Category Archives: technology

Teenage Girl…

Posted on by

It looks like June was probably a high water mark for me at least in one respect. Somehow I managed to send 3,730 text messages. I’ve often joked about it, but it appears to be confirmed that I do, in fact, have the phone habits of a teenage girl… This fact was punctuated by the fact that a 20-something chick friend of mine assures me that my text volume is somewhere in the neighborhood of six times what hers is for the same time period. That little factoid is made even more exciting when you do the quick math and find out it’s also approximately equivalent to about five months of her average number of texts. Yeah, thanks for that bit of trivia, Allyson.

A more enlightened individual might find these numbers a reason for pause, but I’m fairly sure I’m just going to give them a disinterested “meh” and go on about my day. So if you need anything, just go ahead and text… given the number of rollover minutes I have expiring every month, it definitely seems like that might be the only actual way to get in touch with me with some kind of consistency.

Phone behaving badly or: My excuse to go to the Apple Store…

Posted on by

In case anyone has been trying to reach me, I apparently have a phone problem. After getting an irate phone call wondering why I haven’t returned any of a dozen text messages that were sent in my direction, I thought it wise to give my friends at AT&T a call. After a little over an hour on the horn with three levels of tech support they narrowed it down to a) a SIM card issue or b) a hardware issue. Apparently the only thing they know for sure is it’s not an issue with their network. They at least were nice enough to point out that “oh yes, we can see a number of failed texts coming in to your number today… that’s really weird.” Really weird particularly because just as many were making it through the system as well. Sigh.

To make the long story of technical support a little shorter, they wanted me to go over to the local AT&T store this morning and let them fiddle with the SIM for a while. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I don’t actually know where the closest AT&T store actually is. In the event that it’s an actual hardware issue rather than just a SIM thing, I thought it would be a better idea to go ahead and bring my ailing 4S back to the Apple Store from whence it came… Which is fine, because I have an unholy love of the Apple Store… except for the part where it’s Saturday, and at the mall, and it’s going to be full of people. And we all know how I feel about places like that.

If there’s any up side to this, it’s probably that whoever decides to buy my iPhone after I pick up the new model in two weeks will in all likelihood be getting a freshly refurbished replacement model since a swap out is pretty much the standard procedure for my trips to the Genius Bar. Still I wish the old girl had held out for just a another 14 days and saved me the trouble. And if anyone out there has tried to text me in let’s say the last 24 hours and hasn’t gotten a response, yeah, sorry about that. Hopefully by around 1:00 this afternoon we’ll have things resolved… or not. It’d say that odds are 50/50 at best that incoming texts will ever be reliable again, but that’s just the optimist in me coming through.

It’s not a fad…

Posted on by

When I walked into the Toyota dealership’s waiting room this morning I took a quick lookie-loo at the dozen or so people sitting there trying not to make eye contact with one another. I’ve known for years that I’d be more or less lost without my iPad, but what I saw in that room legitimately surprised me. I counted two laptops, five iPads, one Kindle Fire, one Nook, one Android tablet of unspecified origin, one old guy reading an actual dead tree newspaper, and one lone soul actually watching whatever Saturday morning kid’s drivel they were showing on television. So out of a dozen people, eight were fully engaged with their tablets. Two years ago sitting in another Toyota dealership waiting for my truck my iPad was a curiosity and garnered plenty of questions. This morning, they were the rule rather than the exception. And that’s when I became well and truly convinced that the tablets aren’t going to be an electronic fad, but a legitimate way of the future.

Rumor Mill 5…

Posted on by

It’s no secret that I read alot of tech blogs and keep my eye on half a dozen or so rumor sites. When it gets to be this time of year and they all start coalescing around the a few key pieces of information, it’s impossible to keep my mind from turning to the thought that perhaps these might be more than the run of the mill rumors. As it stands after the last day or so, the blogs have all lit up with September 12th being the day Apple officially announces “iPhone 5”. Most are going so far as to point to September 21st as the expected launch date. Apple, of course, does not comment on rumor or speculation. Apple barely comments on products that are already in their lineup, which is sort of an impressive quality in a world full of companies that spend alot of time telling you how great their products are.

So, with the coming of the massed rumors, this would now be the time of the year when I start thinking that I don’t really “need” to upgrade my phone this time around. Eventually that will slip to only upgrading if there’s a major update. As specs start leaking out, I’ll be caught in the maelstrom and come around to understanding that this is a product update that I just can’t live without. Maybe this year I’ll skip the foreplay and go ahead and say for the record that I’m really, really looking forward to having a new model iPhone to play with and that baring any unforeseen circumstances, I’ll be throwing a pile of cash in Apple’s direction in September, as is my annual tradition.

So yeah, if anyone is looking for a good quality previously owned iPhone 4S, let me know and come September I’m sure I’ll be able to make you a good deal on it.

Pin count…

Posted on by

Because underwater mortgages, impending fiscal cliffs, and a heat wave baking the East Coast (again) aren’t enough bad news, I’m sitting here reading an article about Apple’s possible redesign of its decade-old 30-pin dock connector. A smaller form factor sounds like good news at first, until I added up the sheer number of 30-pin connectors I currently have sitting around. If you’re really curious, that would be a total of eight. Four at home, two in the car, and two at the office. With tax, that’s probably a $200 replacement cost to convert everything over to the new and improved 19-pin variant of the connector. I’d gulp and roll my eyes a bit, but fine, it’s just another Apple tax.

Assuming that this fall’s iteration of the iPhone includes the 19-pin connector, it means I’ll have to tote around 3 separate ways of charging my gear (19-pin for iPhone, 30-pin for iPad, magsafe for MacBook Pro. Sure there will be some kind of adapter available for $19.95, but adapters aren’t the elegant kind of solution I like with my tech. Then again, needing three different connectors to leave the house isn’t the kind of elegance I expect from Apple either. In fairness, I don’t know that there would ever be a good time to switch over from the connector we’ve all been using for ten years to a new and better model. Since it seems highly implausible that Apple will ever refresh its entire iOS line at the same time, I guess getting the pain over now is as good a time as any.

Hopefully deep in the bowels of Apple Headquarters a bleary eyed engineer is hard at work on some kind solar cell coating or a bio-mechanical mechanism that draws power directly from the user (or self-winds like a wristwatch for all I care). Then we could get rid of the connectors and adapters altogether. And really, wouldn’t that make the world a better place for everyone?

Go Google Youself…

Posted on by

Three years ago, if I googled myself, I think the blog I was running at the time started showing up somewhere around page five or six of the search results. A few minutes ago I typed my name into the search bar instead of the address bar and ended up googling myself by accident. I swear it’s not something I do on a regular basis. Seriously. I don’t. Honest.

As it turns out, a few years make a difference in the standings and there I am right there as the second listing whenever anyone searches for “Jeffrey Tharp”. Let’s just ignore the reasons why anyone might be doing that for the moment. As it turns out, the #1 Jeffrey Tharp in all of the internet is not yours truly, but rather an orthopedic surgeon based in Ohio. He seems like a good enough doc, rated better than average from what I can see. But still, I lust after his coveted 1st place search result location. Does that give you any indication of how slow a week it’s been? Yes, I’ve had time tonight to sit here and ponder zen and the nature of Google search results.

All I can say, Dr. Jeffrey S. Tharp of Akron, Ohio, is I’m coming for you. Do you hear the footsteps? You’ve probably improved the lives of hundreds and thousands of people with your healing arts, but I’m a go to source of humor, sarcasm, and snarky commentary for at least several people who I can name off the top of my head. I think we can all see why I should be first in the rankings, right? So you can either stand aside gracefully to let me claim my rightful place atop page one, or I’ll be forced to continue blogging five days a week until I simply overwhelm Google with the volume of subpages linked from http://www.jeffreytharp.com. The choice is yours. I know you’ll do the honorable thing.

Tweet, Twitter, Tweeted…

Posted on by

I’ve had a Twitter account for, well, I can’t really remember how long. Suffice to say it’s been a while. Maybe I’m just not creative enough or otherwise lack some kind of vision, but as much as I’ve tried to like Twitter, I really don’t. I thought maybe it would help if I followed more people. It didn’t. All that ended up being is a list of people whose tweets I’ve had to block from coming to my phone. I sort of instinctually grasp the social utility of Facebook, but I haven’t quite decided what Twitter is supposed to be all about. I mean it’s sort of cool being able to send a text message to the whole planet at once, but I’m blanking when it comes to reasons I’d want to.

Sure, I’ll keep my account in the hopes that someday I’ll figure out why I need to have it in the first place, but mostly that’s a strategy just to keep someone from hijacking my name. Maybe I’ll get inspired at some point and figure out a reason I need to spend more time with it. Yeah, so clue me in, friends, is there any reason to keep Twitter around or should I go with my gut and chunk it over the side to become yet another piece of the tecno-infrastructure that I tried and found lacking?

Been there, done that…

Posted on by

The thing that no one ever seems to want to understand or be willing to accept about productivity software is that it’s usually designed to meet a specific need. Word, not surprisingly, is a reasonably good piece of word processing software. Take away all the bells and whistles and right down at the center of its core functionality, it still lets you put words on a blank electronic page and then tinker with them until everything looks just right. Most people grasp this almost intuitively at some level.

The real problems creep in when things get a little more complicated… Like when someone decides to buy into an entire file-sharing and collaboration platform that’s closely integrated with the Microsoft Office family of products. When they use the platform as the programmers intended – it’s actually a remarkably effective and efficient way to manage your information. On the other hand, when you give this product to a somewhat aged group of people and tell them to start using it from a standing start, well, you’re pretty much just inviting things to end badly.

I’ve seen this story play out before. The first couple of weeks are going to go like gangbusters, but once the early adopters have had their fun, the rollout will slow to a crawl. After that, it will be a hand-to-hand fight to convince the 50% who are holding out that it’s worth doing. Eventually, it will die under its own weight and we’ll be stuck with another system that we’re halfway using. Yeah, this ain’t my first rodeo, cowboy.

Stick around long enough and I guess you’ll see history repeat itself over, and over, and over, and over ad infinitum. At least this way I’ll only have to act surprised with how things turn out, rather than actually being surprised that something so simple could go so badly awry.

Explorer…

Posted on by

Until the arrival of the new computers, the fact that many of us installed Firefox as our default web browser wasn’t quite officially sanctioned, but wasn’t banned either. I’d have still rather used Chrome, but that wasn’t even considered worthy of being an option. Now look, I’m all in favor of network security, but that doesn’t have to mean we get stuck using antiquated software – and yes, even a three year old browser feels antiquated after you’re use to using one of the other available options – you know, the ones that have been released in the current decade.

Hey, I’m super excited about getting a new computer. It’s swell that I can now unplug the machine and not have the battery die immediately. It’s just on this one little point of software where we’re having a real problem. I’m sure Internet Explorer works just fine for most people under most conditions, but on a machine that’s already bogged down with metric tons of security software and on a network that no one would call speedy under the best of conditions, IE pretty much adds insult to injury.

We’re a nation that prides itself on technological innovation, so please, for the love of God, his saints, and all things good and holy, can we find a way to look at the interwebs that doesn’t involve dragging out this old warhorse of a program? We’re seriously not doing ourselves any favors here. Don’t believe me? Go ahead and ask about the nine times I had to force quit Explorer before I went to lunch this morning.

And while you’re at it, can you please stop resetting my default homepage. I know our web address and I find it a lot less useful in my daily work than Google is. Sigh.