iDay

Yes, it is iDay. I am very excited, and a little depressed. I am very excited because the coolest thing ever, or at least in a long time came out today. The Belkin Mini Jack Converter for that one thing from Apple. Is it the iFoam? Some packing material I heard. Anyway, I want an iPhone very badly. Fortunately, I am going to get one. I just have to wait like 8 months. And if I am at all lucky, there will be 3G by then. I am OK with all of its "flaws" except for the 3G. That should be better. I have to say I am a little surprised it is not there. There have been reports of people noticing that their Cingular EDGE networks have seemed a little faster and one guy even took a snap shot of his screen on his phone of the results of a speed test. He got 200k or something. And the normal for EDGE is like 150-180k. This could mean that AT&T is doing some work to make their EDGE network a little ore bearable. But still, 200, even 250k if they managed to get their EDGE speeds that high, would not be much of an improvement. If Apple were to put a 3G chip in the iPhone, and who's to say they didn't already and it is a software update away, you would have speeds of 400k-700k anywhere you had AT&T coverage. Not just in that lame little wi-fi hot spots. When I saw the keynote and saw Steve introduce mobile safari that was the "Real Safari" I was excited thinking that omg, the iPhone is going to be the Internet in your pocket. But no, not exactly, he comes along not to long later to tell us that it is only 2G. He had better be glad he is Apple, and that there are still some VERY cool features on the iPhone, because that would have been enough to loose my interest if they were say . . .Sony. I think Apple would make tons if they didn’t get into the phone market. They just had a wi-fi safari browser and a touch screen iPod, and sold it for $299.99, or even $249.99. I would go out and buy it that day. The whole phone thing, I just don’t know. If they had left that market alone, things could have gone well. Or if they had less mobile features and it was more focused on being an iPod and internet device. If it were unlocked, and you didn’t need a new contract, you just needed to take it to your Verizon store, your T-Mobile store, and they would activate it for you, that would in my opinion sell just as well without the carrier lock in. My reasoning I personally think that people are all hyped up about this iPhone is this. People at this point in time, are pissed off at their cell phones. This may be true more or less, but on average people are not 100% satisfied with their phones. But carriers are different. Carriers, people are not only pissed off at, most people hate their carriers, carriers, and their phones. People think of Apple as the company that does things right, the company that makes things beautiful, simple, and easy to use. Now when such a company announces that they will be producing a mobile phone, this is what makes people so excited. Apple technically is going to have their iPhones running on the AT&T network, but is going to keep the interference between AT&T, and their iPhone buyers, to a minimal. For example, the activation of the iPhone is done in iTunes. This basically says to AT&T, “We want our costumers to have the easy of use that they have grown accustom to when activating their iPhones, so you are obviously not in the equation, kay?” AT&T agreeing to this is not a bad idea. Although AT&T might not have much control, they are going to make huge profits. For those of you who did not know this, Apple originally went to Verizon, a much stronger and more reliable network (sorry AT&T fan boys if there is such a thing) and Verizon did not agree to the terms Apple was proposing. Now I don’t blame Verizon entirely, they had no idea what this phone was going to be capable of; they didn’t really get to know anything about it. All that Verizon was told is that Apple would have full control over advertising, and control rate plans, but it would be fair. Naturally, Verizon did not want anything to do with that. AT&T (then Cingular) knew about Apple, and what they were capable of doing. AT&T was able to see that giving up control of one of their phones could bring in large amounts of profits. AT&T eventually agreed, and we are going to see how things play out over the next few months. But for now, we are going to have to just wait. More about me though, I am going to Great America on Sunday, and tomorrow I will be doing iPhone stuff and homework all day. Hopefully I will get to touch one and do a short write off of the multi touch system tomorrow as well. Let’s move slightly away from the iPhone, and on to networking. Out of the box, Macs are fully open to talking to other Macs, I print to other Mac’s printers in my house, and I save files on another Mac’s drive. But I have never actually tried to network my Gateway laptop to any of the Macs. I only wanted to today because I do not have a printer in my room, and needed to print something. I only print once in a blue moon, so this never really came up before. But today I wanted to. I am able to print to the iMac in the basement from anywhere in the house on the MacBook, but I would like the same capability on the Gateway. Well, five minutes on a mixture of google and Mac Help, and I found out that if I installed Bonjour on my PC, it would recognize the shared printers and set them up in the windows printer utility for me. That worked instantly. But then I wanted more. I decided that I wanted file sharing as well. (btw, I used it to transfer this post which I was typing in word from the Mac to the pc) So I went onto google, I went onto Apple’s help page, but eventually got my help from some forums that I was to excited to take note of the name of. (Sorry unknown forum) Long story short, I am able to not only see, but read, write, delete files on my pc from my Mac now, and on my Mac from my pc. Of course, Apple makes it much more beautiful. Good thing I have an XP pc too, because I would not have done this on a Vista pc.
-Ryan

6/18/07

Today was a good day I suppose. I will start with my day, but if that doesn't matter to you, scroll down to some format war news. Ok, I woke up to find that my family had left to my mom's sisters son's 6 year old birthday. So I had the house to myself all day, which was nice. I went down, made a Stouffer's casserole thing in the microwave, and ate that. Then I went upstairs, took a shower, and then I went down to the treadmill and fell asleep power walking. Not literally of coarse. I had my eyes shut and held on adjust kept walking. I got in 3 miles, and burned 350 calories. I Got my heart rate up to 209. It was fun. So I finished that, I started some homework. I did about 15 minutes of homework and then I got a call from my mom telling me that she was bringing me some steak from the party, and asked me to get bo ready for a walk. I said yes, and put my homework away. When she got home we walked bo, I rode alongside her on my bike. About 50 feet from my house, I decided to do a fishtail in a sandpit, and I did, and then when I went to pull out of it, the chain slipped off, so I had to walk out of the sand and walk the bike home. The bike is a nice one, it is only two years old. It has disc breaks and everything. It is not the first time this has happened either. So I am a little upset at Mongoose for building such a bad bike. But that was cool, cause I really don't care and have a hundred other bikes all over my garage. So I went in, ate the steak my mom brought me, and then I got back to homework. I did homework until like 20 minutes ago while talking t Derek. Then I took the MacBook to were I am sitting right now and pulled up Google Reader. Not much struck my eye until I found out that Blockbuster chose Blu-Ray as the HD disc format they will be marketing. This angers me because Blu-Ray players cost more, and it has been what, 8 months that you can purchase a Blu-Ray disc? And the coating on them is beginning to rust already. I like Blu-Ray more in theory, and I was on the side of Blu-Ray for a while, it has more capacity, has a cooler name, and Microsoft doesn't like them, whats not to love? Well, the players. They cost too much. An HD-DVD player is almost 50% cheaper. Half the capacity, meant you have to package your movies with 2 discs if it comes down to it. I am just mad because Blockbuster deciding to go with Blu-Ray is a pretty big punch in the face for HD-DVD. I hope the producers have chosen one of the two by the holidays, because my family is planning to upgrade out TV, out Player, and our sound system. And I don't want to have to old off because the effing producers are still throwing baby fits about why this is better, or this is better. Just shut the fuck up and choose one! If Blu-Ray does become the standard, I would hope that Sony is able to build a quality Blu-Ray player that is not lacking in features and is affordable. If Sony is unable to do this, I will not be buying, I will just stick with the HD on-demand Comcast movies for the time being. I used www.urltea.com today, and I like it much better than www.tinyurl.com. It is prettier, but it seems faster and more reliable. Plus, it automatically copies the shortened url to your clipboard.

Good Night All,

-Ryan

4/22/07

I was sitting out in my garage today (sunday) with my father. We were discussing how there are 113 days until i get my permit and how i want the key to the camry as a birthday gift. He was all ok, get good grades and shit. We went inside to get lemon aid. I got some and started to walk outside, saw mackenzie was walking over, so i shut the dore quickly and ran. I waited like 10 minutes, my dad was with my mom talking about something. I eventually peeked out. And she was leaning against my car ( I got a carwash and a tire shine earlier that day) and I was like get off my car you idiot. (word for word, I seriously hate her) and she is like I think you need to sit down. I am like I think you need to go home. I sat down and started to sip my lemon aid. She helped herself to one of my chairs. And then she was like I dont know how to tell you this, but it's just not working out. And I was thinking OMG she cannot be talking about what i think she is talking about. But she was. lol, she was like there is this other boy that I like (not sure of him name) and she is like I really like him and i think he likes me back because he didnt hang up on me and was nice to me on the phone (infering that i am an ass and hang up on her alot on the phone ((i usually dont even answer)) ) and I am like HA! thats a mistake. And she is like I can see your hurt. I say, Nope. . . She says yes you are, I say, I dont believe I am. And she is like, well, we can still be friends, I never really wanted a relationship anyway. (note that I was never even aware that I was her friend) And I am like you know, I dont really want anything. She says what do you mean because she is as dumb as a piece of wood. And I saw, I dont even want to be your friend. And she pauses for a moment, and then gets all defensive and says, SO YOU DONT WANT TO BE FRIENDS, YOU DONT WANT ME TO CALL YOU, AND YOU DON'T WANT TO HANG OUT? And I said, ummmmmm. . . . that sounds about right, bye now. (all happy like) and walked inside. (for dramatic affect and to make her feel bad) I am not usually that much of a dick, but since the day I moved into my house about 6 years ago, I have not been able to walk outside and or have much of a social life without her tagging along, (she even invites herself into my house sometimes) And she is exceptionally rude without knowing it. so I don't feel bad. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Feel bad for the next guy she stalks. Her idea of having a romantic relationship is taking bike rides, and holding hands. Call me shallow, but that sounds a little boring.

-Ryan