sunsets

This baby comes with a remodel

Did you know that new babies require new paint in the walls and new carpet on the floors? I did not know this until Amber got pregnant. My wife, my mom and my mother-in-law all assured me that the baby's room must be remodeled.

The 70s era shag green carpet, peeling paint and general ugliness wasn't good enough for the future President of these United States. Also the broken handle, shaky toilet and mold covered tile meant that the bathroom had to be redone too. And since we were doing the carpet in the babies room we might as well do the carpet in the other two bedrooms and lay down new floors in the rest of the house.

I told my wife today that before we put down the carpet in the other two bedrooms we might as well repaint the walls and the ceilings as needed. And we need to replace those ceiling fans.

And, you know, curtains, wall plugs, light switches and other odds and ends could use a refresh.

You know what the sad part is? 40 years from now when my baby is running for President of these United States the media will say he lived in a "humble" middle class home. It's a lot of work to bring a house up to "humble."

Future fatherhood

People keep giving me advice. Most of it is things like, "your life will now suck." No one who currently has a young baby has said that. Mostly it's come from people who's kids are grown.

I want to go to these grown children and say, "Hey, your parents really resent you. You must have been an awful child."

But I haven't done it yet. I'm too nice a guy.

I'm looking forward too fatherhood. I'm utterly terrified but in a, 'hmmmm I wonder how this will turn out' sort of way.

It's not like I could do anything about it anyway. The baby is due in February. Doctors don't do a whole lot to lessen the night terrors. We go in once a month. They show us a video on a computer screen. They say things like, "there's the elbows. And there are the feet. See, its hands are in front of its face."

My wife and I can't decode these videos. We couldn't decode these videos with all the equipment in Radioshack. In the first video the baby looked like a peanut with a heartbeat. In the second it was bigger but just as weird looking.

"I don't think we're having a baby I think we're having a gelatinous blob," I said after a recent visit.

She agreed.

I'm a little worried my future baby will have gelatinous blob-like mutant powers and that I will have to send him or her to a school for gifted youngsters run by a bald-headed New Yorker who can read minds but couldn't see that his best friend was about to shoot him in the spine.

That or a boy. I'd like a boy.

The Spotify post

By now, given the media coverage, you should know what Spotify is but if you don't I can give you the explanation I was giving people last week.

Spotify is a free service that lets you listen to more than 15 million songs on your computer. The free service is ad supported but they offer an ad free $10 a month plan that allows you to put 3,333 songs on your smartphone. They have everything, which means you can listen to anything you want anytime you want on any device you want.

Well, they have everything except The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and that one album. You know that one album you always wanted? They don't have that. Spotify also brings over all the music on iTunes and other services into the Spotify program. Which means, of course, that if you already put The Beatles or Led Zeppelin on your computer then you will have them on Spotify.

I've been using the $10 a month plan for a couple of weeks and it's well worth it. I do most of my music listening in the car so I need to be able to put songs on my phone and play them on the road. Well, need is a strong word but I certainly want to be able to do that.

I found that finding and playing songs or albums or whatnot works pretty well. They have a way for you to save songs on the phone so if you can't get a signal you can still hear a tune. The app for the phone is kind of buggy and freezes frequently and generally doesn't like it when you do anything other than find songs and play songs.

For instance, every time I try to create a playlist on the phone it crashes. However, creating playlists on the computer is easy and they show up immediately on the phone. Also, you can stream music from the Spotify iPhone app to an Apple TV or other wireless playback devices like Sonos speakers. It worked pretty well with my Apple TV.

For music lovers this is the service that wins, I think. In the same way that Netflix won for movie and television lovers.

#attfail becomes a win

I loathe rebates.

The idea that some company is going to send you money back if you buy their product just bugs the crap out of me. It doesn't make economic sense for the buyer and to me it always makes the company look greedy and dumb.

After all everyone knows that the company A. will never give enough away in rebates so as to lose money on the deal and B. they count on most people never applying for the rebate.

I mean, if you want to offer a discount offer a discount. If you want to give me a Visa gift card for buying your product then give me a Visa gift card at the point of sale.

Which brings me to ATT. I switched over all of my services to ATT a few months back and the saleslady told me I would get a $100 rebate. I didn't ask for it but she went through the process and told me how to get it. So, I filled out the form, attached the receipts put it in the mail and then ... nothing. For weeks, nothing.

Finally, I called ATT, and we did a little dance. The lady on the other end said something was wrong in processing and that I needed to call someone in sales and have that person call her back with me on the line to get the rebate approved.

So I called the other number but it was too late, they were closed. I called again the next day, got the right lady to call the other lady who, without much explanation, said everything was OK now and she would be sending my rebate forthwith.

And then ... nothing. Nothing for weeks.

Finally, I went to the only option I had left, I complained on Twitter.

"I'm still waiting on a $100 rebate the the nice customer service lady promised I would get quickly 4 months ago," I tweeted.

Then I added:

"That last tweet should have included #attfail"

That day I got a response on Twitter from ATTJessica. As you might have guessed ATTJessica works for ATT. She wanted to help. I sent her some information about the situation and she promised to find out what happened. Different people from ATT called me every day or every other day for about week, telling me they were working on my problem.

Finally, someone left me a voicemail that said, ummm, we sent it to the wrong address because we had the wrong address on file. And also, were you getting mail from us?

I assured them I was getting mail from them but I had noticed, in conversations with various ATT people that from time to time they had the wrong address and each time I told them the right address and was told that it was fixed.

My guess is that it was fixed, it just wasn't fixed at the rebate center.

Anyway, the rebate came this weekend. ATT threw in some extra money because they felt bad.

Amber and I spent it all on groceries.

Yaaaay.

How much social is too much social?

Let's start with the roll call of sites and services I have joined.

I have a Tumblr page, an Instagram account, a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, this website, an old and possibly deleted personal website, a Linkedin account, a Foursquare account, a work blog at newsherald.com and now, tonight, I added a Google+ account.
Now, granted, a lot of this is my own fault. I like to try new things. I had a Netflix account back when they were still building Blockbuster stores. I got an iPhone earlier this year and that made it worse. I could now check in and post on three or four new social services instantly and constantly.
That's great. Except that the people in my life who actually want to have a face to face conversation with me are forever annoyed that I won't get my head out of my phone.
Bah, if I wanted to have personal interactions I wouldn't have gotten a smartphone.
Anyway, let's take these services one at a time.

Linkedin: Our television friends on 30 Rock pretty much nailed this service when Jack Donaghy, the all powerful corporate executive talked about a failed executive who was looking for a job.
"I tracked him down to an address in Brooklyn. He's on LinkedIn, Lemon. He might as well be dead," Donaghy said. Correct.

Foursquare: Burned it up for about two weeks then got creeped out by it. Might use it again someday but haven't used it in nearly a month. Haven't missed it.

Tumblr: Really, really cool. If I had it to do over again I wouldn't have started this blog I would have just created a Tumblr account and let that be it. It seems like the perfect blogging tool but I get the sinking feeling that not a lot of people use it or want to use it.

Instagram: A photo sharing service that all the cool kids are using. I like it because it's smart enough to realize it's not the only game in town. I take a picture and I can send it anyplace I choose anyway I choose. I can send to Twitter and Tumblr and the blog or any combination of the three or nowhere except on Instagram itself. I wish more social sites worked this out. Also, it's designed for smart phone users. Highly recommended for smart phone users.

Twitter: I plan to do a longer post about Twitter someday but it boils down to this: You can check in on the news of the moment very quickly. You can follow the people who entertain you (not those awful "famous" people but cool people like writers and journalists). There is not enough space for family members to complain about their personal drama. Your mother and father aren't on Twitter and wouldn't use it even if they knew what it was.
In short, it's my go to social site of the moment.

Facebook: Like Dusty Rhodes used to say, "The Grandaddy of them all." Actually, that may be Myspace but come on, no one has a Myspace page anymore. Facebook is Facebook. You don't need me to tell you about it. You either love it or you hate it or like me you tolerate it because if you shut down your account your mom would get mad.

Which brings us to Google+.
Have you ever shown up at a party too early? Knocked on the door while the host was just starting to cook and had to sit on their couch while they made small talk with you and wondered why the heck you showed up a half hour before anyone with any sense was supposed to be there.
That's what Google+ is right now. No one you know is on Google+ yet which makes it functionally useless. Perhaps millions of people will join, heck for all I know millions of people have already joined just nobody in my circle of friends. It's got a pretty decent user interface and it seems like it could be something someday.
But one thing bugs me. Why does a huge tech company do something like this in Beta? I mean Yoda had it right, "Do or do not, there is no try." To be frank I don't like Google's always in beta strategy. It seems like a way to deflect criticism from products that aren't quite done when they should be.
Finally, my question about Google+ is yet to be resolved. Will Google+ be a service that I can use to master all my other services? Can I use it, like Instagram, to create something and then post that something around the web as I see fit? Or, is it a direct competitor to Facebook that will only work if it beats big blue and convinces the world to switch?
I hope it is one thing but it is probably that other thing.


P.S. Oh, I also have a Google Buzz account and a Ping (you remember Ping don't you it's on iTunes) account. I wrote this entire post, nearly finished and then remembered that I had those accounts. That ought to tell you all you need to know.

Boom