60 degrees and overcast. Perfect. That marine layer just does amazing things in the morning – far from being gloomy or grim, having that thick gray ceiling at 8 AM is a comfort. No garish sunlight, no glare punching you right in the face, no unpleasant heating up first thing in the morning.
Fog is also what apparently drifts through the brains of assorted football officials. Setting aside the preposterous non-call of a safety that Cal forced on the Twerps just before the first half, Ed Hochuli’s brain-lock in Denver suggests that the NFL has the same unnatural love for Mike Shannahan that the media once had for John McCain (though that shows signs of fraying when some bobblehead bimbo on Fox in the morning is ripping into the campaign manager). Amazingly, the play’s a fumble, because the ball moved backwards…but it’s *not* a turnover? I got nothing but love for Jay Cutler, pride of the Commodores, but isn’t it enough that nobody ever calls the cut block above 4500 feet?
Meanwhile, yes, I have a new iPhone. I didn’t want a new iPhone, but mine had an esoteric failure: something went wrong with the dock connector above and beyond the traditional “it’s got lint in it” problem. It charged just fine, it would sync with no problem, but it kept thinking something was plugging into that dock connector, thus activating the screen and occasionally even warning that an unsupported peripheral was being plugged in. As a result, you could take the phone off the charger and barely touch it, and seven and a half hours later, it would show that it had been used for seven hours. That’s bad arithmetic.
As it turns out, once out of warranty, the fix is a refurb unit for $199 with only a 90-day warranty. At that point, you may as well have the new one. And as it turns out, I got to keep a foundation account…so my monthly bill only goes up by about $12-15 total. At that point, it’s worth it to have the new one with a full warranty (and 3G and GPS besides, which I guess I will be happy enough to use). The big trick now is the battery life…I think my old iPhone may have had this problem well before I noticed, so I’m curious to see whether I get more than a day out of the new one (especially with the new firmware, which I strongly recommend to everyone).
Oh yes – my brother-in-law has the old iPhone now. He has no fear of cracking cases and firing up soldering irons, so if he can make it work, it’s his. Meanwhile, I have bought a nice silicone-grip case for my new iPhone…with a cover for the dock port.