The Vig

Is Tumblr.  You may have noticed some slight changes to the layout here.  Things have been added, deleted, or moved.  The biggest change, for me at least, is the addition of my Tumblr feed.  It’s much easier to post links there from my iPhone than it is to use the WordPress iPhone app.  Plus I kind of want to make this space more about my own thing and less about commenting on others’ work.

Like everything else in my world right now, this is a work-in-progress.  Once the dust settles in a few months, I may try and find a template that integrates Tumblr into my WordPress blog a little better.  This particular solution isn’t very pretty, but it does the job.

A microcell for my house.  Seriously, this thing cannot get to Portland fast enough.

Back in mid-June I went into an AT&T store to help a friend who was having some issues with her Blackberry.  I wanted to get her upgraded to the latest and greatest OS so she could access the app store.  After a few minutes, we got the directions we needed.  As we left, the girl asked if we needed anything else.  Then she uttered the Siren Song.

“$99 iPhone!”

I’ve resisted getting an iPhone from the start.  Yeah, it’s a great device.  But it’s on AT&T and we had an awful break-up several years ago.  I figured I’d never be able to go back.  But the lure of the price tag proved to be too much.  So I went through the application process and wouldn’t you know, I was approved!  No deposit, no nothing!  I couldn’t believe it.  I walked out with a new device that day.

And I love it…I really do…when it works.

My first trouble was a few weeks after I first purchased it.  I was driving to the coast when it quit getting service west of Salem.  I kept waiting for service to return, but it never did.  It wasn’t until I got to Lincoln City that I finally turned it off and back on.  Then it worked.  And it worked for the entire drive back.  Weird.

The second incident was much worse.  I was at the UFC fight a couple of weeks ago.  It was my intent to Tweet the entire thing.  But I had zero coverage inside the arena.  None.  Zilch.  The guy next to me’s iPhone worked.  But mine?  Nope.  The entire time I was inside the event, I was unable to send or receive texts or get into Twitter.  And it Pissed. Me. Off.  What REALLY got to me was after I’d walked outside and the thing came right back as though nothing had happened.

The capper came this last weekend, standing inside the Circuit City out at the airport.  Again, I had no coverage inside the building.  This really isn’t right.  Especially at the airport.  I don’t care if it’s inside and I’m surrounded by electronics.  My Verizon Blackberry never had this problem.

I finally decided to give it up on Saturday night.

Listen.  The iPhone is the finest device out there.  There is no equal.  I know.  I’ve had them all.  When it works, I’m able to stream radio stations from across the country, especially helpful when you don’t want to hear the Dan Patrick radio show on a five-hour tape delay.  The Blackberry will also do this, but it drops out after several minutes.  The iPhone doesn’t, at least not at the office.

The applications for the iPhone are also spectacular.  The Twitter apps are superior to anything the Blackberry offers as is the Facebook app.  Apps like AroundMe, Fandango, and Urbanspoon simply don’t exist for the Blackberry.  And don’t get me started on the MLB app.  Live games on my iPhone?  Wherever I am (provided the phone works)?  The thing is simply fantastic.

But if I can’t get coverage, it’s useless.  Verizon’s network, at least here locally, is second-to-none.  It works everywhere I go, every time.

So yeah, going back to the Blackberry is going to be tough.  I won’t be in the wilderness long though.  The Palm Pre is coming to Verizon soon and I’ll be picking that up at my first opportunity.  That is provided Verizon doesn’t also get the iPhone themselves.  In the meantime, I’m going to be that much less cool.

I had the pleasure of attending yesterday’s Tom Friedman lecture at Portland State.  A co-worker and I both showed up without tickets and after a half hour or so of waiting, were allowed in.  The room was definitely divided between the haves aned the have-nots.  The haves were all seated on the floor in their own chairs.  The commoners were sent to the Stott Center bleachers.  Actually, we ended up with better seats than Ted Kulongoski, who was reported to have been down front, but actually took a seat in the rear of the place and left a good fifteen minutes before the lecture was over.  Friedman made it a point to mention he’d met with both Kulongoski and Portland State President Wim Wiewel prior to  the event, but failed to mention even one green initiative either man presented.  Not exactly a stellar endorsement.

If you’ve followed Friedman for any length of time you would have found the presentation pretty boiler plate.  He’s gone to cool places and seen some cool things.  And that’s great.  Yet even he seemed underwhelmed by what’s going on out there.  He kept coming back to this idea that “going green” seems to be more of a hobby for people right now than an actual industry.  A perfect example locally is that lame solar plant down at the junction of I-5 and I-205 between Wilsonville and Tualatin.  Hey great!  We can light up a freeway exit with the sun!  But we can do so much better.  And Friedman challenged the audience to do better.

“Get off Facebook and into someone’s face,” he admonished us.  The change we seek isn’t here on-line, it’s in the Senate cloak room.  And he’s right.  The innovation is out there.  There are guys everywhere doing some spectacular things.  What we’ve lacked is the leadership to channel our efforts.

He talked about hobbiests in garages sparking energy innovation.  The way he described it reminded me a lot of films I saw as a kid of people trying to figure out flight.  You’ve seen them too.  We watch these films now and laugh.  What fools!  But the thing is, until the Wright Brothers, no one knew how to fly.  And they were trying everything.  What Friedman suggested was we incubate tens of thousands of these inventors and creators in the hope that just one or two seriously take off. Because like the Wright Brothers, it will all be worth it when we find the one discovery that works.  It will all be worth it.

For months now we’ve heard all about this digital transition.  Your rabbit ears are going away and we’re going to live in a glorious new digital wonderland.  The drop-dead date for the transition was supposed to be February 17th, but the government got cold feet at the last minute and put the brakes on.

As we lead up to that date, Comcast ran literally thousands of ads telling their customers that they’d be alright.  As long as we had Comcast, there was nothing to worry about.  Turns out, there sort of is somethint to worry about.  See, on March 18th, if you take your cable straight out of the wall, channels 31(ish) through 71 will go blank on your TV.  Why?  Because those channels will all be going digital and your tee vee is analog.  At least my nine-year-old Sony is analog.

But it’s all good, you see.  Why?  Because I subscribe to digital TV.  I get HBO, the NFL Network, the MLB Network, and Turner Classics.  I’m set.  March 18th can come to me and I don’t care.  So I keep moving down the road.

Until today.

Today I was listening to an episode of Harry Shearer’s LeShow when a light bulb flickered in my head.  He’s been talking about the digital transition for well over a year now and definitely knows his stuff.  In this episode he was talking about the lowly VCR.  You know, that thing you donated to Goodwill five years ago when you got a dvd player and a Tivo.  Well it turns out people out there still have them and love them.  At least they do for now.  See, when the great digital transition happens, you’ll no longer be able to watch one channel and tape another on your VCR.  Why?  Because your VCR has an analog tuner.  And when we go digital, analog tuners will no longer work.  So you’re going to have to route your digital tuner through your VCR and into your TV, but the digital tuner will govern what channel you’re watching, not your TV tuner or your VCR tuner.

And this zaps cable users as well because when Comcast does their thing, your VCR will no longer be able to tune into channels 31(ish) through 71.  So unless you have a Comcast DTA box between your VCR and the wall, you’re out of luck.  And because the channels will only change on the DTA box, your VCR will no longer be able to record different channels.  That feature is done.

Listening to this made me chuckle.  I mean who uses a VCR anymore?  It’s the 21st Century.  Everyone is on Tivo.  And my Tivo is awesome.

Except…

My Series 2 Tivo gets its signal straight from the wall.  And it has an analog tuner.  Curses!  Comcast is turning my Tivo into a brick!

So I put the question out on Twitter.  WTF, Comcast?  Within five minutes I had answers back from both Tivo and Comcast.  I would be alright.  Or so they thought.  They figured I had the new HD Tivo and all I would need was a cable card from Comcast.  But I don’t.  I have a Series 2, which has no such adapter.  So in order to make my Tivo work, I need a new box.  A not inexpesive option.  The thing goes for $300, which is 3/5 of what I was planning to spend on a new flat screen TV, and requires a new one-year commitment.  The other option is to get Comcast’s DVR, but I already pay them enough and the reviews have been less than stellar.  Freaking great.

After a little Googling, it seems there’s a work-around with the DTA that may work.  I’ll try it out this weekend and report back.  So much for this being a seamless transition for Comcast customers.

I love the Cutline theme I’ve chosen for this blog.  It’s clean.  It’s easy to look at.  But with the new WordPress 2.7, it’s been found lacking.  There was no support for Gravatars, for example.  And threaded comments, the feature I was most excited about with the new WordPress, didn’t work either.

Well, it’s all been solved as of today.  And I couldn’t be happier.  So go get yerself a Gravatar and leave a comment!  They’re quite fun, trust me.

I’m upgrading to Wordpress 2.7 tonight.  If I don’t come back, call Aaron Hockley.

Update: I survived!  I feel like I’m in an alternate universe now, however.  Too many new buttons.  This thing is crazy.

HT: Wired.

Double hat tip:  Pete in Parkrose.  He knows why.

A fascinating observation from Seth Godin.

The market doesn’t care a whit about maintaining your industry. The lesson from Napster and iTunes is that there’s even MORE music than there was before. What got hurt was Tower and the guys in the suits and the unlimited budgets for groupies and drugs. The music will keep coming. Same thing is true with books. So you can decide to hassle your readers (oh, I mean your customers) and you can decide that a book on a Kindle SHOULD cost $15 because it replaces a $15 book, and if you do, we (the readers) will just walk away. Or, you could say, “if books on the Kindle were $1, perhaps we could create a vast audience of people who buy books like candy, all the time, and read more and don’t pirate stuff cause it’s convenient and cheap…” I’m a pessimist that the book industry will learn from music.

As one who’s fascinated by the Kindle, I can tell you definitively that if bestsellers were $5 each on that thing, I’d probably buy a couple a month, which is a couple more books than I buy now.  I don’t buy books.  Especially not bestsellers.

The marketing budgets for the big book houses have already all but disappeared.  In its place is crap like this, which simply won’t fly.

Hat tip:  Sullivan

Apparently there’s a big announcement coming out tomorrow morning at 8 am.  Strange timing given that we’re about to enter the Christmas shopping season.

I used to be a loyal Circuit City shopper.  It was my second-favorite electronics store after Fry’s.  The last few years, however, the place has become dreary.  And every time I go in there, I’m hounded by salespeople.  It’s not as bad as going into Video Only, which I don’t recommend unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, but it’s close.  The place to be now is Best Buy.

I’m a browser and a pretty decent researcher.  I know what I’m looking for and don’t need a community college kid “helping” me with my decision.  Best Buy does a good job of leaving me alone.  Circuit City, not so much.  Can’t say I’ll miss them if they leave PDX.

Update: No Oregon stores on the list, and only one in Washington.