Author: Stagger Lee

If you have an iPhone 3G, do yourself a favor and go to school on my experience: iOS 4 is not worth trying to install unless you hate yourself and your time is worth nothing. So much of the new coolness depends on the hardware (video capture, front facing camera, autofocus, hardware graphics acceleration, Bluetooth keyboard support, enhanced voice control) and, more importantly, the thing is built with the newer phones in mind so you can expect to drag just as much as in version 3.1.3.

Basically all you’re getting is folders, a unified inbox for mail, and iBooks. If you need that, go right ahead. Otherwise, save yourself and pick up the $99 3GS.

* Well, looks like “IT” has hit the wall with Ivory Coast. I realize that rooting for Brazil is like going into a casino and cheering for the slot machine, but damn, they are amazing to watch. (If you don’t get the reference to “IT” you should be checking out Special1TV at the World Cup on BBC3.)
* The thing I was going to be dogging England with was to change their official 2010 song to “It’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s coming, SOCCER’S coming home” but I think they have enough problems at present without the colonies mocking them. At least they haven’t gone on strike like the French. Or shat the bed a la Italy…and doesn’t that just warm the little cockles of my heart?
* The iPhone 4 (which I should have by close of business Thursday, cross fingers) apparently does support the use of a Bluetooth keyboard. That is HUGE, as it gets over the biggest obstacle to my travel use of the iPhone (i.e. long-form text entry). Apple’s own regular Bluetooth keyboard for computers is only $69 and apparently runs for 9 months on two AA batteries, and is pretty compact on its own…that really could make all the diff in the world for travel purposes. What remains to be seen is whether the 960×640 display will make that much of a difference in terms of usability – from a pixel standpoint, though, it’s damn close to the 1024×600 of my netbook. It’s only the learning of Ubuntu that keeps me from putting this netbook on Craigslist. Well, that and the fact that I stickered it up with stuff from Maker Faire…
* The other thing I need to find out about the iPhone 4 is whether it still has the voice control features of the 3 GS and if so, what Bluetooth headsets support those command features. Not that I drive alone enough to really warrant an iPhone, but it’s one of those things you kind of have to have.
* Most of all, the big comparison from Thursday will be what the performance is like between the iPhone 4 and the iPad. I intend to get the work iPad onto iOS 4 as soon as possible to see what’s doing (tomorrow? don’t know for sure if the 21st is for the iPad version too)…
* Bitter that my Vandy cap was in that Timbuk2 bag. Not that I needed another Vandy hat, but the only one I have that kinda sorts fits is the St Patricks Day version, and that still has the stink of losing to Murray State on it…
* Dogfishheadshoulderskneesandtoeskneesandtoes 90 Minute IPA ain’t nothin’ to F with. I’m just sayin’.

I’m still discovering things that I lost when I left my bag in the taxi. So far, we’re up to: five magazines, my iPod Shuffle, a couple of pens, the foam contour travel pillow, the bag itself, and today I realize my khaki Vandy cap was in there too. No wonder I had to buy a hat halfway through the trip – I brought one, lost it, and forgot I lost it. I should not be allowed out of the house.

The last time I left London, I said we needed to either quit going or just move there and be done with it. After this trip, I’m inclined to think the latter. London works on me like New York: big city, world capital, everything you need and tons of it, and old old old with history and presence to match. Plus I’m well acclimated to sandwiches from Pret, coffee from Costa, prepaid cell service, Oyster card travel and coins for half my transactions.

Similarly, last time I got home I said “I really think the next trip will be Dublin, Salzburg, the Black Forest, and whatever else of Ireland I can get in. But…I think it will be a long time before we can get out of the country again.” Turns out it only took two and a half years – albeit a fairly eventful two and a half years. No Ireland, though – that’s for a time when we’re not parading my less-presentable family members around. London, Bath, Paris, Munich, Salzburg, the Berner Oberland, and the Rhine country near Frankfurt am Main…that was the trip this time.

The thing I love about London – which was impossible to manage this time – is just being there to hang out and experience life happening around me. Like one day, we were there when Millwall won the League One playoff and promotion to the Coca-Cola Championship League. The town was crazy with Millwall supporters – for those of you who don’t follow English football, this is the fanbase whose anthem is “No One Likes Us – We Don’t Care” and whose “F-Troop” of hooligan fans were known to attack other fans when outnumbered by two orders of magnitude. Well, the blue and white strips were everywhere, and I was giving a wide berth to a Leicester Square pub where the fans were belting it out on the patio, glass smashing, “WE ARE MILLWALL, SUPER MILLWALL FROM THE DEN!” And it was a sight to see – right up to the point where a passing limo disgorged what I can only assume was a bachelorette party, dressed to show up on Texts From Last Night – and without missing a beat, the chanting turned on a dime to “GET YER TITS OUT, GET YER TITS OUT, GET YER TITS OUT FOR THE LADS!”

Not that they did. As far as I could tell. But it’s not the sort of thing one would get strolling through Union Square or along the Mall in DC. =)

More to follow obviously…

Well, the entire world knows what the beef is in this post, but the shocking upset of the night is that FIFA apparently plans to do something about it. Which is fine, as it goes, but it presents a problem: if Koman Coulibaly (a.k.a. Osama Bin Whistlin’) is defenestrated from the tournament, it will concede to all and sundry that the United States was jobbed out of three points – which would have essentially guaranteed their passage to the second round. If they can put the wood to Algeria, this will all be water under the bridge, but there’s still no way to figure how good the Desert Foxes are based on what we’ve seen in South Africa.

What this gets back to is the ongoing problem that soccer has in this country. Premier League games are now popping up in the early hours on ESPN, certainly, and Setanta (RIP) and Fox Soccer Channel show a lot of international games, but for Bubba P. American, the World Cup is probably the only sustained exposure he gets to international football at the highest level. And when he sees it, he sees a steady diet of flopping, whining, and officiating decisions that suggest the use of a dog and a white cane.

More than anything, this is the thing that FIFA needs to do if they really want to crack the American culture. In every other team sport in America, if a player commits an infraction, the ref names that player and that infraction right in front of everybody and usually over a microphone. There’s no debating what the ref claims to have happened – it may be a good call, it may not, but at least you have the ref asserting that #12 traveled or #56 false-started or that there was a two-line pass, and you can judge from there whether the call was justified. As far as I know, nobody has yet been able to ascertain what penalty Coulibaly was calling, and nobody has been able to get a public explanation out of him.

Sports depends on one thing and one thing alone: the integrity of the contest. WIthout it, you might as well watch wrestling. That’s why the Black Sox scandal devastated baseball and why Pete Rose is still suspended. That’s why the NFL was hounded endlessly about the Seahawks-Steelers Super Bowl and why Tim Donaghy was the NBA’s nightmare (and why many people still believe the 2002 Western Conference Finals or 2006 NBA Finals were worked). As long as Bubba P. American thinks that international soccer is a game officiated on the basis of bias, partisanship, nationalism or just whether the ref’s bowels were acting up that day, he will dismiss it. And he will be right to do so.

It’s 2010. We have replay. We can afford to pay more than one man to watch the 22 players. FIFA needs to straighten up and fly right well before 2014.

So I left my carry-on bag in the cab on the way to the hotel, the first day of the trip. I filed a report with the Lost Property Office at Transport for London (which handles everything – cabs, buses, the Tube, you name it) and have a case number, but they still haven’t heard anything. I had a couple of my business cards in there, but I’m not sanguine about the prospects for getting it back.

See, I don’t really care about the contents, because I didn’t have that much in it – a pillow, a dinged-up iPod Shuffle (I have now had three Shuffles and lost every single one of them), half a dozen magazines for strategic plane/Eurostar purposes. The real loss was the bag itself. It’s a Timbuk2 Messenger Custom, small size, army green – the sort of thing they would make if Timbuk2 had to convert to wartime production. And it was a gift from a grateful end-user in the old country – a fairly high-profile user at an extremely high-profile institution. That bag was the perfect size to use for anything – overnight/weekender, backup laptop bag, what have you. And I was on super monkey tilt for the first two days of the trip because I’d lost my bag.

I may have something already that will do for a replacement. For the time being. But it’s not going to be my old bag, and I’m a little bitter about that. (It doesn’t help that the rollaway carry-on that I took as my main suitcase lost a zipper and is about to fall apart itself. Last thing I need is to go buying luggage.)

I woke up at stupid o’clock in the morning on June 5, 2002. Portugal was the stylish pick to win the 2002 World Cup, and the Americans were just hoping to better the 32nd-place finish from France four years earlier. And the Metro didn’t start running early enough for me to go to a bar to watch it live. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t exactly sanguine about the prospects. And then John O’Brien slotted a goal for the US inside of five minutes, and then Portugal gave up an own goal at the half-hour mark, and the riot was on. There would be a goal from the mighty McBride, another own-goal from Jeff Agoos, and by the time the smoke cleared and the closing theme from Independence Day struck up, the USA had won 3-2…and the best World Cup ever was finally on.

I say best ever because I got to see a ton of games. I went straight to Lucky Bar at the conclusion of the first game so I could be there for the replay and drink heavily (and cast aspersion on the refs). It was the first of many trips. I saw games overnight flying to California on jetBlue. I saw the USA beat Mexico in the round of 16 in a conference room at work, on the clock, after we somehow luck-boxed our way into the second stage. I saw the Americans outplay Germany for 90 minutes and lose anyway, because the incredible Oliver Kahn stood on his head and just bricked off the goal.

But there was more going on than soccer. I had a vacation in California that month, a week spent stooging around and reading and relaxing. I had my old iBook, which had just been fitted with an AirPort card, and I got to walk down University Avenue in Palo Alto and see open wireless around literally every corner. I had an iPod for the first time, and was able to listen to all my girlfriend’s new wave tracks and a band called Air that I’d just discovered through a Nick Hornby book. I saw a Cingular store where all the phones were GSM-based and marveled at the newer better technology than what I was carrying – better battery life in a smaller phone that you could change out without any input from the phone company. And I was amazed over and over again by the fact that it got cold at night – and really didn’t get that hot during the day, thanks to the morning fog and the lack of humidity otherwise.

It was amazing. I knew that this was the girl for me and that our future was on the West Coast, but that June was the first time that I really began to absorb what it would genuinely be like to be in California. All the things I would come to rely on – pervasive wireless, fully digital mobile telephony, all my music available all the time, Mediterranean climate – can be traced back to that June. I mention it because here I sit, watching the World Cup streaming at work, waiting eight days for the delivery of my iPhone 4. The circle of life continues to turn…

* If you really want an iPhone 4 and you have an iPhone already, your best bet is to use the new Apple Store app and upgrade direct from the phone. That worked for me in under 5 minutes, including the time to download and install the app.

* The former Big-XII is rapidly turning into a joke conference. Basically, it’s Texas-Chokelahoma-A&M trying to get all the money they can (they are literally getting all of the severance money from the Colorado-Nebraska departures at the expense of the other 7 schools). Basically it’s going to be the new WAC – a vanity conference of negligible strength for its one capable member school (i.e. Texas).

* Boise State to the Mountain West is a step up for both, and something that should have happened years ago.

* California voters are just paste-eating stupid. Prop 14 will give the state the same jungle primary that Louisiana is abandoning – all candidates run in one big primary, and the top two go to the general election. Get ready for the 2003 recall gangbang EVERY YEAR – the system disembowels political parties in favor of giving all power to those with the most name recognition and the money to get it. Meg Whitman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Huffington – lather, rinse, repeat. Idiots.

* Nothing makes me laugh harder than people trying to take the partisanship out of politics. What next? Taking the alcohol out of whiskey? Partisanship is why we HAVE politics, you morons. It’s how we resolve large-scale disagreements in society without resorting to firearms. The alternative to politics is not some big hand-holding circle of consensus where we all sing Kumbaya and do the right thing for all and sundry. The alternative to politics is fucking Somalia.

* Speaking of paste-eating stupid, nobody with two brain cells to rub together should listen to a single word the Republicans have to say until they purge themselves of their Confederate sickness. I can get along just fine with actual conservatism. Populist redneckery is not worthy of serious consideration.

* The reason I really hate crackers isn’t because they’re terrified of anything different. It’s because they’re terrified of the very concept of difference. The Confederate sickness stems from fear and outrage that anybody or anything might be unlike them in any way, and I have eighteen days of dragging a real live fossilized Wallace-ite like a ball and chain through Europe to prove it. I am not kidding when I say we should get Sherman’s descendants on the phone and see about getting an estimate.

* I was up 24 hours yesterday. I have had a shit-ton of caffeine. I am about one more cup of coffee from turning directly into Captain Jack Sparrow.

Home from vacation. Trying to stay awake ’til 9 PM so I can get ten hours of sleep and still be up by 7 for work. This will mean that I will be up 24 hours straight on travel day, same as when we went out.

I’ll have more to say about the trip later. For now, I will just say that the California elections were predictable as ever and California voters are not really deserving of the power of direct democracy. Also, I’m pretty sure I can drink under the table any of my blood relatives who did not to go my high school.

And in a couple weeks, when it’s hot as balls, I’m really going to wish I was back in Switzerland…

Christmas week, 1996, I sat at Cafe Du Monde in the French Quarter, sipping on an au lait and nomming a beignet and looking at the USA Today. And on the front page of the business section: Apple Acquires Next; Steve Jobs Returns. And I thought to myself, well, that’s that – we will live or die with this one.

At the time, Apple was worth $16 billion, and Microsoft $556 billion.

Cut to today.

Market cap – debt = AAPL worth more as a company than MSFT.

I feel a little lightheaded just thinking about that.

If you weren’t an Apple aficionado in the mid-90s, I don’t think you can appreciate just how much Cupertino Hexachrome Fruit was hanging on by a fingernail. The PowerPC-based systems had failed to change the world. A whole litany of projects – CHRP, OpenDoc, GeoPort, PowerTalk – had utterly failed to catch fire. Copland – the mythical System 8 – was a year late and a GNP short. Michael “The Diesel” Spindler had given way as CEO to Gil Amelio, who seemed bound and determined to run Apple off the rails – the January 1997 MacWorld Expo keynote rivaled only Labour’s 1983 election manifesto for the title of “longest suicide note in history”. And after doing what everybody had insisted Apple needed to do – open its hardware to clone manufacturers – other companies were making better (or at least sufficient) hardware for less money, digging away at Apple’s most reliable profit margin. And to add insult to injury, Power Computing was outmarketing the Mac OS in almost every conceivable fashion.

It wasn’t Apple Computer, it was “beleaguered Apple Computer.” Press speculation ran rampant that Apple would be bought by Sun. Or Disney. Or Microsoft, who had launched Windows 95 and brought a sorta-Mac-like interface to PCs that was good enough for the vast majority of buyers, and undercut a big part of Apple’s usability advantage. That was the worst part – Microsoft was selling a shitty operating system, on cheap-ass screwdriver-job PCs, and devastating Apple in the marketplace despite superior technology at every level from Cupertino. Maddening.

That’s why there was almost a religious angle to Steve coming back. (I’m not making this up – Wired magazine even had the controversial “sacred heart of Apple” cover in summer ’97 with the simple headline “Pray.”) And then, at the summer MacWorld, there on that big screen – Bill Gates. Because Apple had to do something to ensure Microsoft Office would continue for the Mac, because without it the last finger would slip off the cliff. Fortunately, Microsoft had every incentive to stave off the antitrust regulators circling them, and keeping Apple from going under was an insurance policy – and cheap, at only $150M.

People still rolled their eyes. No point to Apple, they said. When Microsoft put the 95 interface on NT, that was the end, they said. No future. No future.

Well, the future’s here.

Microsoft missed the boat on digital music. Then they missed the boat on consumer smartphones. Then they missed the boat on social networking. And while they sat on a near-monopoly in operating systems and office suites, letting that river of cash fund everything else, Apple pared their line of goods down and decided that they would only sell the best products out there – no more competing at the discount end any more than Dior sells at Wal-Mart or Mercedes makes econoboxes. And then, in 2001, Apple (and at this point, make no mistake, that meant Steve) decided to sell people something they didn’t even know they wanted. Six years later, when the iPod ruled digital music, they decided to sell something else people didn’t know they wanted, and the iPhone revolutionized consumer smartphones in a way that Danger or Blackberry or Symbian never had.

And around 2007, as Vista flopped, Microsoft looked up and realized they essentially hadn’t budged in six years. And they suddenly realized the meaning of Stagger Lee’s Tenth Law: “In the 21st century, if your Next Big Thing runs on a PC, it’s not the Next Big Thing.” Of all the hottest things going – iPhone, Android, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare – none of them relies on a PC running a Microsoft product.

Not to say that the race is over. It’s never over, and like the man says, in the end it’s only with yourself. But to look out on an Apple whose stock has gone up about 5000% since the old days, and to see the head of one of Microsoft’s most forward-looking groups resigning, and watching the world hold its breath for June 7…

I’m not gonna lie. It feels like a win. So I’ma call it a win.

Meanwhile, we wait for the fate of “beleaguered Microsoft”…

After eight tries, the GOP has finally won a special election since Obama was nominated in August 2008. This time in Hawaii-1, which is an uncommonly blue district and Obama’s old home district. So how did the GOP win?

Easy: two Democratic candidates. Neither would drop out, the DCCC washed their hands of it all, and the Honolulu City Councilman won the seat with a whopping 39.4% of the vote. The two Democrats wound up with 59% of the vote…which strongly suggests that the Republican had better rent rather than buy.

Naturally, the GOP is taking this as the latest omen of ultimate victory. But if Michael Steele wants to take this as proof that he can do the same thing nationwide – well, giddy up. If I’m running the D-triple-C, I’m more than happy to play on that field the rest of the way…