Dropped the ball last night. Wasn’t even that I didn’t have anything to say. I got into bed around 11:45, and was reading my book (the new Stephen King – pretty good, but it’s making me tense with the timeline stuff in a way that Connie Willis has repeatedly NOT done) and did a facepalm because I’d forgotten to post. Even after sleeping in until NOON-THIRTY, I was still spacey when going back to bed a mere twelve hours later.
Rode to and from work today. Pretty good rides, but woof, I gotta remember to stretch for a while after riding, ’cause the number of times I literally said “oof” out loud when getting up was bordering on pathetic. At least I’m still limber enough to stretch when I get into doing it. My shoulders are pretty blown out (haven’t had a bad dislocation aside from the occasional poing for quite a while, if you don’t count me trying to do a somersault in the pool on the last day of our Disneyland trip.
And boom, just like that, I just bought Endomondo Pro for $3.99 I will now be able to chase my best time in either direction and my headphones will be telling me whether I’m pacing, leading, or trailing. Oh, maybe
That’s one thing that the folks at the Apple Appstore got right – pricing. MOST games are $2.99 or less. Most applications for business are under $10. Angry birds is less than a Starbucks coffee, and last I heard they had over 500,000 purchases. Blackberry? I love you, really I do, but I remember seeing a THEME for $35.00 once. It’s ICONS and wallpaper, people. I mean, c’mon.
My only hope for Blackberry now is that Google purchased Motorola, and Motorola makes the Blackberry guts (they, do, right? I’m not just making that up, am I?) so we’ll soon see Blackberry devices running Android. With LED lights on them that change colours so I can tell from across the room which account that mail was from, or make disco lights if it’s my wife, or go silent when on my hip, and non-vibrate-y when on the table. PLEASE DO THIS! BUT!
BUT!
Figure out a way to make central management, control, and policy possible on Blackberry running Android, ’cause it just doesn’t exist on iPhone. Someone highly-placed in my company calls me and says “omigod, someone just stole my iPhone, and all my data’s on it!” there’s really next to nothing I can do about it. In my days at EA, I could have immediately locked and erased the device remotely, and left a note on the screen saying where to take the unit for reward. iPhone? You better have that “Where’s my iPhone?” application (and a friend with another iPhone to track it with) and be ready to face a desperate thief in a dark alley who thinks they’re holding something that’ll keep them in food/shelter for a week. You want that fight? I don’t.
Also, was listening to this thing the other day about “shadow work” and that now everyone with an iPhone has to provide their own technical support for it, because frankly, there’s not a lot an IT person can do to help you get set up with it, because hey, it’s yours, and techies don’t like play “last touchies” with your personal gear. If I can’t tell you what NOT to do with it, how can it be my problem to fix it if it gets screwed up? Shadow work is the work that used to be done by someone else, but now, in order to cut costs, you’re being asked to do it yourself. Y’know, self-checkout and bag-your own groceries, and they were saying that cel phone support is shadow work, because so many people have their OWN phone, but use it for work, so they need to straddle work with home stuff on the same device, and sometimes they collide, and you end up having to fix your gear so it’ll do work stuff again. Nothing really new, but now the owness (that’s the word, right?) is on you to fix it because it’s YOURS and nobody’s put anything on it, instead of you bringing your laptop in to work because “ever since you guys put that VPN software on my computer, it’s acting weird.”
Also, the Spokelit bike lights I have in my wheels (two in each, for that Tron-esque spinny look)? They come in colours other than orange now. SWEET!
