Auto-Correct Says the Darnedest Things

I was typing out an email this morning and accidentally spelled "yesterday" as "yestetday." When I did that, auto-correct's word suggestion was "redhead terse." I think auto-correct must have been smokin' some auto-crack this morning...

There Oughta Be a Law...

OK, so I'd probably be the first person to tell you that we have too many laws already, and I'm completely in favor of having some sort of "sunset provision" where old laws come up for review every ten years or so, in order to see if they're still needed. And most of the time, I'd like to see less government interference in business, unless said business is acting badly.

And in this case, I think that a business is acting badly. Even worse, I can't even identify the business in question.

It goes like this: For some reason, I still have a land-line phone, though I question why I do this on a regular basis. ("In case of emergency" is the only reason I can conjure up, but I can probably do other things for the same peace of mind that don't cost $33 a month.) I never actually answer this phone, but it's hooked up to an answering machine (no sense in paying the phone company for voicemail when I have a perfectly functional, if ancient, device on hand), and most of the time, people just hang up on it, which is fine. I get the occasional long-winded messages from political candidates when election time comes around, but otherwise, if anything is even on the tape, it's a dial tone (remember those?) from the caller having hung up concurrently with the beep of the machine.

But lately, there's been a disturbing trend: Companies who not only use a recorded message--which is annoying enough in the first place--but start the message right when the machine picks up. That means that anything the robo-caller "says" during the time it takes for my greeting message to play (and my greeting is looooong, basically advising everyone to send me email instead) is clipped off, so what I hear after the beep is the second half of the message, if even that much.

Again, this is annoying, especially when the caller ends up requesting a person who has never been at this number (of which, I should point out, I have been the sole holder, seeing as how my area code was created during the time it was assigned to me). Sometimes they sound like they might even be collection agencies, but there's no way in the world I'm going to call them back without knowing if the call was even intended for me in the first place.

So here's where it gets really bad--the thing that has sparked my possible call to action: Lately, I've gotten some calls where the recorded voice has obviously "spoken" the name of a person during the time when my greeting is still playing, so I miss that portion of the message on my recording. But the part I do hear goes something like this: "If you are not the person we have named, you have five seconds to hang up. By continuing on the line, you acknowledge that you are the person in question."

The problem here is pretty obvious, I would think: During such a call (at which point I'm not even home, mind you), my answering machine is not smart enough to recognize the name of the person and hang up if it's not me. So in effect, my machine is committing me to something that is likely not true, without my being able to do something about it!

So this is one of those rare times where I'll actually say, "There oughta be a law." At the very least, I would like to see such robo-calls outlawed, because an answering machine is being asked to do something which it has neither the capability nor the authority to do. (And I'd really like to see robo-calls themselves outlawed, but I'm certain that Big Telemarketing has its hands in the pockets of enough members of Congress that such a thing could happen anytime soon.)

Have you had any experiences like this from a robo-call? And do you agree that this behavior needs to be outlawed? Let me know in the comments.

Today's Pseudo-Scientific Question: Do iPods Hibernate?

I've had my iPod since Christmas of '06, which I realize makes it ancient in gadget years. But it's served me well throughout this entire time, especially compared to some friends who have been through two or three of them in the same duration. I was really happy when I got a new car adapter for Christmas (the old one having given up the ghost in August) and could listen to all my newest music in the car again (my computer's CD burner also having bitten the dust about a year ago). There were times when the 'Pod seemed to freeze up a bit, but it was usually because of a Very Low Battery, which would be fixed by a full-length charge.

So I was somewhat alarmed last Wednesday when it froze up and wouldn't be revived by any method. Plugging in into the computer for 2+ hours? Nothing. Plugging it into the car for the entire outgoing trip to Stephenville on Friday? No response. I busted out my CDs for the whole trip and was almost resigned to not hearing anything new in the car until I could afford a new iPod, which would be a while.

And then yesterday, I decided to give it one more try, plugging it into the computer again. It took about ten minutes, but sure enough, it roared back to life, white Apple logo glowing on black background. I let it charge for quite a long time, and so far, so good at this point.

So my question is: Has anyone ever had an iPod "hibernate" like this? And if so, has it ever taken longer than three tries to revive?

Teaching and Technology, Part I

With the beginning of school upon us, a lot of the big feature stories in the news right now are about education. And while more than a few of those are very local in nature--the opening of a new school, just to name one popular theme--there have been quite a few stories lately about teaching and technology, with one big theme being this: In a classroom full of younger students who have fully embraced the latest gadgets and social networking sites, but led by a teacher or professor who may still be warming up to email, what's the best way to communicate? Is any one way better than the rest, and should anything in particular be avoided?

Let me start by explaining a little bit about where I stand with this, and I'll cover the rest of that later: As far as new technology goes, I'm about as plugged-in as the vast majority of my students, and most of their favorite ways to communicate are mine as well. (In case you're new to the blog, here's some further background: I teach both at the college and secondary [middle and high school] levels, though in the latter case, it's all private lessons, which--mostly due to the fact that I don't give grades for what I teach--serves to differentiate me a bit from the students' regular classroom teachers and places me more in the category of a mentor or personal coach. At the college, I direct music ensembles and also teach privately, so while I do award grades, my situations are not of the typical "I lecture, you listen" variety.)

The large-scale discussion started last week with an article at the Inside Higher Ed. blog about a college in Georgia that is outfitting its 300 faculty members with high-end smart phones in an effort to improve communication between the profs and their students. The idea is that the profs are supposed to respond to text messages or calls from their students within 24 hours. (The cost is estimated at $1000 per phone, which obviously means that the school is kicking in for most, if not all, of the calling/texting plan as well.) And so far, the college says that the idea appears to be working:

[Georgia Gwinnett College vice president for instructional technology Lonnie D. Harvell] says the college has observed a bump in faculty productivity as a result of the phones equivalent to “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in labor. For example, Georgia Gwinnett faculty are not required to hold office hours — the idea being that a big bulk of outside-of-class communication with students can be handled via the mobile devices, allowing faculty to deploy their energies on other things. Also, the desktop phone bills are down and inter-faculty communication is up, Harvel says. “A cost analysis demonstrates that the program saves more money than it costs,” Harvel says (though he adds that the benefits are “only valid if the institution is intent on expending resources on student engagement”).

And the professors contacted by Inside Higher Ed. don't seem to consider the added connectivity to be a burden, and they tend to set appropriate boundaries right away, some of them even playfully rebuking excessive texters to check the syllabus or other readily available sources for answers to questions that don't really require professorial help. (The comments to that post are, as you can imagine, all over the map, and several Georgia Gwinnett faculty chime in as well.)

This story was picked up by one of my favorite blogs, Althouse, where the bloghostess--a noted law professor--falls into the naysayers' camp:

You want students dashing off little notes full of typos and abbreviations and professors struggling with teensy keyboards and adapting to the ultra-concise writing form? And what happens when there are misunderstandings? These are inevitable in texting.

Leave texting to friends and family and to coworkers who interact casually. Professors — however friendly they may seem in person — must relate to students in a professional way.

Count me as one who doesn't believe that those two things--using texting and relating to students professionally--are always mutually exclusive.

Althouse's commenters are as divided as those at the original post, but this time, as a semi-regular at Althouse, I chime in:

There are situations where texting could come in handy; mine is one of them.

I teach music ensembles and applied music (a.k.a. private lessons), so I'm rarely able to answer the phone during the business day, and emails get checked only every few hours. In addition, since I'm not yet a full prof, my "office" is shared with 100 other profs, and no way do I want to burden the administrative assistant with taking phone message for me, as I wouldn't likely get them in a timely manner in the first place.

Since most of my ensembles (jazz combos) are one person on a part, you'd better believe that I want to know ASAP if the drummer is sick and can't make rehearsal today, as that gives me a lot more time to find a sub. So I'd much rather find out this news right away (via text) rather than, say, a few minutes before rehearsal starts (which could happen if the student emailed me instead). We also have a lot of non-traditional students (who may work as far as 20 miles away from school) in one of my groups, so a quick "I'm running late" text is appreciated, as taking a quick peek at the screen is much less disruptive than listening to a voicemail once class has started.

I've had texting capability for six years now, and for me, it's been overwhelmingly positive, and I have yet to have a student abuse the privilege.

So texting is a plus for me (as it appears to be for many of the Georgia Gwinnett faculty), while others seem to think it would be a really big minus. Is it a generational thing? (And let's assume "generation" might be a "where you are inside your head" idea, as opposed to strictly chronological age; I know that I skew a generation younger than the one into which I was born.) Is it truly the wave of the future, and will those who don't embrace it inevitably get left behind?

It's been a while since I've had a vigorous discussion in the comments, so I'd love to hear from lots of different people on this one. Let me know if you're a teacher, student or interested observer, as well as where you fall in this debate. And there will be another angle on this subject tomorrow, as it has many different angles.

AT&T's New Data Plan Limits--Much Ado About Nothing?

I've been a happy iPhone user since I took the plunge right before Christmas of '08. Sure, there have been a few dropped calls here and there, and I had to learn how to keep the battery from draining too quickly (turn off location services, notifications, etc.), but otherwise, it's been nothing but positive. So I was concerned when the story came out this week that AT&T is planning to do away with unlimited data plans. But I had to know more--would this even affect me? Let's see:

AT&T will now offer a lower-end data plan, called DataPlus, for $15 per month. Users on this plan get 200MB to use for one month, and those that go over will be given an additional 200MB for another $15. According to AT&T's analysis, 65 percent of its smartphone customers use less than 200MB on average. Checking around the Orbiting HQ, all but one of us with an iPhone on AT&T fall into this category.

The new high-end plan, called DataPro, gets you 2GB of data use for $25 per month. If you go over 2GB, you'll pay $10 for each 1GB increment. For example, if you use 3.5GB, you'll pay $25 + 10 + 10, or $45 for the month. AT&T is not offering an unlimited data tier at any price. The company says that 98 percent of its customers use less than 2GB of data, so among these two plans, all but the heaviest data users should theoretically save on their monthly bill...

Hmm. I have no idea how much data i use, so I checked the settings on my phone. It said I'd used 1.5 GB. And when had I last reset my statistics? Umm...never. That means I'd used 1.5 GB since I'd bought the phone, a year and a half ago. So I'm good with the $25 plan. I later went to AT&T's website and checked my account for more specific usage; had I gone over 200MB in a month? Yup, most recently in February and December, the two months where I've done the most traveling.

So it appears that, not only will I not be affected by this new practice, but I could actually save money with it. Some recent iPad buyers who depend on the 3G network instead of wi-fi will undoubtedly be upset, as will those who are the true data hogs on the network. (UPDATE: According to another article on the subject, the people most likely to be affected by the new plans are "the 3 percent of customers who AT&T says are using 40 percent of the network assets," along with those who are using a cellphone as a modem.

So tell me, fellow iPhone users--will this affect you at all? And if you just got an iPad, are you disappointed? Fire away in the comments (you can wait until you find wi-fi if you want).

The iCouldhavehadabettername

As had been expected for a while, this morning marked the unveiling of Apple's long-awaited new tablet computer. And while there's been a lot of talk about the positives and negatives of such a device, a lot of people have been homing in on the name: the iPad.

This wasn't what a lot of people were expecting, at least from what I've been reading the past few weeks; the usual guesses seemed to be along the lines of the iTablet or the iTab. I can see Apple's logic in continuing the use of the "i(Monosyllabic word)" idea, since it's been with them from the beginning: iMac, iBook, iPod, iPhone. But iPad seems to have laid an iEgg with some observers.

I'm not sure they could have pleased everybody here, as they seem to have had a limited selection of cool iNames for something of this nature. The word iTab (and its longer sibling iTablet) sound too much like pharmaceuticals, but iPad sounds like, well, a feminine hygiene product. Is that really where they wanted to go with this? The name just seems to be overripe for parody (and yes, the parodies have already begun). And does anyone else wonder how this will all go over in the New England area? If you say "iPod" with a thick Boston accent, doesn't it sound too much like "iPad" to avoid massive confusion?

But I guess the big thing for me right now is that, for the first time in a while, Apple has come out with something that I'm not looking to buy right away. I owned one of the original teal-colored fishbowl iMacs (and mine was a great replacement for my previous computer, which I eventually dubbed the "MacAbacus"; it was pretty much an email reader on which I could also do word processing and play Tetris, while loading even the most rudimental webpage took several minutes). I didn't get an iPod right away, but it was always on my proverbial list (the thought of being able to listen to music on plane trips without carrying around my Discman, a big wallet of CDs and an army of AA batteries was appealing from the start). The MacBook Pro on which I type this was also acquired fairly soon after the line was launched, and i got my iPhone rather soon after the contract on my previous phone ran out.

But the iPad? My initial response is simply, "Meh." But I'm not sure that it's a matter of being disinterested in this product as much as it is simply having no need at the moment for the entire genre. My MacBook does certain things well, and my iPhone does certain things well; some of those things (email, certain websites, listening to music) even overlap. I don't read books or newspapers online (and if I did, I'd also have to check out the Kindle and the Nook), so I'm not seeing where this fits into my life at the moment.

Your mileage, of course, may very. Did you greet this announcement with a smile or a shrug? Tell me why in the comments.

UPDATE: I didn't realize it when I wrote this post, but I guess I've been enjoying my iPad nano for a while now. LOL.

The Best 13 Bucks I've Spent in a While

For the past several days, the trackpad problem with the computer (which I mentioned here had reached a critical stage; it got to the point where I could hardly get anything done at all on here. The increased level of frustration made for an awful way to start the day, and productivity was truly suffering (and the iPhone wasn't always a good substitute; trying to copy and past multiple links into my web-based school email took a good ten minutes this morning).

This whole time, I was really hoping that the problem was strictly with the trackpad and would thus be solved by simply obtaining a mouse. Thankfully, I was correct. Having both a little bit of time and money, I headed to the Giant Corporate Electronics Concern and Tech Geek's Nirvana Spot Which Shares Its Name with a Futurama Character after rehearsal tonight and parted with a mere 13 simoleons, acquiring a perfectly serviceable USB mouse in the process. (As convenient as a wireless mouse would be, I can't part with that kind of money during the holidays, and as much as I'd like to stay all-Apple, all the time with the MacBook, I knew that such things weren't a requirement.)

Sure enough, I got home, plugged it in, and the problems of the past several weeks vanished right away. (Do I really need to download software from the manufacturer, as the installation instructions suggest? It appears to work fine as it is, and I don't need to do anything fancy like programming the buttons to do special things.) I still have a few small things to work out, such as the lack of USB ports (since I'm also running a peripheral keyboard--yes, this laptop is acting more and more like a desktop these days--and my speakers, and I'm trying to find a way to use all three simultaneously without messing with the extra wires and cables of the old powered USB hub left over from my old iMac), but it's nice to be able to do things on here on demand again. I can feel the wave of relaxation settling in already.

I'll try to use some of the next few days to get caught up on old posts and the like. As always (how many times have I said this during this semester alone?), thanks for your patience.

Trying to Get Back on Track(pad), or I Wish There Were a Mouse in My House

Apologies for the lack of posting so far this week; it's not even the usual excuse (lack of time), though that certainly figures in. Rather, this week, it has to do with a computer problem--namely, the trackpad on my MacBook Pro. It just won't, well, track sometimes. I'll move my finger around and around, but to no avail; the arrow just stays in place for a while. It's almost like a very mild version of what it must feel like to be paralyzed in a limb.

The idea has hit me that perhaps the hard drive is getting full, which I realize could affect performance somewhat. To that end, I've been doing the Great Music Purge of '09 whenever I've been on the computer during the past 24 hours. I topped out at 25 days of music, so I've been deleting anything that I already had on a physical CD, saving my iTunes space for things I've gotten through eMusic or Amazon Downloads or the iTunes Store. I'm seeing slightly better performance since I've done that, but the occasional paralysis continues.

So, a quick bleg to my fellow Mac users: Is there anything else that I'm not thinking of which could be causing this problem? A repair is not really in the cards right now, due to budgetary concerns. I also realize that I could just throw down for an actual mouse, bypassing the trackpad altogether, but I'd like some information about that as well: Of the Apple mice, which one have you found to be the best? And how about any other mice that aren't made by Apple but work on Macs--any yays or nays there? Feel free to enlighten me in the comments, as this is driving me nuts; it's taking up to five times as long to do simple tasks, and there are just some things that I can't farm out to the iPhone. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Kind of Bizarre...But I LIke It

Having, as I do, a bunch of friends who are hardcore gamers, I'm pretty sure that I already knew that there were people out there making music out of vintage video game system sounds. Chiptunes, they call them, or 8-bit music. But I didn't know that several artists, coordinated by Andy Baio of waxy.org fame, had collaborated on a complete 8-bit remake of Miles Davis' classic Kind of Blue album. The result is called Kind of Bloop (heh), and it's actually pretty well-done. (You can hear samples of each track at the link or buy the whole thing for a mere five bucks.)

I actually bought the thing, and it is indeed clever. Purists will scoff, of course (isn't that part of a purist's job?), but I found the thing to be a reasonable interpretation of the music using that particular medium--certainly no more irreverent than the synthesizer reworkings of classical music by Isao Tomita that I listened to as a kid. There are only a few noticeable deviations from the spirit of the original (a note in Miles' "So What" solo is missed--hey, a guy who's transcribed that and assigned it to dozens of others over the years will catch stuff like that--and the intro to "All Blues" is done in 11/8, which makes me want to try the whole thing that way), but again, it comes off as much more of a tribute than a parody.

More information on the project can be found here, including a vigorous debate in the comments as to whether Miles would be spinning in his grave over this or not. (I"m the "Kev" who commented a few days ago, but you'd probably figure that out from reading what I wrote.)

(Hat tip: My webmaster, Nate, who didn't like it nearly as much as I did.)

What We Have Here Is a Lack of Communication (But Some of It Might Be Restored)

I've never been shy about calling out school districts on this blog when they implement policies that really don't make sense. In this particular case, I wasn't aware that the policy had already existed, but I'm glad to see that McKinney ISD is giving this a second look.

As reported in today's Dallas Morning News, the district is reconsidering a ban on all electronic contact--email, texting and Facebook-- between teachers and students:

[T]he tough new policy – aimed at limiting chances for inappropriate contact – brought protests from parents, teachers, students and even school board members.

And now the policy is under review.

"There's obviously a groundswell in the community of people that feel like this [policy] is going overboard," said Cody Cunningham, spokesman for the McKinney ISD.

"We certainly need to revisit it."

Trustee Mark Rude is among those who say the policy goes too far, curtailing legitimate communication about homework, band practice, athletics scheduling and more.

He's right; this seems like a "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" type of situation, where all the good aspects of electronic communication get cast aside because of the possibility that something bad might happen. The scheduling/practice aspect alone would be enough for me to be in favor of the policy; suppose a band contest's time got moved up? Imagine if the directors had to call every student in the band! (Now imagine this at Allen High School, where the band numbers nearly 600. Even with multiple directors, the time consumed by calling--even with a phone tree, even with multiple directors--would be a huge waste compared with the simple act of an email or a mass text message.)

But administrators don't always think about "simple"--or about what's best for students and teachers--when they make policy. Far too often, it seems that most rules of this type are meant to do one thing, and one thing only: Protect the school from a lawsuit, no matter what the cost to the educational process. (I'm not saying that people should go off half-cocked and expose the schools to real problems, but I am saying that running around in fear of lawyers 24/7 isn't living; it's existing, at best. Do we want to just exist all the time?)

And it appears that a lot of the problem starts at the top here:

Tom Crowe, McKinney ISD superintendent, defended the policy at a recent trustees meeting. "I would rather start with zero tolerance and ease up," he said, though he said he supports the review that's under way.

In a word, no. As I've said here many times before, "zero tolerance" equals "zero thinking," and it also allows administrators to hide behind rules--which they elevate to a status even higher than that of the people the rules are supposed to protect--and avoid making the difficult decisions which they were hired to make in the first place. If you don't have the courage to do that, get another job.

I don't directly have a dog in this hunt, since I don't teach in McKinney, but I shudder to think how much more difficult things would be at times if my own district had a similar policy. It's not that I'm getting emails and texts from students all the time, but it's come in very handy on occasion; thanks to a well-timed text message, I've managed to avoid unnecessary trips to schools because someone was sick that day, as well as get there on time instead of late when a school went on activity schedule at the last minute. Sure, going through the parents is usually the best idea, but in the cases I've just cited, I might well have not gotten the message on time (I don't know that many parents who text, for one thing). And Facebook is not a problem for me at this immediate moment, as I'm not a member yet; having this blog, a website, a MySpace and being on Twitter is enough for me right now. (And yes, some students have hit me up on MySpace at times, but that's less of an issue, as 1) it's a musician's page, and there's nothing wrong with having students as "fans"--in fact, I'd love to see them at my gigs; and 2) I'm smart enough to not post anything worse than PG-13 in any online forum.)

So what do you think--is the current McKInney policy an overreaction? I for one am very happy that they're revisiting it, and I hope that common sense prevails in the end.

And I love this quote from the linked story: "Some McKinney ISD students created a Facebook page to organize opposition. Parent Bobette Hilliard used her blog to criticize the policy."

Home Tweet Home: Does Social Networking While on Vacation Compromise Your Safety?

As noted here last month, I took the plunge and started using Twitter. I've also done plenty of blog posts--with pictures, in recent years--while out of town. But is this sort of behavior a bad idea? Some security experts think so:

Like a lot of people who use social media, Israel Hyman and his wife, Noell, went on Twitter to share real-time details of a recent trip. Their posts said they were "preparing to head out of town," that they had "another 10 hours of driving ahead," and that they "made it to Kansas City."

While they were on the road, their home in Mesa, Ariz., was burglarized. Hyman has an online video business called IzzyVideo.com, with 2,000 followers on Twitter. He thinks his Twitter updates tipped the burglars off.

"My wife thinks it could be a random thing, but I just have my suspicions," he said. "They didn't take any of our normal consumer electronics." They took his video editing equipment.

Yeah, that could certainly have happened for a number of reasons. But the experts do have some good points:

Most people wouldn't leave a recording on a home answering machine telling callers they're on vacation for a week, and most people wouldn't let mail or newspapers pile up while they were away. But users of social media think nothing of posting real-time vacation photos on Facebook, or sending out automatic e-mail messages that say, "I'm out of the country for a week."

This is true. But it seems especially unlikely to be burglarized by your Facebook friends, especially if they're old friends from high school or college whom you've known forever. Twiiter might be a different story, since anyone can sign up to follow you without your having to approve it first.

I think the jury's out on this one; some people are likely to be more vigilant after reading this article, while others are a bit more carefree:

"I don't worry about it," said David McCauley of Boise, a social-media consultant who posts a running update of his activities for his Facebook friends. McCauley also communicates constantly on Twitter, where anyone can sign up to read your posts.

"If somebody really wanted to rob me, they could rob me whether they're Tweeting about it or not," McCauley said. "Most people who want to follow you [on Twitter] are typically not thieves, or they're not looking to take your stuff; they just want to follow you and understand you."

I'm not sure how I feel about all this; I guess we'll have to see what happens the next time I go out of town.

DTV Switchover Really Caught Some People by Surprise? Really?

I caught a snippet of the TV news tonight (which is rare for me), and they were talking about the big switch over to a digital TV signal that took place at noon today. I'm not sure which surprised me more--that the local station I was watching had an active call center fielding questions about the switch, or that people were actually calling it. But the thing that really blew my mind was that, after the government, electronics retailers, and the TV stations themselves making a big deal out of the switchover for years, there were still some people who were evidently unaware that anything was happening:

The Association for Public Television Stations, found in a September 2008 study, that 51 percent of people surveyed had no idea that the transition was taking place next year. Another study, which focused on households that receive their television signals mainly over the air, found that 57 percent had still not heard about the transition.

Amazing. And there were some unprepared people locally as well:

[T]he Federal Communications Commission estimated in late May that 6.67 percent of Dallas-Fort Worth households with TVs – more than twice the national average of 2.9 percent – weren't ready for the switch, which had been postponed from its original date of Feb. 17.

A few years ago, I had that original date seared in my mind for a while, as I figured I'd have to replace my old-school 1991 model TV. But it turns out that those of us who have cable didn't have to do a thing, so I can put off the HDTV purchase for another day (year?).

But overall, it seems that the transition here went pretty smoothly, so it's possible that the people calling in to the stations were mostly concerned with small technical glitches and not wondering where their favorite show went. And most of those who needed a converter box may not have had it set up yet, but at least they owned the thing already.

So as far as Casa de Kev goes, the change had little effect. Sure, the very small TV in my kitchen is now a very large paperweight, but I didn't watch TV while cooking all that much in the first place. (Doing so, of course, would require me to actually cook on a regular basis.) But there was one cool thing about that TV: It showed me that there was about a five-second gap between over-the-air and cable; I could watch a snippet of, say, The Simpsons in the kitchen (I tend to eat in a lot on Sunday nights) and then go into the living room and see the exact same part of the show again. I don't know why cable is five seconds slower, but there you have it.

Otherwise, I didn't notice a huge difference in the signal quality between yesterday and today. I was happy to see that my VCR (a Montgomery Ward model, of the same vintage as my TV) still worked, though there was no improvement to the erratic reception of some cable-only channels. I got rid of my roof antenna months ago (yes, only months; the handyman next door was kind enough to take it down for me), and the last pair of rabbit ears in my house were attached to an actual rabbit.

So did the switchover affect you at all? Did all the channels work? Or did you even notice the difference?

UPDATE: I like the title of Althouse's post on the subject: "At long last, grandma turns on the television and discovers...there's nothing on."

Also, Lileks has a hilarious tweet on the subject: "This is odd. All my books about 1960s television are suddenly full of blank pages."

You've Heard of "Chocolate Rain." Now Here's a "Chocoolate Racer"

Scientists have come up with a car that runs on chocolate.

Now, it's not as simple as opening up the gas tank and pouring in a few cans of Hershey's Syrup or anything, but you'd have to say that it's very "green:"

The car runs on vegetable oils and chocolate waste that has been turned into biofuel. The steering wheel is made out of plant-based fibers derived from carrots and other root vegetables, and the seat is built of flax fibre and soybean oil foam. The body is also made of plant fibers.

It's not just a car; it's a meal!

This certainly is not the first time a vehicle has been built out of plant life (think Rose Parade floats, for example), and there may be some practical applications that need tweaking (will the biodegradable stuff, well, biodegrade before the end of the normal life of a vehicle?), but it's still a really cool idea.

Tweet No Evil?

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has been fined quite a bit of money during the time that he's owned the team, mostly for criticizing the officiating over the years. So the fact that he was fined again this weekend comes as no real surprise, but the way that it happened is unusual: The fine was levied as the result of a Twitter post:

Cuban used the Twitter online social network to complain after Friday night's game that Denver's J.R. Smith was not called for coming off the bench to taunt Antoine Wright after he missed a shot near the Nuggets bench.

Cuban said in another posting Sunday that he "can't say no one makes money from twitter now. the nba does."

Heh. It's funny (and completely understandable) that online mogul Cuban is using the latest technology to vent his proverbial spleen.

But that brings up a question: Should owners be getting fined for criticizing the officiating, no matter what form of communciation is used? If an official is called out by name, I can see a problem, because that could bring up security issues for said official. But why does free speech end at the door of a sports league? The officials have a huge responsibility, and their actions can affect the outcome of a game. If something is really wrong, I don't see a problem with talking about it in public. (If it happens too much, people will likely dismiss a coach or owner's actions as "crying wolf" anyway.)

Am I all wet here? Feel free to call me out in the comments; no fines will be levied.

UPDATE: On the other hand, I think most people would agree that it's a bad idea to use Twitter to criticize a job you haven't even gotten yet.

A Beautiful Afternoon on the Square

Southlake Town Square. A shade after four o'clock in the afternoon. Temperatures in the 70s belie the mid-December date on the calendar. And I'm sitting on a park bench taking pictures like this...

...on my new iPhone. Yep, I took the plunge today.

I'd been debating iPhone vs. BlackBerry a while ago, and, while the keyboard of the latter sounded nice, the iPhone's far superior browser display, access to wi-fi when needed, and overall cool factor made it win out in the end. Plus, I was already with the proper carrier and long past due for an upgrade. Having gotten a little bonus money recently, it was time for a Christmas present to myself this year.

I'm sure it will take me a while to figure out all the different functions of this device. I've already figured out most of what I need to know for texting (although I had some righteous typos while getting used to the touch-screen keyboard), but I haven't set up email yet. The iPod portion will likely be filled with a mix of my favorite tunes and some teaching aids, as I'm now one gadget away (either a Y-cord or a small, durable docking device, respectively) from being able to have access to play-alongs at the college and the schools for the first time since my boom box bit the dust. And I have yet to even visit the App Store; that'll be a fun, productive time-waster, I'm sure.

I wanted to go back to Southlake after my early-evening event to try another picture out there at night, when the area is festooned in Christmas lights, but I'll have to save that for later. (The camera is not anywhere near the quality of my Canon, of course, but from these first few pictures, it appears to be a little better than the ones from the RAZR.)

This is a light teaching week ahead with the college on break, but I have a feeling my new "toy" will consume a bit of my free time for the next few days, as I figure out the ins and outs of it.

Brrrrr: What's with the 30-degree temperature drop during the time of the Cowboys game? I have a feeling that tomorrow won't be anything like today was.

iPhone or BlackBerry?

I've often asked the readers of this blog for advice on certain decisions I'm about to make. A couple of years ago, it was a decision between getting a laptop or contacts (I ended up getting the laptop as a birthday present, and chose to hold out for LASIK when I can afford it). And earlier this year, when said laptop was in the shop and I was mostly Net-less for a few weeks, I wondered if I should increase my surfability by getting either a desktop or a smart phone. For the moment, I've decided on the smart phone, because 1) it's cheaper, and 2) I'm eligible for an upgrade, as it's been over two years since I last did that.

But one question still remains: Which smart phone do I get? The iPhone has always been attractive to me, and the new one has probably been out long enough that a lot of the initial bugs have been fixed. But I'm also aware that my monthly rate would go up if I got one. In the meantime, there are some other smart phones out there, like this BlackBerry, that sound intriguing. (And, scrolling through everything, it appears that my bill would go up no matter which smart phone I got, so that comparison is a wash, I guess.)

So the call goes out to anyone who's had either a BlackBerry or an iPhone: If you had a choice, which one would you get, and why? Or is there something else out there that I haven't discovered yet that's even better? Let me know in the comments.

We Can Only Wish for Something Like This in August

My favorite news site said that it was having "technical difficulties" this morning. I guess it was, since the weather forecast looked like this:


Ha--if only. In the thirties during August in Texas? And how about that Wednesday--high of 91, low of 40! People would be getting sick left and right. It was obviously a glitch; the fact that it started with Monday and today's a Thursday pretty much tipped me off. (And when I clicked the "More" link, it took me to a page where Thursday was listed as "Thanksgiving Day." Heh.)

But evidently, we are getting some relief in the form of rain. They said on the radio that there'll be lots of it over the weekend, and we'll have rain-soaked highs of "only" 80-something. That may not be as cool as the "forecast" above, but I'll take it.

(So do you like my first effort at taking a screenshot? I do realize it's a bit messy up top, but I just learned how to do that this week. Call me a "n00b" if you wish, but I'd never really had a need to do this until recently, when a site I visit--the same news site, coincidentally--started spawning unblocked popups, and the support people asked me to take a shot of the offending ad to send to them. And now I can do that!)

Tea and biscuits, or crumpets and gravy: The city of Birmingham, England recently released an official city brochure containing a picture of the skyline. Unfortunately, it was the skyline of Birmingham, Alabama by mistake. (A similar thing happened in my college yearbook; at the beginning of the College of Music section, they had a nice writeup on the program and a big picture of the building. Unfortunately, it was a picture of the Art Building. D'oh.)

He probably scared the Pooh out of them: Two people in Tokyo were assaulted and robbed by a guy wearing a Winnie-the-Pooh costume. (Fun facts: 1) "Pooh" evidently went off on the pair because he didn't like them staring at him. 2) He and his friends were in costume because they didn't have anything else clean to wear.)

This Could Be Known as "Call Not Waiting"

Hot on the heels of yesterday's story about people ditching their land-line phones in record numbers comes this NY Times profile of a company called Slydial, which allows a caller to go directly to someone's voicemail without having to talk to them live; it shows up on that person's phone as a missed call:

When Alexis Gorman, 26, wanted to tell a man she had been dating that the courtship was over, she felt sending a Dear John text message was too impersonal. But she worried that if she called the man, she would face an awkward conversation or a confrontation.

So she found a middle ground. She broke it off in a voice mail message, using new technology that allowed her to jump directly to the suitor’s voice mail, without ever having to talk to the man — or risk his actually answering the phone.

The technology, called Slydial, lets callers dial a mobile phone but avoid an unwanted conversation — or unwanted intimacy — on the other end. The incoming call goes undetected by the recipient, who simply receives the traditional blinking light or ping that indicates that a voice mail message has been received.

That's clever--a "Dear John" voicemail! And Gorman made a good point: Why risk an awkward conversation with a person with whom she'd only gone out a few times?

Here's another crafty use of the technology:

[Manny Manakas of New York] used it to call in sick to work — without facing follow-up questions from his boss.

“I don’t want 50 questions,” Mr. Mamakas said. “I just say, ‘I won’t be coming in; I’m under the weather.’ By the time he hears voice mail, it’s already noon.”

He acknowledges that the technology encourages a perhaps not-so-valiant character trait.

“It does make you more cowardly,” he said.

But is that cowardly, or just being efficient with one's time? Someone quoted in the article notes that, with modern technology, we can easily be tethered to the outside world 24/7 if we're not careful. This seems like as good of a "temporary opt-out" solution as any. IBecause of my teaching schedule, I rarely do business by phone to begin with, especially in the summer when the computer is right beside me and I can fire off a quick email or two between lessons. If I actually needed to reach someone by phone, having a way to guarantee that I could leave a quick voicemail might come in very handy.)

Althouse links to the story and makes a few good points in response to the "cowardly" idea:

What about all the positive reasons for not wanting to make someone's phone ring? They might be sleeping, with someone, or concentrating on work. I often hesitate to make phone calls, not for selfish reasons, but out of consideration for others. You have no idea what they are doing. In fact, why did it ever become acceptable to cause a bell to ring that required somebody to drop what they are doing and talk to somebody who unilaterally decided it was time to talk? It had to have been an adjustment to phone technology as it was. If it is no longer necessary to behave that way, why is it still thought to be polite? At the very least, calling specifically to leave a voice message should be regarded as fine etiquette. Stigmatizing it as solipsistic and cowardly is ridiculous.

I totally agree, and I posted a portion of my little call-waiting rant from yesterday in the comments to Althouse's post.

So what do you think--is this cowardly or efficient? And, knowing that it's free (save for having to listen to a few ads to access it), would you use a service like this?

Two If By Land, One If By Cell?

I've been meaning to write this post for quite some time, and I was finally prompted to do so by the news that, for many people, the land-line phone is going the way of the dodo:

Adults are finding that they don't need the lines in anywhere near the numbers they used to, and it can't be chalked up simply to instant messing displacing phone conversations and cell phones displacing housebound phones. The economy is playing its part, too.

[...]The percentage of homes with telephone service has held remarkably steady in recent decades, according to another FCC report. But in this first real slowdown of the wireless age, consumers seem to be saying that home-based telephones are expendable luxuries, like Starbucks lattes or Coach handbags.

And it makes sense. Confronted with high inflation, soaring energy costs and stagnant wages, millions of households are facing choices about which monthly bills to pay and which commitments to maintain. And if it comes down to one or the other, the mobile or the home-based land line, it's clear which is a necessity and which is an option.
One lets you make telephone calls only from your house. The other lets you make telephone calls from anywhere, send e-mails, surf the Internet, play music and take photographs.

Another feature of today's economic climate favors wireless over land lines: the real estate mess. According to RealtyTrac, foreclosures are booming. In the first half of 2008, there were 1.4 million foreclosures. The company is projecting at least 2 million foreclosures for 2008. When people under financial duress move out of their homes, they're likely to disconnect the land line and find some temporary arrangement (a rental, staying with friends or relatives), which makes it unlikely they'll acquire a new land line.

But it's not just the economy. It's the way our society has changed. Even without experiencing the conditions listed above, I'm pretty close to ditching my land line. I really haven't used it for years, for two resaons: One, as stated above, is that the land-line can't leave the house. The other has to do with Caller ID.

I'll admit to a love-hate relationship with this feature. When Caller ID first came out, I had a job in retail, and it annoyed me to no end that many people used it to replace their answering machines. Part of my job was to call people when their music orders came in, and often times, I'd call someone, get no answer, and figure that they weren't home and didn't have a machine. Then, a few hours later, I'd get a call from someone who would say something to the effect of, "Hi, this is So-and-So. You called me a few hours ago; what do you want?" It wasn't always quite that rude, but it was a lot more complicated than it would have been if I could have simply left them a message.

The other problem with Caller ID was that it cost extra, and it was usually bundled with a bunch of stuff I'd never use, like call forwarding and three-way calling. As a result, I resisted adding that feature...and then it came free with my cell phone service. And I'll admit it--I was hooked after that. It was great to be able to see who was calling me and then decide whether to pick up or not. (That practice continues to this day. Never mind the fact that, because of my teaching job, I rarely am able to pick up the phone to begin with; but I won't pick up for an unfamiliar number, and if they don't leave a message, I won't call them back. This stems from my annoyance with those who use Caller ID as an answering machine, as stated above, as well as from the idea that if someone doesn't have time to leave me a message, I don't have time to call them back.) The long and short of it is, I don't have that ability with my land-line, so it's pretty much fallen into disuse.

So what's the only thing keeping me from ditching the land line? Probably the "peace of mind" angle; the fact is, the house phone would wake me up in the middle of the night in case of an emergency, and the cell (which almost always stays in vibrate mode) would not. Do I trust myself to turn the cell's ringer on every night, and would I hear even that if I did?

I guess it pretty much comes down to this: Should I get rid of the land line completely, or should I simply strip it down to its barest essentials (i.e. get rid of call waiting and things like the "inside wire maintenance plan")? And if I happen to throw down for a new iPhone, this question pretty much becomes moot, as the savings from the cancellation of the house phone would counterbalance the new charges for cell service, with a little bit of pocket change left over.

This is a huge change in the way we do things over here; until now, the home line was the essential one and the cell was expendable; now, it seems to have been turned inside out.

So here are the questions of the day:

• Do you have a land line, a cell phone, or both?


• If you had to choose between one or the other, which would be your choice?


• From what you've read above, do you see any reason I should keep my land line?

Please respond in the comments.

I'm Sorry, But "Mr. Lyres" Won't Be Seeing You Anytime Soon

Today, I invite all the Musings readers who are way more computer-savvy than myself to have a little laugh at my expense (after all, if you can't laugh at yourself, you can't laugh at others, right?). Sure, I know my way around the Internet very well and have no trouble with garden-variety HTML (and also possess what I consider to be "mad Googling skillz"), but something I figured out this weekend reminded me of what a complete "n00b" I still am in many areas.

This is how it all started: there's a huge road construction project in my city, almost literally within rock-throwing distance of my house, that's been going on for over a year now. I've gone to the city's website on many occasions to check on its progress, as well as that of some other upcoming projects in my area. I noticed that the URL for the page looked something like this:

http://www.ci.garland.tx.us/NR/rdonlyres/5D0DD681-1D0C-4612-BD3B-1E346A6FD85A/0/completionschedule.pdf

There were some unusual things listed there, such as the "NR/rdonlyres" part, but it didn't grab my attention too much...yet.

Here's one more thing about me: I'm a pretty big road geek. If I hadn't gone into music (or architecture, which was another possibility until my high school math teachers pretty much snuffed my desire to do anything with that much math in it), I might well have gone into civil engineering, designing roads and the like. I used to draw up entire cities' worth of street grids when I was bored in school, and sometimes, while driving, I'd just follow a road to see where it went.

Because of that predisposition, and the fact that I drive around a lot (and am always looking for more efficient ways to get places), I'm often checking the various local road websites (NTTA, TxDOT, etc.) to see when new projects in my area (and other places I visit a lot, like Austin and Houston) will be built. And every road schematic on that site included the term "rdonlyres" just like the city's site did. I jumped to the conclusion that there must be an engineering firm headed up by one R. Don Lyres that was responsible for all these types of things in the state (and if you have trouble conceiving of "Don" as a middle name--as opposed to the more formal "Donald," that is--you must not live in the South).

So I wallowed around in my ignorance for quite a while, continuing to see the handiwork of Mr. Lyres on other engineering projects, and the only thought that went through my head was that business must be really good for the Lyres firm. But this weekend, I was Googling for something else, and the "NR/rdonlyres" thing appeared on other URL's as well--things that had nothing to do with engineering or Texas. Maybe it wasn't someone's name after all...

I thought about it for a second, before researching it: What did all the "rdonlyres" pages have in common? Looking at a few, it occurred to me that the appellation only applied to PDF's. Then I looked at the character string differently, and the word "only" jumped out at me in a way that it never had before. Was this the clue? Let's separate the elements by isolating that word: "rd only res." Hmm--could the first part be "Read only?" That would make sense with a PDF. Read only...resolution? Maybe that was it.

It was obviously time to hunt for it online, so I did, and it turns out that I was close; this answer page defines it as "read only resource." That certainly makes sense. (And if anyone knows what the "NR" that precedes it stands for, go here and post the answer, as nobody's chimed in so far. Then please come back and post it in the comments here as well.)

So I felt a little silly when I discovered the truth; so much for "Mr. Lyres" and his thriving business. But at least I know now.
What's the silliest misconception you've ever had about something computer-related?

This technology will scare a lot of people: For those who just can't wait till they get to the bar to belt out their favorite song, a Japanese firm has come up with a portable karaoke machine (alcohol not included.)