I've migrated all my Posterous posts to my new blogging platform and site at http://dancbates.com.  You'll find the latest there.  This site is now deprecated but will remain up for a while.

All evening the world has been sharing their stories, favorite quotes, and recollections of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs who passed away earlier today. He's been honored by an unprecedented number of industry heads and even the President of the United States. Steve touched the world in such a way that everyone can say something about him. Maybe they ran into him at an industry event and he said something witty and Jobsian. Perhaps they saw his Stanford commencement speech in which he touched on the very subject of death. Even non-technical people that use their iPod every day knows Steve Jobs. His DNA is in every device Apple has made in recent memory. I'm writing this entry on an iPad 2, which may turn out to be even more revolutionary to the computing industry than Jobs' earlier iMacs or even NeXT. Reading through all the articles, blogs, and tweets about Jobs really made me think about why he was important. Not only was he CEO of the most profitable computer company in the world, but he was a part of the culture. The world craved his next keynote speech. Journalists built their career covering what Steve Jobs was planning at Apple and what next great thing would come out of Cupertino. But it wasn't just Steve's tone, it was his passion. Whenever he spoke about Apple you could feel the fire in him. You knew he loved what he did and you knew he wanted to help people not only work better, but play better as well. It's this passion that many companies lack and it's this passion that makes Apple different. People are sharing such wonderful memories of how they interacted with Steve. It reenforces the fact that people do remember how you treat them and that you should act the way you want to be remembered. I never got an opportunity to even see him in person but given the amount of reflection going on he was the real deal. He cared about his company, he cared about his customers, he cared about his family. I feel inspired. His story is remarkable yet attainable. He worked hard to get where he was and he made his own destiny. We'll miss you Steve, thanks for everything. I think different because of you.

In reading my daily tech news I came across "10 Reasons Why iPhone 5 Doesn't Stand a Chance Against Motorola Droid Bionic" (via daringfireball.net).  It got me thinking, how many of these types of articles have been written over the past years comparing the latest Android superphone versus the current (or in this case future, unreleased) iPhone.  Not only that, but the points listed within said articles are often the same set of features that Android handsets have offered since inception.  But the best part of this type of article is the Apple vs. Android fight that goes on in the comments.

The article covers the basics, the Bionic has a bigger screen, HDMI output, SD card slot.  I've written a few times how I feel about bigger screens, as well as the fact that the bigger screen STILL does not carry a Retina Display PPI (pixels per inch).  Having used the iPhone 4 for over a year now it's hard for me to accept anything less.  I sorta get the HDMI output and why someone would want that, but honestly I've never heard someone say "Gee, good thing I have this HDMI output so that I can pull out my micro-HDMI to HDMI cable and plug in my phone to a TV and show you what's on it."  If you desperately need HDMI output for an iDevice, Apple does sell an adapter for iPhone 4 and iPad.  I also can see the benefit of an SD card slot as some Android handsets only come with a small amount of onboard memory (some as low as 2GB, but recent ones have reached 16GB).  Android handsets do not offer different onboard memory sizes so they have to supplement onboard storage with SD cards.  Not a disparagement, simply fact.

The article mentions the gimmicky WebTop capability in the Bionic that allows you, through a dock (not included), to use a sort of meta OS environment that's basically Chrome OS with Firefox instead of Chrome.  Again, my HDMI comments above apply here.  There's a nerdy section comparing the processors in both the phones which is basically devoid of any information outside of "it's better because it's newer".  Then a general section on "speed" which again lacks any real benchmark and lumps data speed and OS performance together.

One feature that the Bionic does have a leg up on is 4G LTE support.  Almost all information regarding the upcoming iPhone points to a lack of LTE.  T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint all have variants they are branding as 4G (either WiMax or HSPA+), however LTE will be the prevalent 4G technology once implemented by all carriers.  Verizon's network has been rapidly rolling out over the past months and AT&T has recently started their final testing in a few markets.  LTE has cable broadband equivalent speeds for wireless data and it's going to be nice when it's everywhere.

What a great segue into battery life!  The main complaint of the LTE devices out there right now is battery life.  The devices tend to run hotter and use more battery than their 3G-only brethren.  While the Bionic touts a "1735 mAh battery", industry reviews still peg the device requiring a daily charge for light to moderate use.  In contrast, using the iPhone 4 I can typically go at least 2 days, sometimes more.  The iPhone's legendary battery life is likely one of the reasons the new handset will not carry LTE radios.

An Android vs. Apple comparison wouldn't be complete if they didn't mention Flash support and Android's "openness".  Since Flash "enriches web experience" we must have it right?  The only time the lack of Flash has ever hindered me on the iPhone is when I can't get a restaurant menu.  Most sites detect what device you are using and switch to a mobile version (that doesn't use Flash to begin with).  I love hearing that Flash is a feature, when chances are any website you go to on your phone will be the mobile version.  As for open Android, malware certainly seems to be on the rise.

The battle rages on.  At the rate Android devices are released, hardware specs are almost always going to be above the iPhone simply because of its release cycle.  We need to stop looking at it quantitatively and begin to compare qualitatively.  How does the user experience compare between the devices?  Are Android users generally happy about their device or generally frustrated?  What about Apple's users?  Are the features that make Android "so much better" than iOS useful for the average user or is it just marketing?

Yes I own an iPhone and it's my primary device.  No I've never used an Android handset as a primary device.  I've demoed some Android hardware in stores and never gave it another look.  Call me biased!  All I know is that a fair amount of people I know have moved from Android to Apple, and not so many the other way.  It's not indoctrination, it's because the iPhone "just works."

I like making plans.  It gives me time to look at most options and determine what's the best fit for us as opposed to blindly selecting something that looks nice but has no practicality.  Unfortunately the world doesn't seem to want to work with us.

Karen and I got married last October by a local magistrate on a Sunday morning.  No frills, no fanfare, just us, our marriage certificate and sixty American dollars.  Since then we've moved to Florida permanently and wanted to put together something so that we can share this occasion with our families and friends (chances are if you are reading this, you already are very aware of this).  We've been working on the details for a while, we've got our plans for catering, cakes, photographers, clothes, everything except the venue.  The venue has been the biggest limiting factor of putting this together and those whom provide this service aren't making it much easier.

We have a simple need.  We want a quick easy casual ceremony on the beach followed by a low key casual reception.  No $20,000 chandeliers, no designer tablecloths, no 30 person choir, just a room and a place on the beach.  With the Gulf coast as beautiful and popular as it is, almost every possible venue offers only the giant "wedding package" that contains all the nonsense that everyone typically wants for a full out wedding.  Not to mention trying to get any information about pricing basically outputs a "call for further info" message where I'll undoubtedly be connected with some planner that will talk my ear off about how wonderful their facility is and what all they can provide that I don't need and certainly can't afford.

The other option we were looking at was a full blown rental property, perhaps for a weekend or so.  Again, most properties need you to rent it out at least a week (some do have 3 day weekend options) and anything that is actually beachfront is ridiculously priced, even for October.

It probably doesn't help that this is our first time ever booking any type of social gathering as well as being in an area we've only lived in for a few months.  I just didn't expect it to be this challenging.

Perhaps I need to go rent 'The Wedding Planner' at my local Redbox for some insight.  Silly me, that'll only teach me to be a terrible actor.

Long nerd post. Beware.

I've been playing World of Warcraft pretty much since early 2005, a few months after it's initial release.  Things were different then.  Level 60 was the cap, the cool raid to go to was UBRS, Azeroth was small and difficult to traverse as an epic mount cost 1,000 gold and training was 900g which was extremely hard to obtain.  I waited in line for the midnight release of The Burning Crusade expansion.  Over all my accounts and characters, I've probably posted near 200 full days played.

Unfortunately, the game has changed.  The tide has been turning for a while but just within the last couple of weeks I've started to realize that the core draw of the game is gone for me.  Perhaps it was the introduction of patch 4.1, which disappointingly added only 2 new 5 man heroics based off of former raid instances.  Don't get me wrong, ZG and ZA were great as raids, and the new 5 mans were interesting for the first couple of run throughs.  Once my main character was geared up with most of the 353 epics (which only took a few runs), once again I was stuck with nothing to do.  I already had a level 85 bear that I could run through for more gear as well as an 83 shaman and 81 warrior that I could level to 85, but why?  To get ready for Firelands in 4.2?  Content that I wouldn't actually see until 4.3 or greater?  If Blizzard continues this trend of releasing a couple 5 mans in one patch then a raid in the next, that's a lot of downtime for non-raiders.  Sure there's the Molten Front dailies which will be interesting for the first week or two, then again it becomes grindy.  It's time for a break.

I took a break from WoW before for almost a year and followed it through fan sites but eventually came back.  This time I've decided to try to replace it.

I first tried Rift during the public beta a couple weeks before it’s retail launch earlier this year.  I didn't pay much attention to it simply because I was already in WoW and knew I didn't want to juggle 2 MMOs.  The style was interesting, the graphics were definitely better than WoW, and it had a unique class/skill configuration.  I maybe played for an hour or two and that was all.  It wasn't until I saw last week that they were now offering a free 7 day trial of the finished product that I wanted to see how far it'd come since February.

I picked my class and souls and dove right in to playing.  It had a similar feeling to vanilla WoW and similar elements to allow an easy transition.  The stars must've been aligned as Steam was actually running a 33% discount on both the regular and collector's editions of Rift so I took the plunge and purchased the full version of the game.

The first thing I noticed was that leveling took a LOT longer than what I was used to.  I've played around 16 hours thus far and I'm barely level 20.  You can be level 60+ in WoW in that time, even without heirlooms.  The quest path is very fluid, which WoW didn't achieve until Cataclysm.

I was also able to run an entry level dungeon in Rift over the weekend.  I'm reserving my overall opinion regarding dungeons until I run a few more, but based off the first, the dungeon was the perfect length.  It wasn't a 20 min face roll but it wasn't an hour long excruciating pain fest.  I also used the Looking for Group tool which took around 20 minutes to find a group (which is fast for DPS by WoW standards).  

The crafting/gathering aspect of Rift is a bit clunky but not unusable.  The other major issue I have with the game is transportation.  I've been spoiled by flight points in WoW every 50 yards so all the running around gets a bit frustrating.  There's typically a teleport or two in each zone but you typically have to search for them and they aren't easily discovered.  The collector's edition included a mount that increases speed by 60% so it's not as bad as it could be.

Another interesting aspect of the game are the rifts themselves.  Minor or major tears occur in the elemental planes where players can open rift events.  These elemental events consist of waves of monsters or a single boss monster and you earn rewards as each level is completed.  Rifts usually close within 3 or 4 levels and the public group system of Rift allows you to easily group with nearby members working to close the rift.  Occasionally a large boss event will overtake the entire zone where players have to quell invaders, collect items and/or close rifts.  The random aspect of this is a neat idea but can be cumbersome when invaders destroy the camp you are questing at or a rift 3 or 4 levels above you surrounds a quest target.

I'm not going to say that Rift is the new WoW.  It won't ever have the player base that WoW has, nor the advertising or development.  It does bring a relatively polished experience and good play value.  I imagine the soul system will see some simplification as the game develops, right now there's a ton of abilities which make rotations difficult.  And yes, a lot of the features introduced at launch or patched into Rift thus far have been taken from WoW, but the implementation of these features are important for the game.  Additionally, these features have been in previous MMOs from what I understand so it's nothing ground breaking.  Rift is lacking some of the nicer features WoW provides, like add-on API and an Armory profile site, but chances are that the developers are working on these.  However little things like AOE looting and built in full UI customization is a solid offering from Trion Worlds.

Will I keep following WoW updates?  Yes.  Will I give Rift a fair chance to keep it's content fresh and game interesting?  Yes.  Will I ever go back to WoW?  Hopefully not, but sadly cannot rule it out.

 

I don't get the newest hardware BEFORE it's released to review.  I know the product has been out for nearly 6 months and has been reviewed by every major tech outlet, but it's new to us!

Karen and I picked up the base model, 11.6 inch with 64GB memory at our local Apple store yesterday.  Our goal was to replace a 6 year old Dell lugger which had little to no real portability, which Karen desperately needs to work on her job.  We've been eyeing the Macbook Air since it's release last October, but now that we've moved in and settled we wanted to pick one up.

When you go to an Apple store, you're overwhelmed with hardware.  There's iPads, iPhones, Macbooks, iMacs, the whole product line.  There's always enough staff to discuss your purchase.  We arrived around 8:00pm so there was barely a crowd.  The nice Apple staffer explained the basics about the computer, an offering of AppleCare and iWork, and other general items.  We knew what we wanted when we stepped in the door but we let her give her spiel.  Soon enough we were walking out the door with the new hardware.

So now the unboxing.  Apple's packaging design is absolutely amazing.  It's a simple box and when you open it the first thing you see is the new computer.  The documentation and power cords are underneath as to not take away from the beauty that is the hardware.  Everything fits right and everything has it's own compartment.  It's a simple, efficient design that falls right in line with Apple's expected experience.

I've found there's a distinct difference between handling a device inside an Apple store and inside your own home.  I've picked up the demo unit of the Air in the store many a time, but it felt like a different device at home.  It's absolutely shocking how Apple got a computer to fit in the chassis.  It's light, minimalist, and beautiful.  Karen even made mention that when the lid is closed, it's similar in size to an iPad.  It's that thin and that compact, though you still get a full keyboard and touchpad.

The flash hard drive helps make up for the lower end specs on the CPU and RAM.  It's mostly going to be used as a photo editing/word processing computer so based on our initial tests it should have no issues.  The screen is crisp, clear and bright.

I've never used Mac OS X, but setting up the system was a snap.  It takes you through initial config like setting up a user account, connecting the wireless, and setting time zone.  The other cool feature is disc sharing.  The Air doesn't have a CD drive.  You can set up other computers on your network to share their CD/DVD with the Air with a small program that runs in Windows or natively in Macs.  We installed iWork and then ran a system update to get iLife, iWork, and OS X up to the latest code.  The Mac App store is basically like the one in iOS and a lot of the elements of OS X we're familiar with because of iOS.  It will take some time to understand the nuances of OS X.  I like the multitouch trackpad though it's somewhat awkward having to use 2 fingers to alternate select.  I'm certain it'll get easier over time.

Overall it's a solid little machine and no doubt will last us a while.  I'd like to think this is the first step to a no-Windows household and based on the usage we've had thus far, I can see it as a possibility.  For me, I'll likely be using iOS devices in lieu of OS X devices as my iPhone is pretty much permanently attached to me and I imagine the iPad will take over most of my daily computing consumption from the PC.

We're mostly moved in, just trying to get into our routines in a different locale and different roles. My thoughts on Florida so far:

The sun is almost always out. The weather basically is sunny and warm unless it happens to be raining, but even then it's sunny again real soon.

There are a lot of numbered streets, and a lot of them have names too. I haven't quite figured out if people call the streets by their name or number.

Any service we've gotten has pretty much been mediocre. This includes utilities, dining, store checkout, etc. 2 exceptions though, our apartment's management office and our local Publix have been very welcoming, helpful and nice.

I think the no state income tax thing will be good, just waiting on the first FL paycheck to see.

The Florida sun still causes sunburn, even if you are a resident of Florida.

It's best to make an appointment if you have to go to the DMV.

I think that's all for now. I'm sure I'll have more ramblings soon.

As our time in NC winds to a close, I wanted to thank the Tar Heel State for being our lovely host for the past two years.  The time we've spent here will never be forgotten and was influential in putting us on the path we are headed.  I'd like to share some final thoughts about our time here below.

First off, I'd like to personally thank the everyone involved at the NC State Fair.  Not only did we attend the fair itself for the last two years, but we also enjoyed various other activities that took place at the fairgrounds such as the Greek Festival, 4th of July, Got to Be NC Festival, coin shows, boat shows, and of course the flea market.  Conveniently located near our apartment, there were (mostly free) events almost every weekend and if we found ourselves in need of something to do we'd first look at the fairgrounds schedule.

As much as traffic is mostly bad on I-40 and I-440, it was nice to finally live in an area where the interstate was accessible.  Back in Kentucky, 3/4 of the city basically had to drive 20 min or more to even get to the on ramp of the closest interstate.  Even out of Cary where we live there were 3 interstate exits within 15 min of each other.  I know this is kind of a silly thing to write about, but it was one of the first things I noticed when I started living here.

No reflection post of mine is complete without mention of food.  The Raleigh/Cary area provided a multitude of restaurants, some I had only seen in far away bigger cities.  My first trip to Ruth's Chris Steak House was in Cary.  We got to enjoy the mostly Canadian based Jack Astor's.  Other restaurants like California Pizza Kitchen and the Cheesecake Factory were so far away back in Kentucky it wasn't worth the drive, but both were basically right down the street here.  I was able to regroup with long lost sandwich shop Jersey Mike's which was based in downtown Lexington when I was in college but closed relatively quick.

Finally and most importantly, we got married in North Carolina.  Sure it wasn't a big wedding with all the fanfare and such but we were married on our dream date of 10/10/10.  Our wedding for $80 at the Wake County Public Safety Center was perfect for us.  It's really about the couple, not the circumstances.  I love my wife Karen and everything about her and couldn't ask for anything more.  It's also going to put a lot less stress on the wedding celebration we're putting on this fall for family and friends to commemorate our first year of marriage.

Our time in NC served as a platform for the future.  As we start our Florida journey in just 2 weeks' time, I couldn't have asked to be in a better position.  I'm slowly learning that life is nothing but a bunch of beginnings, and this could be our biggest one yet.

We'll miss you North Carolina, you really do hold a piece of our heart.

As I was drifting into the dream world last night, I started thinking about dreams.  Not the crazy stuff you see when you're sleeping, but those goals, items, places that you dream about completing, having, or going to.  I remember growing up with very few dreams.  I didn't really know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go, but I knew that I had potential in me to go far.  It took meeting my wife to really understand what it was like to chase dreams.

It's interesting how the universe works.  Without going into debate material, it almost seems like when you get on the right track, everything going forward is smooth sailing.  Of course smooth is a relative term, it's not all unicorns and rainbows, there's challenges along the way that you have to deal with.  But the challenges are meant to prepare you for the future, and as you approach and defeat more challenges, the better off you'll end up.

There's a distinct difference between wild dreams and realistic dreams.  People can dream about being a big movie star, singer, pro baseball player, but the chances of actually being able to chase and be successful are slim.  I'm not saying that you shouldn't have these kinds of dreams, however it's going to be riddled with many more challenges than a more realistic dream.  I feel that realistic dreams are actually a series of smaller goals to achieve.

I've always worked backwards for goals, starting with the ending and working to fill in the gaps in order to reach the beginning.  It's always provided a precise pathway to achieving the end result.  Once it's outlined it's easier to come up with alternatives should anything go awry.

When I first met Karen, a change began to happen in me.  I saw a clearer future than I had ever seen before.  I got the confidence in my ability to act upon dreams.  I rose from my financial apocalypse and was able to focus on where we actually wanted to be.  It started moving into an apartment in Lexington then planning the interstate move to North Carolina.  I never thought I'd actually leave Lexington, it was never a possibility.  But I was able to realize there's more to the world.  My dream all along was to have a life of my own, one that I built, not one that was provided.  And as the time passes I've realized how I want my life to be constructed.  I'll keep chasing dreams, each one marking a new floor on the tower that I'm building.  Be it a new locale, a new business, or new carpet, I'll be able to say that this was my dream, one that I dreamed.

[This page intentionally left blank]