Lucky Albatross

Welcome back to insaneville folks. Just like my post last year about the PS3 and Wii bizarro world we now enter the world of the Apple iPhone. Lines started forming all over the country this week and the hysteria reached Portland's Washington Square Mall this morning around 7am (according to the lead line sitter). Please excuse the crappy phone pics.

Washington Square (OR) iPhone Line

The Apple store folks were cool enough to go grab some Starbucks for the loyal fans:

Washington Square (OR) iPhone Line

How far down the path of craziness must we tread for a phone. Apple, your genius is monumental.

Full disclosure: I have promised a friend that I would procure a device for him today and I fully intend to do so. I refuse, however, to stand in line all day.

....when you wake up to 11 missed calls and 3 voice mails on your mobile phone. I'm back at the colo again folks. :)

There was a crazy hailstorm today. Jay Phillips and I were working at Costello's today and on came the hail:

For the first time in YEARS I've got a clean Inbox. Holy cow. I thought I didn't care, but it is a relief. Such a relief that I took a screenshot:

Clean Inbox!

I just had to share.

I don't understand the phenomenon of the secondary video game console market that has popped up in the past few years. Have we gotten to the point that waiting a few weeks or months to get a silly piece of electronics is so painful as to waste good money on the item? The latest version of this phenomenon of scarcity is of course the Sony Playstation 3.

The units retail for $499 and $599. There are two models. Both are comparable and also being sold at retail by Sony at a considerable loss to wanting consumers world wide. People were sleeping on sidewalks outside of their local big-box retail consumer electronics chain stores literally salivating over the possibility of purchasing one of these machines. There were no guarantees of success, but people were willing to stick it out in the cold and rain (at least here in Portland, OR). Some of them genuinely cared about owning one, but many stayed as profiteers.

Tents were erected. People were being kicked out of malls and shopping centers for up to 7 days before the big event. The folks at the local Target store where I went shopping a couple of nights before said that they would be surprised if they got a dozen of the prized machines. I even read reports of shootings, hold ups and near riot conditions as stores opened their doors and people rushed to the counters. Political scandal even reared its ugly head.

This was modern day prospecting writ large. One Ebay auction event went up to $13,100. Craigslist Portland listed 62 PS3 systems available for purchase with prices ranging from $1500-$6000. All of this craziness for something that will be easy to get in 6 months time at the same retail outlets that people flocked to today.

How have we come so far? Is capitalism so important that we will trample each other for a chance to make a quick buck? Is our need for instant gratification and entertainment so great that we will put ourselves in some amount of physical anguish, and in some cases danger, just to be the first kid on the block? What is the point of spending all of this money on something as fleeting as all of this? Can't you just wait 6 bloody months to buy one of these things?

In the end, the days events underline the fact that our society's values are very far out of whack. I'm not talking about the petty stuff like Abortion and Gay Marriage. I'm talking about what we actually want in our lives. Who we want to be as a people and what image we want to project to the world are grossly illustrated here.

The United States of America is a dumping ground for mostly throw-away consumer electronics. We are an economic cesspool to the companies that would profit from this junk. We are addicts. We are insanely impatient. We aren't interested in sustainability or helping the guy next door. Most importantly, we are willing to forsake our own fellow citizens for the chance to have the newest toy on the block.

The PS3 (and the other game consoles out now) will be obsolete in 2-4 years and will be replaced with another variant. Inevitably the same escalation will take place. There will be wars fought over this silliness for a few dark days in 2009 or 2010. Maybe then we will realize how far down the rabbit hole we've gone.

The folks at Airbus were recently doing crosswind tests in Keflavic, Iceland and someone took cool video:
[via]

MONKEYS need I say more?

Apparently my friend Imran feels that things are missing, as he mentioned to me in IM:

Imran:
pah - where's dr. zaius?
cornelius?
ape zero from 2001!

I mean really Mr. Ape-O-Naut. Get it right, or don't get it at all. Sheesh. This intarweb is getting ridiculously. out of control.

We've been working for months on the first application for my buddy Rael Dornfest's new company Values of n. And now the fruits of our labors are finally available to the larger world. Check out the new and revolutionary application Stikkit.

Congrats everyone!

This is the kitty lap slut at the Albina Press coffee shop. He stole my lap and took a nap.

Lap Slut

Why are there certain people who are constantly having issues with telephone companies? I was talking to my wife about this issue the other day and I think it comes down to attitude. Whenever I approach a company that has an effective monopoly (or part of the mobile carrier oligarchy in this case), I always go into the conversation knowing that I will be respectful of the person on the phone. I also go into the conversation with a large amount of time and patience on my hands. These are givens, and I rarely come away with an issue with a carrier that I feel unsatisfied with.

This morning, I was reading my normal daily stuff, and saw that Andy Abramson was having troubles with his Blackberry. This was after months of having troubles with it. He was quick to blame T-Mobile's support department and data coverage. Om Malik jumped in saying that T-Mobile had better shape up or ship out with their new spectrum allocations.Alec Saunders jumped on his familiar "This is Voice 1.0" type conversation. These all amused me considerably.

I have a great deal of respect for these folks, and usually agree with them to some degree on the telco issues of the day, but this is a bit rediculous. As I said in a comment on Om's post:

Om, Andy, etc have expressed many issues with T-Mobile, but I have had zero problems with my Blackberry 8700 service from them. Even in the Bay Area, I’ve been blessed with EDGE coverage almost everywhere, and at least GPRS everywhere else. I live in Portland, and things work great here as well.

I invite you all to contact the carrier’s Blackberry support department whenever you have a problem with your service. I’ve found them very knowledgeable and quick to fix any issue I’ve ever had.

As far as I know, from what I know of T-Mobile’s network, they are 100% GPRS enabled on any cell that they own at this point. Almost all of the top 100 DMAs have EDGE installed on at least 50% of their cells. So if you are having issues with “data coverage” you should speak to someone in support and make sure your Blackberry is sorted with all of the right Service Books and Host Routing Tables installed on your device.

I’m all about a little carrier bashing, but don’t do it until it’s time. Let’s try and be fair here.