Archive for the 'Work' Category

Frank, Sarah’s little brother, is now 21. We went to Famous Dave’s, a chain BBQ place, last night, and he did not get carded. Sarah didn’t get carded either, but she wasn’t that surprised. It made me think back to when I was 16 and my sister was 26 and the two of us were wandering around Key West, Florida, during the week that my brother got married. We stopped into a bar, because there’s more of those than anything else in Key West. She got carded; I ordered a Sprite, the bartender asked if I was sure that’s “all I wanted.” My sister was upset… in a few more years, I’m sure that getting carded no longer upset her.

I also took a trip down memory lane, earlier in the week, when an old ex-girlfriend apologized to me on facebook, in case she was ever heartless or selfish. She wasn’t and I told her so. It got me thinking about past relationships… there are a few people I should probably apologize to; I guess I have a few regrets, but I think I only really hold one grudge, maybe two. Facebook is certainly good for bringing up these random memories and feelings.

In other news, camp is almost over, though I got roped into an extra week. It’s going to be a low-enrollment/more chilled-out version of camp, but it’s still another week of getting up early and going to the city. My hope is that my seniority and 15+ years of camp experience will mean that I’m running the show as the fill-in director. My history in these matters is that I’m promised a director’s position and/or I fill in for one until a decision is made and then it isn’t given to me… no such promise was made this time, so maybe this will be the time it happens.

The commute to camp has been made much nicer, this summer, by the set of Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5vi that I picked up when they went on super-sale at Amazon. Unfortunately, the cord busted on the first set, so I had to get myself another set, but Logitech customer service got back to me about my complaint and replaced the first set for free… in the meantime, the cord started to separate, right at the jack, on the second set. I put some electrical tape on there to hold it together until the replacement set came. I’m hoping they replace them as well. The foam tips are the most comfortable, but it makes me sad that they fall apart after a week and half or so. I think my ear canals are too small or something because all of the various sized silicone tips irritate my ears a bit and seem to wiggle their way out. The cord is obviously cheap on this model, both have broken and it makes lots of contact-noise when I’m walking around, but if I ever upgrade to something better, I might look into those custom ear-molded ones.

I’m also still playing the music on my commutes from my iPod. I was hoping to be just be carrying the Droid. I am carrying an extra battery for the phone, so I don’t have that excuse anymore, and it’s not that it’s not capable, but the lack of gapless playback (for those few albums that really need it) or built-in volume normalization (for regular shuffle) or a shuffle-by-album option (for when I feel like reconnecting with my albums, which is most of the time) makes me continue to carry my iPod. There are alternative music apps that attempt to solve these issues (at least the gapless and shuffle by album), but none puts it all together. I’m sure that future versions of Android will get these features in, especially if the rumors are true and they start using android as an OS for a media-player type device. Will these features make it in before I upgrade to a new phone?

I’ve found the phone very difficult to use this summer. I’m not sure if it’s just too humid at my mostly-outside job, or if I sweat too much (likely) but the touchscreen gets all freaked out and thinks it’s being touched all over the place and renders the phone useless until I clean it off… and even then, I can only get good response from it for a few seconds until it starts freaking out again. If I go somewhere cool and dry (air conditioned) and give it some time to recover… and give myself some time to recover and not be so sweaty … it works just fine. This wasn’t an issue at all in the Winter and Spring; It will probably affect when I decide to upgrade to a new phone. I’ll be eligible for a bit of a discount in early July, and that humidity will just be starting to bother me again. So whatever awesome android phone is available on July 06, 2011, you can pretty much bet that I’ll be buying one. If it continues to happen on the next phone I own, I’ll have to seal my phone in a ziploc bag all summer, or something.

I’m pretty sure I have a legitimate use for the wireless tether feature of the Droid. We’ve booked ourselves a few days at a cabin in Gatlinburg, TN, in late September. The rental policy said something about having “local Knoxville area access numbers…” Dial-up? Awesome. I don’t think I know anyone in the area (unless EJ is still around there, somewhere), so this one is going to be pure vacation, for me, and no attempting to visit friends/family. That stuff will have to wait until sometime around the holidays. It’ll be one of the longer roadtrips we’ve done in the past couple years, and I’m excited about that.