Monday, October 27, 2008

Parents !!!

Saturday we had our yearly Halloween aka "Fall Festival" neighborhood party. You know the drill - pony rides, chili cookoffs, costume contests, etc. All geared toward a fun ol' time for the kiddies. Yet there always seems to be at least one parent who doesn't get it that the whole thing is supposed to be fun.

To set the stage: one of the activities was a small bounce house. A rotating group of neighborhood volunteers was monitoring the bounce house - 8 kids at a time, 5 minutes per rotation. Now this bounce house was pretty closed-in. Not a lot of visibility from the outside.

So, I'm standing in line with the Princess for awhile (maybe I should call her Tinker Bell 'cause that's her costume this year...). We make our way to the front of the line and are patiently waiting our turn when a woman comes storming up with her daughter in tow. I would guess her daughter was in the 8-10 year old range. The mom starts going off on the volunteer about how her daughter had been hit in the mouth by some kid in the bounce house. Now I had been in line for quite awhile and that mom had been no where around. I saw no damage to the daughter, just a pouty face. Yet this woman started getting more-and-more aggressive toward the volunteer like it was her fault or as if something really horrible had happened. The volunteer patiently kept explaining she couldn't watch the kids all the time, was just a volunteer, and generally handling it more calmly than I would have. Finally the woman yelled she was going to hunt down the kid who hit her daughter so she could "tell his parents what she thinks about it." Apparently thoughts like "why weren't you watching your daughter" never crossed her own mind. For sure this lady's daughter will grow up having a hard time dealing with life on her own.

Oh, I saw the pair about 30 minutes later. The mother was still fuming. Yeah, they had a great time at the festival.

And folks wonder why no one likes to volunteer...

iPhone Takes over the Earth

Great news for my iPhone peeps! Google has released it's Earth application and in fine fashion indeed. It takes advantage of the motion sensors built into the iPhone to adjust the view as you move your iPhone around.

Read all about it at TUAW.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Google Reader

Following Harald's lead I too want to note that in addition to seeing a few shared headlines on my Facebook account and here on the blog there is now a page available via Google Reader. I tend to share technical tips, some humorous items and some others I consider generally useful. In other words whatever I feel like :-) Click here to visit and/or subscribe to the feed.

I've been using Google Reader for a few years now. I switched to web-based reading since I keep a pretty solid partition between my work computers and home computers. Since the blogs I follow are a mix of work, personal, and in-between I want access to all my feeds no matter what hardware I'm using. I used Bloglines are first but switched to Google Reader as its features, and integrations, improved.

Monday, October 13, 2008

iPhone Life (battery, that is)

I've had my iPhone 3G for several months and read a lot of complaints about its battery life. Most of the complaints seem to be - if I use it a lot the battery doesn't last a day and that makes me cry. Wah wah...

I've had Crackberry and Smartphones/(aka dumb Windows Mobile) for years and I can assure you the iPhone's battery life is in reality best in breed when used like a BB or WM device.

But I can also confirm if you use it "for all it's worth" the battery won't make it to bedtime. In my case "for all it's worth" would mean a number of phone calls, checking email on it regularly, and running applications requiring net and location signals. Also throw in some podcast/video watching to the mix. When I do all this I come up an hour or two short on battery life.

I needed to travel to San Jose for several days of (boring) meetings and knew I'd make heavy use of the iPhone on the plane and to entertain myself while there. I needed extra battery power and after searching around selected the Richard Solo DX001 for the trip. I'd heard good things about the item and the price wasn't too bad (though more than the old AA battery pack I used to use to extend my iPod's life).

Having had the DX001 for a few weeks I can say that it has worked without issue and as advertised. If not for the trip I probably would have tried to wait a few more months as I expect more aesthetic solutions will eventually make their way to market. But if, like me, you need something now I do recommend the DX001. Not only does it work but also the customer service response to my pre-sale questions was very fast. Non-expedited shipping brought it to my door in 2 days == happy camper :-)

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Reminds Me of the Internet Bubble

Microsoft has gotten so desperate to catch up in the (now misnamed) search business that it will pay you to use Live.com's search. Saw this originally at David Pogue's blog.

Following on the heels of the horrible Seinfeld ad campaign and Ballmer's denials in the "Vista ready" lawsuit I really wonder how such a rudderless ship manages to prosper. Ah, the miracles of a monopoly...