Suck it Verizon and Sprint

Bash all you want, I have never experienced any of the problems people always complain about with AT&T, I also worked in wireless, so I guess I also know to expect that cellular phones do not work everywhere, and occasionally they will drop a call during a tower handoff (or a 3G to edge handoff for that matter), remember folks its just a phone, and think back 25 years or so, the thought of having a phone in your pocket was crazy-talk.  That being said, I stumbled upon this interesting piece about a recent study by a company called Metrico Wireless, never heard of them, but these firms pop up all the time.  The data is quite interesting, like most studies, they measured the basics...Metrico measured five performance factors shortly after the iPhone 4S was launched on all three carriers in October: whether calls could be connected and held; voice quality; data performance; Web browsing by page load speeds and video performance.


"Metrico did not pronounce any carrier a winner or loser in the study, noting that each had strengths. In an analysis of a summary of the findings, however, AT&T came out on top in more areas than the others, with Verizon second and Sprint third."


This was what I found interesting, "AT&T was twice as fast as Verizon in Web browsing with the iPhone 4S, recording average page load times of 1.29 seconds, compared with Verizon's 2.60 seconds. Sprint's version of the phone took an average of 6.44 seconds for Web browsing page loads, according to Amit Malhotra, vice president of marketing at Metrico, in an interview."


Check it out, tell me what you think, do you have an iPhone, if so who are you with?


Oh yeah, geeky graph incoming!

And with that, I'm done, it's my daughters 2nd birthday today, so I'm off to wake the girls up and go get her favorite breakfast, hash browns from McDonalds.  See you tomorrow!


Geeky Dad Out..

New Software is Available for Your Computer

I was greeted with a software update this morning, nothing overly exciting, it was iTunes 5.1.  So whats new in 5.1?  


Well, With iTunes Match, even songs you’ve imported from CDs can be stored in iCloud. And you can play them on any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC — whenever you want and wherever you are, without syncing. iTunes Match is just $24.99 a year.

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to iCloud for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 20 million songs in the iTunes Store, chances are, your music is already in iCloud. And for the few songs that aren’t, iTunes has to upload only what it can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream and store it to any of your devices. Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

So, if you decide to use this, I'm guessing your going to need more space in your cloud, and look, Apple has a plan for that!  Enjoy!

So...does this open up the door for a cloud based iPhone/iPod/iPad?  Only time will tell, and of course the adoption rate will be a factor on whether this will happen.  But then again, we won't know anything as always until Apple tells us.

Have a day, It's Friday, and no one can take that away from you!

An open letter to CenturyLink

To Whom it may concern;  I have been very patient, when you sold me internet you told me I could get 8 mb down, when I installed your service I got less than 1mb down and was told it was a fiber cut.  When it continued to the next day, I am told I can't have 8 mb, only 6, which I'm fine with, but since the start of this service my modem will just drop connection, all the lights still show its connected, but no devices will connect to then internet.  Modem replaced on last tech call, still having same issue, I think its time to get someone a little higher up the chain to tell me why this is happening and why I haven't gotten my 6 mb down in over a week.  Your killing my productivity, which includes job hunting, and do you know how bad it sucks to be half-way through an online application (45 minutes worth) to have the internet go down and have to start all over!  So please someone find out why I am having all these problems, give me a straight answer, and lets work together to get it right the first time.

I wish I could say that I was able to post this in one try, but no, modem just had to be reset...again (4th time today).

Sincerely
The Geeky Mac Daddy (not the pimp, the Macintosh)

And so it just keeps getting better

So, with most changes, like a move, you go through the routine and find a new grocery store, a new barber/stylist, a new barista, and of course new doctors.  With new insurance comes change as well, we now have an asininely larger deductible, and have a limited choice of dentists.  Upon searching for a dentist all we have to choose from is something called Monarch Dental, which I hear is like fast food dentistry.  I don't like to complain, but why can't I just go to a nice local independent dentist and not have to use a conglomerate?  Just ranting, but thats not really why its just getting better...

Found a new doctor, my wife suggested instead of going to a family medicine that I start going to an Internal Medicine doctor.  Get that all set up and have my first visit, my annual physical (been doing these since I turned 30), same thing, lots of questions, weight loss, exercise, etc.  She refills my scrips, also orders my lab work, which the hospital does, so I have to go there.  Finally make it to the hospital (on Thursday) while fasting and get my blood drawn, fast easy, got it on the first stick, which was awesome!

Fast forward to Tuesday of this week, get a phone call at lunch from my doctor, this can't be good, she didn't have a nurse call..."Jon, you have diabetes, your sugar was 226, bad cholesterol was within range, my good cholesterol was low, and uric acid was normal."  So she says she's going to start me on metformin and that I need to check my sugar every morning.  Starting to look at meters, and see what I need, the geek in me kicks in, bayer makes a USB meter that automatically uploads your results and graphs, this is very cool and intrigues the nerd in me.  So I decided last night to try it out, since I've never done it before.  I almost had a panic attack trying to get the damn lancet to work.  I would tense up and then it wouldn't fire (because I'm too smart to read instructions), finally  Marty said she'd do it for me, and well she couldn't figure it out at first too, and asked for the instructions.  I went into the other room and figured it out and did it myself, and flinched as I was doing it so it didn't stick fully so very small stream of blood, but finally enough to test.  227.  I looked at myself in the mirror, I was sweating, I had worked myself up so much over what turned out to be nice and easy and almost painless.  I am such a baby!

On a side note, anyone seeing battery issues with iOS 5?  Well apparently there is a fix on the way.
Also, I've been playing Battlefield 3 on the 360, and I hate to admit this but I like it better than MW3, also started Skyrim, but think I am going to start over as I really want to be a mage, and I don't like my Dark Elf.  Arkham City is on hold at the moment, that game is huge and so immersive, I could spend hours just flying around the city, and you have to love Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as The Joker.

I think an apology may be in order...

So, as some of you may know from my previous post, I recently relocated to Texas.  This was not an easy decision to make, especially now that there is a granddaughter involved.  I quit a good job at Verizon (I was going to get laid off, but was also going to be compensated for this), started my own business with my wife, business failed, chaos ensued, relocation successful.  So during most of the year we were running our own business, I was suffering from what I would say was semi-sever anxiety, everything was a stressor, my life, my work, my bank accounts, etc...  Add to that the fact that I don't really have a lot of friends, that is to say I have a lot of acquaintances, but not many "friends".  I know this is partially my fault as I was living in Searcy, did not drive a truck, did not hunt nor fish, could not recite the player rosters or stats of any player in high school or college football, so all the while I never felt like I fit in.  For that I apologize, I should have been more open to trying new things.  Secondly, once the business was set to close and the assets set to disappear, I think I started to get really depressed, you know not dark, i'm going to kill something depressed, but just genuinely sad, people I thought were my friends turned their backs, people started talking behind backs like children, and well I just sunk deeper and deeper.  So, since I didn't confront any of you petty assholes, I apologize, I hope you get your karmic just desserts (up your ass).  Sorry, I apologize for that too.  I also want to apologize to my friends who were not made aware of the transition until it was already over, it was hard enough coordinating closing my office, packing my house and leaving all my family, so for that too, I am heartfully sorry (not sure if thats the right word, but you get my meaning.

I've never felt like an overly smart person, but I have managed to work my ass off over the years and prove that I can do anything I set my mind to....until now, I can't seem to get a job to save my life, I've been turned down for everything, even sales jobs at wireless companies, I mean I had the inside track, I knew wireless inside and out, and now I can't even get an interview.  Everything is done online, so you really have no chance to make any kind of impression.  I have some people who just ignore my applications and my emails, so thats really nice, I'd rather get the Dear Jon, we regret to inform you.... form letter than nothing.  So for my interest in working for those of you who lack the decency to respond, I'm sorry I bugged you, no go drink your latte and sit in your Herman Miller chair, and take your middle finger, and spin...

So, that leaves me being a stay at home dad (not all bad, I do have the best daughter in the whole world), a desire to try to broaden my cooking skills, a desire to learn more about digital photography, and a completed application to the University of North Texas, yep, after almost 15 years, I'm going to go back to school and finally get that piece of paper, so maybe then I can get a job selling cell phones to people with no credit.

Since it appears I will have more time on my hands, I will try to update this with more frequency and try not to be an asshole the whole time, and get back to some cool techie posts, as I know most of you love my rants about geekology and technology (technogeek).

So good night, farewell, auf feiderzein, goodbye.