Are my eyes really blue?

So it begins. Tomorrow, we find out the stuff we don’t yet know about the Apple Watch. Mainly the actual price points and the battery life, which are the two things we don’t know about in any meaningful way aside from $349 to start and possibly “every day”.  The great mentioner’s consensus is that the “Watch Edition” (i.e. the gold stuff) will easily be in the thousands, going against serious watches along the lines of Hublot or Patek Phillips or Rolex, and the $349 will be the base level sport watch with “ion-X glass” instead of sapphire crystal and elastomeric (read: rubber) bands instead of leather or metal.

To me, though. the first obvious question is “how much battery is this going to save me?” My expectation being that not pulling out the phone and illuminating the screen – the biggest battery eater – will make the phone hold out longer throughout the day. But my biggest battery eaters are Tweetbot, Reeder, Mail and Instagram. That represents half my battery use over the last week, and I only have notifications turned on for Instagram. I have my doubts whether I can read my RSS on my wrist without destroying that battery. 

But honestly, what is it I need from a smart watch? I’d be willing to use it for Apple Pay, I wouldn’t mind caller ID when the phone is in my pocket, I’d love to know I got a text when the phone isn’t audible or can’t be felt in a jacket pocket, I guess the pedometer and heart monitor would be cool… honestly, though, it still feels like a solution in search of a problem. The iPad was like that, until it became the home laptop replacement and thus eminently practical. If there’s a must-have use case for a smart watch for me, it hasn’t manifested itself yet, and I’m honestly not sure what it would be. Good money thrown after bad, for something whose lifespan is still up in the air at best as a usable device. Of which, as I say, more later. 

This is the second post of the year.  The entire month of February: nothing.  I don’t know what that says about the current state of my life, because February had some activities.  A reunion in Vegas with friends I’ve never met in person, a chance to throw live dice with a purpose for the first time in over four years, a long weekend in Tahoe to read books and sip cocktails, a birthday trip to see the Santa Cruz Warriors and enjoy live basketball…there were things happening.

I don’t know.  This year feels like the phase-5 version of last year; despondency and despair giving way to “whatever, long as I can have a drink and see friends and/or stretch out by the fire and don’t have to set an alarm.” We’ve been to places this year and have more on the way (not least the long-awaited Japan excursion).  I look at the stuff on my “frivolous things to purchase” list and don’t really want any of them badly enough to spend the money. I haven’t been down the pub on a Sunday night yet this year, I don’t believe, and I am seriously considering making a Tuesday night thing happen with the local dive and the most local Irish place with live music.

I mean, look at the categories…politics is too depressing to think about. Sports – well, Vandy basketball is surprisingly not bad despite the sluggish SEC start and Vandy baseball is defending the title well, the Warriors are still killing it and spring training has started and that’s nice. Not much to sing out about yet.  Technology? Well, the Apple Watch event is on Monday morning and we’ll find out whether it’s worth throwing cash (right now, I suspect probably not) and I still feel drawn to the Moto X even though carrying two phones is no more practical than it ever was.

Honestly? I just need something to happen.  I need my job to change somehow – new job, new workplace, or just a big enough win at the current one that I am propelled into a better spot.  Sort that out, reduce that as a stress factor, and maybe I can get on with improving my life in other areas.  More working out, better eating. That sort of thing.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. 

It feels like I’m waiting for the curtain to go up.  On what…I don’t know.

This post comes to you from the Moto X, which I still keep trying to find a reason to need. Jony Ive can take his shots in the New Yorker, but it doesn’t change the fact that the original X is the most innovative device since the iPhone 4 – it may not have given Motorola the boost it was hoping for but the following among its fans is unmistakeable. And I’d still rather have it in my pocket than my 6, just from a tactile standpoint.

Android 5 had better hurry, though. Battery is still the curse of Android. And I still haven’t found a satisfactory mail client, which is less of an issue than it used to be (iMessage is another story, but if I’m on the Moto X it’s usually to get away from it all). I do seriously love it for Kindle purposes, though. I think there’s a world where I could have the Moto X and the iPad mini and be satisfied with my computing situation. Assuming I could pop in the Bluetooth headphones and leave the iPad in my jacket pocket…but there’s that other world again.

Speaking of, I’m on my way there again: the third straight Tahoe trip. I went in 2013 to get away from a truly miserable month of work, and was left to sip coffee by the fire (with perhaps a little Gentleman Jack in it) and just read with my feet up and my thick socks on. It was bliss, and I can’t wait to be back there. Maybe this is the year I break down and go to one of the casinos to see what’s doing with that craps table.

I don’t think I realized I hadn’t blogged in almost a month. Then again, it doesn’t seem like there’s that much to say.  Am I sticking to my resolutions? Sure. Are the things of the wider world getting better? Not really. Am I still struggling with where I’ve landed in life and how to make the stones worth counting? Absolutely. 

In keeping with the goals for 2015, though, I’m going to try pushing through and see what comes of it.  Sometimes that works better than others, but anyway, here is a post just for the sake of trying not to let it lie fallow for a month. So what to talk about?

Japan.  Japan is coming in April, and I’ve been researching options for internet access while there.  Turns out that Japan is so much the opposite of the US for mobility that Wi-Fi is hard to come by, since your cell service is pervasive and reliable and strong.  So while my original thought was to get a SIM in the Moto X, it’s looking more and more like the preferred option will be to rent one of those mobile internet widgets (the kind that acts as a wi-fi hotspot and gets its connectivity from the 4G network – basically like the internet service on a VTA light rail) and take the iPhone 6 in airplane mode with wi-fi turned on.  Which would actually probably be just fine, in light of the fact that we’re unlikely to ever be further than wi-fi range apart on this trip (an actual guided tour, which is the way to go when you don’t speak or read the language and can’t sound it out).

Nevertheless – and despite the fact that Android 5 Lollipop STILL hasn’t made its way over yet – I still find myself drawn to the Moto X. Sure, it doesn’t have the email or media or messaging I want (SIMSme notwithstanding). But it’s mine.  It doesn’t belong to work, and I only have to pay for service when I need it, and it’s not tied to anything contractually, and it’s unlocked, and it was actually slapped together in America (okay, in Texas, but that’s practically America), and they nailed the handfeel and micro-USB is an industry standard everywhere, and this phone feels…

It feels like something else.  It feels like it fell out of a different path, one where I not only don’t have the Apple ties but don’t even necessarily live in the tech sector. A different world where politics is center-seeking and things are made in this country and the American Dream isn’t a luxury good and people who are different are approached in goodwill rather than fear.  A world that doesn’t suck the way 2014 did.

Something was different last year, and if I had to put a finger on it, I’d say it’s when we all collectively realized that there may not be a happy ending.  Stupid keeps winning, ignorance keeps winning, racism and bigotry keep bubbling up even as we get traction on gay marriage, the climate keeps changing, the drought goes on, Congress gets more worthless and the media that covers it gets even more so, sports becomes ever more rigged and gimmicked and sports media gets ever more shrill and predictable, and the tech boom shoots money out of a firehose at complete assholes while everyone else tries to scrape by in a world where a suburban 3-bedroom townhouse can cost a million dollars.

I’ve said it before, but as bad as the old days were, at least you knew who the enemy was.  Look, the Nazis are exterminating people and the Japanese Empire is bombing us. Either we fight or things will be worse. Look, Jim Crow is backed by law and by terrorists who will bomb churches to make it stand up. Either we fight or we let the rednecks write off a third of the South to sub-American status.  When the enemy is Hitler or Bull Connor, it’s a lot easier to rally and fight and know you’re doing the right thing.

Now? Now it’s becoming apparent that small-town America (and not-so-small-town-America in some places) has a police force that’s armed itself to the teeth and thinks it’s patrolling Fallujah and they’re going to shoot and what are you going to do about it, call the cops? And half the country is willing to let them, because they’re only shooting colored people so what do they care?  People think that climate change is a fraud because all they think of is “global warming” and every time it snows in New York in January that’s proof that Al Gore is fat, and meanwhile Northern California goes the entire month of January without a drop of rain and the drought extends into its – third? Fourth year? And in the meantime people don’t seem to remember where their fruits and vegetables come from and wonder why produce is going up.  And Saudi Arabia ramps up oil production and because gas goes back to $2.30 a gallon, people are happy to go back to driving and filling up the SUV and don’t think about the fact that the country that produced most of the September 11 hijackers is suddenly in a state of political flux that could leave it highly unstable.

So I guess that’s why I haven’t been blogging. I don’t particularly want to engage with the world right now.  I want to punch out, take refuge in a fireplace on TV with the Christmas tree still up and my sweetie snuggled up nearby. Or in a quiet dark dive bar where I’m the youngest person around by at least ten years. Or in a dell near Weathertop a few days out of Bree with Black Riders no more than a day behind. Or in Las Vegas, or Tahoe, or Japan.

Sometimes, you just need an escape.

2014 started as a great year. Flew to Birmingham, saw the bowl game, partied hard with the Vanderbilt faithful, saw a bowl win, flew home in triumph with Aloe Blacc echoing from my headphones as I swaggered down the concourse. That was January 5 and everything looks like it was coming up perfect.

The next day, it all went to hell.

On a personal scale, it was plenty bad. Terrible health for loved ones. Jobs applied for and not gotten. My own health issues. Vanderbilt loses a coach and staff so Penn State can get right, and his replacement is godawful and returns Commodore football to its usual place in the world. And then the wider world: Russia getting horrible again, Ebola breaking out, an American public and politics that gets ever more stupid by the year…there seems to be a consensus that across the board, 2014 was a dismal and disastrous year that we’ll all be better off to see the back of.

I had hopes that 2014 would be a comeback from the awfulness of 2013. Instead, in so many ways, it just got worse. It’s not a sustainable trend. This year, the good things I wrote down to remember were pretty much the only good things to remember.

There are signs that next year could get better. There are finally changes coming at work. My distant relations (well, the most trying one) are improving their behavior. We did get a national championship in baseball for Vandy and another world championship for the Giants locally. The Warriors are good, the Dores are better than expected, my new iPhone is working well, I’m on a train to Los Angeles for the Rose Parade and Disneyland…

So resolutions: same as ever. Hard shutdown on Tuesday nights. Not so much with the soda, or the snack machines, or the fast food. Exercise more. Ride my new bike for recreation. Try to see the good. Worry less about existential things and the wider world. Make an effort to do more with friends and socialize with other people. And since giving up on the NFL worked so well, take a long look at whether college football needs the same treatment. The things you love don’t every time love you back, and when they don’t, you have to consider how healthy that relationship is.

And if possible, make this the year I actually play the piano and follow soccer. Because those could be fun.

Tonight I caved and bought a six-pack of Coca-Cola Life. What is Coca-Cola Life, you ask? As far as I can tell, it’s a transparent attempt to get Coke product into Whole Foods. Do the checklist: HFCS replaced with cane sugar? Check. Aspartame and ace-K and sucralose replaced with stevia extract? Check. Glass bottles instead of PET plastic or aluminum? Check. 8 ounce containers with green labels? Check. There’s nothing in here that couldn’t go on the shelf at Whole Paycheck, and that is as significant a development as the revelation that Diet Coke with Splenda only existed because Wal-Mart wanted a Splenda-based diet soda to market.

So…the great shift to organic purity has finally hit the biggest soft drink in the world. How does it TASTE though?

To be honest? It’s a little strange. The mouthfeel is almost hollowed-out, sort of: this is a blend of sugar and stevia and the actual sugar content is reduced by more than a third from standard Coke (and slightly more relative to the glass-bottle Mexican Coke that is indispensable to life in California). In a way, it’s a recreation of C2, the abortive reduced-calorie offering from a decade ago, which used HFCS and various diet blends to halve the caloric contents while still maintaining more or less the classic Coke taste.

I took the liberty of testing it out on the wife, who is genetically sensitive to bitter flavors and as a result eschews all artificial sweeteners. She could still taste the stevia bitterness, but much diminished, and allowed that given the option she would take this over Diet Coke or Coke Zero. So that’s a step in the right direction. I’d be happy to keep it around myself, just because an 8 ounce shot is a lot closer to the classic 6.5 ounce “nickel Coke” of the 20th century. Even if this one costs closer to a dollar than a nickel. Portion control is easy when they do it for you for a fee.

It’s going to be an interesting experiment. Can the Coca-Cola corporation move their flagship beverage in a healthier direction? Will the market force them to? Will anyone but annoying affluent white people glom onto this? Is there an audience beyond people like myself who are just a bitch for any form of soda marketing? Ask me later, I’m finishing this six-pack.

Tennessee gets sent to the Gator Bowl. With a record of 3-5 in conference and 6-6 overall, they are at best the 10th of 12 bowl-eligible teams. And yet, they’re off to the same bowl that snubbed Vanderbilt last year when they went 4-4 in conference and 8-4 overall. We sank to the bowl in Birmingham, which now winds up with a 6-5 Florida team that didn’t even reschedule a non-conference game washed out by weather.

Nothing in the SEC – not your performance on the field, not your performance in the classroom, not your ability to stay out of legal trouble, not the quality of your performance in any other sport – matters as much as how good you were at football in the 1970s. That’s how we can go 8-4 in back to back years and play one bowl four miles from home and another in Birmingham while that school to the East can go 6-6, get bowl eligible for the first time in four seasons, and vault to a bowl four spots above where its standings would suggest.

I don’t know where else we could go. I think the inherent nature of the playoff system and the burgeoning of 12 and 14-team conferences means that nowhere else can be that much better. I certainly don’t much care for the prospect of being the 14th team in the ACC or the B1G. Ideally, I’d love to see the world set back as it was in 1990 for college football purposes – no bullshit about conference title games (we’ve had a playoff since 1992, if we’re honest about it), no automatic tie-ins below conference winners, and nothing but a mythical national title at the end, rather than some half-assed combination of polls and computers and committees to do the same thing with a veneer of scientific respectability around it.

Fuck it. More than ever I’m thinking the Ivy League might have been the place for me: no postseason at all, no football scholarships, just ten games to line up and sic ’em and to hell with what anyone else wants to do. There’s the dream, and if it means an end to the SEC run for Vanderbilt, so be it. Georgia Tech certainly hasn’t suffered by departing.

Not much to say here, except that if you find this outcome surprising or shocking at all, you haven’t been paying attention. Make the police a militarized occupying force, decide that all brown people are A Criminal and all criminals are Magneto, and you end up with a bunch of dumb necks who want to need the guns seizing the opportunity.

We could be the greatest country in the world, but rednecks.

Last night, I took the Moto X out for the first time since getting the new phone. I was immediately struck by how it’s gone from being the bigger phone to the smaller phone; despite having a physical screen of the same size, the iPhone 6 brings a slightly higher resolution and the Moto X is shorter and ever so slightly narrower (in no small part due to the smaller bezels that go along with foregoing the TouchID button and the fixation on symmetry). With the leather case, the thickness is similar, and remarkably the Moto has the larger battery (and a more ergonomic curve in the hand).

It’s entirely possible that the Moto will have improved battery life under Lollipop. i certainly hope so, as it’s going to be the travel-abroad phone next year. In all other respects, though, the iPhone 6 on AT&T is a clear winner: the coverage is superior and the data throughput faster almost without exception. And the day-to-day battery life is far more acceptable; I can hit it as hard as I normally would at work, without worrying about it, and still have about half the battery left by quitting time even if I haven’t plugged in.

It was the right move. I’m glad I was able to hold out, even if it took for damn near ever to get it.

I suppose I should say something about the elections.  It’s incredibly frustrating, to be honest: Mitch McConnell vows to go scorched earth, fight everything, make Obama a one-term president, and then six years later gets a majority in Congress because people are fed up with the obstruction and check out.  Which is really the secret, because the low turnout is what put the GOP over the top (in addition to the disproportionate vulnerability of Democrats defending seats won int he 2008 Obama victory).  The Democrats have to figure out how to make people turn out in the off years and not cede the field to the aging racists on their Medicare scooters forwarding scare mail about immigrants to everyone in sight.

I can pretty much guarantee you that there will be at least one shutdown attempt and one impeachment attempt in the next two years.  They’ll find some excuse.  Forget everything you hear about the “moderate Republicans” or the “grownups” – there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the GOP and the Tea Party, there never was, and the successful laundering of the Republican label in the wake of 2008 while going even further to the right is one of the amazing mysteries of our time.  Ted Cruz is driving this bus, folks, and he sees the 45th President every time he looks in the mirror.  And don’t underestimate the chance of Clinton Fatigue dragging Hillary down to the point where he – or another of his neb-confederate pals in Amen Corner – finds himself in the Oval Office on January 20, 2017.

Better days are coming.  They can’t live forever.  The only catch is, can we last long enough to ride it out.