Live Life. Life is Short. Life is an Adventure.

Apple today released the iPhone. It was released at 6pm on Friday June 29. Who releases a product at 6pm on a Friday? While walking up 5th Avenue before dinner I noticed a line of people outside a Cingular (now the new AT&T) store (the only phone network you can get an iPhone for).

Apparently people had been lining up at the New York Apple store for two days. Fools. So after dinner tonight at 11pm I headed up to the NY Apple store with Andrew and Jo, given they had never been there before. Lucky the store here is open 24 hours.

No lines, but inside it was the normal mayhem with some extra fanfare around the obvious new iPhones. Check out photo.

A few minutes later I got to play with one, really cool. Smaller then I expected, I had some difficulty understanding how to zoom in on web pages, I needed to learn the pinch and expand step. The keyboard is smaller then my Nokia E62 PDA so that was a little annoying.

You could even get a free box bag with a picture of an iPhone on it. Check it out.

Of course the box is free when you buy an iPhone. I got the 8GB model at $599 US, plus case plus tax set me back $681.82

Ok, so that’s nice, just had to wait the 1hr 15min to get home.

It’s now 1am, and the first requirement is to download the latest iTunes. Reboot my laptop into Windoze, and of course it’s like a 56MB file. While downloading I grabbed the image from my camera, upload the image to my Fotolog account, and started this blog. Download and install complete, and guess what, Windows has to restart your computer. There is just one more reason why I hate Windoze and simply don’t use it. Reboot later, and finally I get to start.

Activation of phone is via iTunes. Of course this doesn’t work. Please Call AT&T. This was to be expected as my phone is under an a corporate account. I did specifically check with the store before purchasing that I could use this account for the required 2 year contract commitment.

Of course the number presented on screen, and that I rang (1.877.419.4500) could not help me because I’m a business account. I have to call the Business Center on 1.866.907.3484. Ring that, and guess what I’m on hold, 20+ mins later still nothing. It’s now 2:14am, I hang up, I was on the phone waiting for 27 minutes. Rather disappointing, I guess that’s one reason why you start a sales promotion at 6pm on a Friday. All the phone support the Business Center have gone home for the weekend.

This had better turn out for the better in the morning. I’ll be rather peeved if I find out, I need some account information I simply don’t have then have to wait until Monday to call my office (of course wait until midday as that is 9AM Pacific time).

Right now failure, after such a great evening with friends, food and just excellent service it’s just one of those bummers in life.

Update 1. I’ve added video of the NY Apple Store iPhone activity.
Update 2. My phone is still not activated. Read about it at iPhone for corporate users. What a debacle.
Update 3 It’s alive iPhone activation - Finally after 3 days

I’ve started some *different* collections of photos lately. I’m collecting Vehicle Number Plates. I started about 3 weeks ago, and I’m at 36 of 50 US states (thanks to visits in the past 3 weeks to San Francisco - California, Orlando - Florida, Boston - Massachusetts, Minneapolis - Minnesota and Fargo - North Dakota. I’m using Fotolog, which limits free members to one a day, but you can checkout Vehicle Plates and Google Maps of States to Date.

Not listed but will be when done with the US, are Washington DC “Taxation without Representation”, the US Government, a Native Indian reservation, and 3 Canada states to date.

I’m also collecting *Cool* Vehicle Plates, already with a collection like “LINUX”, “POSIX”,”IM NO FUN”, “DOT ORG”, “POLICE” “FLIPPER”, “BOGGIE”, “BMW NOT” . Check them out at Cool Vehicle Plates. I’ve heard of plates like “GOOGLE”, “HTML”, “XML”, here’s hoping I see these one day.

Below you will see a few collages I’ve started as well.

Not to be outdone, I’ve also taken a few images of windows lately. Go figure why I started that.

According to today’s regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 60’s and earlier probably shouldn’t have survived because our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead based paint which was promptly chewed and licked. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles or latches on doors or cabinets and it was find to play with pans.

When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just bar feet or pokey dokey’s on our wheel’s. As children we would rid in cars with no seatbelts or airbags - riding in the passenger seat was a treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the same. We at chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy pop with sugar in it but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

We shared one drink with four friends from one bottle and no one actually died from this. We would spend hours building cards made out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill only to find out we forgot the brakes.

We did not have play stations or x-boxes, no video games, no 99 channels on TV, no tapes or VCRs, no stereo or mobile phones, computers or Internet chat rooms. We had friends and went outside to play.

We played rounders, fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones - but there were no law suits.

We walked to friends homes and school. Dad didn’t drive us, we made up games with sticks and balls, we rode bikes in packs. If we broke the law our parents actually sided with the law.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility and we learned how to deal with it all.

If some of it all brings back great memories, congratulations, it was a better life by far.

Harry Chandler, Ashford. The Free Times 11th October 2006 http://freetimes.com.au

Yesterday I created a new site for my photos at www.ronaldbradford.com.

I managed to do all the work for this in one day (I thought about the design on Friday), from designing the layout, writing the code, finding all the photos (which was the longest part), uploading, changing my server to serve up the new site. The DNS was done last night so it will take a little time to propagate around the world.

There is a lot more I want to do but I’ve got something out there to start, and I’ve got a now central place for all my photos, which are presently scattered across probably 10 different sites.

I was inspired to finally doing this (i.e. stop working on 5 other projects for a day), by seeing the web site of new friend Jaco at www.jacoleroux.com.

Pessimist - The glass is half empty.
Optimist - The glass is half full.
Engineer - The glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
Accountant - Does the glass really need all that water?
Quantum Physicist - The glass has a 50% probability of holding water.
Philosopher - If no one looks after the glass, who’s to say how full or empty it is?

Today’s fortune cookie message.

I spend a certain amount of time at airports. Unfortunately having to work in SF so much lately all I see in Newark and San Francisco. San Jose thrown in when bored.

Today I got some fresh blood finally. First I left from Boston after Sheeri’s wedding. I then had a stopover in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA before my destination of Fargo, North Dakota.

At Minneapolis I landed in concourse F and I had to head to concourse A, the direct opposite. Lucky I had 1:40. This was one of the most impressive places I have been.

At one point i walked past a refrigerator type vending machine. I almost stopped to take a photo. However a few minutes later i came across the iPod vending machine. We are not just talking accessories here, all iPods, top of the line headphones. It was impressive. I headed out into the car park. You may think why? To adds to my vehicle plates of course. 4 more states to my collection. Fotolog only allows one up load per day so it will be a while before you get to see them all. Back through security, past snoopy to a store where you can’t take your purchase on the plane. That would be the motorcycle from the Harley Davidson store. What’s the world coming to.

My flying adventure didn’t end there. Destination at departure was Fargo but we ended up at Grand Forks due to the Blue Angels at the Fargo air show. Drat if I’d known. Note to self, always check for major events at work locations. Finally land, get my bag, I’m standing at the front of the airport for shuttle and there goes the blue angels taking off in plain sight. If only I had my camera out.

Leonardo da Vinci.

Boston

Diary: Friday 15^th June 2007

Today I headed to Boston. Spent a lot of time in the I-95N car park. My plan was to get to Boston during the day, but it took 2-3 hours longer then expected. I did get the opportunity to try out my reflection photos more, taking bridge photos of George Washington Bridge while driving again (doing the Bay Bridge in SF Last Week), as well as moving to taking working out how to take vehicle plates from the car. Too many amazing ones not to try while on the road. Check out Vehicle Plates. Unfortunately I can only upload one per day, so it will take a while before I get to show you the very cool ones. Stay tuned.

I did head into Boston after dark, taking some night photos of Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge some cityscapes (including with the MIT boat moorings — These turned out very well). Check them all out.

I thought I’d show an image of approximately what the reflection actually is.

This is a self portrait photo of my sunglasses while driving across the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.

For an unplanned photo I was very impressed with the results. Rather cool. To see what I was looking at click here.

Pilot on Flight 41 from Newark to San Fransisco. There is always weather, it’s what type of weather we needed to know about!.

Diary: Saturday June 9^th 2007

Today’s flight to San Fransisco is thankfully the last for a while, unfortunately I’ve got no respite from the East Coast to West Coast travel, with 3 probably LA trips in the next 6 weeks, they are even longer flights.

My 3:45pm flight departure is rather uneventful, no first class upgrade today, drat. I’m in the 4th row of economy. In the first 4 rows there are 4 newborn babies and an infant. 1 Baby in my 3 seats. There are more babies on the plane, what is this a baby convention? One cries, it starts another, however the most pain comes from the infant that at a time in the flight just starts screaming, so what does the mother do, she ignores it, she’s actually standing in the ailse with her back to the child. Ok, so this may be some technique of ignoring the child, but lady this is a confined public space. There is something call respect for others and she clearly ignored this. What is the world coming to? For the last 15 years I’ve see so much lack of discipline shown. I can’t speak from first hand parenting experience, but I was a child, and I was disciplined when I was no acting appropriately, period. The world needs to wake up and do something about this. There is already a generation lost to what I’d consider better family values to when I grew up. The problem I see is I see more children behaving badly then not. What does that say to what is happening. How does a parent that instill good values in a child cope when simple exposure to all the children can easily undermine this.

On a side note, I was sitting in a Window Seat 8A on a Continental Boeing 737/800, and there is no window. The photo shows you my view. Go figure that. Checking Seat Guru tells me this is a bad seat. Drat!

Diary: Friday Jun 8^th 2007

9:00am wake up
9:01am check status. Countdown ok.
9:02am check weather. 30% chance of showers. Not great news
9:03am calculated opportunity to be available next time this occurs , likelihood low to nil
9:04am call friend at location for status report, and some level of affirmation for my impending crazy actions
9:10am flights booked, $498
9:11am boarding passes printed — being able to print out my outgoing and return flight boarding passes both at once (flights within 24 hours - freaky)
9:15am rental car booked
9:20am taxi booked
9:30am thought of packing begins, breakfast distant second
9:40am personal grooming and cleaning teeth
9:50am unable to find zoom lens for camera, panic.
10:00am lens found, large relief
10:15am taxi calls, 15mins early
12:10pm Scheduled departure of my flight from Newark Liberty Airport, New York Area.
12:45pm Actual departure time. Flight delayed due to some flight control traffic problems, and our departure had to be calculated manually. I can’t complain, I’ve been upgraded to first class again.
3:00pm Arrival at my destination of Orlando Florida to cloudy skies, rain to the south including lightning. That’s not a good sign.
7:38pm The Space Shuttle Atlantis Mission ST-117 blasts into space from Platform 39A at Cape Canaveral.

Unfortunately my 15 year dream to “experience” a shuttle launch, to see, to hear and to feel it did not happen. Due to a car park like traffic jam for over an hour we hardly reached 1/2 our intended distance to our viewing point. Words can’t describe just seeing from a car park what I’d come so far and waited so long for. To add further insult, my camera zoom lens (which I’ve had for every world trip for 14 years) jammed and would not focus (that’s never ever happened). I guess this sums my week, from misfortunes in my work and personal life, this would have simply eliminated the woes of this week. Like I said, words could not describe the feelings and emotion of being oh so close.

There is always next time. The chances of being close, not being on a client site, being able to get to Orlando, a schedule of 3 to 4 flights a year, the right weather and no delays are slim to remote. One can only hope I get to “experience” my dream another day.

The shuttle had a 10 minute launch window, I had no option for delays more then Friday evening as I had a return flight at 6:30am the next morning, before heading to San Francisco at 3:45pm for work. I saw a rocket launch a few months ago that was delayed for about 90 minutes, if only.

The next day
6:40am Flight home, first class upgrade again.
9:15am Arrive home, packing, goto bank and pick up dry cleaning the list to do.
10:00am I find out that flights from the New York were delayed up to 4 hours, and there were even cancellations due to a major failure of the flight control traffic system. See FAA Computer Glitch Causes Flight Delays

Stay tuned for my next 24 hour “Life’s Short Adventure” experience.

Conan talking about a comment on Paris Hilton after only serving 3 days of a 40 day jail sentence