Are my eyes really blue?

Once again, an obvious goal was missed in the World Cup. Not surprisingly, the call was missed by the same incompetent Uruguayan who was handing out cards like candy to the Yanks against Italy four years ago, including two reds in the span of four game minutes. Germany beat England 4-1, so it’s difficult to say England got robbed as such, but if they’d gotten the tying 2-2 goal late in the first period, with the momentum behind them…who knows?

There is a problem with FIFA, and it can no longer be written off as the whingeing of ignorant Americans who don’t care anyway: their officiating is shit on toast. In a game where one goal can make the difference between promotion or relegation, between millions of dollars, between advancing in the world’s biggest sporting event for a single sport, it is no longer enough to allow the officials to continue to commit obvious errors and pass it off as “part of the game.”

None of the excuses hold water, and I am not going to waste time dignifying them by enumeration. We don’t need much – a few chips in the ball, and suddenly offsides – or whether a goal went in – becomes a matter of blow the whistle, stop play, look up at the booth where the display is already up showing the ball and a line across the field, radio down “yes” or “no”, and we’re back to it. Total elapsed time: 30 seconds, or approximately 1/4 of the standard Italian crybaby writhing on the ground in the last ten minutes of a match.

Americans will not take international-competition soccer seriously until the officiating doesn’t come with a dog and a white cane. Nor should they. If FIFA can’t move into the 21st century, I question whether they deserve your attention.

* This thing feels like carrying around a Ming vase – priceless perfection and God help you if you drop it. If there weren’t a 7 business day wait, I would have ordered a bumper case from store.apple.com by now. As it is, I suspect I may be able to get one at the bookstore at work, or maybe at the Company Store in Cupertino (which won’t be overrun with phone purchasers).

* Last night, with the battery just below 10%, I watched an entire episode of The Young Ones (“Bambi” if you must know) and still had battery life left. Power management with the A4 and the larger battery is magical – though I’m still waiting for a proper workday test.

* I have had a couple of weird one-off glitches – I had to turn the phone off and back on again before I could re-add my in-laws’ Wi-Fi, and my cheek actually dialed “42” (!!!) while talking to the wife once on Friday. I haven’t actually experienced a dropped call from antenna touching, but the ham radio operator in me can totally see how such a thing is possible. Also, my copy of Epocrates keeps showing a “4” badge for unread messages even though I mark them read over and over.

* I don’t think the default settings are as bright as previous phones. That could be a tamer version of the auto-detect being judicious with the backlighting.

* Having folders makes all the difference in the world. Everything I have is on three screens, but I’m adding things I never would have bothered keeping around just because I can do it without creating an un-navigable mess.

* Maybe it just seems this way because I’m coming from a 3G and not a 3 GS, but bejaysus, this thing ain’t half shaggin’ quick. Google Earth is actually usable, it’s so fast, and that was something I never thought I’d be able to say. In fact, there’s almost a 3D effect that lets you see just what a dropoff there was below our hotel in Mürren. I want to go back to Switzerland.

* I’ve taken a few preliminary pics and video clips, but haven’t really done the heavy lifting to compare them to the previous phone (or to see if the 30fps 720p HD video is legit and all it’s cracked up to be). Suffice to say that if I were really able to quit my job, move up to the city and pursue a career as a flaneur, this is the only piece I’d need aside from the Bluetooth keyboard.

* All my previous iPhones have been called “Lightsaber.” I think this one may deserve to be called “Wand.”

My back’s been killing me all day. And by killing me, I mean that I bent down to pick up my shoes this morning and felt as if a Marine sniper had shot directly into my back just above my right buttcheek. I actually took two Vicodin and didn’t try to get back off the bed until almost noon. Nevertheless, I called into both meetings today and actually closed three or four tickets.

But tonight, it’s 7 PM, the temp outside is in the low 60s, the windows are open, the breeze is blowing, and the game’s coming on. Specifically, the Red Sox at the Giants, which is on channel 11. I don’t know why, but some combination of factors – the fact that it’s a local MLB team, the fact that it’s on a network affiliate in prime time in HD, the fact that Jon Miller has the call on play-by-play – makes me happy. This feels right. This feels like what a Friday summer evening in Silicon Valley should be.

Or it could just be the Vicodin. That hydrocodone’s a hell of a drug. Nancy Reagan can kiss my ass.

I waited in line about 2.5 hours, not counting the extra times I walked over to scout the line and see if it was worth committing. I didn’t wait in line for any previous phone – the original iPhone was a work freebie and we didn’t get them until they’d been out for a month, and the 3G I got to replace it only came along three months after the 3G’s release – the wife got one well before me. Come to think of it, I’ve never stood in line for any Apple product – and if I could have completed the web order for shipping, I wouldn’t have stood in line for this one.

It’s definitely faster. The amazing thing is that I can add multiple gig of movies, video, apps, and it adds them ridiculously fast. I mean, I wouldn’t think twice about adding a couple of feature-length films on my way out. That alone is a huge improvement.

The feel of it isn’t quite what I expected, but that’s not a criticism – it definitely has the heft and metal quality I’ve missed from the original. I’m not having the antenna problems everyone else did – after it didn’t activate in about 30 minutes, I gave it the IT Crowd treatment. As soon as I’d turned it off and back on again, it registered instantly and went right to work.

I didn’t restore from any backup. I set everything up fresh. This is a bit of a pain in the ass, having to log into every bloody app or Wi-Fi network again, but in the long run I think it’s better than trying to keep going with all the cruft of previous times.

Haven’t tested FaceTime. Somebody call me.

Gave the camera a cursory look, and it looks good, but photography hasn’t happened yet.

I REALLY like having the percentage indicator on the battery meter.

More to follow…

June 23, 2010, will go down in history as one of the craziest days in sports and news for a long, long time. The USA gets a miracle goal at the final gasp from Landon “Hollywood” Donovan to win their World Cup group for the first time in eighty years. A big lurch from Georgia and an irritable Frenchman play a ten-hour tennis match that ends up drawn 59-59 in the fifth set. The President of the United States deals with the highest-profile case in decades of senior military gone off the reservation by relieving the general of his duties in what may be the #1 trouble hotspot on Earth right now. How crazy was this day? A Hall-of-Fame former NFL linebacker was arrested and charged with sexual assault against an underage prostitute, and it slipped through the cracks.

All of that combined to make quite a distraction. Because I’m supposed to make pickup on an iPhone 4 tomorrow.

It wasn’t meant to be like this originally. I had planned to skip the iPhone 3G when it came out – for me, 3G was nothing but a waste of battery life and I wasn’t prepared to pay $300 up front and an extra $240 over two years just for GPS. And assisted GPS at that. Bad arithmetic. Then my dock connector got packed full of lint and shorted right out, and three months after it was released, I had to go to an AT&T store and pick up a 3G, because it cost the same as buying a refurb replacement unit for my existing iPhone.

My father-in-law still has that iPhone, and I mean to keep it, because it’s the one I was given while I was still taking Himself’s shilling along with every other employee of Cupertino Hexachrome Produce Holdings, Ltd. And I missed it. I missed the flatter back, I missed the heft and feel of the aluminum casing. And when the iPhone 3GS came out, I was sore that I couldn’t take advantage of a handset that finally included legit video capture, a faster processor, and double the RAM. My only consolation was that if I waited another year, somebody was bound to push things further.

Then Android came out. The G1 was the first iPhone challenger good enough to be worth criticizing, but it wasn’t enough to tempt me. Neither was the myTouch. Then Android 2 dropped, and the Droid, and then the Nexus One – and all of a sudden, there was an iPhone challenger not only good enough to criticize, but good enough to consider for myself – especially with AT&T’s network sagging under a load it was unable and unwilling to bear. And I looked at the $530 price tag on the Nexus One, and I did math on T-Mobile’s plans, and I ultimately decided to give Cupertino until the end of the summer to return serve. After all, I wasn’t out of contract until September 15, so I had to wait anyway. And if there was no new iPhone, or if it didn’t meet the challenge, well, I had an alternative.

And then, the announcement.

Everything I could have hoped for in moving up from the 3G – faster processor, more battery life, better camera (with LED flash and HD video capture!) and a more compact package with the heft and density I’d missed. Sure, some of the benefits of 4.0 will be nice (although I still think multitasking is more for the geeks than a practical benefit for me – an improved notification system would have been better), but what I needed was a change in hardware. And I’m going to make a much better jump than I would have last year.

Now I just have to battle through the paste-eaters. I’m not using one of the more prominent Bay Area Apple stores, and it’s close enough to walk from work, so I’m hoping to avoid a massive crowd of paste-eaters camping out. Because I’m not after some sort of status symbol or fetish icon – I’m after a better phone than what I’ve got. And I’m pretty sure this is it.

It was a no-win situation. You can either sack the man who’s at the core of the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, or you can leave in place a person who loudly and publicly shat all over the civilian chain of command at a time when the rift between Washington and Arlington is as troubling as it’s been in decades. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. So how to resolve it?

My first job out of college, I was lucky to have a boss who turned out to be one of the best friends I’d ever had. And the relationship was simple: he would keep the shit-avalanche of upper management off me, so long as I didn’t do anything to make said shit-avalanche worse. Basically, we had to trust each other – me that he was fighting in my best interests, and him that I wouldn’t do anything to screw him.

That’s the tiebreaker. The general forced the President into having to choose between the options above – and the tiebreaker is that the President was forced to make a choice at all. I realize that the only parts of the Constitution that Republicans care about are the Second Amendment and Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1. And I realize that the national news media is pussywhipped into believing that the President is the Commander-in-Chief of everything in the country, except the military. But the only thing the President is actually commander-in-chief of is the military. Key phrased being “commander” and “in chief.”

You want to question the strategy? You want to throw stones? You want to be a big-baller in the fashion of LeMay and MacArthur and McClellan? Resign. Write a book. Get a regular gig as a Fox News blowjob recipient. But as long as you’re active-duty military, the only answer you have to the President of the United States, for anything at all, is “SIR YES SIR!” Because that’s how the system is set up, that’s how it’s been set up since 1787, and it’s worked out pretty well so far. People can piss and moan, but it kept nukes out of Vietnam, and it kept us out of a land war with China, so I’m inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Because when you make your manager’s life a greater misery, you’re a liability.

The line of the trip had to be in Bath. We’re on the open-top tour bus, where the tour guide was a sixty-ish woman with a dry wit and an impressive command of history. She described how people came to take the waters for all manner of infirmities – “infertility, gout, baldness, the lot.” Some time later, she asked if anyone had been to Bath before. My hand was up, and the following conversation ensues:

GUIDE: “And when were you in Bath, sir?”

YOURS TRULY: “Five years ago.”

G: “And did you take the waters?”

YT: “Of course.”

(pause)

G: “Well if you don’t mind my saying so, sir, you might try another glass…”

(entire top half of the bus explodes in laughter)

The thing about Bath, like London, is that you can walk around in things that were built six hundred, eight hundred, two thousand years ago. It really screws with your perspective to think that Columbus sailing the ocean blue was at the halfway point between the construction of Bath Abbey and the present day.

The other thing about Bath is that you get there on the train. Inter-city trains were the thing I really latched onto this trip – partly because we were going through five countries, I think. We certainly took a lot of trains last time – Eurostar to Paris and back, inter-city to Oxford and York – but it didn’t quite resonate with me as much as this time. I guess it’s because it seems like we were always on a train this trip – whether the Eurostar or the Deutsche Bahn inter-city sleeper from Paris to Munich or the Golden Pass narrow-gauge out toward Montreaux or the wee little one-car train from Mürren to the cable car station.

The trains are FAST, though. Never mind the Eurostar, we were routinely pushing 200kph on the way from Interlaken to Frankfurt. I would gladly kill several people to have that caliber of high-speed rail in the US – there’s no excuse for not being able to go 120 miles an hour flat-out from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Disneyland in three and a half hours.

I also signed up for a Clipper card when I got home. Clipper is the new name for Translink, the all-in-one card for the Bay Area’s alphabet soup of transit agencies. BART, MUNI, VTA, Caltrain – this is your one-stop shop for all of them. Mainly it’ll just be a way for me to avoid having to buy tickets on Cal gameday at Daly City or to make the train faster at Milbrae when going up to the city for dinner or whatnot. But the Oyster card in London only served to remind me of how much I missed having the SmarTrip card in DC – tag on, tag off.

I like European trains. There’s plenty enough legroom even in second class, most of them had a bar car readily available, they were all prompt and clean and navigable…I could use more of that.

Anyway, that was the UK experience, more or less. I did get my pub meal, thanks to the good offices of some of Da Wife’s clients in Marylebone (and they picked up the tab – cheers, lads) and I did get to hear some of Geoff Lloyd’s Hometime Show on Absolute live on FM (thanks to Da Wife’s new Euro-phone on Orange) and I got plenty of Pret and I got to ride around the scenic loop again on the Big Bus (which never, ever gets old for me). It’s just good to be there.

Paris I have less to say about. Wasn’t as good an experience as last time – the shellshock of dragging the old ones around a country they’re programmed not to like, when they don’t speak the language, is bad enough. Add in too much heat relative to the UK and an absolute shitshow trying to find the bus, not to mention constantly having to make saving throws versus aggressive vendors and gypsy beggars, and factor in the new revelation that I am more acrophobic than I thought (it’s not that I’m scared of heights, I’m scared of FALLING from heights. More to the point, I’m scared of LANDING when falling from heights)…well, the practical upshot is that the only good thing in Paris was laying in bed with the wicked-fast hotel WiFi letting me top up podcasts and RSS feeds for the next long train ride.

Ultimately that’s the big criticism of this trip: it’s not the trip we would have made if it were just us. Don’t get me wrong, I think everyone had a good time (well, everybody that could cope with towns bigger than 20K population) and I’m not sorry I went, but it’s a lock that things would have looked very different with just ‘er indoors and myself. I’m pretty sure Paris would have been a scratch and I honestly think we probably would have dropped the UK altogether unless we just had shopping needs that couldn’t be fulfilled outside Londinium…

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…