. I'd say that Steve has something going on.

Too bad he's the largest Disney shareholder and he apparently couldn't manage to weigh in on the bullshit drama that ABC foisted on everyone tonight.

I don't regret any iTunes tracks I bought up until a few days ago. Do you? And how much have you spent since buying music appeared online?

(latest - Apparently, this counterculture maniac thinks everyone should get "stoned", whatever that means.)

Moving

We just moved to Baton Rouge. More to come.

Another Messed Up Charge Slip

Gawdammmit! My bank is always making mistakes. Bank of This Continent, if you know who I mean.

CHECKCARD GEORGE BUSH INT'L HOUSTON TX DEBIT ON 08/03/2006 - $12.60

My letter follows:

Dear Gyant Bank:

I'd like to protest the charge of $12.60 against my Visa™ card, number xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx, expiration date xx/yy.

Now, I'll admit - I was mistaken in purchasing two plastic-bottled (nice touch!) Bud Lite™ beers. After many years of beer supression, I was looking forward to the free-thinking atmosphere of the Uniter "Beer States" of America! Whoooooooo!

Those beers appeared enticingly cold in the cooler. In fact, I was almost sure that I could see delicious beads of condensation against the smooth surface of the bottle. The beer almost looked as if it was trying to burst out - like it wanted freedom or something. (My stomach growled about that cruel bottle - holding that beer against it's will!)

I asked a friend of mine to touch the beer to verify it's coldness, but he couldn't - he told me that someone who used to work at the beer booth last year said it should be cold.

Hrummph. Well, if that's good enough for George Bush Intercontinent airport, it's good enough for me! I trust that the coolers'd be kept "kool" in a place like GHWBIA!

I sent my hard-earned money into the breach with the anticipation that it would be met with the chilled reception that only an "I-scold" (ha-ha, that's what my wifey calls 'em!) Bud can deliver!

I was especially excited because this all happened in George Bush Intercontinent Airport - and I was on my way to Baton Rouge - (the overcrowded castle next door to the shithouse as my Republican friends call it).

In other words, what a Bush promises, it delivers, and I knew that in this temple of beer, auntie-terrerism and precision flight, I couldn't go wrong!

Now, I know that in today's corporate climate of belt-tightening, I might be asked to sacrifice as a citizen. To pay more. To expect less. For the good of the country.

I stand behind this directive! Yes, sir!

But, sir, there is only so far any citizen can go on a regular basis. This beer was as warm as...well, I don't mean to be rude (and if y'rn a woman, skip to the next paragraph!) but that beer was as warm as...well, as Jesus said: "the path of an ass in the heat of July"*.

I found out from the Oriental woman running the counter (is she a terraist?) that the beer is "sprayed" to make it look all frosty and shit.

To add insultation to injuriousness, I paid too much for beer in the airport last time I was there, and I was surprised to find that the beer was even more expensive today - despite our conquerisquation of the rice and hop fields in Afghanistan.

Fox News (they've got a store in the Houston Airport!) said that Afghanistan was going to plow under the poppies for the "stoppies" - in other words, grains or other crops that would "stoppie" the drug trade. I want to help - but not if our government is going to let expensive Afghani rice and grain into our beers. It is time this practice stopped.

You'd think that those people have better things to do since we liberated them from the Tally-Man - but no - they just grouse an shoot at the brave Americans we send over there to fight.! It isn't like grain is hard to grow.**

(Aw, hell, we have better things to do - my wife has to spend hours on the phone with our investment counselors, trying to figure out what to do with all the money we made off of Enron in 2000!)

Back to business, what exactly are we fighting for, if not freedom? And does not freedom mean that OneClass members get beer on the cheap in the ass-hot terminals at GHWBIA? I'm disappointed. Therein lies the problem, and my complaint.

Since I was in the George H.W. Bush Airport, I proclaim my right to have the American people pay for my mistakes over the next twelve years. (Please submit a form 1099-DMBASS to the I.R.S. (not the record company!), and submit a credit to Capitol One against the above-mentioned account for $12.60.)

Thanks!

An American who can count. (and 2-3 Billion a week in Iraq is a lot to keep up with)

*Not an actual Jesus Quote. For actual Jesus Quotes, click here. Jesus quotes may be substituted, and not quoth by the actual carpenter, who may not actually be from Nazareth, Jerusalem, or for that matter, in this corporeal world. But hey - believe what you want. It might be Jesus on the other end. You never know.

**This entire post is a fucking joke. If you were on a phone, I'd say "hang up". If you haven't figured it out yet...pull the power plug outta your computer, drink a bottle of beer, and head for the nearest coast.

Microcowards

Microsoft should just bite the bullet and do what worked so well for Apple - let go of their entire legacy codebase. Seriously.

My advice to Microsoft is to buy or develop a new operating system with a provision for Windows compatibility - but the compatibility layer should be partitioned from the new OS and deprecated quickly.

Sure - put a few people on a team to make sure that legacy codebae will run in the new OS, but kill that insanely complex and increasingly bloated monster now, so we can all move forward.

Win32 and the NT Kernel are suffocating security, innovation, and style on the Wintel platform - which could develop into the MacTel platform more easily than I think people will admit at this point.