goodbye, macbook. goodbye, DVD-ROM drive that Sparklet washed out with red wine. goodbye, keyboard that never really worked right again. and, most importantly, goodbye sticker-that-Sparklet-gave-me-and-stayed-with-me-for-the-last-three-years.
Tag: Apple
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sparklet: photobooth
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Most of sparklet’s photos are only available to her friends and family contacts on Flickr. If you aren’t a contact and would like to be, add sparklet as a contact here, and we’ll reciprocate asap.See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
photobooth -
elmo’s monster maker
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sparklet has a new ipad app, and a new found southern accent.the new app is “elmo’s monster maker” which lets her pick a muppet and then add custom eyes, noses, and hats. you can also have elmo come out and take a virtual snapshot of your monster, and our ipad photo gallery now has 200 pictures of monsters in various states of creation.
the funny part actually comes from sparklet’s new pronunciation of the word ipad by saying “i-pay-yad” — like the 65 year old southern lady that she is.
i wish i was making this stuff up.
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blackberry
I’ve changed phones, again — temporarily.With my new gig, I’ve been issued a Blackberry Bold — a newish model Bb with most the bells and whistles, but a step below the fancy-pants, big/touch screen models you see being pushed on TV.
so, I’ve packed away my Android and I’m going cold turkey for a month to see what having a Bb is really like. (trying to keep my personal phone going while i learn a new platform is just a recipe for frustration.)
I’ve actually never had a Bb before, which in itself is amazing. I had an iPhone for two years, and then the HTC Incredible. Bb’s were just becoming a thing when I left the Hill, but at that point only the Members and Chief of Staffs had them — unlike now, where they give them out like candy.
No reason to panic if you’re trying to reach me — I’ve already forwarded my old phone number, all the texts that may come in, and I’ve setup the Bb to check my person email address to boot. It’s all good.
I’m strangely excited — we’ll see how it’s going in a month.
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video: ipad
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9TfkNHnvzo
as a pre-emptive thank you gift, i bought the lady sparkler an ipad — mainly for the near-term pain she’s going to face with me switching from a 35 hour/wk job to one that’s more like 50 hours/wk.(she wants it to satisfy her horrible taste in tv/streaming video. the ipad is admittedly much more fun to watch on the couch than watching hulu plus on the computer at a desk.)
turns out, we had the thing for a sum-total of 72 hours before sparklet learned how to turn it on, navigate to the main menu, load up the photo application, select a photo from the index, and start flipping through the pictures.
i’m starting to wonder if we’ll ever see it again.
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goodbye, iphone
Well, it had to happen eventually.After 20 long months of AT&T suckage, i have finally taken my iPhone back to that great Daisy Hill Puppy Farm in the sky.
While the death-throws of our relationship have been well documented, baby sparklet was the two-ton brick that finally broke the camel’s back.
One afternoon in March, baby momma thought she was playing phone tag with me about some scheduling — she left me two voicemails and three text messages — but AT&T didn’t deliver any of them until it was too late to do any good.
Turned out it was nothing important, but neither of us particularly wanted to discover what it felt like if it *had* been something more life-or-death.
i got the HTC incredible — is one of the new-fangled google android phones. it has all the applications i used on the iphone, and has got some crazy social media integration (my address book entries link directly to their corresponding facebook and twitter accounts).
but the think i love most about my new phone is that it rings when called, and voicemails don’t get lost for days on end. i know it’s crazy, but it’s kind of nice having a phone again.
goodbye, foursquare
speaking of saying goodbye, when the iphone died we kicked foursquare to the curb as well (foursquare was the location-based social media application that made her “mayor” of her favorite playground).
in the end, it was just too darn competitive.
while we thought it was fun to keep track of where we had been, foursquare is setup to be a game, and the person who checks in the most wins. this was cute and all, but we apparently live within blocks of the #1 foursquare user in D.C. — with an average of 20 check-ins per day — and so our mayorships were under constant threat.
eventually, when I found myself making decisions on where to go based on where our mayorships were threatened, it struck me as the time to call it quits.
instead, we’ve swapped over to Gowalla which is waaaaay more low key. there are no mayorships, just rewards for going places and trying new things.
i’m saving up sparklet’s competitive streak for team sports.
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ipod
I’ve been without my music for about six weeks now.I really only use my iPod during work or commute (and I’ve been on leave) and then something got nosed up in Austin that caused all my music to disappear.
so, when I finally got things straigtened out last night, it was a bit like the scene from it’s a wonderful life when Jimmy Stewart runs up and down mainstreet:
Look, it’s the good old Sleater-Kinney! And there’s Kate Nash! Kathleen Edwards! Oh, Liz Phair, perhaps I missed you most of all.
it’s probably a sign i need therapy … or better taste in music.
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how at&t has made me hate my iphone
I think I should have guessed something was wrong last fall, when i accidentally left my iPhone in the car overnight. the next morning, when i realized what i had done, i secretly wished that my window had been smashed in and my iPhone taken.Rock bottom came two months later, when I dreamed that my iPhone was stolen … and i woke up bummed that it didn’t actually happen.
Don’t get me wrong, i love my iPhone. It’s arguably the best thing that I have ever owned. it’s just not a phone — because for it to be a phone, i’d have to occasionally get AT&T coverage within the borders of Washington, DC.
It turns out that my problem is a mixture of the science behind AT&T’s network, and location-location-location. The range of each cell tower shrinks as more and more people us that particular tower. In DC, all the towers are on the beltway. When the network gets busy, the coverage retreats from the center of the city towards the edges … which is exactly where I don’t live.
So, once the new version of the iPhone came out (and another gazillion people started using AT&T’s network) my reception went from spotty to non-existant.
When I walk around Mount Pleasant on an average day, I get limited, spotty access to AT&T’s vinatge EDGE network. I’ll average about two hours of cell coverage a day in my house, but more often than not those tenuous bars disappear as soon as I try and make a call.
In Columbia Heights, I don’t even get that … my phone tells me I’m roaming. Last week, I actually ducked into the Columbia Heights metro station because I needed to make a call. As far as i can tell, the best chance of getting a signal up here is to go underground.
To date, my only hope for salvation comes because Gizmodo.com is giving away a new Google Android if you write in to them and tell them why you deserve one. Which I did.
I need it because I’ve had 36 dropped calls in one day … because I regularly get voicemails a week after they are sent and text messages the following morning … because I now give my wife’s cell phone number out to friends and family … because I can’t stand the thought of riding out the last 6 months of my current phone contract.
So far, they have had 12,000+ comments, so I’m guessing i’m not going to be first in line to win. Either way, my contract with AT&T is up this summer, and once it expires, i’ll be long gone.
It turns out that it doesn’t matter how great your phone is, if your network blows chunks.
PHOTOS: Street in Mount Pleasant, DC by Chambo25 via a Creative Commons license; Darth Phone image courtesy Gizmodo.com.
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hiking in rock creek park (why we love dc #9)
it turns out that rock creek park (of Chandra Levy fame) has a network of trails … *actual* trails with switchbacks, elevation gain, wildlife, streams, and mud. not just the paved rec paths or glorified sidewalks you would imagine in a city park.
it amazes me that residents of Mt. Pleasant won’t shut up about the glory that is the National Zoo — though it is pretty awesome — and yet they neglect to mention the National Park-grade liking trails less than three blocks away.
even more stupefying is that we had the trails to our selves. sans a couple or dog owners and a pair of septuagenarians warning us about the perils of poison ivy (they had just been interviewed by News Channel 8 on the topic) there was nary a human in sight on a stunningly beautiful Sunday afternoon.
there are two main trails around the park … the western ridge trail and the valley trail. we looped through the bottom third of both in about two hours. the trails go from the Zoo all the way up to Maryland, but we weren’t that brave (and, frankly, should have been in better shoes).
we did get lost (yes, in rock creek park) and used my fancy-pants new iPhone’s GPS locator-thingy to save our bacon. I’d like to think that the coolness of the iPhone balances embarrassment of actually using it in the “wilderness” … but, sadly, it’s still just humiliating.
speaking of maps, those provided by the Park Service show the trails as one unintelligible smudge, which makes navigation (without an iPhone) that much more exciting. there are larger, more printer friendly rock creek trail maps here:
Map: Hiking Trails in Rock Creek Park (South)
Map: Hiking Trails in Rock Creek Park (North)Explore the Photoset:
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iPhone makes wife love you
on the way back from the airport last night, i had my first “come to Jesus” moment with my new, beloved iPhone …
it was late(ish) and we needed to get some food. there is nothing around the airport (bwi, yick…) and the lady sparkler said she wanted something that wasn’t fast food … like maybe baja fresh or panera, and then proceeded to start chatting up her cell phone.
so, ever looking for reasons to play with “my precious,” i brought up the fancy GPS/map thing, and typed in baja fresh. it immediately brought up my location, the location of the closest baja fresh (8.2 miles towards D.C.), plotted directions for me, and then proceeded to blink a blue dot to guide me in.
this, in itself, should have been enough to make me babble about the technology revolution all through dinner.
however, it turns out that when we made the blinking blue dot (us) match up with the steady red dot (them) there was no restaurant — but (!), when i clicked on the red dot to get more information about the restaurant, there was a phone number listed (which i clicked), and the phone dialed it automatically (!).
a nice boy told me we needed to go two blocks farther down the street. wifey ate, i didn’t go 20 miles out of the way, and evvvverybody was happy.
i’ve totally drunk the iPhone kool-aid. nothing will come between me and my precious … <ominous> noothiing </omninous>.
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Karma
I’m writing this from my brand new iPhone … from the side of the road next to our broken-down car.
Ain’t karma a #%*£?
It’s hard not to think that something is up. Hurricane Gustav came after the Louisiana Spindlers. Hannah tried to get the Virginia Parkers (but failed) and took a swipe at us (the DC Parkers?) but we had fled south.
And, just today, the Texas Spindlers took Hurricane Ike on the chin, though by all accounts they weathered the storm. But, in the immortal words of The Lady Sparkler, “if I were [the Oregon Spindler], I’d be on typhoon watch…”
So, considering every one is happy and healthy (and I have an iPhone), I guess a temperamental radiator isn’t such a big deal … thank the good sweet Lord.
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As a result, instead of it being filled up with screenshots of muppets, the iPad is now filled with shots of sparklet staring at the iPad’s screen.
307 times over.