My night class, HCI has been going well. I’m looking forward to our project there, which should be a lot of fun and very eye-opening. Usually, my work on interfaces stems from what I want, not from what data shows people want, so this should be fun. I am sure the results will be awesome and I’ll post those here, too.

I have also been learning valuable lessons in life. Don’t chase too hard or care too much about people who won’t care about you back. Always be honest. Don’t keep people around if they don’t want to be, or if you don’t want them to be. Always be honest. And stop being such a goddamned packrat, Alex.

More soon, and more often. Pinky swear.

And I was so productive.

It was a rush. I felt like a champion just by clicking a little button. I was free from the confines of a digital friends list. No one could say “hi?” as though I was online staring at the list of names choosing to ignore people with whom I didn’t want to speak. No one could pop up in the middle of the brief period of time during each day that I actually am focused on completing tasks. And behold, my productivity skyrocketed. Back into Omnifocus I went for a mental dump for the first time in a while and I breathed a loud sigh of relief: I felt organized, less stressed and calmer. ANd that’s how things have been since.

When I was in eighth grade I briefly dated Kimberlyn Knowles, a Staples Copy Center Employee who doesn’t currently return my text messages. In High School, it was Amanda. Then Kait and Jen. And Nikki and Courtney. And Sada. And Allison. And through all of this, I never took the time to realize how nice it feels in the middle of all of it when you aren’t being tugged in any direction. Perhaps my aversion to commitment is actually not such at all: I’m just too exhausted from trying to appease others that I have needed a break from this for years.

When I leave a relationship, I’m usually like a dog who knows there’s good food around somewhere. Sniffing. Looking. Sensing. Always alert. I feel such loneliness that I seek to escape by replacing those feelings with happier thoughts of a new beginning. When one door closes, I’m sprinting out the other. Well, not right now. I’m have come to the realization that I am perfectly lonely.

Had a little love, but I spread it thin
Falling in her arms and out again
Made a bad name for my game around town
Tore up my heart, and shut it down

Nothing to do, nowhere to be
A simple little kind of free
Nothing to do, No one but me
And that’s all I need

I’m perfectly lonely, I’m perfectly lonely
I’m perfectly lonely (Yeah)
‘Cause I don’t belong to anyone
Nobody belongs to me

I see friends around from time to time
When their ladies let ‘em slip away
And when they ask me how I’m doing with mine
This is always what I say

Nothing to do, nowhere to be
A simple little kind of free
Nothing to do, no one to be
Is it really hard to see

Why I’m perfectly lonely
I’m perfectly lonely, I’m perfectly lonely
I’m perfectly lonely (Yeah)
‘Cause I don’t belong to anyone
Nobody belongs to me

And this is not to say there never comes a day
I’ll take my chances and start again
And when I look behind on all my younger times
I have to thank the wrongs that led me to a love so strong

I’m perfectly lonely, I’m perfectly lonely
I’m perfectly lonely (Yeah)
‘Cause I don’t belong to anyone
Nobody belongs to me

(It’s the way, it’s the way, it’s the way that I want it)

Thanks, John. Nothing like hearing exactly how you feel from someone you respect.

1. You have never heard of WoW
2. You used to play WoW
3. You currently Play WoW
4. You despise WoW because the people in group #2 disappeared from your life for the duration of their account’s active status, and when they did talk to you, it was solely about WoW and because the people in group #3 are currently nonexistent in your life and will be until their account is as frozen as the Lich King.

There are two groups intentionally missing from the above: People who have never played WoW because they know they will become addicted to it, and People who have heard of WoW and have no real opinion on it. I don’t know anyone who would fall into the latter category who would not describe WoW as “that stupid game everyone plays and goes on raids for?” nor do I know anyone who really can admit to the former.

I used to belong in the first group, for a short time. In Spring 2006, I knew a few classmates who played religiously. They spoke of nothing else and I quickly tired of it. My ex-girlfriend (she was my ex-girlfriend in 2006 as well as now) Amanda began playing sometime around there was well and in August when we went to Ruby Tuesday for lunch she spent 45 minutes or so of our seventy-five minute long lunch explaining how much fun she had and how much she loved playing, and also how it scared her: that the girls at school would think she was some freak or not want to socialize with her because she played an MMO. By this point, I was a #4.

I got to school and some kids in my hall played WoW pretty hardcore. I resisted, instead getting myself excited for the Wii I would have in a few months. Everyone loved my Wii and made plenty of time to come by my room and play Wii Sports and whatever else I had. Even my roommate, who I never saw play any video games (save for Pokemon Blue, emulated on his laptop) thoroughly enjoyed TLOZ:TP on there. It was awesome. Come the spring, I inquired with a good friend of mine about the game and wanted to understand a little more about it after seeing another good friend play it non-stop all weekend. So Wrathos told me all about the game because Graveshatter was having way too much fun with it. He explained a lot about it and said “The best thing you can do is see for yourself” and invited me to a ten day trial. He helped me get acquainted and learn the ropes.

Before the end of my ten-day trial, I walked down to Gamestop and purchased a copy. The next month, I attended less than 75% of my classes. I slept less. And I played a lot of WoW. In retrospect, it was a big time-pit. My friends who were still in group #4 placed WoW-bans on lunchtime discussions. And distanced themselves from me (with good reason). But WoW is really nothing more than an excellent video game.

That’s right, I said it. It’s just a great game. The difference is that in most great games, you can explore the entire world by foot in couple of hours. In WoW, running North to South through the Barrens (From RFK up past WC and into Ashenvale) takes a good 45 minutes. That’s one of the 50 or more zones in the World of Warcraft, each of which have their own NPCs, Quests, Lore, Mobs, Rewards, Intricacies, Instanced or Non-Instanced Dungeons and more. The world is expansive and the choices and options of how you play your game vary so greatly you can play it through 20 times and have a different, rewarding experience each time.

Pikmin, one of my favorite games ever, is great, and I am skilled enough to 100% the game in 4 hours. WoW, on the other hand, is impossible to 100%. What I’m getting at is that a good game draws you in and hooks you, and WoW is no exception. The difference is that in WoW, there is no ability to 100%, but there are so many things you can do at any given time that spending time outside of Azeroth seems like a daunting task. On one character who can no longer level, there are daily quests which offer money or reputation rewards, loot to grind for to use for either of your professions, an auction house at which you can buy or sell items, player versus player experiences in which groups of subscribers battle against another group in a setting with no monsters, dungeons to PUG, complete with your guild or raid, and that’s just on one character. You might have three. Or seven. Or a few on different servers. Options are just about endless, and I’m sure there’s a ton I forgot there.

What I’m getting at is that today I headed to Gamestop and picked up a retail disk of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and will soon be reactivating my account (I’m currently using the 10 day free trial. I look forward to my return to Azeroth and all it entails, but am aware of everything I just said: playing can have a profound impact on your life. And so, I return to Azeroth with three simple rules to keep myself from turning into an antisocial hermit devoid of any topics of conversation that don’t involve the most fun video game I’ve ever played.

1. You may not cancel any plans in order to play WoW: academic, social or otherwise. This does not exclude you from neglecting to make plans or making plans around a raiding schedule or any other form of play.
2. All obligations must be completed on time. Any deadline missed will result in a forfeiting of playing time until that task has been completed.
3. You must physically exert yourself at a gym or playing a sport for at least three hours a week unless some legitimate, non-WoW restriction becomes imposed on you and prevents you from doing so (illness, family matters, etc.)

To prove how serious I am about this, initially, I wrote “go to the gym” before acknowledging that a true addict could misconstrue that to mean “be at the gym doing anything one pleased.” I changed it to “work out” before realizing that a true addict could misconstrue that to mean “walking briskly” and occupy three hours just commuting to and from work. I am very serious about ensuring that I responsibly take up an old habit which alienated people I love. And so I firmly intend to play WoW to my heart’s content assuming the above three rules are constantly examined and I can be sure that I am not allowing it to negatively effect my life.

This may seem like overkill, but if someone abused alcohol, and hadn’t had a sip in five years, wouldn’t you want to be sure they were being cautious before telling you they planned to start drinking socially again? Perhaps the only different is that this is not “playing socially” or its equivalent but in my mind, rather, something to which I wish to make a commitment. I want to fall in love with this game for all the right reasons I did initially, without the negative effects of it. Let’s see how I do, hmm?

Think I saw her for the first time
Maybe in a news stand
She was picking a mag
And dressed oblique
She called me baby
And was a mean lady
With the song on the radio
So I told her I was rich
Then she asked
Could I use a dirty bitch
“Of course”, Then she said

“No one loves me,” and neither do I
You get what you give
I give goodbye
And if I should vanish
Don’t get caught off guard
Don’t hold it against me
Unless it gets hard

That’s right
Well if sex is a weapon
Then smash, boom, pow
How you like me now?
You can’t always do it right
You can always do whats left
So I told her I was trashed
She winked and laughed
And said “I already know
I’ve got a beautiful place
To put your face”
And she was right, and I said

“No one loves me,” and neither do I
It makes perfect sense,
So i never asked why
I’ll go tomorrow
Cause life doesn’t wait
You can keep your soul
I don’t wanna cell mate

Cutting me a noose, I’m ready to go
People in the world, You’re gonna lose control
Cutting me a noose, I’m ready to go
People in the world, You’re gonna lose control
Cutting me a noose, I’m ready to go
People in the world, You’re gonna lose control
Cutting me a noose, I’m ready to go
People in the world, You’re gonna lose… uhh

I know how to burn with passion
Hold nothing back for future ration
Give all you are, do not make haste
Savor every single taste
You get cut

I know how to be controlled
Do what they said, son, watch your tongue
Quick to react, to break the box
Turn on queue, as your cell door locks
Behind you

I know how to be lost in lust
Not because you should, but because you must
It burns white hot, and so climbs the mile
This lightening strike isn’t always kind

So use me up
Use me up

I will call out Perez Hilton for a number of reasons, namely the fact that his website, twitter feed, and poor (immature) drawings composed, I assume, in MSPaint bother me to no end. He lost a ton of contacts and data, which is a travesty, but totally avoidable. My main issue is that he then proceeded to bitch about it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t totally disagree with him (as TMo should actually be giving users a refund for time without their data as well as making cutting ties with the company in whom I know I could never trust again with my money, let alone data) but I don’t agree with John Mayer, either (because those are as easy to lose as any data). I think my real problem with his whining was his reason for not backing up his data:

PS T-Mobile used to tell Sidekick users they personally didn’t need to back up their data. They did it for us. That’s why I never did. :-(

Really? That’s your reason? The ejaculatory-mouthed drawings make a lot more sense now: you’re just not an intelligent human being.

So there are a numerous points of failure in the Sidekick Data System. Perez is not the first Hilton to have a data problem with their Sidekick (warning, Nudity) since a simple password protects all that data, and people do not know how to make a password to save their lives as we all know. Another is that, while most GSM phones either default to storing numbers on the SIM cards which grant cellular service to the device, Sidekicks default the data to the device itself, and migration is not made simple. There is no “move…” or even “copy all data to SIM Card” option. There is an option users can set to store their contacts on the SIM card when added, but I do not believe this will migrate existing contacts over (if anyone has a sidekick and wishes to correct me, please feel free). I have not used a sidekick since November 1, 2007 but users from “my day” likely would have had their contacts stored on their devices already and not made the switch. And then, perhaps, the largest point of Failure in the whole system: no backups?

The true test of a backup system is what happens in the case of total data loss. I use Mac OS X’s built in Time Machine to backup data to an external drive. You can bet that if that drive failed, I would overnight a Seagate Barracuda to replace it at nearly any cost and backup my data again the next day. But if someone stole my iMac what would stop them from taking the little hard drive right next to it? This is a problem I don’t have themoney to solve, but when I upgrade my external from the 750GB I am currently using, to something a little more spacey (either a Seagate 2TB or a Drobo) I will surely do it. The plan is to backup my machine onto two drives, and keep one offsite (preferrably) or at least somewhere other than right next to my machine (another room, closet, in a drawer, etc.). Backups are great if your computer dies of natural causes. If my computer were consumed in a fire, what’s to say the data would be okay on my external?

You’ll notice something here: no one had to tell me that my data would be okay. Seagate tells me their drives have a five-year warranty, so they expect them to last for at least five years. Apple tells me that using Time Machine is all I need to keep things backed up. Common sense tells me that one set of backups should be enough but if you’re actually relying on your data that much, you really can’t be too safe. I personally cannot rebuild my 11k Music Library: there are too many bootlegs I taped, and too much time spent organizing it. Photos are traditionally harder to replace as music can be reobtained through ripping, downloading, etc. whereas photos are usually just your own, though you might have them somewhere. Documents, again, are very personal and not distributed. But to me, those things are small losses compared to my music library. Unfortunately for me, the priceless data in question weighs in at about 60GB. Pretty substantial amount of data to backup, as versus what Perez had: some pictures, and 2000 address book contacts. How much data is 2000 contacts?

Alexander William Bradley
x-(xxx)-xxx-xxxx
someemailaddress@gmail.com

I even gave him the benefit of the doubt and included a country code, and think my name is pretty long. 25 characters for my name. 15 for a properly formatted phone number. Regardless of the length of my email addresses, again, benefit of the doubt, I’ll throw in 50 characters for an email, to be safe. That means a name, number and email is 90 bytes, which makes an entire phone book a whopping 180k worth of data. Even if you printed your phone book as a PDF (something I did before leaving TMo and periodically throughout my year of little to no service most everywhere) the file should have been small enough to email. He could have likely exported to a CSV file and imported it into something useful (Google Contact Manager, I’m looking at you).

The point is that there is no excuse for not backing up data seen as this precious, but people do it all the time. It is frustrating as a technologist to have someone rely on me to bail out a dinghy with a paper cup, when I usually don’t even need to ask if they have life-vests: it’s just assumed that the computer will be okay and they don’t need to worry, but they don’t have backups if they’re wrong (and they usually are). I am not proposing a foolproof solution here, but have a few ideas and things I actively do:

1. MobileMe iDisk – While I primarily use the service for syncing small bits of data across machines, it’s nice to know that this data is backed up somewhere, including my address book (which syncs with my phone). iDisk gives you 20GB of space and syncs pretty seamlessly through a mounted drive on your Mac.
2. Time Machine – Again, Mac specific, but, if you have Leopard or Snow Leopard and are not using Time Machine, you’re out of your mind. A free utility I have been able to use countless times for contacts alone, this takes the guesswork out of creating backups. The last time my father’s Mac Mini gave him some troubles, I went and bought one for him. “Merry Christmas,” I said. “Your data’s safe now!” — This was in September, by the way.
3. Dropbox – I have sung its praises before, but this thing’s the real deal. Imagine a 2GB Flash Drive you can’t lose that is on you no matter where you are so as long as you have the internet. It can also sync to numerous computers. I have it on four machines, so if they ever lose my data, unless they go crazy and start erasing data on your machines, my data’s safe in at least one location. Even if it wasn’t, Time Machine is backing up that data on one machine, and two are laptops, so I could just turn off wireless and grab my files (Yes, I have considered the possibility of a full Data Loss by Dropbox and syncing ‘nothing’ down to my machine. I’m paranoid).

I hope this information helps and teaches some people. This is serious stuff, guys. Don’t pull a Perez (or just don’t use Microsoft Products). I wonder if people thinking about using a Web Based, In-The-Cloud Office are watching this and making a mental note that Microsoft is not necessarily the best place to store all your files…

I don’t ever want to see you again, my friend. This is the end.
Out of the house, she grabs the keys, runs for the hills and doesn’t leave a letter.
That way the impact will be much better.
Away from the man that she’s grown so fearful of, so fearful of.

Why, oh why, do you wear sunglasses in the home
when the sun went down about an hour ago?
Life should not be that way.

Always up or down, never down and out.
Dream of demons while you sleep
That make you stutter when you speak.

Some things are far too good to go ahead and let go.

Always up or down, never down and out.
Dream of demons while you sleep that make you stutter when you speak.
Speak now or forever hold your peace in pieces.

::sigh::

And so I finished the one minute segment of the aforementioned ritual and stood up. I turned to my right as I always do. As I did and leaned over to flush, I really only tapped my iPhone on the doorframe, but it was accidental and unexpected enough for it to leave my hands, landing facedown for a brief moment on the inward-slanted toilet seat. Plop.

The toilet is flushing, and the unsanitary nature of reaching one’s ungloved hand into the toilet is not apparent to me in my panicked state. Having been said, even if it was apparent to me, I would have been just as quick to reach into this to grab my phone had it fallen into it. Let it be noted here that as I have already let you all into my bathroom for this story, I went “#1,” not “#2.” So in my hand went, and out my phone came. The backlight flickered and I quickly shut it off. I was shaking, thinking to myself “one second: $700.”

And at that point, all reason flies out the window. What do you do when a piece of technology gets wet? You have a few possible solutions, and none of them take less than a week, really. If you send it off to some company, it takes a while. You’re without your phone. If you put it in a bag of rice, or those little packets of desiccant that come in shoe-boxes, you’re supposed to wait a few weeks. If you’re reading this blog, you likely know me, and that means you know that I don’t even sleep through the night without using my phone. It’s a part of me like no other device has ever become. It is the digital extension of my analog self. So what did I do? Likely, all the wrong things.

1. Turn it off: good. Duh…
2. Towel: good. Get as much surface wetness off of it as I can.
3. Eject the Sim Card: this was good, too. Let’s remove the only other pieces of it to keep the water stuck to them from effecting the device. I dried them with dry sections of the same towel. After this, I start to lose my composure and subsequently try to do a few things which likely are terrible, terrible ideas.
4. The old NES Trick: some say that hair dryers are a good idea. My breath couldn’t have been too warm, but it did do one of the following (not sure which):
   • Remove water from the headphone jack, SIM slot and Dock Connector, OR
   • Push water further into the phone through those same ports. AND
   • Pushback partially-flushed toilet water onto my face near my mouth. Again: I lacked reason at this point. It was nearly 1am and I felt stupid as it was. Don’t remind me.
5. Compressed Air: this, in hindsight, was dumb. Likely did all of the pushing water in with very little of the cleaning out part.
6. Turned it back on: this is a huge no-no, but how else do I know if what I’m doing is working? ;)
7. Synced the phone with iTunes: okay, at this point, I had given up. The backlight was dead. The phone still worked, though! So I figured if I was going to need to replace the phone, I may as well back my data up, right?

Step seven above likely saved all of my data while simultaneously ensuring that my phone would never work again. So if I did it and the cell shorted, I’d have no data and a bad phone. If I didn’t, I might have a working phone in a few weeks, but I might not. And would have no data, or cell phone. Thanks to that backup I made last night at 1:11am, I now have an iPhone 3GS which looks, really, just like my 3G. It’s got all my apps, all my texts, pictures, everything. That’s all a very good thing. The $430 price tag for the replacement, which extended my service contract with AT&T for 2 years from this date, was okay, too. It’s better than the $650 I’d have paid for the “contractless” phone.

The funny thing with all of this was that I’ve owned a lot of cell phones…

• Nokia 5165 (one month, to see if I was responsible)
• Nokia 3360 (my first real cell phone)
• Motorola 120e (few months. Hated it)
• Motorola 730c (the c is for color; Amanda had one, and I wanted it. Loved this cell)
• LG vx6000 (everyone had this phone. I was late to the game, but loved it)
• Palm Treo (my bag got stolen with my cell phone in it. Charlie let me borrow this clunker. It had a stylus, hahaha)
• LG vx6000 (Courtney’s when she replaced it. She’s been through more cells than I have though)
• Danger Sidekick II (Data only. Casper made me jealous. It was great. TMo blew chunks)
• LG vx8300 (The best non-Apple phone I’ve ever had. Wonderful device, build quality, everything)
• iPhone (jailbroken and sold on eBay for $400)
• iPhone 3G (uhm, haven’t you been reading?!)

and now the iPhone 3GS. It took me that long to let a cell phone take a drink. After years of rowing, with my phone near water so much, and even in the boat sometimes, I’ve never gotten a phone more than a little wet. And so, at the request of Ted Reed I present to you a short list of Pro’s and Con’s of this situation:

Pro’s

• Faster processor, new battery, etc.
• Better camera which takes video; has a compass
• Newer, non-scratched body and screen. I popped it in my case immediately
• Battery Percentage Indicator (sorry, this is just a huge plus for me)
• 16GB of storage as versus 8GB. This means more Phish to bring around with me
• Video Tweets when Tweetie 2 comes out

Cons

• $430. This is the biggest one for me: Sonnovabitch
• Extended my contract by 14 mos
• I could have gone to bed earlier and woken up later today
• I may not be eligible for upgrade pricing come the iPhone 4G or whatever it’ll be called
• I really didn’t need any of the pros listed above, if my phone still worked

And finally, the best thing to come of all this. A Google search sent me to an Apple Support page which detailed a man who dropped his iPhone in a river while saving a drowning kitten (his story is not nearly as heroic as mine). He later asks how to remove a grain of rice from the SIM card slot. The answer is priceless:

Flush it out with river water?
;)

So if you have two machines, imagine having a folder on each of them, and anything you put in either of them from one of your machines will show up in the same place on your other machine. Or your other twenty machines. But even if you don’t have a particular machine configured for use, you could always just log into a website and download the files.

That’s what Dropbox is. 2GB of free storage you always have both locally and backed up on the server. No longer will you ever think “Oh, that’s on my other computer” if you store your files in DropBox. I absolutely love it. Try it out with my referral link and give me some extra storage!

So I’d like to publicly say that I’m sorry if I’m being a little quick with some of you, or can’t put the right amount of time or effort into things. No one ever lauded me for my time management, and I get tunnel vision at this time of year. Grades come first, and for a self-professed workaholic, that comes next.

If you feel put off, let me know, please, and try and be aware of all this as we interact. I’ll do my best as I have before, but I will surely falter and hurt someone before the semester’s out. About that inevitable fact, I am sorry. Thanks to all anyway for being patient with me so far.

I can see the light between me and my mind
I can feel memories fall behind
And the light is growing brighter now
And the light is growing brighter now

I see the future is less and less there
And the past has vanished in the air
And I’m left in the now with a wonderous glow
I think I’m still me, but how would you know?

I can see the light between me and my mind
I can feel memories fall behind
And the light is growing brighter now
And the light is growing brighter now

It takes a few moments of rolling around
‘Till your feet finally leave the ground
And fending off fears, and hearing the call
And finally waiting for nothing at all

I can see the light between me and my mind
I can feel memories fall behind
And the light is growing brighter now
And the light is growing brighter now
And the light is growing brighter now
And the light is growing brighter now

And the light is growing brighter now
And the light is growing brighter now
(Obstacles are stepping stones)
And the light is growing brighter now
(Fences are filter)
And the light is growing brighter now
(Obstacles are stepping stones
That guides us to our goals)
And the light is growing brighter now
(fences are filters
That purify our souls)
And the light is growing brighter now
(Obstacles are stepping stones
That guides us to our goals)
And the light is growing brighter now
(fences are filters
That purify our souls)
And the light is growing brighter now
(Obstacles are stepping stones
That guides us to our goals)
And the light is growing brighter now
(fences are filters
That purify our souls)
And the light is growing brighter now
(Obstacles are stepping stones
That guides us to our goals)
And the light is growing brighter now
(fences are filters
That purify our souls)
And the light is growing brighter now