Exorcising the Goat Gremlins
I’m never a happy camper when my car starts giving me crap. So I was none too pleased by my GTO’s behavior over the last few weeks, during which time it started displaying myriad symptoms of some unidentifiable illness or another, all of which seemed infuriatingly unrelated. It started with occasional sluggish starting, escalated to mystery messages in the Driver Information Center (DIC) and finally to problems with the HVAC system and even a sudden inability to cram a full 16 gallons of fuel into the tank. Needless to say, I was walking on eggshells every time I got into it, wondering what would be next to go.
Along the way, I mostly blamed myself for it. It was a hellishly long and hot summer, even for Texas, and my GTO (or the “goat” as it’s colloquially called, at least partially because it eats everything) spent the majority of it on top of a parking garage in broad daylight. And it’s black; did I mention that? Getting into the car after work was like walking into a paint baking booth. I practically needed a change of clothes from the sweat when I got home, despite working in a frigid cold office all day. To its credit, the air conditioner kept up admirably, and I kept the paint coated with UV-rejecting polish, but I wondered how long it would be before that damnable heat started taking some kind of noticeable toll.
Ironically, I had my answer not long after I finally ponied up for a parking space in the office garage. On some mornings, particularly Mondays after the GTO had sat up for a couple of days without use, the starter would crank fairly sluggishly. It would always fire up, but my ears are attuned to the typical sounds my car makes and are hyper-sensitive to any variation. The battery in my wife’s Mazda6 had completely crapped out near the tail end of the summer, and I’d heard some pretty startling statistics about the number of car batteries that had been killed dead by this summer’s torturous heat, so I wondered if the GTO was next in line for the same fate.
However, it kept cranking every morning and nothing else seemed to be amiss, so I shelved this interesting anomaly in the back of my mind. What with my wife being seven months pregnant at the time, and both of us busy with childbirth class, grocery shopping and all manner of preparations every weekend, I hadn’t much time to spare worrying about “what-ifs”.
Then the phantom warnings started.
The PC is Dying? Hardly
Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of proclamations that the personal computer as we know it is rapidly being replaced by smartphones and tablets, with today’s CNN Money article about the slow death of the PC being just the latest example. Personally, as someone who works in the IT field and uses a PC to create tangible content, I feel that there is a salient point often left out of analyses such as this: if the PC is on its way out, then on what device will producers create all of the content that we will consume with our new phones and tablets?
Tablets are great for consumption of media: checking email, browsing the web, updating your Facebook status, reading magazines or books. Some of these things were the sole reasons why many households had a “family computer” in the first place. For those households, tablets are a great option because there’s a lot less cruft, a lot more simplicity and lower energy use, not to mention no more need to dedicate an entire piece of furniture to a desktop computer. But for somebody who is creating intricately detailed websites or graphic art, or coding and testing an application in an integrated development environment, how can a small, simple tablet possibly hold up?
It can’t, in my world. While it’s possible to create compelling art on a tablet using a stylus or even your own finger — similar to what a Wacom tablet on a PC would do, although much less precise in my experience — this allows for only fairly broad strokes. I have no idea how it would ever be possible to use a relatively fat, stubby, imprecise thing like a finger to design things like pixel-precise layouts and finely detailed icons. I simply need to have the precision of a pointing device.
Multi-monitor setups are another thing that’s not happening (yet) with tablets, and I’m not in any hurry to give up my three-screen array with Photoshop’s canvas on one screen and its tool palettes on another so that I can cram it all onto a 10-inch tablet. No thanks. Programmers surely fall into the same group, and I know many who live and die by multi-monitor arrays consisting of as many as four, five or even six screens. Even with one screen, you’d need significant enough real estate for all of the tools, browsers and panels that typically go along with IDE-based development.
I found the CNN Money article somewhat telling because it indicates PC sales are actually up significantly in markets like China and India, while they are down in North America. Factoring into this, I’m sure, is the fact that China and India’s economies are growing very rapidly, affording more and more households the ability (and desire) to purchase a PC. Whereas here in the West, PCs have surely already reached a sort of saturation, and tablets are looking much more appealing to families who just want a device that can check email and surf the web.
At the same time, though, I wonder if part of this is because India and China are doing a huge amount of actual producing of content now, not just manufacturing of tangible goods but also development of software and systems.
Although there’s no doubt that the PC’s market share stands to continue declining slowly as more consumer-friendly “consumption devices” become both available and more affordable, I don’t see the PC truly “dying” anytime soon. It’s simply too important a tool for too many professionals, a tool for which there is not yet anything close to an apt replacement.
This Christmas Lasts a Quarter
My cup runneth over! Those were the words that came to mind a couple of days ago as I took stock of all the exciting things that will soon befall me in the coming days, weeks and month. You’ve heard of “Christmas in July”…well, this is starting to look like “Christmas in the entire fourth quarter of 2011.” It’s just non-stop activity from now through the new year…the arrival of our son Connor, lots of toys (for both the baby and his parents!) and plenty of one-of-a-kind family memories to create and share.
I even came into some lightweight web design sidework last night, the payout for which will get me the rest of the way to my goal for the new stereo I’ve been lusting after for the GTO. I can’t afford one of those fancy-pants touchscreen head units with nav built in — and most of them have some pretty crappy navigation, anyway, unless you pony up for the top-end models — so I’m going with a more rudimentary JVC KW-XR810. It’s got just the features I need: iPod control, multiple USB ports, and Bluetooth music streaming at last!
The big gadget news for today is Apple’s iOS 5.0, which Apple and I are both currently installing on our iPhone 3GSes. This is the biggest iOS refresh since the App Store was introduced, and Apple’s servers have been getting hit hard all day as tons of iPhone users all over the globe downloaded and installed the upgrade. There’s some cool stuff in this one, but perhaps my favorite new feature of all is the ability to finally — finally — assign our own custom sound effects for text messages, email alerts, calendar alerts and lots more. I had that ability on my Motorola E815 flip phone in…what, 2004?…so there’s really no excuse why Apple took so long to give us this capability, but at least it’s finally here. With me being a big sound effects guy, I’m going to have some fun with this.
Speaking of iPhone news, my 32 GB iPhone 4GS should be here within 48 hours — and, possibly, even tomorrow. I’ve got a UPS tracking number in hand, but it’s not registering in the UPS system yet. However, the tracking number indicates a service level of “01″, meaning Domestic Next Day Air. This means that the phone is coming from the U.S., and because I ordered it from AT&T directly, that means it’s likely coming from their Fort Worth, TX warehouse. The great thing about that is, Fort Worth is only a couple hours’ drive from my house. If anybody’s likely to get their phone early, it’s me. So I’m going to work from home tomorrow and hope to catch the UPS guy when…and if…he stops by. We’ve also got a really cool play yard (formerly known as “play pen”) for Connor arriving via UPS tomorrow, so it’s likely to be a big day!
Also, I simply must say a word about Forza Motorsport 4. This is the Xbox racing game to end all Xbox racing games. Seriously, every time a new Forza game is released, I think they can’t possibly do any better. And every time, they make the previous game look like amateur night. The entire game contains 500 cars, half of which (2.8 GB worth) are on the second disc and must be installed to your hard drive before you can drive them. Every car from Forza 3 and its DLC packs is available out-of-the-box in Forza 4, plus some new ones as well. And somehow, not only are the cars more detailed than they were in Forza 3, but the game feels like it runs at a butter-smooth 60 frames a second. Seriously, I thought I was watching Top Gear at one point. (And you might as well be: you can actually drive on the Top Gear test track!)
You just have to love the guys at Turn 10 — makers of the Forza series — too. Because somebody there has to have some serious love for Pontiac Motor Division. The lineup of Pontiac cars in Forza 4 now tops every other racing game I’ve ever played and contains an analogue to every car I’ve ever owned, except for my ’93 Grand Prix. Fans of the late red arrowhead can enjoy driving iconic cars like these:
- 1973 Trans Am SD-455
- 1969 Trans Am
- 1968 Firebird
- 1965 GTO
- 1969 GTO “The Judge”
- 1977 Trans Am Y84 (Smokey and the Bandit Special Edition)
- 1987 Trans Am GTA
- 2002 Trans Am WS6 Ram Air
- 2006 GTO
- 2009 Solstice GXP Coupe
- 2009 G8 GXP
I mean, that list reads like a “who’s who” of famous Pontiac hot rods from the last fifty years. I’ve died and gone to Tin Injun heaven.
Naturally, I’ll have a full review of Forza 4 in the coming days (I’ve only spent a couple hours with the game so far), but I could literally stay busy for years playing this. I’ll leave you with this final parting shot of my GTO gobbling up a turn at Road America. Plenty more where this came from!
Preparedness
“You always prepare in advance for everything,” my wife Apple said to me earlier this evening, when I walked in the door carrying a case for my new iPhone which won’t even be here until Friday. “Not just your own stuff, but for Connor too.” Connor is our son, and he’s not here yet, either. (We’re expecting him during Thanksgiving week.)
She was right, as usual. I had spent the previous evening assembling the Graco Reverse Quattro travel system that my grandmother generously purchased as a gift for us (and which my mom generously ordered and had shipped to our home). This afternoon, I installed the system’s car seat base in the backseat of Apple’s Mazda using the LATCH system. All of this went better than I expected, and — assuming I installed the car seat correctly — was in fact so easy that I probably wouldn’t even bat an eyelash about moving it from car to car. (I expect to post an initial review of the travel system shortly, “initial” because I haven’t actually put a baby in it yet.) This was just another step in my process of getting as ready as I can for our son’s arrival.
It’s not just me, either, as Apple herself enjoys preparedness as much as I. Previous steps in the aforementioned process have included painting Connor’s room, outfitting it with furniture, and the ubiquitous (and perhaps most important) task of helping my wife ready herself physically for labor and delivery. Since we’re planning to deliver naturally at a birthing center instead of a hospital, we’re taking classes on the Bradley Method of childbirth and are doing the appropriate research, staying active, and doing special exercises. We also got Connor to turn head-down in the ideal birthing position by performing a variety of encouraging activities, ranging from inversion to moxibustion.
A Guide to iPhone Preordering: Take an Anxiolytic First
So last night I preordered my first iPhone. Yes, despite owning two previous models — the 3GS and the original flavor — each time I’ve just walked into an Apple store and bought it. Part of the reason for this is the fact that preorders weren’t even taken on iPhones until the iPhone 4 was released in 2010. Even so, there’s something really fulfilling about just buying something you’ve saved up for from a brick-and-mortar store, holding it in your hands and getting to play with it as soon as you lay out the cash. (Or gift card, as was the case in 2008 when Apple refused to take my actual Benjamins.)
Anyway, this year I wanted the new iPhone on release day, and I didn’t want to be one of those noinks sleeping in a tent outside the local mega-mall. So when the news got around the preorders would start being taken at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday the 7th, I resolved to stay up and be one of the first to get my order in. The iPhone 4 sold out pretty quick last year, so if you want to be a part of the first batch, you need to act within the first few hours.
Since midnight Pacific is 2 a.m. Central, and I was feeling pretty sleepy by 7 o’clock last evening, I figured I’d just go to bed and catch some winks before the actual release time. I set my 3GS alarm to wake me up with an obnoxious duck sound and read Lovecraft on the phone’s tiny screen until I could stand it no more.
When the incessant quacking first launched me out of my slumber at 2 a.m., I immediately checked the Apple Store iOS app. Last year it was reported that this was a great way to avoid the server crashes and the hassles that traditional web store visitors endured; plus, it would allow me to order the phone from the comfort of my own bed. But the “We’ll be back soon” post-it note graphic was still being displayed on the Apple store, meaning preorders weren’t open yet. I hit the snooze on the alarm.
I think I woke up, checked, and snoozed again for the next hour before I finally got something other than the “We’ll be back soon” message, but by then, it was 3:15 a.m. Central and the store was erroring out. A crush of people were on it already, it seemed. All right, let’s saddle up and finish this like a man. I shuffled off to the study and fired up the computer, headed over to the Apple store in my browser and tried to order up an iPhone 4S.
The iPhone Bandwagon, Going On Year Four
It was March of 2008 when I first became a member of the card-carrying, fruit-badged iPhone intelligentsia. Prior to that moment, I was still clinging to my Motorola Razr V9M, a phone that looked like it had been carved from a solid wedge of obsidian, refusing to get on the goofy “candy bar” bandwagon. “Phones that look like candy bars…how dumb! What a waste of space! Who would carry one of those bulky, unwieldy things?”
Then the iPhone arrived, and I was smitten. Technically yes, it was a candy bar form factor, but it was also completely awesome and looked like some kind of space-age device that you’d see Geordi La Forge walking around with in engineering. The $600 price tag was a bit of a problem, though, so I grudgingly tried to ignore it while everybody and their uncle bought one. Luckily, though, I didn’t have long to brood: a fortuitously-timed web design project in February netted me the exact amount of cash needed for the just-introduced 16 GB iPhone, I promptly scooped one up, and the rest is history.
I’ve been an iPhone user ever since, even as the mobile market has exploded around me with competing devices running everything from Android to Windows Phone 7. There’s more of a “spec race” now in cell phones than in computers — when I read all the hoopla on a daily basis about the next hot phone that’s about to drop, it reminds me of 1995 when I salivated over upcoming Intel chipsets and new-generation Pentium processors, wondering which configuration would give me the highest number of frames per second in games like Duke 3D and Quake. Back then I started getting antsy to upgrade my computer every couple of years — exactly as often as I upgrade my phone today. By contrast, my desktop computer turns five years old this month and I’m not feeling especially compelled to replace it. How times change.
I happen to like the “ecosystem” that Apple has created with iOS, iTunes, iCloud and iWhateverElse. This, too, is almost comical to me because I spent the greater part of the 1990s lambasting Apple precisely because of their limited, walled-garden, “we-know-best” approach. But unlike traditional computers, where I demand the freedom to tinker, configure and arrange things exactly as I want them, I just want my phone to work. I want it to do a metric ton of stuff, but I don’t want to worry about any problems along the way. Everything that it does should be part of its overall design, and should function reliably and without question.
While this describes the iPhone perfectly and always has, the mobile landscape is significantly different now as compared to 2008. There are dozens of alternatives to the iPhone, touting 4.6″ 720p screens, dual-core processors, LTE, expandable storage, near-field communication capability, HDMI out and God knows what else. The fifteen-year-old in me who obsessed so completely over his new 200 MHz Pentium Pro desktop in the 1990s would have absolutely lapped it up, and I should have been mightily tempted to jump ship this week when Apple announced the iPhone 4S, which is — on the outside — little more than an iterative update to its previous model. A fairly risky and complacent strategy in the face of such fervent competition, to say the least.
And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted myself, however briefly.
Oddball Update Relaunched
With monumental changes in my life just around the corner, what better time to reintroduce my online outlet for it all? Oddball Update Revision X makes reviews more prominent, adds a brand new look and introduces a smattering of modern technologies (HTML5 and CSS3) — and, with any luck, will actually be updated more than once a quarter.
For a while, over the past month, I experimented with a tumblelog at Tumblr under a different domain name. It was interesting, but I found myself drawn back to Oddball Update and the WordPress platform that powers it (especially because, since this site is hosted on my own server, I have much greater control over it). Having put the Tumblr experiment on ice, I’ve decided to refocus my efforts on Oddball Update, including what I hope to be a return to the kind of posting that this site used to see in its early days.
You’ll notice that I’ve divided the site into two categories: the Blog section and the decidedly more colorful (in one way, anyhow) News & Reviews section. The former is home to my journal, commentaries, rants and opinions on cars, tech and the news of the day. The latter is where I review video games, movies, music, electronics and whatever else I might be passionate about. If you’re considering any of the products featured therein, my opinions might be of some value to you.
Since this is a brand new installation of WordPress, rather than a simple upgrade of the legacy Oddball Update installation, you may find some familiar things missing. While Oddball X isn’t entirely feature-complete, it’s 90% of the way there and I hope to fill in the gaps over the coming days.
In what is perhaps the biggest sea change of all, open comments are allowed. This means that you no longer have to register or login to post a comment on an article; however, all comments are still moderated for first-time visitors. User registration is still possible, and is recommended for family members and friends as I can give your accounts access to certain posts (family photos, etc.) that the general public wouldn’t otherwise see.
Now, off to write some new blog posts and reviews. As I am no longer a Florida resident, though, you may find the new Oddball Update short on rants about crotchety old fogies. I promise, you won’t miss them.
