you might as well blink

it was just the other night, enjoying a pre-release version of the new frustrated felines game and a tall glass of whatever it is that keeps you (yes, you) up at night, that i realized the problem with my life. it isn't apparent to most people, but a steady diet of disposable pie flavors, amusingly-armed cartoon cats, and fleece blankets is enough to break my concentration. life itself becomes visible when there is little on the horizon, that time for reflection being most critical. to put it in stereotypically confusing terms, what is not apparent is not apparent until nothing is apparent. while some folks are figuring the best colored wall to cast their shadows against, the rest of us are waiting around for a more meaningful experience than the same old 'solve this riddle to unlock' mobile phone game. life, in short, is frustratingly feline.

in a world with no jaws

there are only two types of people in a world with no jaws. those who should and those who say nothing at all. the former are valued for their ability to consume popsicles and extinguish birthday candles. the latter are considered prime dating material by librarians and shoplifters.

i own a partial share in a couch

because no one can own a couch. just like no one owns the magma feeding the couchcano that spewed it to life.

at minimum, the title has to be sarcastic

there are times to ask the simple questions, and there are times when you are stuck probing the mysteries that keep people going from day to day. i don't mean the meaning of life questions. i'm not going to figure out how to give the rest of my money to apple. maybe they could use it. after all, the ceo is sick and all everyone seems to care about is their stock price. i feel bad, but then he wants and deserves his privacy. it seems like some journalistic best wishes wouldn't hurt, though. i get that publicly traded companies and private lives don't always mix well. in all seriousness, though, i know why everything apple has to be such a big deal these days. i have a hard time thinking of something that has brought the sense of wonder that the iphone did, and continues to do.

i wonder at times whether people realize how much the iphone changed the way we interact with technology. the blackberry is probably the only other mobile device that has created anything like the pathos of the iphone.

while we're letting the old pc wars replay themselves in the smartphone arena, let's not forget how we got here this time. a product came along that combined new and existing technologies in a way that changed the dynamics of the entire marketplace. then, things got complicated as the responses from competitors became more compelling on their own merits. not only is the closed vs. open platform debate restarting, so is the issue of the innovating platform being ripped off by an imitator that grabs a higher market share. all of this is far less interesting to me than the replay of the old logic versus emotion debate.

apple's products have this emotional life, generating feelings of loyalty or affection. some people don't like this, and argue that there's no rational reason for this, because apple users are blind to the superior speed, capabilities, etc of other products. the problem is, that type of reasoning is just responding to an emotionally appealing product by arguing that there is no logic to back up that pathos.

it really doesn't matter; we can use whatever technology we want and it shouldn't bother us what other people use. but as i type this on a laptop that at times recently has slid back to its old habit of demanding a double(!) reboot to get on the internet, i'd say that my emotional relationship to a device has a huge impact on my experience using it. it doesn't matter what specs my computer has if it gets in my way when i'm trying to do something simple. it especially doesn't matter what specs my computer has when i recently found out i was wrong both about the processor speed and amount of ram installed on it. having used it for almost two years, i know what it's like; it's infuriatingly resistant to wifi. no matter what specs and capabilities it has, it's just a lemon unless that mess goes away.

i leave my laptop on whenever possible, just so i don't have to trick it back into a wifi connection again. it seems trivial, but it poisons my relationship with a computer i have decorated with stickers and that i enjoy in most regards. i just find myself looking for things to do while i give it the two to six minutes it frequently needs to find the wifi.

this seems crazy because technology has become so instant. i can wake my ipod touch and get the weather in what seems like an instant. if you count the time it takes to walk to the room that has your thermometer, it's as fast as checking the temperature and gives you a forecast as well. in a world where technology works seamlessly enough to replace and one-up our most trusted sources of information, i'm over playing the waiting game and/or tug-of-war to get online.

so despite its endearing role as my sticker canvas, its ideal weight, and marathon battery life, i've never felt comfortable with my laptop. it has little value to me because it's never been able to earn my trust. maybe that's what we want from technology, whether it's built on the logic of knowing you've gotten the bang for your buck that apple has never been interested in delivering, the long list of features that apple rarely matches, or the human touches that apple regularly nails. the reasons differ, the arguments focus on completely separate concepts, but we probably all want the same thing. we want computers, phones, and devices that inspire our confidence.

but really, back to the big questions. why is it that hard-boiled eggs are smarter than us? i for one am sick of eating a breakfast that can outsmart me.

redacted

red sox. pessimism. red sox. pessimism.

honesty is our policy, even when things get redacted.

i should have said this long ago

it would not have bothered me tremendously if the yankees had signed carl crawford. in fact, i was basically hoping they would.

blackberry unveils genius low-cost marketing plan

research in motion, famed blackberry bakers, have apparently abandoned their comedy central stop-motion poolside hipster ad campaign to grab attention the cheapest way possible: by getting sued.

though most media outlets have interpreted research in motion's recent announcement of the blackberry playbook as a competitor to the ipad. what cracks me up the most is when they start talking about the price. the most important price on the playbook is this one: free.

free? how can a tablet be sold for free? it can't, but if it infringes upon the iconic naming convention of a rich and litigious competitor, it can generate a lot of free publicity. that's right, the playbook is a play for attention. the current news focuses on research in motion's technological challenge to the ipad. soon, though, we'll have steve jobs firing lawyers until apple legal challenges this thing in court. macbook, ibook, powerbook, playbook? tell me which of those doesn't fit. yup, they all fit. so i think apple will see rim in court.

i mean seriously, you thought they named the "first professional tablet" the "play"book because it sent the right brand message? please. still, maybe they're just faking the initial ad campaign to mess with us. everyone knows only consumer-targeted blackberries come with cameras. this one has two.

no, that guy's pool is amazing

over the long weekend, i was fortunate to be able to watch some rebroadcasted television online. it seems that no one, in terms of ratings makers and ad salespeople, really cares about the online audience, but thanks to verizon dsl, comedycentral.com, and the blackberry corporation, i was able to view some intriguing long-form commercials with my programming.

up until recently, online television has apparently taken a realistic view of the problem of serving up advertising: if there's no content from the ad network, you go back to your video without further delay. the worst thing that happens is you stare at a blank screen for the same (limited) amount of time that you would have watched a commercial.

the vzdsl/c...c....com/bb team, however, has brought an entirely new hilarity to the equation. with no one else using our 3mbps (haha) connection, i found myself staring at a sort of wallpaper/splash screen that featured blackberry branding and an aqueous background. at first, i found this amusing, as if i was watching a slideshow. i was soon irritated, however, to discover that the ad was just going to sit and sit until i had been forced to watch it in its entirety.

let me be clear on one thing: it might be annoying to advertisers that their content doesn't always come through as well as the streaming video it's paying for, but that doesn't mean it's time to enrage viewers. if i'm forced to sit and wait and wait for a chance to watch a dude in a grey deep-v t-shirt play with his phone by a pool, i'm probably going to hate that phone, the people who made me watch the phone, and the people who deliver my internet. three-for-one, guys. clap clap.

so i went and watched videos on a different site. yup, c...whatever may have a monopoly on its own content, but it doesn't have a monopoly on stuff that interests me. sorry. i came back later and found comedycentral.com was working, so i watched some more...and was treated to another static first frame of a commercial, joking to myself that it would be fun to see where the hawaiian theme of this intro was going. it was going to the same dude, but without a narrative that coherently connected it to the previous commercial. yup. why am i still watching commercials of this guy? he is almost as pointless as that palm pre ghost woman - and palm went dead dead sold to hp. bad company to be keeping. so blackberry - even more annoyed at y'all. i'm going to bed now and i've gotta plug in my nokia, which has the same features as your phones and fewer awful ad experiences.

somehow that dude seems sexier now though.

it's that time of the year

i am visiting my parents. there's a temptation while here to live a slightly different life than i normally do, and maybe that's the whole point of vacation. i have noticed that i treat my email and phone differently than i would if i were home. i wonder whether that is the secret to enjoying getting away. now, it's not like i have a boss calling me up, but the distance from my social home is probably an okay thing. i don't know if there are people who think i'm ignoring them; i did try to warn folks that i was leaving for a while.

i am also traveling back in time via my own posted writings. not from here, of course. it does strike me as funny that i almost wrote a post tonight mentioning the unusual nature of my old 97s fandom and then i randomly clicked two posts from september 2007, both of which turned out to be about the old 97s. not unthinkable, but an amusing coincidence.

i noticed while writing all of this, however, that i am not going to be able to honestly maintain my strong pro-kathryn calder stance. her new solo material seems fine, but it definitely seems like something i would listen to for a few months and then forget. there's nothing wrong with that; i think it's perfectly all right for an album to make you happy for a short period of time. i just don't think i'll bother obtaining hers, and that makes me slightly sad.

a likely story

i have two reports of the red sox game to deal with, or at least two possible reports:

1. they had scored nine runs or were up nine runs in the first inning or two

2. the score was 7-5

while modern technology makes it almost insane for me not to reconcile these two facts, i am going to assume the second was the score of the previous night's game.

what strikes me as odd is that i cared enough to look up the score of the game even knowing it had started out with a nine run explosion, and yet once i saw this 7-5 thing happening, i gave up. oh, and there was the fact that the newspaper web site it was posted on had annoying ads and popups that tricked our popup blocker.

conclusion: information may be easy to get from a time standpoint, but once that's a fact, there's less incentive to bother retrieving the information once anything goes wrong.

people have no idea who jacoby ellsbury is

no, actually they do. i just wonder if adrian beltre has any idea who jacoby ellsbury is. or that when he's done collecting his huge checks for this second amazing contract year of his career, he'll apologize one more time for running into him like he was a brick wall. technically, fault is not an issue. the fact that someone missed nearly an entire season is an issue, and one that demands repeated apologies.

so i don't blame adrian beltre. i just happen to have been angered that the red sox signed him since the day i heard about it. only the marco scutaro signing angered me more, and scutaro has the benefit of being older, less talented, and the first massively annoying signing of last offseason.

i would like adrian beltre not to be on the red sox next year. is that asking too much? i would like to get rid of mike cameron, bill hall, marco scutaro, and adrian beltre. now maybe that's asking too much. i just want to ask, because what else can i do? and maybe some jacoby ellsbury memorial 2010 t-shirts, with the letters in ellsbury all cracked like his ribs. i heard he stole four bases. that's great. imagine how many bases the guy should have stolen this year, without having to go through ridiculous third baseman collision rib crackery to steal them.

people have no idea who jacoby ellsbury is. or they do, they just don't know how many bases he could have stolen this year. because that is impossible to know. as is the actual value of prolific base stealing as a contribution to a major league baseball team. but i think most people are in favor of unbroken ribs. make healthy choices people. in your diet and your baseball team. say goodbye to adrian beltre. if only he had never run into his teammates.

reasons i want dan haren

Dan Haren's a good fantasy baseball player. I don't mind grabbing him for my keeper league, but I thought I should make sure I've made the case properly. Six of my fantasy pitchers come from just two teams, so if nothing else it would help to spread my risk.

Why I am pretty sure Dan Haren is worth adding off waivers:

He's not a Tigers starter.
He's also not a Blue Jays reliever.
I'm desperate for a reason not to keep Fausto Carmona for $3.
Now I can worry about an elite pitcher other than Cliff Lee, who's not even on my team.
Any time you can add a pitcher with a .350 babip, you do it.
It's like picking a pitcher off the dollar menu.
A pitcher who's striking out a guy an inning.
Unlike Derrick Lee, he actually wants to play for the Angels.
Maybe now I can forgive myself for not grabbing a $3 Carlos Santana when he cleared waivers in April.
At the end of the year, no one remembers who finished with the best waiver priority.

not in miami

i just realized i'm doing something lebron james could probably never do again in his life - i'm wearing cleveland cavaliers shorts and a sport coat.

yes, it matters how you hold the phone

it's interesting to me not that the new iphone has reception issues if you put your fingers in the wrong spot, but that this is receiving attention in the mainstream media. maybe people are used to having flip phones with those little extendable antennas, but every nokia i have owned gets horrid reception if you put your fingers on the top 1/4 or so of the back. that's where the antenna is. this is a known issue, but it's only talked about on sites that exclusively cover cell phones, and relatively speaking, it's a tiny subset of the phone purchasing population that ever visits those.

so this has been clear already with previous iphone-related issues, but the massive level of attention given to apple on the stock market, in the media, etc totally cuts both ways. there are times people get mad because things they feel were not originated by apple are acclaimed as exciting new developments. however, performance problems that are far from new to the mobile phone world often are talked about as if iphones are the first products to suffer from these limitations. the reception issue is the latest example.

i actually was highly impressed to hear that while the antenna runs around the phone, there is apparently only one spot where there's a problem. it's so natural to hold a bar-style phone by the top, but my nokia experiences have taught me not to do this. it sounds like the iphone thing is easier to work around, which would be nice.

why i am not watching the nba playoffs

i walked into the living room, where my roommate and his breakfast burrito had congregated for the celtics-lakers game, and andrew bynum was being introduced. immediately, i announced 'this is just going to make me angry,' and left the room to watch something on the internet.
i am watching the a-team right now instead of the nba finals because the a-team is not going to result in me getting angry.

reckless speculation about the blue jays

when the red sox signed marco scutaro, i was immediately incensed because they guy had been coming off a career year at 35. his performance, especially coupled with aaron hill outhomering his career total and adam lind's power output, made me somewhat curious about whether the toronto clubhouse had some access to undetected performance enhancing drugs of some sort. now this year, alex gonzalez has 10 home runs and vernon wells is significantly better than he has been the past two years. it's a little strange to see all these outlying performances from one team. i haven't compared any of this to other teams, but that's a lot of strange numbers.

the old becomes new again

thanks to the constant repetition of pandora, i am now coming to the point with my spoon station where i'm evicting songs i like lest i get sick of them. spoon's catalog is pretty deep, so thus far i've only been ruling out other acts' fine but overplayed works. still, it's almost refreshing to experience the fresh thrill of seeing a good station go bad. oh...well, i guess that's not such a good thing.

is it cool if i evict steve jobs from my brain?

after grading papers, it's time to relax. i'm enjoying a nice album (she&him's vol 2) and a slice of german chocolate cake. so i start to think why don't i head over and sit on the comfortable couch with my dell laptop. then i realize what i should really do is head over to the couch to eat my cake and browse the web on the ipad i don't own, because my dell is admittedly a sort of terrible computer to use. but really? somehow mentally i already own an ipad?

so thanks, steve jobs. thanks a whole lot for taking over my brain. it's time for you to leave. or at least stick around long enough so i can interview you for my folklore project.

stevie j!

seriously, i can't figure out which apple products to buy. so, mr. jobs, is it cool if i just mail a big check to cupertino and you send me a mystery grab bag? note: no desktop macs allowed in said grab bag. i want a portable technology (magic?) grab bag.

pandora emailed me

i apparently linked my pandora account to an email i never check, but they wrote me several days ago to remind me that i'd run out or nearly run out of listening hours for the month. i suppose i might as well burn through the rest of it tomorrow.

as it turned out, my old stations are still annoying shallow in playlist size. the spoon station may be less annoying; perhaps it's got something to do with the fact that they have so many albums. i wonder though whether all the music on that station will get old too. it was weird going back to the decemberists station and having it play the exact same tarkio song over again. that's been the worst thing about them, and one that seemed to have improved--they play one 'related' song and then nothing else by that artist. this is clearly still a company that's overly in love with their technology.