I remember my Unitarian minister in Oklahoma City once saying, “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.” I always thought that was a good perspective to take. Nonetheless, I think I can safely say that I have two kinds of friends on Facebook: those who discuss political and social matters on Facebook and those who don’t.
In the wake of President Obama’s surprise endorsement of gay marriage last week it did not surprise me that my friends in the latter category were 100% positive and supportive. I’m fully aware, of course, that plenty of people were not happy with that statement.
It reinforces my perspective that your experience on Facebook is exactly what you make it.
When I converted to Facebook timeline I thought my page looked really ugly due to all the check-in’s in proportion to other content. So I stopped, for the most part, doing check-in’s.
Then I had to ask myself, “What’s with that?” I don’t know if anyone even looks at my Facebook page. And why am I letting Facebook dictate what I do?
It’s been about a year since we switched from DirecTV to our local cable company. We did so because our Verizon DSL was horribly slow and we knew that to get Internet without television from Charter we’d have to pay a ridiculous premium, and that the only logical course was to sign up with them for both TV and Internet.
The annoying thing is that I’m still hearing from DirecTV. I’m not changing my mind, guys.
Then there’s SiriusXM radio. I had a home receive and a car receiver, but when my annual renewal came up I realized that the home receiver and Internet access were redundant and the home receiver was an unnecessary expense. So I dropped the home receiver, and kept my car receiver and Internet access. Now I’m getting those “we want you back” emails. Well first of all, you haven’t turned off my home receiver, and second, my Internet access is working fine.
I know these companies are in the business of making money and maximizing profit, but really, it does get a little (a lot actually) annoying after a while.
No doubt it’s true that a stressful work life can help induce us in moments of weakness to make purchases that we would perhaps not otherwise have made. And perhaps there’s an element of that to this purchase. At the same time, I think this was a purchase with some real practical value, and out of which I am getting a lot of use.
The radio reception inside the house here in Gilroy is pretty scratchy. And it doesn’t always make sense to fire up the desktop to listen online, especially during the day while I’m working on my company laptop. When I am at the desktop and listening to music, I’m always having to shift whichever streaming app I’m using out of the way.
The solution: an Internet radio. It plugs directly into the router (or I could have used WiFi), and I can manage my station list via my Web browser. It works just fine with my wireless audio transmitter, so we can listen from any place in the house we have wireless speakers.
Actually quite a useful purchase. Even more so than I anticipated, in fact.
Perhaps you’re familiar with the game Word Whomp. A group of cartoon gophers present a set of random letters and you click (or in the case of my iPad, tap) on the gophers to create words from the letters available.
Recently I was playing and the letters a-l-b were among those displayed. So, of course, good Episcopalian that I am, I entered “alb,” at which the gophers shook their heads and rejected the word.
What? As a practicing Episcopalian I resent that! I would expect the makers of a word game to recognize such a word, even if not in common use by most of the population.
I’m delighted to be part of the brother and sisterhood of iPhone owners.
My iPhone is much lighter than my old semi-Android phone, lacking the external keyboard. I think the screen is much sharper. It is happy to talk to a WiFi connection, which my old phone never would for some reason. And of course there is the famed iPhone user interface which is as great as it is made out to be. I even learned that I can group similar apps into folders: news, utilities, weather, Episcopal resources, etc. Something, it turns out, that works equally well on my iPad.
Speaking of the iPad, there’s also the fact that the two user interfaces are very similar. It’s easy to go back and forth between the two. With Apple’s new iOS 5 and iCloud my contacts, browser bookmarks, and notes are all in sync. Love it!
My only quibble: on my old phone I used an app called Cardiotrainer to track my walks. A man with a proper British accent would tell me, “workout started,” “workout paused,” workout resumed,” or “workout ended.” That app doesn’t exist for the iPhone and in my search for the right app for tracking my walks on my iPhone I haven’t yet found that pleasant voice.
A small price to pay for such a fun, cool device.
I ordered my iPhone on the day after Thanksgiving, the first day I was eligible for a new phone. In my impatience I toyed briefly with the idea of going to the Verizon store, but I knew that was a bad idea given that the store is located in the same shopping center as Target, Kohl’s, Ross, and Barnes & Noble. In any case I logged on to the Verizon Web site and quickly forgot about doing something so silly. I found my iPhone 4 at the expected $99 dollar price along with an additional $30 online discount. How about that? Verizon is rewarding me for doing something I didn’t want to do anyway.
It took me maybe twenty minutes to step through the whole process of ordering the phone, selecting my voice and data plans, and checking out. When my phone arrived on Tuesday of last week setup was simple and straightforward. I was up and running in another twenty minutes or so.
This compared to going into the Verizon store, waiting fifteen or twenty minutes for a sales rep, and then spending an hour going through the process of buying and setting up my phone, confirming my voice and data plans, and being presented with accessories I don’t need while the sales rep stares at his computer and mumbles.
How cool is that?
In tribute to Andy Rooney, though he may never have actually said this: “Did you ever notice…”
Facebook has the word “via” exactly backwards. If I share something that Fran Rossi Szpylczyn posted, Facebook will say “Mike Christie via Fran Rossi Szpylczyn.” But that’s not right. It’s really the other way around. Fran posted it originally, and I re-posted it. It’s Fran’s material passed on via Mike.
I’m just sayin’ …
I provided a Kindle update yesterday, so I thought I should provide an iPad update today. In short: I love it.
After I read the old-fashioned physical newspaper it’s how I spend my evening when Terry and I are sitting with our feet up and listening to jazz (or on Sunday, classical).
First I check out the comics that the San Jose Mercury News recently dropped when they rearranged their comics page (grrr). After that I review Facebook using the MyPad app, which still lists posts in simple chronological order (what a concept!). I then check out the various blogs I follow using my RSS reader. After that I’ll take a look at my various magazines (The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, etc.) depending on the day of the week and who has new issues. Then I’ll settle in with my Kindle app and my current book.
No paper, no putting down one thing and picking up the next. Everything all in one place on one device.
Love it.
My friend the Tahoe Mom was writing about the new Kindle app she installed on her computer, and it made me realize that I haven’t provided my own Kindle update here in a long time. I guess I’ve just been to busy enjoying it.
You know that I had an original Kindle and upgraded to the second generation Kindle. When I got my HP TouchPad I installed the Kindle app as soon as it was available. It was nice, but was a beta and was missing a number of features. When HP discontinued the TouchPad I bought my iPad 2, which I love.
The Kindle app on the iPad is great. It has a full-featured dictionary and allows sharing on Facebook and the saving of clippings. The display is clear and sharp and I can read single-page portrait or two-page landscape. Footnotes are easy to access and it’s easy to return to the page you just left. And the book covers are in full color. I’ve got quite the backlog of samples, as is my habit.
I was so pleased with my iPad Kindle app that I sold my second generation Kindle on eBay (along with my Canon pocket camera, which I replaced) and used the proceeds to buy iTunes and Amazon gift cards to feed my habits.
It’s working well. I’m pleased.
