Unthinkability

AT&T’s special message to me:

“As a valued AT&T customer, AT&T can offer you an early iPhone upgrade with a new 2-yr commitment and an $18 upgrade fee. You may qualify for a standard iPhone upgrade on 04/20/2010.”

Attached are the screenshots of my personalized price quotes to ‘upgrade’ to a new iPhone 3GS.  It is a $200 upgrade penalty.

So, here’s what I hear them saying:

“As a way of saying ‘thank you’ to you, our loyal customers, for your business in these tough economic times, we would like to offer you a solid kick in the nuts.” – AT&T Management.

New customers are offered a $199 price tag on a new 16GB iPhone 3GS, but existing customers whose plans have not yet expired are told they must pay an additional $200 above what a new customer would pay.  Ouch.  I can understand the balance sheet logic, but I don’t have to like it.

I will be stewing about this for several weeks, I am sure. 

One last note from me to AT&T: Please deduct 27 loyalty points from my karma account.  I’ll be looking for a way to say goodbye to you sooner than before.  Also, your coverage in Peoria Illinois sucks ass compared to Verizon.  No 3G, and dark spots galore.  Thank you.

My family is heading to a huge waterpark for a few days, and I need to remain available to our customers.  Since I don’t want to drown my $400 iPhone or my $100 Voyager Pro bluetooth headset, and I was planning to check my phone every 10-15 minutes for calls like I usually do when I have to leave my phone behind.

Alas, I had an idea while I was in the shower.  I don’t need to answer the call while I am sliding down the mega-master-blaster with my 8 year-old;  I only need to be notified of the call so that I can return the call 4 minutes later.  I needed to invent a waterproof bluetooth widget!

Experience has taught me to check the internet before bustin’ out the drafting table, so I searched on ‘bluetooth waterproof notify call.’  I found the following interesting gadgets:

Non-Water-Resitant

• Bluetooth Bracelet with Vibration and LCD Display – $80 
• Natural Air Man Bluetooth Watch with Vibration and Caller ID Display – $150
• Bluetooth Incoming Call Vibrate Alert Bracelet – $40

Water-Resistant:

• Bluetrek X2 Water-Resistant and Weatherproof Bluetooth Headset – $45

Close, but no cigar.  I am STILL looking for a water resistant bracelet.  Sure, I know that I could put it in a ziplock and keep it in my pocket, but that wouldn’t be ‘cool.’  If all else fails, I might just have to hack one of these non-water-resistant units open and encase the electronics in carbonite (or silicon gel).  I wonder if the rechargeable battery would explode.  Hmmmmm….

If you know of a water-resistant model, please let me know!!!

UPDATE: The bracelet only worked about 8 feet from the phone. It was fine if I was sitting in a lounge chair next to the bag containing my phone, but it certainly did not have the range required to reach the water slides.  The water parks need some sort of bluetooth-pairing RF pager system.  Any electronics/pager manufacturers listening?

I upgraded my iPhone 3G to the new firmware version 3.0, and [after a 20-minute upgrade process and a subsequent 60-minute backup procedure] I am the proud operator of a nifty phone.

One of the simplest, yet most-welcome additions to the new iPhone firmware is the built-in Voice Memo recorder application.  Click to start, click to stop, click to e-mail the file.  Simple.

I stuck my Plantronics Voyager Pro bluetooth headset in my ear and prepared to record my first monologue for posterity, but I discovered that the Voice Memo Recorder does not work with bluetooth.  Not even the almighty Jawbone Prime.

Here’s the poop from the Apple support webpage Apple – iPhone – Learn how to use Voice Memo.

NOTE: External microphones must be designed to work with the iPhone headset jack or Dock Connector, such as Apple-branded earbuds or authorized third-party accessories marked with the Apple “Works with iPhone” logo.

I am still bummed.  Had it worked, I might have even posted a new and final podcast.  The world may never know what noise might have come out of my pie hole.

My wife and I watched Ben Stein’s documentary “Expelled” a few days ago.  It is a conversation-starter, for sure.  After the [often manipulative and partisan] movie was over, my wife and I had our first discussion in 15 years about religion.  It was good to have a discussion about “how did life start,” and to not confuse that with “how did life evolve.” 

Natural Selection is an all-but-indisputable fact, but it does not adequately answer “how did life start.”  The world would be a better place if we could all get this through our thick skulls.

Natural Selection fully describes and predicts variations within species, as well as the emergence of new species over time.  Period.  The end.  My favorite two examples of how ’selection’ matters: 

"You don’t have to be faster than the bear; you just have to be faster than the other guy."

–and–

“The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”