What's this? A post before the end of the day? Yes, it seems I am beginning to remember things all of my own brilliance. It's like evolution but backwards.
My package is in Kentucky, for whatever reason, and my "2nd Day Air" shipping label is finally starting to shine. I hope to know soon the fate of my bright friend. There may be light at the end of the tunnel, or it could just be headlights from the UPS truck returning my lifeless phone.
On a lighter note, I got a ridiculous amount of work done today. To be fair I probably accomplished as much as I normally would, but it was not nearly as entertaining. Without the shine of Pandora and Netflix the day dragged on. Each loading screen seemed to take twice as long. Every 100 lines of scripting code seemed to occupy the space of 1000. Still the feeling of accomplishment is as dazzling as ever.
Even though re-reading the "trouble ticket" e-mail from Samsung brought feelings of disdain, there still may be a glimmer of hope. Have you figured out the theme?
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Phoneless - Day 3
By the end of the day, I had become tired of thinking about my options. Running through the various scenarios of "what if Samsung says I'm out of luck" or "how much money am I really willing to spend to replace my phone" was wearing on me. In fact, I had difficulty getting to sleep. I hate thinking that a simple act of trying to upgrade my phone's firmware could cost me so much money besides the headache. With the holiday season looming, we're tight already. And I had planned on asking my wife to spend very little on me this year so we could focus on the children. Now this.
The woes of a first world life, right? "How will I ever pass down the memories of early parenthood to my children without 720p video recordings? How will I check for the best prices on items while I'm shopping without a price checking app?" Hey, once my kids are clothed, fed, and sheltered it's time to kick things up a notch, right? Well, I can't do that without a smartphone. Or in my case a superphone.
My thought process may be flawed, but really I'm just trying to return to my version of "normal." It's normal to expect push notifications. It's normal to choose a different wallpaper every-other week. It's normal to have three different launchers so that when one crashes I can keep going on a similar (albeit less feature rich) application. It's normal to flash a new ROM on the weekend, especially when a new OS version is available. It's normal to choose from an array of options, variations and iterations so that I get an experience I have tailored myself. Or at least I think so.
Until I hear from Samsung, I'm afraid I must live abnormally wondering what is to become of all of the tweets, posts, status updates, checkins, youtubes, reddits, and lolcats I am missing in between the periods of time I sit in front of a tethered PC. When will the madness end?
The woes of a first world life, right? "How will I ever pass down the memories of early parenthood to my children without 720p video recordings? How will I check for the best prices on items while I'm shopping without a price checking app?" Hey, once my kids are clothed, fed, and sheltered it's time to kick things up a notch, right? Well, I can't do that without a smartphone. Or in my case a superphone.
My thought process may be flawed, but really I'm just trying to return to my version of "normal." It's normal to expect push notifications. It's normal to choose a different wallpaper every-other week. It's normal to have three different launchers so that when one crashes I can keep going on a similar (albeit less feature rich) application. It's normal to flash a new ROM on the weekend, especially when a new OS version is available. It's normal to choose from an array of options, variations and iterations so that I get an experience I have tailored myself. Or at least I think so.
Until I hear from Samsung, I'm afraid I must live abnormally wondering what is to become of all of the tweets, posts, status updates, checkins, youtubes, reddits, and lolcats I am missing in between the periods of time I sit in front of a tethered PC. When will the madness end?
Monday, December 5, 2011
Phoneless - Day 2
Well, I'll start off day 3 by writing day 2's post about how not having my phone makes me forget things - like writing day 2's post about being phoneless.
Yes, I used my phone to remind me of everything. It was my alarm clock and reminder-based todo list. Each day I had at least 3 different alarms to wake me up, wake the kids up from their afternoon nap, and remind me to do things. I used Astrid to remind me to write e-mails, follow up on online orders, tell Erin things that I wanted to tell her but couldn't because I was at work, and a host of other things. I find myself almost entirely brainless without it.
I described this phenomenon to Erin as having lost my "crutch." I started to feel like without my phone to remind me to do things, I might actually lose my head. Erin was quick to remind me that "planners" of any kind are used by professionals all around the world and have been for generations upon generations. Man is a forgetful beast and, if it were not for friends, family, personal aides, or ribbons tied around a finger, things just wouldn't get done. So I guess I don't feel so bad about not having my little friend to remind me to do just about everything except breathe.
Except I do feel bad. I miss my friendly little pocket organizer. And as the days go by I find myself feeling more and more forlorn. I have been watching incessantly the tracking number of my phone containing package sent back to Samsung. So far, it appears to still be in Ogden. Boo. But I have also been searching the internet for cheap replacements. And by "cheap replacements" I mean another Vibrant or Galaxy S 4G in respectable condition.
As the thought of having to trash my old buddy and get a look-alike settles in I am starting to understand the feeling of a young child being told that the goldfish mommy and daddy got them to replace the one they had to flush down the toilet was "just as good." It's not. I took excellent care of my Vibrant. It had a case on it from day 1 (-ish) and an expensive, professionally installed screen protector from the start. I used microfiber cloths to rub away oily fingerprints and pocket lint. I even talked to it! Granted it was to do voice searches, but still, it listened as well as any old friend from childhood.
So the days tick on, and I am starting to see how impossible it would be to return to my old life of a "dumb phone" and a pad of paper. Honestly, I think the paper would only get turned into airplanes anyway. And the phone, being mostly useless since I use less than 100 minutes of voice each month and never text outside of Google Voice, would only get used when I attached it to the charger every 3 days or so. I have never missed my Vibrant's 4-8 hour battery life so much.
Yes, I used my phone to remind me of everything. It was my alarm clock and reminder-based todo list. Each day I had at least 3 different alarms to wake me up, wake the kids up from their afternoon nap, and remind me to do things. I used Astrid to remind me to write e-mails, follow up on online orders, tell Erin things that I wanted to tell her but couldn't because I was at work, and a host of other things. I find myself almost entirely brainless without it.
I described this phenomenon to Erin as having lost my "crutch." I started to feel like without my phone to remind me to do things, I might actually lose my head. Erin was quick to remind me that "planners" of any kind are used by professionals all around the world and have been for generations upon generations. Man is a forgetful beast and, if it were not for friends, family, personal aides, or ribbons tied around a finger, things just wouldn't get done. So I guess I don't feel so bad about not having my little friend to remind me to do just about everything except breathe.
Except I do feel bad. I miss my friendly little pocket organizer. And as the days go by I find myself feeling more and more forlorn. I have been watching incessantly the tracking number of my phone containing package sent back to Samsung. So far, it appears to still be in Ogden. Boo. But I have also been searching the internet for cheap replacements. And by "cheap replacements" I mean another Vibrant or Galaxy S 4G in respectable condition.
As the thought of having to trash my old buddy and get a look-alike settles in I am starting to understand the feeling of a young child being told that the goldfish mommy and daddy got them to replace the one they had to flush down the toilet was "just as good." It's not. I took excellent care of my Vibrant. It had a case on it from day 1 (-ish) and an expensive, professionally installed screen protector from the start. I used microfiber cloths to rub away oily fingerprints and pocket lint. I even talked to it! Granted it was to do voice searches, but still, it listened as well as any old friend from childhood.
So the days tick on, and I am starting to see how impossible it would be to return to my old life of a "dumb phone" and a pad of paper. Honestly, I think the paper would only get turned into airplanes anyway. And the phone, being mostly useless since I use less than 100 minutes of voice each month and never text outside of Google Voice, would only get used when I attached it to the charger every 3 days or so. I have never missed my Vibrant's 4-8 hour battery life so much.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Phoneless - Day 1
Last night I used Samsung's Mini Kies software to update my phone to the latest firmware available. It subsequently stopped working entirely. So I packed up my little friend and sent it back to Samsung today to see if they can do anything to help. I'm thinking about keeping a brief record of how my days change because of the loss of my phone. This is day one.
Usually, I get up to my phone's alarm. This morning, I woke up to the boys playing drums in their room. It was about the same time I usually wake up, so no big deal. I'm used to checking my Twitter and Facebook first thing, which had to wait until I booted up my PC. Still not that bad. Danny (my brother-in-law) came by around noon to let me borrow his 10+ year-old Samsung something-something; so I will at least have an alarm. In fact, so far the only thing that I can think of that is going to change is not being able to take video or pictures of the kids when they do random fun things without having to go grab the point-and-shoot. But that hasn't even come up yet, so I'm not hurting terribly yet.
A couple of times today I reached for my pocket to play a game or check to see if I had any new e-mails only to find a hole in my heart. I miss being able to check my calendar to see my agenda or hear that friendly "Tweeter" noise whenever a load of new tweets or Facebook posts has come in. But other than that I had more time to pay attention to what my kids were doing, actually listen to my wife, remember I had a dog, and navigate in my car the old fashioned way: with my eyes.
Tonight I sat down to review my lesson plans for teaching the Deacons tomorrow. This is where I hit my first major roadblock. I'm used to pulling up a few windows on my PC (LDS.org for the Priesthood manual and scriptures, and Google Docs for my lesson plans), typing an outline, and then pulling up the Docs app on my phone for use during class on Sunday. It took me a while to remember I had a physical copy of the Priesthood manual and another few minutes to grab the stack of 3x5 notecards I bought back when I attended Weber state for lesson notes. These archaic tools combined, I was ready to do things "old school." We'll see how things turn out at lesson time tomorrow.
Well, Samsung, the ball is in your court. Please fix my phone so I can go back to Tweeting and capturing HD home movies. I'd rather not have to resort to, oh say, buying a replacement from HTC or LG. Day 2 tomorrow.
Usually, I get up to my phone's alarm. This morning, I woke up to the boys playing drums in their room. It was about the same time I usually wake up, so no big deal. I'm used to checking my Twitter and Facebook first thing, which had to wait until I booted up my PC. Still not that bad. Danny (my brother-in-law) came by around noon to let me borrow his 10+ year-old Samsung something-something; so I will at least have an alarm. In fact, so far the only thing that I can think of that is going to change is not being able to take video or pictures of the kids when they do random fun things without having to go grab the point-and-shoot. But that hasn't even come up yet, so I'm not hurting terribly yet.
A couple of times today I reached for my pocket to play a game or check to see if I had any new e-mails only to find a hole in my heart. I miss being able to check my calendar to see my agenda or hear that friendly "Tweeter" noise whenever a load of new tweets or Facebook posts has come in. But other than that I had more time to pay attention to what my kids were doing, actually listen to my wife, remember I had a dog, and navigate in my car the old fashioned way: with my eyes.
Tonight I sat down to review my lesson plans for teaching the Deacons tomorrow. This is where I hit my first major roadblock. I'm used to pulling up a few windows on my PC (LDS.org for the Priesthood manual and scriptures, and Google Docs for my lesson plans), typing an outline, and then pulling up the Docs app on my phone for use during class on Sunday. It took me a while to remember I had a physical copy of the Priesthood manual and another few minutes to grab the stack of 3x5 notecards I bought back when I attended Weber state for lesson notes. These archaic tools combined, I was ready to do things "old school." We'll see how things turn out at lesson time tomorrow.
Well, Samsung, the ball is in your court. Please fix my phone so I can go back to Tweeting and capturing HD home movies. I'd rather not have to resort to, oh say, buying a replacement from HTC or LG. Day 2 tomorrow.
Friday, August 19, 2011
"Lots of vids!" Update
So we have a lot of videos we have been meaning to upload and we finally did it!
The oldest video is of our family riding the FrontRunner train to the Gateway mall in SLC. It was fun for the kids to experience and reminded me of my mission.
Then, Atticus, Haven and I went to the Father & Sons camp overnighter at Camp Woodland and played with cousins, launched rockets and told "spooky" stories. The next three videos are in order as described above.
Finally, we visited the Tracy Aviary today and watched a bird show. Erin, the kids and I all LOVED the owls. My favorite was the Great Horned Owl (I think we had a painting of one in our house when I was young), and Erin loved the Barn Owl. We saw all kinds of birds from the Amazon that were kept in a temperature and humidity controlled building. Very colorful and diverse. God has made some amazing creatures!
The video below is of the family looking at ducks and PINK FLAMINGOS! I think it's the first time I've seen real ones in person (maybe not, dunno). Anyway, ENJOY!
The oldest video is of our family riding the FrontRunner train to the Gateway mall in SLC. It was fun for the kids to experience and reminded me of my mission.
Then, Atticus, Haven and I went to the Father & Sons camp overnighter at Camp Woodland and played with cousins, launched rockets and told "spooky" stories. The next three videos are in order as described above.
Finally, we visited the Tracy Aviary today and watched a bird show. Erin, the kids and I all LOVED the owls. My favorite was the Great Horned Owl (I think we had a painting of one in our house when I was young), and Erin loved the Barn Owl. We saw all kinds of birds from the Amazon that were kept in a temperature and humidity controlled building. Very colorful and diverse. God has made some amazing creatures!
The video below is of the family looking at ducks and PINK FLAMINGOS! I think it's the first time I've seen real ones in person (maybe not, dunno). Anyway, ENJOY!
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Look Who's Dancing Now!
Scarlett had her first dance recital yesterday! She is the cute little one in the middle with dark hair, if you can't tell - she just got a major hair cut; first by herself, then by a professional. Farrah is also in the video, and they love getting to dance together. We have uploaded the first part already and as soon as the second part is uploaded, we'll link that one, too. Enjoy!
UPDATE: Second video is available!
View full screen for best results!
UPDATE: Second video is available!
View full screen for best results!
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