上海美味

Years and years ago, I implored the browser development community to come up with a web browser that gave me, the user, control over cookies, pop-ups, and other hijackings like window resizing or movement.  Mozilla was the first browser that answered not one, but all of my requests, and I'm happy to say that to this day, I still use the descendant of Mozilla, Firefox.

Now I realize that hardware manufacturers are not remotely as innovative or responsive as the open-source community that gave us Mozilla and Firefox, but I am going to try the same thing for a mobile phone.  I'm tired of being negative towards my mobile phone and the industry without so much as providing them a blueprint for what I want.  So I present my wish list:  the perfect phone.

The Perfect Phone

• No larger than 3" x 1" x 0.4" (if shaped cylindrically, a maximum diameter of 0.5") closed.
  
• Flip or slide mechanism - key guard is stupid, just give me the flip.  The flip is the ideal form factor for a phone.  It serves the functions of key guard and screen protector while keeping the form factor reasonable.  The challenge with the flip is that it has to be well-designed and well-constructed to endure the mechanism strain over the phone's lifetime.  This is easily addressed with good materials, engineering, and production.
• If shaped cylindrically, it should look like a short pen when closed.  Instead of a flip, I "click" the phone like a click pen and voila, it extends by a couple of inches so that you can see a small screen (say from 3" to 5").
  
• World compatible (ie. I can turn it on and use it on any digital mobile network - whether that means Quad band or tri-mode or whatever, I don't care.  Stop muddling the issue with jargon and just give me what I want.)
• 5 hours of talk time, 100 hours of standby time minimum
• 8 kB of memory, maximum - why maximum?  So the only thing I can put in there is names and phone numbers.  If I wanted any more features, I'd get a smartphone.
• 1-bit color display capable of displaying a 20 letter name and 20 digit phone number simultaneously.  I don't care if this is implemented with a series of 7-segment LEDs or if it's implemented with a 320x72 LCD.  Again, stop muddling the issue with jargon and "features" and just give me what I want.  The display must be readable in direct sunlight and the brightness must either automatically adjust or be easily adjustable so as to not blind me while I am drunk dialing in the middle of the cold dark night.
  
• The speaker driver must be made of high quality materials, such as molybdenum.  Really what I'm looking for here is high fidelity sound.  The mobile network is bad enough sound-quality-wise, the last thing I need is to have my phone contributing even more degredation to the signal before it reaches my ear.  Again, the phone must be built solidly enough that even if I turn it up a LOT the phone won't start to rattle like those cheap car stereo installs where every time the bass comes in their whole deck vibrates audibly to everyone in a two block radius.
• Speakerphone would be nice, but really I could give less a shit if the regular phone was high quality and fidelity.
  
• No camera, no internet, no Bluetooth, nothing.  Really, I don't even care to see a mic/headset hands-free port.  When you're in the car, drive.  Talk when you're sitting on the shitter.
• In fact, no ports at all.  Not even power.  Yes, you heard me.  I want this phone to operate on either 1 AA or 2 AAA batteries.  I am tired of having ten million different batteries.  We have a standard for batteries, and they're even rechargeable now.  At every opportunity, I've chosen the appliance that uses standard batteries over proprietary batteries.  This makes me a more efficient user of resources and energy, to say nothing of the impact if society as a whole would wake up to this stupidity.
  
• Since it has no ports, the phone should be waterproof to a depth of 50'.  This is optional, but it would be nice.
  
• Keys must be labeled for number and letter dialing.  I can't believe I have to fucking ask for this "feature" which has been standard on every phone I have ever seen in my entire life except for those costing more than $200.
• Clock, which is set from the mobile network's signal but can maintain the time without a signal.  One alarm.
• Classy, high-quality materials.  Why does every "simple" phone that American telcos offer look like it was designed for sale at Wal/K-Mart?  I want a simple phone that is encased in brushed aluminum or magnesium and/or carbon fibre.  The keys should be aluminum, with laser etched backlit numbers and letters.  I'm tired of cheap plastic shit that wears off within a few months of use.
• Lifetime warranty, including the flip mechanism of course.
  
• I will pay $1000 for this phone, but I refuse to be locked into any contract or network.
  

A little over a year ago, I underwent an utterly hellish process to stay loyal to Sprint and get a Motorola Q.  One day, I may document this on the blog, but not today.  I have all the e-mails saved, and the memory of the multitudes of phone calls with incompetent, undertrained, ineffective "customer" "service" "agents" will be forever seared into my memory...  I imagine that if I ever get Alzheimer's and forget my own name I will still remember the pain that this process caused.

You would think that enduring that kind of pain would net something worthy of the process.  Unfortunately, after a long year of continued frustration and just astonished, flabbergasted bewilderment, I now find it necessary to document all the ills of this phone.  I don't know if these problems are Motorola's fault, Sprint's fault, or Microsoft's fault, but frankly, I don't give a damn.  The phone is the technological equivalent of equine excrement, and every day it surprises me in some new way.  90% of the stress in my day comes from traffic, but the remaining 10% comes from my having to use the Motorola Q.

• First off, the hardware...  about the only good thing I can say about this phone is that it is built fairly solidly.  I've dropped it a couple of times and it's held up well.  Plus, the sexy black rubberized-for-your-pleasure finish is not only aesthetically pleasing but also functions to assist in grip.
• There is a set of maladies which I would like to characterize as "poor battery life," but that doesn't even begin to tell the story.  In fact, it's kind of misleading, because on a brand new battery, it was acceptable.  That is to say, on a full charge when the battery and phone were brand new, I could go an entire day with a little surfing, a little talking on the phone, and some SMS messages without having to worry too much.  Unfortunately, within 6 months, the battery life began to drop noticeably.  I am a fucking battery hound, period.  I am so anal about my batteries that I have a spreadsheet to track the charge that goes into each and every NiMH battery that I own (I have a special charger that lets me cycle each battery fully on every charge and track the energy put into every individual cell).  So don't tell me about how to properly take care of batteries.  My last phone, a Samsung Palm device, was still holding charge on its battery at a level indistinguishable from brand new 3 years later.  On the Q now, if I make it through a whole day without getting a low battery warning, I go and buy a lottery ticket because it's my fucking lucky day.
• What's even more frustrating is that the phone will literally turn itself off as if the battery died for no reason whatsoever, randomly.  I can be sitting there with 3 bars (out of 4) on the batt indicator, and five minutes later, I look at my phone, and it's fucking taking a personal day.  When I power it back on, it comes up with a random number of bars.  Sometimes, it's 3 like before it turned itself off, sometimes it gives me a low battery warning with 0 bars.  What a piece of junk.  I'd pick up a spare battery, but I refuse to give Motorola more money for a defective product.
• The "flash" on the camera must be short for "flashlight" because it is not a "flash" in the photographic sense of the word.
  
• Software-wise, it's just unbelievably buggy.  They couldn't even get something as fundamental as dialing right.  When you're on the "home" screen and press a number, it is supposed to put you into dialing mode.  The numbers you press show up at the top, and simultaneously, it brings up possible matches for the letters underneath out of your address book.  This is pretty standard for any mobile phone since, oh, I dunno...  1990?  But no, not on the Q.  Right now, as I type this rant, if I hit any number or letter from the "home" screen, what do I get?  My fucking calendar.
• Also, there is an entire friggin' qwerty keyboard on this phone.  You'd think you'd be able to dial 1-800-MOTO-SUX but no.  You have to translate the letters yourself and then dial the numbers.  How hard would it have been to include some "letter dialing" mode?  I mean, I don't even need it to be automatic.  I'd be fine with having to press alt- or shift- or whatever.  But no.  Nothing.
• Don't even get me started on IE.
• ActiveSync is neither active nor does it sync.  It is a royal pain in the ass to use, and frankly I doubt that 99% of people who don't have professional IT support have ever sync'd their Q's to their Windows machine.  And if you want to sync over Bluetooth, you might as well hit any number or letter on your Q to bring up your calendar so you can cancel your appointments for the next three days because that's how long it'll take you to figure that shit out.

I'll continue to post the misadventures I have with this phone, which I am convinced must be standard issue in Purgatory.  After all, I am locked into this contractually for another year thanks to the orifices which are the telcos.  But as long as I have to put up with this crap I might as well get my word in edgewise on it.

So Specter isn't letting this go...

"[Goodell] issued the discipline as quickly as he could to send a strong message to teams that this wouldn't be tolerated and there'd be a severe penalty if you violated the rules," Aiello said. "The discipline included they had to turn over everything they had related to that taping procedure."

Specter heard that explanation from Goodell on Wednesday. On Thursday, Specter said, "The words absurd and ridiculous keep coming to my mind because he [Goodell] says it with a straight face."  (From ESPN.com)

Dude, are you kidding me?  How can Specter say that with a straight face?

Look, the Eagles had a bad season.  I'm a Bears fan, we had a bad season too.

Get.  Over.  It.

Deal with it like all the other fans out there.  Make up some stupid storyline about how "long-suffering" you are.  How you are cursed.  How your quarterback is going to defect, blah blah blah...  But stop spending millions of our hard earned tax dollars on your petty grievances over how bad your team is.

I am dumbfounded by the sports news lately.  I expect to see names like Roger Clemens, Tom Brady...  even Michael Jordan (retired), Walter Payton (long retired and passed away), in the sports news.  So why am I seeing names of US Senators and members of Congress in the sports news?

I wish there was a simple answer, like "because our government likes to meddle in all aspects of our lives."  Hmmm, actually, that might be so simple that it's true.  But seriously, why does the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform need to investigate Roger Clemens?  It seems like a pretty simple drug case to me.  I mean, we don't see Congress investigating every teenage steroid user or every loser meth addict.  Shouldn't the Roger Clemens case be handled by the system of criminal investigation and justice that is already in place?  In other words, the law enforcement branch of the jurisdiction where the offense(s) allegedly occurred?  From a judicial perspective (and I'm no  lawyer so one of you should correct me if I'm wrong) should this investigation not be handled by a grand jury?  Or some other judicial investigative agency?

Instead, the legislative branch of our federal government is directly involved.  Last time I checked the Constitution, the legislative branch has the exclusive responsibility to make laws.  Not to interpret or enforce laws.  I believe (and you Constitutional scholars out there feel free to chime in) that it is the judicial branch which is tasked with those responsibilities.

As if the Roger Clemens case (or Barry Bonds or whoever you want to name in Major League Baseball) isn't enough, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) has taken it upon himself and upon United States Senate to investigate the fairness of competition in a professional sports league.  Specifically, he is meeting with the Commissioner of the National Football League to discuss whether the New England Patriots cheated by videotaping opponents against the rules of the NFL.

Why is the highest legislative body in the land looking into whether a sports team cheated?  And not only that, but after the league itself already conducted an investigation.  Look, I know football consumes the lives of millions of men and women for a good half year, but let's get real here.  Even if the Patriots had gone and done something actually illegal...  say, transporting drugs or steroids on their private jet, I don't think the Senate should be the investigating body.  And they didn't even do anything illegal.  Just against the (arbitrary) rules of their own league.

What is the Senate going to do next?  Tell the NFL how to define pass interference?  Is every bad call by a ref going to be reviewed by the highest echelons of our government?

This is meddling to the extreme.  It's a ridiculous waste of my (and your) money.  It's a farce.  If these Senators and Representatives have nothing better to do with their time, they should get out of government.  And as their constituents, let me remind you that you have the power to force them out of our government.  There are far more pressing issues in the country.  At the very least, give us our money back.

There are some people that not even The Easy Button can help...

I watched a lady this morning sit in her car, holding up a line of about 10 cars, because she could not figure out how to press a button.  I am not kidding.

She was trying to enter a parking garage, and all she had to do was press the button on the ticket dispenser so that that gate would raise and she could enter the lot.  Like just about every other pay by the hour parking garage in the entire world.  I watched as I walked past (thank goodness I was walking and not stuck behind her) her, an utterly hollow expression having overtaken her being.

I felt very sorry.  Not for her, but for all the people in society that have to put up with her.  At that moment, it was only those 10 people behind her, but they couldn't have been the only ones she'd touched in an entire lifetime thus far of confused existence.

By the time I had walked beyond sight of her, she had not moved nor had the expression on her face changed.

So I used to fly back from Europe or Asia, arrive at, say 9 in the morning, and go straight to work without missing a beat - or using a vacation day.

The last couple of years, I've usually taken my arrival day off, going back to work the next day.  I joked that I was getting old because of this.

Well, folks, I think it's no longer a joke.  Now I'm definitely old.  I not only take the day of arrival off, but the next day off too.  Yeah, physically, I feel a lot better doing this.  But here's the thing that I think really separates my old and young self:  wisdom.  I've come to realize that no job is worth putting myself through that crap.  I've also positioned myself at work to be able to do this without feeling any guilt, and I've earned enough respect to not have to hoard my vacation days.

My best advice to any job seekers out there:  you might not be able to negotiate much on your salary, but you should never settle for less than 3 weeks of vacay.  Better yet, work as a consultant and bill by the hour.  Then you'll never have to worry about some set number of vacation days in a year.  Just make sure your rate is high enough to maintain the lifestyle you want while working the number of hours you desire.  It's truly amazing.

I love being old.

Well, this was a bachelor party for the ages.  Here are some of the highlights I'm at liberty to share:

• Got trashed on Dom Perignon, provided by the Russian Mafia
• Closed down the Heineken Brewery
  
• Drank a pub dry
• Defeated Howard Lederer in high stakes Texas Hold'em at the Rijksmuseum over Rembrandts
• Obtained two six packs of Heineken from a random newspaper stand at 2 AM on a Sunday (fuck you American blue laws)
• Watched police (politie) bust someone for overloading their pedicab while a crowd of pot smoking onlookers gathered 'round (fuck you American drug laws)
• Ate nothing but steak all weekend
• Believe it or not, didn't even set foot in a casino!
• Overflew Kugluktuk, Nunavut on my way back
• Clicked over 1,000,000 flight miles on my way back

* Not responsible for omissions, errors, embellishments, or straight out lies

So there's all these truck commercials with those absurd situations like trying to stop a plane, running a gauntlet of swinging I-beams, driving along a ridiculously thin rail against a crosswind...

but what I want to see is the outtakes...

trucks flying up into the air, gettin' smashed by I-beams, and a pile of trucks at the bottom of that canyon from being blown over by a bunch of fans.

Hahahhaha.  c'mon, someone with good video editing tools, let's see your work up on YouTube.

Okay.  This is pretty difficult for a Bears fan to say, but:

If it takes the Packers to take down the AFC, so be it.

Further evidence of the bigotry of insurance companies:

They show these commercials that claim "singing can add 15 years to your life!"

Okay, so if that's the case, then I want $50 off of my premium because I friggin' love karaoke.  I mean, if they can charge you more for, say, smoking...  why don't you get a discount for this alleged fountain of youth that is karaoke?

Scheißenhosen...