Where's My iPhone Been?

About a week ago, the news was released that the iPhone has been tracking your every movements. OH MY GOSH BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING, ENTER FREAK OUT MODE NOW!!!

Eh, who cares, the maps that you can extract from the files hidden in your iTunes backup files are pretty cool. Below are two pictures of the maps that I was able to create using this software. I got my phone back in September, so the maps below are based only from the time I got it onwards. Obviously, most of my time is spent in the DC and Northern VA areas, with some visits to PA, NJ, Boston, and Colorado. Yep, seems pretty accurate to me. So there you have it, my iPhone travels from September until now. [You can in fact zoom in further on the maps right down to the street level, but I took the screen shots so you could see a wider area of travel.] 

Kinda interesting, no doubt, I just wish I had done more traveling over the past year!

To Shuffle Or Not To Shuffle

I like music, a lot. It's what helps me through my day to day routines, gets me in the mood to work out, cheer me up, or even put me to sleep. But every once in a while I'm at a loss of what I feel like listening to. I'll open up the ipod player on my phone and skim through my preset playlists, and if nothing strikes my fancy, I'll switch over to 'songs' and hit that magical tab at the top, 'Shuffle'. 

I've also got a ton of music on my phone, enough to last for a week or two if played straight through, so when I hit the ol' shuffle button, it's a bit of a crap shoot of what you're gonna get. But isn't that part of the fun? There are definitely times when I've heard a really good song that I didn't even know I had, and have had to look down to see what it was. There are also times when I get a song that I really don't like at all, and I'll reach down and hit the 'next' button to skip over that song, and then I'm left wondering why I even still have that song on my player, taking up valuable space! Of course I don't do anything about it, and then ask myself that same question next time I hear the song.

Moving on though, this morning was one of those mornings where I was left with no choice but to hit the shuffle button, and thought it would be fun if I wrote down the first 10 songs that played, and then share them with you all. I should note that I chose to not skip ahead through any of them, so everything on this list I listened to in it's entirety whether I liked it or not! Also of note, I always find it crazy that out of more than 3,500 songs, there are still times when I get the same band a couple times in a row [like what happened with Senses Fail in the list below.] At any rate, listed below is my list, and admittedly, I was hoping for a better finale than Prodigy, but that is how today's shuffle list decided to play out [haha, get it?] Enjoy!

1. Five Iron Frenzy - American Kryptonite

2. New Found Glory - No News Is Good News

3. Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun [Really beautiful song by the way]

4. House Of Pain - Jump Around

5. Wall Of Voodoo - Mexican Radio

6. Senses Fail - Slow Dance

7. Senses Fail - Lost and Found

8. Rise Against - Savior

9. Millencolin - Fingers Crossed

10. Prodigy - Voodoo People

What do you think? Should I make this a more regular feature of my writings?

Living Room-Mini Fridge-Beer Cannon

Soooo, this is amazing and awesome, and I may need one. That is all. 

[Mini Fridge Beer Cannon]

Wrong Numer? Wrong Number.

So I was hanging out with some friends last night, when the text message tone on my phone went off. I was in the middle of playing Mario Brothers on the Wii, so I didn't check it right away. Anyway, after a few minutes I check my phone and it was a text message from someone that I didn't know, not a huge deal, that happens from time to time. The message itself however, was a little more entertaining. It simply read "Yo i need bud" -- Now, I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and assume that the sender wasn't looking for bud light. 

I really didn't know what to think except that they obviously had texted the wrong person, but I wanted to reply in a funny way somehow. It was until this morning that I came up with a good enough idea. Here's a screen shot from my phone after I replied this morning, I blurred out the numbers except for the area code of the sender just out of courtesy. 972 in case you were wondering is from the Dallas area.

And just in case you can't tell what my reply was, here's a larger picture:

I'm not really expecting any reply, but I thought this was kind of funny. In the case that I do get a response, perhaps I'll try to establish a rapport with them, and use them as a text message version of a magic 8 ball. Actually, on second thought maybe that's not such a good idea after all.....

Time For An Upgrade

You may remember this post from a long while back in which I mentioned finally getting an iPhone. Well, it's time for round 2 since I just picked up the most recent model, the iPhone 4. My old phone was great and I used it for everything, it was just a tad slow. For instance if I was driving down the road and saw something funny and wanted to try and take a quick picture, 8 times out of 10 I would miss the opportunity cause the phone couldn't launch the camera fast enough. Tagging songs I heard on the radio was also a bit hit or miss. 

As awesome as that phone was [and is] it was simply time to upgrade. So I called the local Apple store to check on what they had in stock, and sure enough they had the 32Gb model. So I stopped by on my way home from work and picked up the new one. My old contract hadn't yet expired, but I was well within the upgrade timeframe. Also I'm selling my old one for a pretty decent chunk of change, which will subsidize the price of the new one considerably. I thought about keeping it to use as an ipod touch since it'll still have wifi capability to surf the net, play games, movies, music, etc, but that's just one more thing laying around that I don't really need. So off it goes to it's new owner sometime this afternoon.

The new one is blazingly fast [especially compared to the 3g model] and the screen is really nice to look at. Now I'm just waiting on my free case from Apple. :) Here's a couple random pictures and screen shots, if you have the ability to upgrade, I highly recommend it. Enjoy.

Packaging: 3g on the left, 4 on the right.

Home screen shot, notice all the folders Apple now let's you create. [Perviously you had to jailbreak your phone to gain access to a feature like this.]

Here's what's in one of my 'games' folders. And yes, Angry Birds

is all it's cracked up to be. Best $0.99 I ever spent.

Something Corporate Last Night

It ruled. Band still sounded real good [for the most part] after having not played together for a number of years. They played two nights, and both nights sold out as well. Also, there was no opening band, and we were a little late getting to the show. Fortunately for me, I was wrong yesterday in my guess about 'I Want To Save You' being the first song, and I got to hear it later on in the set list. The long metro ride home though reminded me of going to shows in high school and getting home real late, only I get up earlier now for work than I did for school! Anyways, here's a few iPhone pics of the show. If I can get a hold of the small video clip I took I'll post that up as well. Enjoy!

Pretty sure this was them playing 'Konstantine'

'Punk Rock Princess'

End of the encore

De-Bunking, Wannabe De-Bunkers

Alright, I should let you know first off that this post is going to be a little bit of a rant, and it deals with Apple's new iPhone, and the people that try and make it seem like it's not all that great. Ready? Let's begin!

As many of you already know, Apple recently officially released their new iPhone 4, and as of yesterday the first models started landing in the hands of consumers who had pre-ordered them, with the official launch coming today and long lines forming outside of Apple stores across the country. Don't be surprised to hear a lot of news about the phone today.

So I get to work this morning and fire up the computer, and hop online, and the first article I see on Yahoo's page is about 5 big problems the new phone has and why you shouldn't buy one. I was curious so I started reading. [Here's the article] I got about half way through the authors first "point" and felt he immediately lost any and all credit he may have once had. I encourage you to read the entire article, because I'm going to go through this point by point. Go grab a cup of nice cold water and we'll continue.

Apple's New iPhone: Super Secret Preview

Apparently someone from Apple lost what is to be believed as the new iPhone at a bar, and the early version of the phone made it's way over to the tech wizards at Gizmodo. You can read their early review of it here, and for some visual stimulation, you can check out the video below. It's safe to say that Apple isn't too pleased about this, and I'd be willing to bet someone just got fired. But if it is released this summer, I may have to go and pick it up....if I'm into the upgrade period on my current phone. [Anyone potentially in the market to upgrade their Zach Morris phone to a 3G?] At any rate, time shall soon tell! [gizmodo]

[new iPhone]

Easter Keg Hunt 2010

Last year's Easter Keg Hunt did not go super well. And one might argue that this year's went even worse. Here is my story.

My team [Team DC Sportbikes] unfortunately did not plan very well this year. The usual orchestrator of our attack has been busy recovering from various surgeries and prepping for the upcoming race season. Thus, this year's event slipped a lot of our minds, and we never really got around to forming a plan.

The weather has been great recently, so I've also been riding my new bike into work. So I get in early this morning and pull up DC101 on the computer and start listening. Lots of people calling in saying how they've found kegs, which really made me wish we had planned this year. For those unaware, each year there is one 'golden Easter keg' that is hidden somewhere with one of the people from the radio show. He calls in periodically and gives clues to where it might be. Clues 1-3 only revealed that they were in fact in DC somewhere. Then I heard clue #4 and knew instantly where they were. Clue 4 was "Under the lights" -- they were at RFK stadium. How did I know this? Well the prizes for all the other redeemed kegs were tickets to DC United's home opener this weekend. I put 2 and 2 together real quick and knew RFK was the location.

I asked my supervisor if I could try and go for it, and he said "yea man, just call me if you get it and I'll come pick up the keg in my car." So I threw the jacket and helmet back on, and blasted over to RFK as quickly as possible on the DRZ.

Cause I'm also a nerd I had the 'I Heart Radio' app going on my iPhone while riding over there. I made it to RFK in about 10 minutes and snuck around a fence or two on the bike (WHICH I AM LOVING BY THE WAY) and starting blasting around the parking lots with my head on a swivel looking for a DC101 van of some kind. Unfortuntely the app cut out briefly and I missed the last clue which probably would've helped.

I checked all the parking lots with nothing to be found, so I headed back under the tunnel and decided to park near the offices. I hopped off the bike and start walking up to the security guard. As I'm walking up, another guy is just behind me walking up as well. We asked each other if we were going for the keg, which confirmed we both had the clues right. I was trying to talk to the security guard to let me peak onto the field to see if it was there.

She didn't know what I was talking about, so she called someone on the radio and I asked them if they knew anything about DC101 and the Easter Keg Hunt. "Yea, they're supposed to be here" the voice responded. I begged the guard to let me go check the field real quick. No sooner am I trying to convince her I'm not a lunatic, then I hear on the radio [DC101] that two guys just nabbed it, and they were indeed on the field at RFK.

NOOO! SOOOOO CLOSE!

After a minute of chatting with the guy with me at the entrance I started walking back to the bike and I see the two guys carrying the golden keg back to their car. I walked over and let them and said hi and let them know how close I was. They were nice guys, we chatted for a few about the keg hunt. They were actually driving by the stadium when they heard the clue about "under the lights." Had I not circled all the parking lots and just gone and tried to go straight onto the field I bet I would've gotten it. Un-freakin-believable! Oh well.

On my way back to my building I decided to do a lap or two around the tidal basin since it's such a nice day out. It was packed full of people looking at the cherry blossoms, one kid even tried to give me a high five as I rode by. [And yes mom, I literally am that close from work.]

In conclusion, team DC Sportbikes [me] came very very close to snagging the mother Golden Keg. This fuels my inspiration for next year, which hopefully will go better.

Oh, and the prize for finding the golden keg? Free beer for one whole year. Yea.....

UPDATE: I just learned that one of my friends over at DC United was the woman behind the whole collaboration between DC101 and DC United. A little heads up would've been nice, but I certainly understand why I didn't hear a peep about it! ;) Congrats DC United office workers, who are also friends of mine, for a perfectly executed marketing operation! Now everyone go to the home opener this Saturday!

Gas Station Mishap

So the other day I stop at the gas station to fill up the tank on my way home from work the station is right around the corner from my house, so it's pretty convenient, and literally on my route home. I pull into one row of 3 pumps and go to the farthest one so people can pull in behind me. I start the pump, and while it's going, I take my time to wash all my windows to rid them of all the road spray that's out there right now. While I'm doing this a woman probably in her 50's pull in behind me in a small SUV, and she seems quite hurried. [Who would've thought, someone in a hurry, in northern Virginia?! Noooooo.]

Anyway, my pump stopped before hers did, but we got back into our cars about the same time, cause I washed my windows....and they definitely needed it. I hop back into my car and start it back up, and then pull up a nifty iPhone app I have that allows me to keep track of all my gas purchases and log them. It's a great little app, but it does run kind of slow. As I'm entering all the info from the transaction and my mileage, I can see the woman behind me starting to inch up a tad waiting for me to pull out so she can too. Well, I wasn't quite done yet and she lost her patience so she decided to pull out around me. She begins to angrily take off, when all of a sudden, BOOM! I hear a huge bang. I look up as the woman screeches to a stop right next to me trying to figure out what happened. [Can you tell where I'm going with this one??] I look up, and see none other than the gas pump hose/handle still attached to her car, and ripped off of the pump. Idiot.

She still can't figure out what was wrong and begins to back up her car back into the spot, she definitely catches me looking directly at her just shaking my head from side to side. Now, my first reaction was to see if there was any gas pouring out, and if there was I was gonna make a dash for the emergency shut off switch. Fortunately that was not the case. She gets out of her car, see's what she did and goes running into the little office to get someone. They come out and take a look and inspect the scene.....while I whip out the camera and take a picture. [C'mon, it's not everyday you see that happen!]

This lady is going bezerk at this point. She keeps smacking herself on the forehead and yelling at herself, stressed beyond belief, still in a hurry, and with higher blood pressure than any human should probably have. The clerks make sure everything is alright and that nothing is broken, and are asking her if she's alright. They take the hose out of her car and say it's alright as long as no one got hurt. She couldn't have cared less that they were making sure she was alright and that there was no damage. Her main goal was now two-fold. 1) Making sure to keep smacking herself on her head I guess as a self punishment, and 2) to get the heck out of there as fast as she could. She hopped back in her car and took off like a bandit, still in a hurry with pretty much no regard for her surroundings or safety. The clerks calmly surveyed the scene and started working on putting the pump back together.

How the heck are these people still on the road, and don't you think they'd learn their lessons?! She was in such a hurry to get around me that she yanked out the gas pump, [luckily avoiding a major fire] and yet she still peeled out of the station angrier than ever. The streets would be safer if she didn't have a license, this I promise you.

Here's the picture I managed to snap real quick. If you see a small SUV that looks like this on the road, STAY AWAY!! Chances are, that there's a disgruntled, angry, stressed out woman driving it without much driving skill.

iPhone: Jailbroken

It was just over a year ago that I broke down and got the iPhone. Well, last night I broke down once again and decided to finally jailbreak my iPhone. I hadn't done it before because the process was a bit more time consuming, but not anymore. I used blackra1n to jailbreak it, and it took all of maybe 3 minutes. It's also safe to say it's been a total productivity killer today at work. All I've been doing is playing with all the new features you can install and customize. So far I've changed the system font a couple times, changed my text message tone to Barney Stinson saying "Suit Up!" and my email notification now has David Letterman telling me "Hey there Skippy, you've got mail!"

I've also added folders so that I can keep my various types of apps organized, which is great because now I don't have to flip through 6 pages of apps to get to one at the end. Also, as you can see in the photos, I changed the background from plain black behind the apps to a video clips from the movie 'Cars' -- pretty crazy. Anyway, there's a lot more to be done, and I'm only scratching the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the phone is capable of now. Here's a couple screen shots:

WWDC09

WWDC 2009 is getting ready to start. Hopefully the new OS for the iPhone will be released verrrry soon! Also, lots of other cool apple stuff to keep an eye out for. Follow the live blogging here. [gizmodo]

New Car Stereo

Okay, so for a little while now, my current (stock) car stereo has been slowly crapping out on me, not playing any burned cd's anymore or just some cd's in general. It's also started to skip a ton. I keep pretty up to date with technology and have gotten tired of dealing with cd's. If anyone's ever been in my car, they know I've got about 50 cd's in there with all my music and various mixes. Well those days are about gone.

A friend of mine who works at Best Buy hooked me up big time and got me a killer deal on a new stereo for my car. My favorite feature of the new unit is that it has an auxhilary input on the front of the deck as well as a usb input. What that means is that I can connect my iPhone directly to the deck and play all my music and playlists without having to deal with cd's anymore. Also, since it has a usb interface on the front, if I wanted I could literally plug in a usb hard drive filled with music files and have access to them all while driving. I probably wont use that feature, but it's still cool. I picked it up yesterday, took it home, and immediately began the install. I tried to take a few pics of the process, as seen below.

My new stereo

The [previous] stock stereo

The teardown begins

Center console torn apart!
Guide to splicing wires
Splicing wires between the two harnesses
My roommate lended a helping hand
The new setup!
[My next project is to repaint that awful fake wood panelling.]

Update

Okay, so it's been a while since I've added anything to the blog, but it's been a pretty crazy start to 2009 for me so far! I've been out of town a good deal and I have a bunch of good stuff to share, I just need to organize all my pictures and I'll put some stuff up soon.

In other (shorter) news. I bit the bullet last night, joined the masses, and got the iPhone. My roommate has one and it came in very handy on a recent trip, so when I finally got done with my recent travels I checked my at&t account online, and sure enough I was eligable for an upgrade. I had a $100 visa gift card, so that took a good chunk out of the price of the phone itself. Anyways I'm still figuring a lot of it out, and trying to look up all the cool apps and stuff, but the only thing I can say so far is that this thing is saweeet! Oh and my sister is psyched cause she wants my old phone. Here's a little screen shot of my phone I figured out you could do!