* I’ve been searching for TVs. Here’s the thing: TV makers are no longer making high-end 1080p sets, they’re only making 4K sets at the high end. And yet right now, there’s no 4K programming other than certain Netflix or Amazon outlets; everything has to up-convert. Lower-end 4K sets don’t up-convert well, so buying a (comparatively) inexpensive 4K set means getting shitty video for the next 3 years while buying the best-available 1080p set means five years instead of ten for viable lifespan. The practical upshot of all this is: I should have bought a new TV as soon as the cousins took theirs with them, but instead I now need to wait at least a year, possibly more. We are in the sour spot of the U-curve.
* In the course of all this searching around, I went by Fry’s, and it’s staggering how different it is since I was first exposed to Fry’s 13 years ago. Time was, it was jam-packed with shelves higher than your head stacked with all manner of things that aren’t there any more. No PDAs. Precious few books. Not a lot in the way of Mac accessories. And no shelves higher than your chest, and very wide and expansive aisles. The Amazon bomb has gone off, and it shows in Silicon Valley retail.
* I put the work AT&T SIM in the Moto X with Lollipop yesterday and tried to use it normally, turning it on around 10. By bedtime, it had only bled down to 50% with normal use. Now, the big caveat was that I was in no way using it for mail or audio like usual, but neither was I plugging it in at every opportunity. I actually turned on location and used it to navigate once, I was fairly constantly looking at Instagram or RSS or Wikipedia, and it seems to have done OK. Maybe it’s settled in; the time to test will be tomorrow or maybe over the weekend of the 4th. But the Moto X, even now, is the insurance against a sudden change of circumstance, and could certainly be my everyday phone until something better comes down the pike if such were necessary.
* Nerf needs to deliver the Rivals series soon. A 70mph Nerf ball is the last argument of technicians.