Barack Obama to Suffer from Internet Withdrawal.

This is something that had never occurred to me. The president of the United States cannot communicate via email. I’m sure that I knew that somewhere deep down, but I was sure exceptions were made for family. I was positive that it was always possible for George Bush to email pictures of his wife and pets to his parents as they enjoy their retirement, but the New York Times pointed out that Barack Obama is expecting to be told by the secret service to give up his blackberry.

People that know me in real life know that it is nearly impossible to separate me from my iPhone. I am practically attached to the thing, and when I broke my first gen iPhone earlier this week I was so upset that I wrote a scathing blog post about the 3g that I had replaced the phone with. Of course… now I don’t want to give the 3g up because it’s my NEW iPhone and is my NEW appendage… and it’s shiny too.

I am not sure that I would ever be able to bring myself to hand it over. Not even if I had been elected ruler of the free world.

President-elect Obama, I already admire you for being willing to hand over your crackberry to the secret service. If you manage to bring yourself to do it without saying, “Screw you! I’m not taking this tin pot job!” you, Sir… are a far better person than I.

The Luckiest Photocopier, Ever.

It’s Wednesday, so even the song is appropriate. It’s called “Weekend” and while appropriate, it’s not the greatest thing, but still… I know many men, some of whom read this blog, that would wish they could be the photocopier.

The Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

This article is very much related to the comment discussion I had with tsykoduk yesterday in this post, where tsykoduk has begun my much needed education on computer security in the wireless world.

Some of these points are really hilarious and these are more related to the corporate world than anything else, but still a good read for those of us who are interested in modern computer security. This is also a fine example of what I believe to be true, that good computer security is 90% common sense, 10% strong technology.

iPhone Swag: Sedio Inno Case and Dock

Okay, iPhone owners, you totally have to check this puppy out. It’s the Sedio Inno Case. This thing… is the stuff. It’s rubberized, but feels silky to the touch, is completely open on the front of the phone. Yes, I said completely open. No access to any part of the front of the iPhone is hindered in anyway. It fits tightly, without adding a lot of bulk to your iPhone, and the thing is lined with felt to keep the case itself from causing unnecessary scratches.

I loved this thing when I saw it. When it sold out, I asked my husband to watch for them to come back in stock so he could order it for me and he liked it so much that he ordered one for himself.

I also highly recommend the docks that go with these cases if you like to dock your phone on your nightstand at night. The case does not hinder standard cable access, but if you’re using a dock, you’ll need to buy Sedio’s dock in order to avoid taking this case on and off all the time. The docks aren’t perfect, I did have some issues getting the dock to behave when I linked it up to my pc. My iPhone got lost during a sync and I’ve never seen that happen before. They do work great for use as charging stands though, and they do free up an apple cable because the docks are USB to USB.

All in all, I’m very impressed. I’m hard to please when it comes to cases for phones. Usually I get annoyed by them and take them off, but this case is really a cut above.

Jobs Says No to Flash on iPhone.

And while all the flash nerds can gripe and cry about this all they want… they should probably talk to someone who actually owns an iphone. I dunno about you, but me and my iPhone toting friends want NOTHING to do with something as insecure and unstable as flash on our cell phones, which are capable of making phone calls from telephone numbers printed on the web.

That’s just asking for some jackass hacker to come up with some way to exploit my phone and while I trust Adobe for photoshop, I don’t trust Adobe for anything else and certainly don’t want to have to mess with a resource hungry Adobe app on my iPhone. It takes 2 gig worth of RAM on my PC to make anything Adobe run smoothly, iPhones just don’t have that kind of real estate.

Speak up in the comments, fellow iPhone owners!

I Love my AT&T Store.

So this morning, after 3 weeks… I received yet another anonymous text message from some person looking for some guy named Dave. It started a while back. My husband and I were watching House, and I was getting phone calls from this dude who sounded like he was stoned saying, “Eh… is Dave there?”

The problem is, I know several guys named Dave, and in an emergency situation, I could see one of them giving a stoner my phone number if he had no one else to turn to, so I always asked, “Which Dave, I know two and none of them live with me.” Stoner Dude (not his real name), hung up after saying, “Well it was his number this morning. Aww man!” After three days of this, I finally managed to convince Stoner Dude that this was not his phone number, and that he was going to have to come up with another way to get in touch with his friend. I figured… the guy was a stoner. It’s entirely possible he just mis-dialed a lot, or wrote down the wrong number for his friend. Fine. I let this incident go.

All was quiet for like a week. Then I got a phone call from this gentlemanly gentleman who asked me very nicely if “Dave” was there. I told him that he had the wrong number, and that I had already talked to Dave’s friend Stoner Dude, and apparently Dave is giving out my number for some reason. I asked him if he would mind asking Dave to stop giving out my number, and he said that he would as soon as he tracked him down, and apologized for bothering me. I never received a phone call from this gentleman again.

Over the course of the next two weeks, I would randomly get phone calls from catty girls, looking for Dave. I told every single one of them that Dave wasn’t at this number, one of them even called me a b-word before she hung up on me.

By this morning, I had had enough of Dave and Dave’s friends, so when I got a text message from a phone number I didn’t know, I snapped. What you see below is a recaptured conversation from my iPhone, with names and numbers changed.

From Weird Number: “Hey”
Me: “Some guy named Dave has been giving out my number for 3 weeks. Looking 4 him right? Would you mind telling him 2 stop? I’ve had this # a long time and don’t want to change it. Thnx!”
Weird Number: “Who is this?”
Me: “The person who’s tired of Dave’s friends calling her at 3 am. Who also doesn’t know who you are or why you txt msg’d her. Just assuming u are a friend of Dave’s.”
Weird Number: “I didn’t text anyone!”
Me: “Weird. I got a txt from this # Sorry to bother you. No caffeine, little sleep due to phone calls all night.”
Weird Number: “And you got a text from this number? When? Who is this?”
Me: “9:10 am. I’m (random gemini, of course!), you are?”
Weird Number: “Wilson. I am sorry you are getting calls but I have never texted this number before, nor do I know who you are.”
Me (at this point, seething and ready to call my provider and scream… ): “No prob. I’ll call my provider about it.”

Wilson could have let it go there, but this bothered him for some reason, so he kept asking me questions. While he was trying to trouble shoot, it came out that he worked at an AT&T store. So we made arrangements for me to head down there so that we could figure this whole thing out, and then I found out that Wilson’s phone is security locked… no one else could have texted me from his phone. He was confused by all of this, then he asked me to just call the store instead, because he was concerned someone had doubled up my phone number with another customer’s number. I agreed to do this, made my coffee and got ready to call him when I received the following text from Wilson.

Wilson: “Oh wait! LOL! You are not gonna believe this! I did text you! This customer who was in here just now has almost the same phone number as you! He said his texts were not working, his number is 555-1213 (mine is 555-1212) and he gave me the wrong number! I apologize!”
Me: “Thank you so much! Glad it was something simple. You’re awesome! What days do you work? I want to bring you cookies.”

It turns out, Dave had been mistakenly giving out my phone number since getting his brand new cell phone, and didn’t understand why his friends never called, and his phone never rang and why he wasn’t getting his text messages. Wilson straightened the guy out and after giving me his work schedule, he offered to help me any time I had problems with my account.

Now that ladies and gentlemen, is what I call customer service. I was rude to this guy. He didn’t have to help me, and he did anyway. I will be taking him some home made Oatmeal Scotchies tomorrow because he deserves them for putting up with the way I treated him. The customer service hotline for AT&T sucks, but I love talking to the people in the stores where I live. They really care about making sure that I’m happy, even if I’m a bitch.

iPhone History Lesson.

For those of you that don’t read /., I offer you this link to a really interesting article about the history of the iPhone’s development process. It’s interesting to get a peek inside what goes on in the minds of creative geniuses who are busting their asses to take the world by storm with the latest gadget.

Honda Chick

So, my husband finally replaced his old beat up volkswagen rabbit convertible (otherwise known as a cabriolet that is the same age as my little brother, who is now of legal age to consume alcohol).

It all started on his birthday. On his birthday, he picked up our son from school and stopped at the mail box to get the mail. When he got back in the car, it wouldn’t start. He and my son had to push the car the rest of the way up the street and into the garage. Little did I know at the time that this was the beginning of the end.

The car has died like this on numerous occasions, so many that I became nervous about taking the vehicle out for family trips in the summer (which is kinda the whole point of owning a convertible anyway, isn’t it?). One time, a county sheriff had to push the car out of one of the busiest intersections in town, into a grocery store parking lot, and I had to go pick up my hubby and take him home. Previously, my hubby has taken these things in stride, saying that he’s just not doing a good enough job maintaining the car, or he hasn’t found the right guy to work on it yet. But this last event… was entirely different.

I knew something was wrong when the mechanic had the car for over a week and he said to me, “Well, we can’t sell it if it’s not running.” Sell it? What? Are you kidding me? I’ve been trying to convince you to sell this car –which would make a fantastic hobby car for someone who loves to get his hands greasy, but really isn’t a great car for a guy who makes his living as a computer geek– for four years and now you’re telling me that you’re going to sell it!

At first I was angry.

Then the phone calls from the mechanic started rolling in.

The place where we took it to have a tune up put in the wrong size spark plug and damaged the head. The place that installed the new wiring harness –the local VW dealer of all things– not only overcharged us for the part, they installed the wrong one AND did it incorrectly, this contributed to draining the battery somehow that I wasn’t able to follow. To top it all off, the exhaust manifold was cracked and the part is no longer manufactured by Volkswagen. Even after all of these repairs were made, the car was still running rough and the mechanic loves working on old cars like this… and could not figure out why it sounded so unhappy for the life of him.

That was when my husband started talking about buying a Honda, the day we picked up the VW from the shop. He drove it home and began surfing and showed me pictures of the CR-V that day. I tried to talk him into something else, I suggested Subarus because they last forever and my dad works at the plant, so we get a discount on buying Subarus. He went and looked at Jeeps, and we finally came back to the Honda CR-V. After some finagling and moonshines, we bought the car and picked it up earlier this week.

This is where the story really begins. Along with the car came “Honda Chick.” My husband spends more time with this gal than he does with me, and to be blunt, it’s really starting to piss me off. He looks forward to getting to have quality time with “Honda Chick” every single day. I don’t think we’ve had a conversation that lasted more than ten minutes that took place outside of his car since he brought “Honda Chick” home. And when I call him while he’s driving home, she annoys the crap out of me with her “Left turn one quarter mile” bull crap. As if he doesn’t know how to get home! Come on lady!

She’s absolutely, one hundred percent, a backseat driver. It gets on my nerves and I’m not even driving the car.

If this doesn’t stop, he’s going to have to make a choice.

Me, or Honda Chick.

“Play with your damn kids!”

Adam Sessler has a message for all you parents out there that have kids that video game. Sit down with your kids and play with them!

This is something I’ve been advocating for years. If you’re kids are doing something, you’ve got to get involved so that you can understand it when they talk about it at dinner, and also to make yourself aware of the kinds of things that they are doing when your back is turned. With video games, you can’t know for sure what they’re playing until you’ve watched them do it. I’m not saying you have to pick up a controller and beat Final Fantasy XII. I am saying that you should spend some time watching your kid beat Final Fantasy XII and ask them questions about the game, find out why they think it’s fun and see the game in action to make sure that it meets your standards. That’s what the demo consoles in gamestop and best buy are for people!

It’s Good to be a Geek.

If ever there were an anthem to geekdom that was not Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy”, it’s this song.

Hail to the Geeks by the Deaf Pedestrians

Watch the video on YouTube and revel in your 13th level halfling fighter thief.