hate AT&T?

...you're not alone. that a company that large, when gifted with the best-selling mobile phone in history by their competition, can turn around and completely fail to support it and then continually commit customer-service suicide is unfathomable.

this techcrunch post hits every point of frustration for iphone owners (and, thanks to the halo effect, every other smartphone owner on their network) perfectly. i can attest to their many failures as there is a one-block dead zone outside my office in san francisco and i just did a complete restore on stephanie's iphone because she was only receiving texts and voicemails intermittently. it would have been nice if at&t had sent out some sort of notification that, in fact, their VM system was crapping out. no, wait... it would have been the MINIMUM LEVEL OF SERVICE EXPECTED. read the post, compare it to your own experience on AT&T and seriously consider this:

The iPhone will eventually be on Verizon, on Apple’s terms. It’s just a question of when.

If that’s by the end of next year, many of us will be happy campers. I don’t care what I have to pay to break an AT&T contract, I will do so in a heartbeat.

amen.

always be prepared

my biggest frustration with having a broken toe (or any other injury) comes from the negative impact it has on my ability to respond in a fight-or-flight situation. on a normal day, i am constantly judging my situation for vulnerability, defensibility and escapability in case of unforeseen danger. y'know, stuff like someone losing control of their vehicle nearby. or someone having a psychotic episode and deciding to make use of that 8" chef's knife in their bag. or terrorists launching a coordinated attack on the building i'm passing. or the violent genesis of the inevitable robot uprising. or the invasion of earth by extra-terrestrials. or armageddon...

seriously, i totally think like this on my way to work and stuff, but i digress. the point is, it's way harder to attack an opponent or flee nuclear death raining down from on high when you're stuck limping around. this frame of mind also informs my manner of dress: backpacks, rather than shoulder bags, because they're more stable while running and can't be ripped off my person as easily; shoes that i can immediately start running in; just the basics in my pockets so i won't be weighed-down. i'm always shocked at the sight of people carrying a ton of useless crap that they'll obviously have to ditch when the zombie apocalypse begins.

this, of course, brings us to flip-flops. what on earth goes through your head while you're making the decision to wear those stupid things? "it sure is sunny today, i'd better put on some footwear that will assault the visual and olfactory senses of everyone around me, insure i couldn't run away from a slow loris on valium and drastically increase my chances of getting huge, infected cuts on my feet and/or broken toes!" perfect. me? i'm gonna put on my nikes and leave you and your tanned feet in the dust when the ninjas start jumping out of the trees...

how to celebrate jonathan lawrence whitmire's birthday

just in case you missed the tweets or facebook posts, there's a video recap of jon whitmire's birthday shenanigans in the bay area over at my mobileme gallery (not embedded here because mobileme doesn't allow that, flickr won't take files that big, youtube is all scared of copyright infringement and i'm waaaaaay too lazy to set up a real blog on my own site with real hosting). it was shot entirely on iPhones 3GS, many thanks to melina juarez for sharing her footage.

this movie is rated PG-13 for tattoos, language, alcohol consumption and comic violence.

UPDATE: now available with less tattoo footage, thanks to viewer feedback.

fastest wedding ever?

the 4th of july weekend was mental. tattoos, a birthday AND a wedding. bill and whitney got married under the crocker crypt at the mountain view cemetery in oakland. their buddy mark, ordained by the church of the latter-day dude, opened with some lovely words and then guided the happy couple through a one minute vow exchange. we drank prosecco, popped party poppers and wrapped things up hastily when security started poking around. definitely the least traditional and one of the sweetest weddings i've ever been to...

the groom

via leigh's flickr

gundam, go!

whoops

this morning i had the bizarre experience of jumping out of bed to turn off the alarm and promptly falling flat on my face. apparently, my left leg was still "asleep" and not responding to commands from my brain.

it was, however, dutifully sending pain signals TO my brain, all of which were originating in my little toe. i had hoped that it was simply sprained but it is now huge and purple - the hallmarks of a broken toe. moral of the story? take your time getting out of bed...

like my foot wasn't gross enough to begin with...

inked

i learned two things this weekend:

1: it is customary to tip your tattoo artist.

2: getting sweat on a fresh tattoo hurts.

jon, george and i had talked about getting tattoos of futura 2000's gear designs way back in college. that idea, like many hatched in college, fell by the wayside as "life" continued. recently, jon had revived the subject with george and george mentioned as much to me. i enthusiastically expressed my support for the endeavor and we concocted a plan to surprise jon while visiting for his birthday on the 4th of july. of course, the design had to be agreed upon first, so george developed a clever ruse involving us planning to have it done in san diego during comic-con later this month.

the ruse worked, jon was surprised and we all made permanent changes to our impermanent bodies.

fail

UPDATE: in fairness to apple and at&t, i think i can pin the failed-sync blame squarely on nikeplus.com, as they are in the middle of rolling out an updated website and service. the feature set is more compelling and the design is far better, so i'll take a couple lost miles in the name of progress.

UPDATE 2: well, it appears apple and nike may be culpable after all. my latest (and longest with the 3GS) run just failed to upload to nikeplus.com AND THEN somehow managed to disappear out of the history list on my iphone... of course, angry emails have been sent and snarky forum posts have been made, but they need to fix this fast. why on earth can't a device as advanced as the latest iphone pull off a feat that is constantly accomplished by my three-year-old ipod nano? and if i'm FORCED to pay for UNLIMITED DATA by at&t, why can't i upload my run history directly from the phone? ridiculous...

memories...

back in 1999, when i began my employment at the venerable Williams-Sonoma, Inc., all catalog photography was shot on large and medium format film. 'round about 2001, we started the transition to digital photography. a day's shoot would be delivered to us as a big ol' stack of iomega zip disks.



zips held a whopping ONE HUNDRED MEGABYTES for about ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS. they were a big deal because they were SO SMALL (about 3.5" square). in college, we had just started using 150MB bernoulli disks (also about $100) for digital projects but they were HUGE in comparison (about 5" square). here's a 100MB bernoulli drive next to my old 16 GIGABYTE iphone:



oh, by the way, the iphone makes calls and surfs the web and plays movies and stuff. hilarious. since 2001, we've gotten photo in on a bunch of different kinds of storage media/devices: CDs, DVDs, portable hard drives... but last week we got a batch on something new, a USB thumb drive. not just any thumb drive, a TWO GIGABYTE MICRO VAULT TINY!



it holds as much data as 20 zip disks, is small enough to swallow, costs about $20 and comes with a cute sleeve you can clip to your shirt or cell phone or something:



i can't wait 'til the photographer just IMs the photo straight to my cell phone. which will be embedded in my eyeglasses. eyephone. ha.

i can relate

via flickr.