No Phone Challenge Was a Success

My last post here was my 400th.  Congratulations go out to me for having a blog for four years.  I also crossed the 30,000 page view mark, so that's neat.  Most of my hits come from a post I did about your iPhone not being able to connect to the 4G network.  Get paid for any of this yet?

No.

Anyway when I last left you, I was planning on doing the no phone challenge.  I did it!  I only used my phone when my wife called me during her lunch break, used Siri to text my wife to let her know I was on my way to pick her up from work, and at the end of the day, my good friend Sean texted me some interesting life happenings, so I had to respond to that.  So how did it go?  Pretty good, actually.  I watched Netflix, which is pretty unusual.  The hardest part was when the kids were napping, I couldn't just fiddle with my phone while watching TV.  I wanted to look up when someone died, but couldn't.  After the kids went to bed for the night, my wife was going on with her business reading Facebook, and all I could do was twiddle my thumbs and dream about going to bed.  Other than that, I didn't miss much.  I thought about it a lot in the morning, but as the day progressed, the less I cared about my phone.  Even in the next couple days, I found myself caring less about what was happening on Twitter or Words with Friends or anything else, really.  But by today, Sunday, I'm fully regressed back to addict.  But if I had to, I could go without my phone.  It would be okay.

It wasn't freeing, like some people have said it would fell like.  I just made me focus on other things.  I suggest you unplug sometime.  It's a little weird, but not life-changing, unless you're addicted to your phone worse than I was.  I don't know.  It wasn't that cool, but I'm glad I did it.  

The No-Phone Challenge

The other night, I was brushing my teeth before bed and checking Twitter while I did so.  As I scrolled along, my phone battery died.  I thought to myself, this sucks, I can't wait to plug my phone in so I can use it again.  Then I thought, what if I didn't plug my phone back in?  What if I went an entire day without the use of my phone?  Wouldn't that be a fun experience?

I'm addicted to my phone.  I freely admit it.  I look at it constantly.  It's sort of sad, really, but there's just so much entertainment on the thing, I can't put it down.  It's an addiction.  I might try the no phone for an entire day, but that day ain't today.  As soon as I got to bed that night, I plugged my phone in and continued on like normal.  It wont' be tomorrow, either because I need to use it tomorrow.  But soon, I think I will do it.  I don't know what extent I'll cut myself off at, like, I can still use the computer or no?  Use any electronic device like the PS3?  I don't know.  I'll have to decide on the extent, but I think that if I went at it hardcore, it might make for an interesting blog post, something that hasn't been written in a good long while.

Maybe next week.  I'll let you when I do it by writing about it the next day...or perhaps during.  We'll see.

Goodbye! 

Coffee Shop or Starbucks?

Something compelled me, the second I sat down here at this coffee shop, the desire to blog. Why is that? Thats dumb! Also, with blogging from a MacBook at the apple store the other day, and now blogging from my iPhone in a Starbucks? What's up with that? I mean, what's so terrible about picking up the computer and writing about things I think about?

So I just told you I'm at a coffee shop and then told you I'm at a Starbucks. I know this is a coffee shop, but I think at this point we all consider the locally owned, local little coffee shop down the stree around the corner as the real coffee shops and a Starbucks as maybe more like, say, McDonald's? I usually feel this weird pointlessness to go sit at a coffee shop or Starbucks and use your computer or iPad or whatever in public. Most people have wifi now a days, don't they? I feel like anytime I see a person browsing away on their iPad in public, they're clearly just showing off that they have one, no? Laptops not as much, but I just feel like you have to make a great effort to go out and do that in public. It's a culture I don't understand.

Well, since I'm here blogging on my iPhone, I think I'll grab that free app thing Starbucks offers. Usually it's something good. Looks like it's Brian Cox's Wonders of the Universe. Hope it's good. I'll take almost anything free.


Have a good day, world.

iPhone Won't Connect to 4G? I Have Your Answer

I have an iPhone 4S, and I recently encountered a problem where it wouldn't connect to the AT&T 4G network here in Nashville. It worked fine on WiFi, but it wouldn't load any data over the network. When it happened to my wife a week or so later, I realized that I may not be alone with this problem.  So I figured I'd post something so that if anyone else has this problem, they'll be able to find an answer on the internet, something I failed to find when I searched for answers.

The Solution?  Turn it off and turn it back on again.  Works like a dream.  Simple as that.  In fact, that's a great thing to do for any weird thing your iPhone may be doing.  With no real on/off switch on the iPhone, it's probably on for long stretches of time.  Turning it off and on every once in a while is a good idea to keep the thing running good. 

So I hope you found you're answer to why your iPhone isn't working right. 

 Have a great day!  

An App For That

Jesus Christ there's an app for blogging? Sorry, didn't mean to take the lords name in vain there, for those of you that get offended by such things. But remember before how I said I could blog from my phone and I thought it was the most badass thing that humankind had come up with this far? Well now there's an actual app that I can type this nonsense up with. Pretty damn handy if you ask me.

I've attempted to insert a picture to this post here, but I'm not sure where it's going to put it. Well anyway, that's a picture of my activity for the past 24 hours. A dead computer and a good book from the library. I want to thank my good friend Tagan for the suggestion. It's actually a pretty good book, even though the thing started with a bunch of nonsensical explanations of characters that I wasn't entirely sure I needed to know about. At any rate, the book picked up a bit, even if it's still not clear what the plot is or what the purpose of this books existence is just yet. I'm nearly done with it, by the way.

I want to give a shutout to spellcheck, more specifically autocorrect. From the looks of things, I'm a perfect typer on this touchscreen, when in reality I'm pretty much just mashing my fat little fingers on the screen and somehow, this bastard knows what I mean. It's pretty incredible.

So, that's whats up. It's 3 in the morning and I'm blogging on my iPhone. I did not expect this to be my life at 28. Honestly, I've pounded this thing out faster than I wrote some posts on a traditional keyboard. Guess I am pretty good at this iPhone typing thing.

The Digital Life

It seems like human nature to want to choose sides.  Good versus Evil.  Axis or Allies.  Chocolate or vanilla.  Transformers or Go Bots.  Superman or Batman or Spiderman or Aquaman...you get the idea.  The world wide web is no different.  There are conflicting companies who are competing for our hard earned dollars everyday, and I'm talking about the big boys here.  Google, Facebook and Apple.  These are the biggest, most involved companies I can think of.  These companies effect my life hourly.  The fact that they are all rivals makes one want to choose a side, but sometimes you need to use, and enjoy using, all three.

Yes, this is ridiculous that we are all tied to these major, major ass-fucking companies who will try to bend you over for each and every dollar you earn, just like every other company that has existed ever.  Well, at least the successful ones will do this. That's why they're successful.  They make money.  They make you spend your money on their product.  They make you want it as well as sometimes need it.  A company's dream is for you to absolutely need the product they provide, because you can't live without it.  See: Drug companies.  Tech companies have spent years developing ways to intergrate themselves into ours lives so that we must have them to do the things they have made us want to do.  Pretty damn clever if you ask me.  Google I would say has done the best job of this, because if you do anything neat-o on the web, chances are it is through Google.

Facebook made it possible to connect with every person you ever had contact with.  Ever.  If I have a conversation with someone on the street and I catch their name, I could probably find them on Facebook and continute the conversation.  They can be my friend forever if I so choose to have them.  It's something that has become almost a necessity.  I can share all the precious moments of my little two-month old daughter with all my family all across the country with the power of Facebook.  I have to have a Facebook.  I could share these things another way, but Facebook just makes it easier.

Apple has made the telephone so much more than a telephone.  They have made the telephone into your handheld computer.  Your connection to everything on the web when you're away from your computer.  You don't have to be tied down to connect with everyone you've ever met, ever.  You can do it while taking a dump at Target.  You can do it on your road trip to Phoenix, while stopped somewhere in Utah.  You can play games whenever, wherever (so long as it's a safe place, like not driving your car, or whatever.)  You get the idea.  Apple revolutionized the way we connect with friends and family.  I can hold my iPhone in my hand and find something to do with it for hours and hours and hours on end.  I say Apple did this because they did it first and they did it best.  They are the industry leader in this aspect.  Google followed suit with Android, but it's a pretender.  Apple is responsible for this revolution, no matter how you slice it.

The point of all this, which I'm sure you're aware of all the facts I pointed out above, is that these are all rivals.  These companies are all vying for your dollar.  They need to come up with innovative ways to improve upon what their rivals come out with.  They need to one-up each other.  Sometimes it works (Mobile photo sharing via Facebook, Google's Blogger and other various add-ons and innovations, iTunes) and sometimes it doesn't (Google Buzz, Facebook chat, um...Apple has never failed, apparently. I can't think of one.)  Apple has the music market cornered with iTunes.  Facebook, I hear, is going to unveil their music division or service or whatever in the near future.  Google will release (or has released, not sure if it's out or not yet) an cloud based music service, like Amazon already has.  (DID I FORGET TO ADD AMAZON TO THE WEB GIANTS?  YEP.)

Anyway, you get the idea.  It all comes back to the consumers choice of which side they prefer.  Some want no part of it, and choose to live in the woods like Bob Balbierz.  Everyone else has their lives touched at least a little by these companies.  But I don't want to choose.  I have an iPhone, use iTunes regularly, yet strictly use Google for web surfing, blogging, emailing, translating, web reading, calendering, and using the internet in general by using Google Chrome.  I am 90% a google guy, except for their phone software.  That's where Apple is #1 for reasons I described above.  Now, Apple doesn't offer ANY of the things Google does, so that's probably why I don't use them for all of this.  If they rolled it any of it, would I use it? Probably not.  Google does a great job and it's what I'm used to.  And I'm not a Mac guy as far as the actual computer.  I have used PC's my entire life and I like them!  Yet I cannot, neigh WILL NOT use any other phone than the iPhone.  I refuse to downgrade.

And then there's Facebook.  I only use Facebook at this point because I feel I have to.  Everyone is on there and I love everyone.  My hope is that Facebook will go the way of the Myspace soon enough.  And that's the hopes of Google when they unveiled their newest thingermabob the other day, Google+.  Apparently Google+ is so badass, some industry experts expect it to do just that, put Facebook in a headlock.  I'm not so sure.  It took this long for mom, auntie Sue, Cousin Larry with one eye and your 11th grade english teacher to get on Facebook, what makes you think they're suddenly going to say, "hey, lets change everything I just got comfortable with."  Ask Twitter how well that's going.  (600 million v.s. 200 million, which is closer than I thought it would be, according to the latest data I found, which was in December of last year.)  No, it's not going to happen overnight, but I think this Google+ thing, if it's really done correctly like the experts are saying it is, will make an impact.  Only time will tell, and in the tech world, that time could be very very short.  So I'll see you on Google+ as soon as we're all able to get on it.  As for whose side I'm on?  Leaning Google, just so you know.  It's so slick!

Today, I Learn How To Spell "Unbelievable"

Yesterday, I was surfing on my iPhone in the App Store, looking for an app I thought probably should exist.  I was disappointed to find out that it didn't exist, but I found something unbelievable in the process.

First off, My Coke Rewards is a thing that exists online where you enter the little stupid code on the cap of your coke product and you get points to use towards useless shit.  Well, Ive been collecting points for a long time now, and I have over 900 currently.  I spent about a hundred of them a months ago as well.  Anyway, I figured there should probably be an iPhone app for My Coke Rewards.  Not true.  I can't believe the Coke company didn't think of this.  How utterly stupid.  If you want people to participate in your program, don't you think you would make it a cool iPhone app?  People love iPhone apps, idiots.  Get with the program.

Well, the point here, the unbelievable thing I found in the process of searching for this app was that for my search results for "Coke Rewards" came up with only one app.  It was a game called Hot Farm.

Hot Farm is being sold in the App Store for $69.99

That's right, one stupid iPhone game that is being sold for seventy dollars.  I figured, who the fuck would ever pay for this?  Apparently, up to 610 people, because, that's how many people have rated this game.  Now, I would assume that at one point this game was either 99 cents like most apps or maybe even as much as five to 10 dollars.  People will pay for stupid shit, but I don't believe anyone would have paid this $70.  If they did, they need to be shot in the face.  Sorry, that's just ridiculous 

The question begs to be asked, what kind of scam artist does it take to price an app at $70?  First off, probably not a very good scam artist.  If you wanted to scam people, make it $5 or something. You could probably convince at least a handful of people to pony up that dough.  But $70?  That is just insane.  And what's funny was reading the comments and ratings by the users, they were mainly negative, or at least neutral.  Basically they said this was just like some poor Facebook game.  Unbelievable.

So check it out if you'd like.  Hot Farm.  Totally fucking stupid insane app developers!  

Project365 v 2.0

I mentioned a while back about a wonderful app for the iPhone called Project365.  I talked before, in case you missed it, about how it was a wonderful way to never forget a day in my life again, and that's exactly what it has done for me, a year later.

Well, I was using the free version, not realizing a few things were to my disadvantage.  First of all, the free version only allows you to have one calender year of pictures and memories saved to the app.  Thankfully, I realized this with plenty of time to come up with a solution, which was to pay for the full version.  The paid version allows for multiple years of entries, so there's no need to get another copy of the app or whatever.  Also, should anything happen to my phone, there is a web backup feature.  So all my Project365 entries are on a web site.  In fact, you can view that website yourself, I believe.  Let me try to link it HERE.  Hope that works.

Anyway, I use that as a pretty personal journal, and some of the writing is in a bit of shorthand, so if it's hard to understand, just know that I know what it means.  Also, I hope I didn't rip on anyone in one of the posts...and now you'll read it... Meh, que sara sara, I suppose.  I don't think I did anyway.

So yes, all my memories are backed up.  This is still probably the best app I got going on my phone.  Sometimes I just really need to look back and know specifically what days things happened.  What I found very weird is that I started using the free version on April 23rd, 2010, and used it for an entire year.  Little did I know at the time that I was documenting the entire calender year, almost exactly to the day, of my final year as a non-parent.  And with the new app, I have started documenting every day of being a dad.  Weird how things like that work out, eh? 

I'd Like To Have A Word With You

I love the game of Scrabble. I really do. I didn't before, because words are hard sometimes. You have to get your friends or family together to play, and sometimes, that's not that easy. Well, thanks to modern technology, you can play "Scrabble" with your friends while being miles and miles away from each other.

I'm talking about Words with Friends. It's an iPhone (or iPod Touch) game that allows you to play "Scrabble" with anyone that wants to play with you. I'm currently in games with people in Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Some of the people I'm playing against I know and are real friends, and some I have never met. I first got the game because a guy that works here saw that I have an iPhone and asked if I played. I said no, but I'll download the free app. We played some games, and then I got my brother and wife in on the action. Soon enough, I was playing against all kinds of people, from Pard, to a guy in Florida named Brandon I never met, but is a friend of a friend.

On Thanksgiving, the music editor of Alternative Press Magazine asked if anyone out there played Words With Friends, and if they would like to play him. So, I started a game, and now I play him regularly! That's pretty fuckin' neat-o if you ask me. I was on one of my favorite sites the other day On The Forecheck, and I was in one of the message boards when someone begged the question if anyone played. I responded, and now I'm playing against some dude here in Tennessee, who's handle on OTF is LuvthePreds.

So, now I'm playing like, six different games of Words with all sorts of people, and I love it. If you have an iPhone (LIKE ONE OF MY REGULAR READERS) and still don't play, I suggest you do. It's a lot of fun. Just play a word whenever you feel like it. Some games I have played have lasted a month or longer! It's something to do while fiddling with your phone, which if you're like me, you do often. It's just another way to stay connected with your friends. Words with Friends. The best app on my iPhone.

my username is bPerala. start one up, if you'd like. You'll probably beat me.