IPad Payoff

I’m sitting here in the dentist’s office while my oldest is getting her braces on. Thankfully the dentist is nice enough to have free wifi in the waiting room, so I’ve got my iPad out and I’m on the Internet (of course I’m only surfing the internet, not opening anything that should be protected).

This is the kind of thing I envisioned when I bought my iPad. I have my little sling bag (back pack) and a book and some other things. It’s perfect!

Of course my iPad is still naked – my cover won’t arrive for two more days, but the only thing I have left to complete the package is my wireless hotspot. For security reasons I don’t want to log into anything through a public access point, so when I get my wireless hotspot (most likely from Virgin Wireless) I’ll be all set.

I’ve been skeptical of replacing my laptop with an iPad and after 2 weeks there are still times I miss a laptop, but I am slowly learning how to work around things and how to live in the cloud. sitting here now I really feel good about the iPad experience. I just pulled it out, Told it what network to use, and off I went.

I still have a lot to learn and I’m sure there will still be times where I go back to my desktop to accomplish things, but every day I’m getting better at the iPad lifestyle and to be honest I’m really starting to enjoy it.

So Long TMobile

I’ve been a TMobile customer for 2 years and to be honest, I’ve been very happy with their service, both customer service and the call quality and data service. My only complaint has been my phone, which was the second android phone on the market and after two long years it is almost unusable. The processor is pitiful and the battery life has deteriorated to the point that it has to be plugged in whenever I’m not using it. I have no one to blame but myself for signing the two year contract. I should have known that android phones would advance rapidly and that two years would be an eternity.

So my contract is up in 3 weeks and I decided to call Tmobile tonight to see what my options are and what it would take to switch to a prepaid, no contract plan. As usual the woman I spoke to was very nice and fairly helpful. When I asked about the prepaid plans, she said she had to transfer me to a prepaid specialist so that they can give me accurate information. That’s when the trouble started.

I was trasnferred to someone who didn’t speak English very well and despite asking me several times if I was on a prepaid plan, she didn’t understand why I was calling. Even after she took my name, phone number, and the last four digits of my SSN, she still couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. Finally she told me I needed to talk to someone else about prepaid plans.

So I politely told her I would go find a company that wants my money and I thanked her for her time. Staying with TMobile was a long shot, but them not wanting to keep my business made it easy to leave.

I don’t fault the people in India, I know they are trying to make a living and they try their best to understand us, but it so rarely works. Two years ago I left AT&T because their service sucked. Now That AT&T will own TMobile, it looks like they are already getting a head start on ruining TMobile’s culture.

I was looking for any little reaso to stay with TMobile tonight, amazingly they couldn’t give it to me. I know I’m only one little customer, but if they keep being indifferent to customers, especially those who really want go stay with them, they are in for a long haul.

I already posted a polite Tweet about my experience, so those that follow me will see my displeasure, although I doubt I have enough influence go sway anyone’s decision making.

So now it’s on to Virgin Mobile and prepaid freedom. I can’t see myself ever getting sucked into a two year contract for any device again, things simply change too quickly.

Sunflowers

Each of the past several summers I have tried to grow sunflowers every way imaginable. I’ve started them in pots, planted them in the garden, put them in pots, and on year out of frustration I just dumped a couple packets of seeds into a hole in the ground.

It’s silly really, this obsession with sunflowers. I love them for some reason and I desperately want to grow some of my own, but I have yet to see a single sunflower grow on my property. This year I thought I had the problem solved when I started about 20 seeds inside and most of the grew well for months until spring came and I could move them outside. I watched over them like a mother hen and they came along nicely and I was able to move several into the garden where they found a nice home.

Things were going great until some creature decided to make lunch out of my sunflowers. Several plants had all the flowers eaten and two were cut off like felled trees.

BUT one has survived and is about 5 feet tall at the moment (these are the huge sunflowers which should grow to be 12 feet tall). The creature has obviously takes some bites out of the leaves, but the sunflower is still growing. I don’t know if it will make it, but this is the longest one has survived for me yet.

It’s all folly as I could easily go to a store and buy beautiful sunflowers any time I want, but now it’s become a battle to try and get some to grow. Hopefully my persistence will pay off someday.

Getting Invited to the Dance

Today someone I follow on Twitter graciously offered me an invite to Google + and I jumped on it right away. I’ve just dipped my feet into the water, but so far I like what I see, although I clearly have more to learn.

Google has sketchy track record with social media, so I didn’t pay too much attention to the Google + announcement at first, but there is clearly a ton of excitement about it amongst the smart people who keep track of these things.

Invites are hard to come by and + is not yet open to the general public, but I still felt like I was being left out of something exciting. Thankfully that changed today.

As of today, 10 million users have jumped on +, which is an adoption rate faster than Facebook. Of course it’s impossible to know why people are jumping on+, but they are jumping quickly.

Only time will tell what will become of +, but I’m really excited to see it’s birth and childhood.

Strange Start to the Holiday Weekend

Tonight was the 1st of four parades for the Clyde Saxton Band aka The Penfield Fireman’s Band. We ventured all the way to Fair Haven NY, which seemed like it was ½ way to Syracuse. There were lots of people there and everyone was obviously in a good mood at the start of the holiday weekend.

Everything started ok, but just after we passed the reviewing stand an ambulance came racing through the parade and started helping a gentleman ahead of us who was apparently having a heart attack. The parade was held up for about 30 minutes while they attended to the fallen man and he was eventually driven off by the ambulance.

Unfortunately we never heard how things turned out with the heart attack victim, but hopefully he is ok. In 30 years I’ve seen quite a few things while playing, but this was a first. Hopefully I will never see it again.

I guess it’s all a good reminder that things happen, good and bad, all the time. In the midst of a huge party 1 person ends up fighting for their life. Sometimes reality can be all too real.

The End of the Wallet

Today PayPal’s CEO predicted the end of the wallet by 2015, a mere 4 years from now.

I like to think of myself as open minded and technologically hip, but I’m having a hard time getting my arms around this one. I know there are systems headed to the mobile space that will act like a wallet, but it’s very hard to see widespread adoption any time soon.

I’ve read a little about what’s in development and what a wallet-less future might look like and I’m not sure I buy into it. I’m sure they will figure out all the security issues and the semantics involved and produce something great, but getting people to use it will be a battle.

I do all my banking online and rarely carry cash with me. It’s gotten to the point where paper checks or anything that sends me to the bank really annoys me. On the surface I would be the perfect candidate for a wallet less future, but I’m not sure I would join insight away for one simple reason; it’s too easy.

Sounds silly, right? Doing everything online is really easy and painless, and therein lies the problem. I work like crazy to make money but then getting rid of it is almost like playing a video game. For me there’s a huge difference between an electronic payment and cash. Paying cash hurts. I don’t want to part with it. I thinnk long and hard about something if I have to put down cash on the table. Doing it electronically I think about it, but not nearly enough and it’s nowhere near as painful as parting with a wad of cash.

I suspect my kids generation will be more likely to embrace the wallet less lifestyle. Being time-strapped and ever more rushed, I believe I will welcome the death of the wallet, but deep down I know that’s not a good thing.