Through A Glass Darkly Outside looking in.
Verizon FIOS Install: Take 1
I’m always a little trepidatious when I order service from Verizon. I think they are just too big and patchworked and entrenched. It seems like each of the separate departments are totally disparate and have no idea what the other is doing. And so, whenever I make a change, I worry, and Saturday, May 5th, was no exception. That is the date we decided to bite the bullet, and ordered a FIOS TV/internet/phone bundle. We were offered an install date that very Tuesday, but we pushed it off a couple weeks so we could run some coax for the TV service. That successfully completed, we anxiously awaited our optical goodness until today, our chosen install date. Let me note that this is not a horror story, at least not yet. It may all turn out to be innocent in the end.
What is wrong with people?
Imagine, if you will, a road that leads solely to a set of on-ramps to a highway. One goes north, one goes south. Now imagine a car following closely behind another car in one lane. If you were that car and wanted to pass the car in front of you, would you (A) slowly pull into the other lane and slowly pass the other car, then, right before the lanes diverge, pull back slowly into the original lane, without having actually finished passing the other car and without signaling, thereby forcing him into the shoulder or (B) pull into other lane, actually put your foot down on the accelerator to get to a speed where you could actually get in front of the other car, then signal and pull back into the lane.
I, and I hope most sensible people, would choose B. Apparently, the person I saw earlier disagrees with that assessment. WTF, indeed.
Signs Point to Yes
Is it pathetic that I couldn’t get myself to make an appointment for a physical until I found out I can interact with the doctor’s office online?
Probably, but I’ll take whatever gets the job done.
Moving Up
Every time I watch TLC’s Moving Up, I can’t help but be amazed by all the people who think their house is perfect and can’t imagine why anyone would want to change it. Even if it is a very nice design, that doesn’t mean it will fit with the style of the next owners, you wackos.
A Wrinkle in Time
I’m currently rereading Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quartet for like the five millionth time. Well, not the fourth one, Many Waters. That came later, and I’ve only read it a few times. But the first three, A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet were some of my all-time favorite childhood books. And the great thing about them is they are timeless. Sure, I read them a lot more quickly now, but they still resonate as very powerful, emotional stories.
The same is true of all her fiction that I’ve read, for young and old. She manages to cut right to the heart of people and life. And even though some of her books take place in a slightly older time, they don’t feel dated. They just feel true.
iPhone SDK Cometh
<looks at last post> Yeah, okay, it’s been a while. And guess what? I’m here to post about the iPhone SDK again. No, I don’t have a one track mind… honestly!
The SDK announcement has come and gone. As usual, it brought many oohs and ahhs and much wailing and gnashing of teeth. In typical Apple fashion, it has many wonderful and brilliant features, and a few drawbacks in the name of simplicity that draw the ire of power users like a lightning rod.
iPhone SDK Soon!
Apple finally coughs up:
Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.
I fully expected something like this to come along sooner or later, but I’m a little surprised they announced it so early. My boyfriend pointed out that it may have been due to the article in BusinessWeek. Or perhaps they wanted to quell some of the cries for blood after 1.1.1 reversed much of the hacking that has been going on.
While I’m excited to see what will happen with this — I do want an iPhone someday! — it’s going to be a long wait with all the speculation that tends to accompany any Apple announcement like this.
Alrighty then
Seen coming out of the offices I work in. I wish I could have gotten a shot of the front of this costume, red and yellow boots and all. Maybe “Who Wants to Be a Superhero” is holding auditions?
iPhone Day Nears
Apple and AT&T have slowly been trickling information about the iPhone as the release date draws nearer. Today, Apple updated the iPhone web page with a variety of extra information. It doesn’t answer all the questions, but it’s a lot more details than we’ve gotten so far. The new 20-minute guided tour video is incredibly drool-worthy. I’ve been trying not to get too interested in the iPhone, partly because I’m in contract with another wireless company, but also because I wondered if it could really be as good as the earlier demos and commercials made it out to be. If it is anywhere close to what’s shown on that video, it is slick. Oh. My. God, is it slick. Sure, it’s not perfect with some of the features, and many people want actual applications for the phone, not just web apps, but those are decisions made by Apple and/or AT&T, not exactly design flaws. What is there is wow. Just… wow. There still remain more questions to be answered, and I’m glad I won’t be an early adopter; this is one instance where I’d really rather see other people figure out what the limitations are, but even so…
I want one.
Kavalier & Clay: Amazing
At first, I wasn’t sure what to think of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I’m can’t remember where I heard about it first, but it sat in my Amazon wishlist for a while. I didn’t know what kind of book to expect. A book about two boys who set out to write comic books? What’s that all about? Then Neil Gaiman mentioned the author, Michael Chabon, on his blog, and I thought if Neil liked it, that boded well. So I finally ordered it.
Boy, am I glad I did.
It is a heartfelt, heartwarming, heartbreaking novel. There are touches of the surreal, which complement the emotional content, a bit like John Irving, but not that strange. I was charmed. Yes, it’s about comics in the Golden Age, which provides a rich fabric in which the story is woven. It’s also about war, death, grieving, but life and laughter too.
Kavalier & Clay is a story of two Jewish cousins, one from Brooklyn, one sent to America by his family to escape the Nazis. They develop a dream of creating comic books, which takes them far. At the same time, they struggle to figure out who they are and where they belong in the world. I highly recommend it.
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