Ahh, the Nexus One...

By now, you've probably heard of the Nexus One, and maybe heard too much. I want one, but Google and T-Mobile seem to want me to wait 10 months. While I'm about 99% certain there will be an even more awesome phone in that time, the Nexus One is the one I want.

Let me start from a little earlier in the story. Ever since Android was announced, I've kept an eye on it because it was a pretty cool concept, and there were certain things I wanted to do on my cell phone. Oh, and I MIGHT be able to write some programs that someone would be willing to spend money on.

So when the G1 came out, I decided that I would invest in one when my Verizon Wireless contract expired, which happened at the end of 2008. Frankly, I prefer Verizon by far, but at the time they were not Google or Android friendly, so I got my G1.

The purpose was two fold: first, I needed a new cell phone, and second, I needed a phone I could use for development. So it was an investment.

The G1 is a pretty decent phone overall, and even though it's kind of dated compared to the Droid and Nexus One, it functions pretty well. I wasn't and still am not particularly tempted by the Droid, but the Nexus is another story.

My only fear with the Nexus is the lack of a physical keyboard, but I'm more than willing to give the on screen keyboard and voice recognition a chance. But the big thing for me is going to be the fact that it will most definitely get Android's latest updates as they become available.

You see, the G1 apparently has a tiny amount of space for the operating system which seems to be preventing it from getting the official 2.0 update despite many rumors. If I'm going to be serious about doing Android development, I will need a 2.x capable phone.

Then there's the recent problems my G1 has been having. It started Thanksgiving weekend, when my phone suddenly started acting weird and certain features were suddenly either missing or malfunctioning. They seemed to be cured with a factory reset that caused me to lose some no longer available apps. Then the G1 started experiencing new problems, such as locking up while the screen was off. The weird thing about that was that the screen wouldn't turn on at all, and I couldn't shut the phone off either. The keyboard backlight turns on if the screen is slid open, but it's useless. Sometimes the notification lights would still be blinking, but the only thing you could do was pull the battery and restart the phone. This didn't happen often, but it was irritating.

So after weeks of hearing about the Nexus One, I asked T-Mobile if it would be possible to extend my contract to 2 more years in exchange for the Nexus at the discounted price. I did this before the official announcement, and was told theoretically that I could. When Tuesday rolled around and the announcement was made, I checked the online orderr system to see if it would allow me to do it, but it wouldn't. It didn't matter at the time any way, because I didn't yet have the money. Today, however I came into the money (through non-nefarious means) to pay on a bill and get the phone, so I called up T-Mobile to try to arrange it.

And I was told that because I wasn't qualified for the normal upgrade routine that I could call Google at a certain number to get the partial discount price. Fine, I called that number, which turned out to be HTC (the manufacturer), who told me that they had nothing to do with it. They connected me back to T-Mobile who then explained that I would have to wait until I was qualified for the upgrade in 10 months.

In rare moment of clarity, I realized what I could do, and I asked about the early termination fee on my existing contract. The lady told me that it was $200, which when combined with the cost of the Nexus One on a new plan was still less than the cost of the unlocked version by more than $100. Since that was a lot of money, I decided to hold off and think about it.

Then my G1 locked up again today, and I made up my mind. If it were just another random lock up, I might not have minded, but on Wednesday, my G1 developed another new and serious issue: while it would make outgoing calls just fine, it would send all incoming calls to voice mail before I could answer them (less than 2 seconds). So between these two problems, and today's lock up coming at precisely the time I was considering my options, I decided on investing in the Nexus One, and ordered it. In all likelihood, I'll contact T-Mobile and ask to get a replacement G1 due to these issues, and cancel that line in a few days or weeks.

Hopefully no one else has to jump through the same hoops I did, but I suppose the bottom line is that I'm getting what I wanted.

Update (1/9/2010 3:12pm) : Despite the disclaimer that it would take up to 72 hours ship the phone out when it has been inscribed (as a free option), my phone actually shipped out last night... The very same day I ordered it! And given that there's free overnight shipping, I'll be receiving my phone on Monday! A full 2-3 days earlier than I was expecting it! Thank you Google!

Who gives a QUIZ on the first day of class?!?!

Ok, so today is my first day of school for the Winter 2010 term, and my very first class was my Art History 100 class. Now, I've taken a lot of classes over a lot of years, but I've never had to take a quiz on the very first day of class before today! Now, I'm aware that there's a quiz in my Japanese class on Friday, my second day of class, as a review of last semester, but how is it possible that someone actually thought it would be a good idea to have a quiz on the first day of class of a 100 level course?

In my professor's defense, the order came down from above, and this waws intended as a practice quiz so we students know what to expect, and for them to know where we are in terms of knowledge of the subject, but damn that was uncool.

Any ways, now that it's over, I'll be prepared next time...

BEST. GRADES. EVER.

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm a pretty smart guy. I feel that way, and friends and family have said as much as well. Yeah, that sounds like I'm tooting my own horn, and of course good friends and family might lie to the dumbest member of the family. But I get the distinct impression that they really mean it. If I weren't at least slightly above average, I wouldn't have been in an honors program in both middle and high school, though I'll be the first to admit that I still haven't graduated from college after nearly 20 years... There are perfectly good reasons for that, and I'll talk about them another day.

That said, I've never been the best student I could be. I tried to never do homework, unless it was absolutely critical to passing the class, and until I got to college, I had only failed a single class in my life. And  *THAT* was due to not doing my homework instead of not getting it; I got B's or better on all the quizzes and tests in that class, and I went to night school to retake it and graduate with my class.

In college, things got bad because I had a bad case of really not caring. I'd stop going to some classes half way through the semester and never tried unless it was a class I was really interested in. That's all related to some family and personal problems I started going through after I graduated from high school, and literally lasted for years afterwards. Again, I don't really want to talk about it right now, because I'm in too good a mood.

Basically, I haven't even attempted to take 3 classes at once since I attended Michigan State University from September 1990 through March 1991. When I took classes, it was usually one or two a semester, and about half the time I'd drop one or the other before the end of the semester. Ultimately, it's a miracle that I had 44 transferable credits by the time I got to Oakland University.

So, this semester, at the age of 37, I apparently got serious about my education, and decided to take 3 classes for 12 credit hours so that I could start pushing towards my degree. I was hoping to just not fail the classes, and I've been worried about my performance and grades all semester long. But tonight, I'm happy to report that not only did I pass the classes I took, but passed them with an average of 3.83 points out of 4.0 points. My best grades ever!

My only disappointment is that it took me this long to get this serious about my education, but for now I'm not going to worry about that. I'm already registered for my next 12 credit hours, and starting to worry about those classes...! LOL!

Finally! Something to actually DO in PS Home...

I don't know if you're familiar with the PlayStation 3 or not, but there's a social program as part of it called Home. Until now, it's been a place to just hang out with other PS3 owners, play a few trivial games, and buy stuff for your avatar. Think Second Life PS3 style. Well, today they introduced Sodium One, which has some fairly good games within its spaces. And get this, the games are ACTUALLY fun! I wouldn't say I'd go out of my way to pay for the upgrades and the full versions of the games, but the free exposures to them actually make me want to continue to play them.

That only took a year! Microsoft's NXE still doesn't make me want to use it...

MysteryQuest on the History Channel can suck it!

Over the last few years, I have watched an increasing amount of programming on TLC, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel. But I think I'm going to start cutting down on the History Channel stuff from here on out.

Like the subject suggests, MysteryQuest irritated the crap out of me just a bit ago. I watched the rebroadcast of an episode on the Bermuda Triangle (episode title "The Devil's Triangle"). As with any genuine scientific investigative program, I didn't really expect them to have an real answers in this 60 minute digest, but I did expect a modicrum of intelligence.

What pissed me off was that they recovered a propeller from a crashed plane, and were trying to identify it, not by the plainly visible serial number, but some etching dates they found in the same area. This would be the same as trying to identify someone by their birthdate when you have that and their social security number readily available. They screwed around with the etching dates, and found that they couldn't find a match on the plane with the NTSB. Duh! Then in the closing voice over they said they would continue to try to identify the plane by the serial number... Why didn't you idiots just focus on that?

What the hell?

It's been a number of years since I've like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I'm not going to say that I suddenly like him again, but I have to say that he's climbed a notch higher on my respectability ladder. It appears that even though I think he's clinically insane, and that he habitually lies to the residents of California, that Sarah Palin is more nutty than he is... These thoughts scare me.

Final Final...

This week is finals week at Oakland University, and I'll be glad when I'm done with my final final for this term tomorrow. The first two final exams  went ok, I think, and I know that I passed both though neither went quite as smoothly as I had hoped.
I'm not disappointed with my performance on them; quite the opposite in fact considering I'm a 37 year old, taking 12 credit hours, in classes with people half my age. But I do wish that I had better prepared myself for the two that I have taken. Although I'm not exactly studying for my last final as I should be, I'm fairly confident that I will do very well on it tomorrow.
Next semester, if I'm still not employed, I'm going to try even harder than I did this semester.

Japanese Oral Interview: Aced.

Today, I had my oral interview in my Japanese class, and though I had feared it, I aced it. I want to send my thanks out to Professor Yasuda for being such a great teacher, and for being so patient with me and my fellow students!

A Few Thoughts on Japanese

The problem with Japanese is that it is Japanese. I love the language but honestly, it's as alien to a native English speaker as Klingon is. And vice versa, really, because English is a monster of a language composed of thousands of words from dozens of other languages, which (if there were some master language editor) could be greatly simplified to eliminate hundreds of words that mean the same damned thing. But I digress...

What I like about Japanese is that once you get the hang of the basic syntax, you're about halfway done learning the language. All you need then is to learn words to fill in the blanks, and master th pronunciation of most of those. Again, that's not to say it's easy, but it's easier than learning the sometimes contradictory rules of my native tongue.

The hardest thing about fully learning Japanese is Kanji: the Chinese writing system adapted by the Japanese hundreds of years ago. Rather than each symbol representing a sound or word, they represent ideas that must be interpreted and associated with syllables, words, or phrases. Given that there are thousands of Kanji it's no wonder that even they need a Kanji dictionary!

Any how, I have a oral interview in Japanese for my class in about an hour and a half. Wish me luck!

Connections

I've spent only a small amount of time today reading "The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film" by Michael Ondaatje and I find myself enthralled with it and angry that I didn't spend more time with it. I borrowed the book from my Film & Formal Analysis instructor, Dr. Heidi Kenaga, at Oakland University and I have to return it to her today.

It's really quite fascinating reading about Mr. Murch and his interactions and friendships with George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppula. It's even more interesting to put that into perspective with my friends, all of whom are creative, and most of which have inspired & pushed me.

Maxx and I have collaborated on many ideas, and I'm fairly sure there will be many more in the future. But it's fascinating to think that our friendship is of a similar nature, in some respects, as those of Murch, Lucas, and Coppula. Will there some day be a book chronicling our ventures, skills, and friendship?