Umbral Echoes Blog

• 13:52 On iPhone 2.1 firmware now. It promises less crashes and better performance. And Genius playlists. Here’s to hoping. #

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• 18:06 Felt like crud today, stayed home from work. Starting to feel a little better though. #

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• 10:30 I somehow manage to forget to put my wallet in my pants at least one day a week. Which will make getting lunch difficult. #
• 17:27 @lordofthefries Hmm. I think in your case, you’d be a little less screwed when getting pulled over. 🙂 #
• 18:38 Meeting at The Highlander at 8. If you’re in Atlanta, be there. If you’re not… then move to Atlanta. #

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This review will be uncharacteristically short and sweet.

The best thing about the iPhone is: it’s almost like a computer in your pocket.  You can surf the web, you can send/receive email, you can download and listen to music, you can install some applications, you can look up directions to some nearby adult novelty stores (more useful than you might think!).  You can hack it to make it do things it wasn’t meant to do.

The worst thing about the iPhone is: it’s almost like a computer in your pocket.  So it doesn’t do a lot of things that I would intuitively expect it to be able to, or otherwise acts differently than I would expect a computer to act.  You can’t open most types of files (PDFs, that sort of thing).  It crashes, much more than one would expect a phone to crash (which would be “never”).  There is no copy/paste functionality.  The touchscreen typing can be annoying sometimes, and the autocorrect feature is a mixed blessing — 90% of the time it helps you out, 10% of the time it “corrects” something you didn’t want corrected.  The web browser is very neat, but can still be a pain to use on most websites, and there’s no option to remember passwords in the iPhone version of Safari.  You can’t actually get turn-by-turn directions with voice prompts, so it’s not quite like a real GPS unit either.

Overall, I do love my iPhone.  Though it is, admittedly, the first smart phone I’ve ever had, so I don’t have a huge basis for comparison.  Until recently, I’ve always wanted my phone to be a phone, and not try to be a Swiss army knife.  But over the past year, there have been so many instances where I’ve been like, “Damn, if I only had an Internet connection right now.”  And really, from what I’ve seen, the iPhone does have the best web browsing experience of any mobile phone, hands-down.  I consider it $200 well-spent, though like everything involving computers… the more functions something has, the more complication (and aggravation) it tends to bring.  Apple has historically made products that break this rule, but the iPhone firmware could definitely use a lot of improvement.

• 20:27 Why must my Internet connection cut out at the worst times? Must investigate using iPhone as tether. #

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• 18:53 Jailbreak successful, minus a minor hiccup. And now my battery meter always reads full. #

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Whew. Finally through with convention season. Why is it that we so often need a vacation to recover from our vacations?

This year’s festivities were confounded somewhat by a database issue at work that I’m still dealing with now, to a lesser extent. Suffice to say, it was my fault, and is the biggest screwup I’ve ever made in my professional life, intensified by a perfect storm of other bad things happening. But, we’re mostly recovered from it, and mistakes are the best teachers.

So in this post, I’ll go over some of the fun times at GenCon.

This year involved more dicebagging, of course. Frank even set up a website for it… though he never approved my account and I’ve therefore been unable to load pictures. I also convinced Lydia to eat three hot peppers at Steak n’ Shake, for the low price of paying for her meal. I think you’ll agree that it was worth it. Or perhaps I’m just a sadist.

Along the lines of discussion, the question was asked, “What is the least compensation you would accept for macing yourself in the face?” Talking about the chemical here, not the medieval weapon. Initially the thought was, “Would you mace yourself in the face for X dollars? What about half that?” And so on. But it evolved into questions such as, “Would you mace yourself in the face to temporarily be changed into a member of the opposite sex for a day? What if part of that was that you’d be a poorly-endowed member of the opposite sex?” In this discussion, I learned that Lydia is secretly very blatantly a sexual misogynist.

The White Wolf party was a bit more strict this year, actually requiring invites at the door. But, as always, it was an open bar, and this time it was split into two sweat-drenched levels of fun. There was an impromptu photo shoot. Word to the wise: whenever someone says, out of the blue, “Are you ready?” the answer is, without fail, “Bring it ON!” Except envision that said in Brock Samson‘s voice in your head, then do your best impression of it. Suffice to say, I was made to remove my shirt and bite random goth chick’s neck. Pictures might or might not be forthcoming on the White Wolf website, depending on the laziness of the people involved in the photo shoot.

Note to self 2: stay away from drunken bisexual dudes. Next time, it will end in blood.

The after-party with the White Wolf folks was somewhat low-key, but we brought the DJ along for the hell of it anyway. Afterward I had to deal with a drunken bitch (drunk to the point where she literally couldn’t walk) who insisted that she was all right to drive not only herself, but a couple of other people who came with her, home. Sometimes I hate having to be the good guy. That one ended up being a couple hours of hassle, and me letting her stumble off to try and find her car. I thought about calling the cops to detain her, but honestly I don’t care that much.

I’ll keep the roleplaying stories to a minimum, since that’s only interesting to a select crowd (and also, I was only in two games this year). Dustin ran an Exalted LARP that was a continuation of games from previous years. My character was on trial for killing the person who was likely to become Empress. Part of the game was that each character was given a motivation/goal for each scene, and in the trial scene my character’s goal was to bed one of the members of a certain house/clan. Long story short, there was really only one option: the judge herself. I came a breath away from managing it, too. Note to self: follow instincts always, without question.

Dustin also ran a Seventh Sea game. This system, for those not in the know, is made of pure awesome. It’s a game set in Renaissance times, normally centered on piracy. It is epic to a sometimes-silly level, and has such rules as: your character can never die, and when you do something awesome, you get extra “drama dice” for it. The game itself involved undead sheep invading what was supposed to be a child’s birthday party, in a mansion. I think that just about sums it up.

Met some cool new people over the weekend (Michael, Christine, others whose names I forget), which is always fun. Drank a lot less than I expected. At the White Wolf party I was making a conscious effort not to drink myself into a stupor. Which, in hindsight, was a mistake — drink deeply or taste not, and all that. There was only a brief respite (or it felt brief, anyway) before it was time to go sprinting around in the woods in 95 degree weather while wearing plate mail armor and beating on people with padded weapons. More on that later, though.

• 01:42 House feels empty. Must get ping pong table and sparring mays for great room. #
• 08:52 Damn suicidal squirrels. Oh well, could be worse. Could be suicidal deer. Here’s to you, New Jersey. #
• 11:06 Going to attempt to jailbreak my iPhone today. If this goes horribly wrong, I might be without a phone temporarily. #
• 23:39 @blackmire What, not because you’ll be blue in the face from my hands wrapped around your throat as you convulse? #

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• 13:24 Playing Moving Tetris (TM) snipurl.com/3m9no #

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• 16:52 Home from DragonCon. Now I catch up on work and then veg out and rest. #

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