So two months ago Laura and I splurged on the iPhone 3G; I love my phone. It does everything I could ever imagine a phone doing. This week, Apple introduced their NEW phone, the iPhone 3GS. It's almost the same, only faster and with a better processor and battery. I've been looking for hoops I can jump through to try to get this thing; it's better! It has a couple features my current phone doesn't have! Holy crap! Then I started thinking about what I was doing, and went to find a Bible verse that fit it. The perfect verse:
"Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
'Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.'"
~ Hebrews 13:5
This fits perfectly. I have an expensive gadget that does WAY more than any phone I've ever had...I can either lust after the new gadget and go crazy trying to find a way to get it, OR I can be happy with what I have, realizing that there are a lot of people that don't get to have a phone at all, and there are even some people that don't get to have a house or a car! I am VERY fortunate to be in the situation I'm in. If a scenario presents itself where I can upgrade the phone for a minimal price, then I might be interested, but for now, I'm going to be happy with all God has blessed me with: a beautiful wife, a new home, four great pets, and great friends and family!
Brad Hill
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Don't get the hype about Pandora
Sunday, June 7, 2009
It seems like almost everyone I know now is using Pandora radio, whether on their home computer or their phone. I fail to see what's so special about Pandora. "Oh, Pandora plays songs you might not have heard before!" Well, so do Last.fm and Slacker Radio. I personally use Last.fm because it has a couple features Pandora and Slacker don't have. Last.fm allows you to connect with your friends and share music between profiles. My favorite thing about Last.fm is that there is NO SKIP LIMIT. I will never be able to use Pandora or Slacker as long as they keep their absurd six skipped songs per hour limit. If the program does a crappy job choosing a song for me, I'm doubly screwed by being stuck listening to something I don't want to listen to? No thanks; Last.fm for me. Another thing I really like about Last.fm is that there is a desktop app that "scrobbles" songs from your iPod. Here's how it works...when you sync your iPod, Last.fm's app will add the listening statistics of what you listened to since your last sync to Last.fm's system in your user profile. It keeps your "listening totals" updated. Last.fm uses the music you already listen to, in addition to the bands you ask it to emulate, to figure out which bands you might like. There is also a "neighborhood mode" where you can listen to a station made up of songs that people who listen to songs you listen to play on their Last.fm profiles. It's very intuititve. Pandora's "smart" system inevitably ended up giving me songs by bands I didn't like, and though Last.fm isn't perfect, there's no limit to the number of times I can skip a song I'm not a fan of.
If you still don't like Last.fm, then I still don't get why Pandora is so widely used as opposed to Slacker Radio. Slacker has FOUR TIMES the number of songs Pandora has, and allows you to determine how closely you want the music that is played for you to mirror what you've asked it to emulate; for example, if you pick Aerosmith, you can say you want it to pick bands JUST like Aerosmith, fairly similar to Aerosmith, or barely like Aerosmith. You can also tell it to replay songs you mark as favorites MORE often, LESS often, or barely ever.
Anyway, I just don't see the hype about Pandora. Want to defend it? Tell me why you use Pandora over these two. If you haven't tried Last.fm or Slacker Radio, I don't really want to hear why Pandora's better since you haven't given anything else a shot. Widen your horizons.
Yesterday was Derek's bachelor party at the A's game, and it was AWESOME. We left the house around 12:30, got some Taco Bell, and headed down to Oakland. When we got there we set up the grill and barbecued some burgers and hot dogs while everyone drank beer or soda and just hung out. We even gave a burger to the parking lot attendant, who said he'd never been offered tailgating food before. Derek busted out his heckling skills at Orioles left fielder Felix Pie ("pee-AY"), calling him about 30 different varieties of pies (blueberry pie, cherry pie, chicken pot pie, etc.) before Pie left the game after fouling a ball off his face. We also got to make fun of the most whipped person in the universe...no sitting on laps at the ballpark, and DEFINITELY no Jordin Sparks posters!!!!!
In case you can't read it, the poster says "Jordin Sparks, you're my Idol". Wow. Just wow. Yes, there was a stupid concert after the game, but it is a BALLPARK. Lame.
I've yet to receive a blog comment, so let's see who gets to be FIRST!
Brad
If you still don't like Last.fm, then I still don't get why Pandora is so widely used as opposed to Slacker Radio. Slacker has FOUR TIMES the number of songs Pandora has, and allows you to determine how closely you want the music that is played for you to mirror what you've asked it to emulate; for example, if you pick Aerosmith, you can say you want it to pick bands JUST like Aerosmith, fairly similar to Aerosmith, or barely like Aerosmith. You can also tell it to replay songs you mark as favorites MORE often, LESS often, or barely ever.
Anyway, I just don't see the hype about Pandora. Want to defend it? Tell me why you use Pandora over these two. If you haven't tried Last.fm or Slacker Radio, I don't really want to hear why Pandora's better since you haven't given anything else a shot. Widen your horizons.
Yesterday was Derek's bachelor party at the A's game, and it was AWESOME. We left the house around 12:30, got some Taco Bell, and headed down to Oakland. When we got there we set up the grill and barbecued some burgers and hot dogs while everyone drank beer or soda and just hung out. We even gave a burger to the parking lot attendant, who said he'd never been offered tailgating food before. Derek busted out his heckling skills at Orioles left fielder Felix Pie ("pee-AY"), calling him about 30 different varieties of pies (blueberry pie, cherry pie, chicken pot pie, etc.) before Pie left the game after fouling a ball off his face. We also got to make fun of the most whipped person in the universe...no sitting on laps at the ballpark, and DEFINITELY no Jordin Sparks posters!!!!!
In case you can't read it, the poster says "Jordin Sparks, you're my Idol". Wow. Just wow. Yes, there was a stupid concert after the game, but it is a BALLPARK. Lame.
I've yet to receive a blog comment, so let's see who gets to be FIRST!
Brad
The Federal Housing Administration sucks.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH...
This is the most ridiculous crap ever. So apparently we have been waiting almost an extra week to get our home loan documents. I finally got an e-mail today saying that they need one form filled out by Laura and sent back. The thing is, though, that the form is a request form for SOMETHING THEY ALREADY HAVE!!!!! Nevertheless, they need it anyway. Seriously? I HATE the FHA. "Sure, we'll insure your loan, but you have to fill out mounds of useless paperwork for NO reason!" I'm surprised I didn't have to go to the doctor and get a verification of breathing. "Well, we can't take your word that you are alive and you breathe; maybe you're a vampire! We need a verification." This is ridiculous. Whatever.
On the plus side, Sammie (that's the new dog's name) is fitting in pretty well. The cats aren't fans of him, but they'll adjust; he doesn't attack them like as my parents' dog Kita used to. Scout is adjusting; we're still trying to make sure he gets loved on first, and Sammie second, but Sammie isn't trained yet and doesn't quite understand that he's second. He's a goofball; he likes to climb on the back of the couch. He can jump onto our bed, which means we're not going to be able to have him sleep in our room unless we want dog-in-the-face. Anyway, he's doing well.
All-in-all, it's been an interesting week. Saturday evening is Derek's bachelor party at the A's game, which should be awesome. The weekend always seems so far away on Wednesday.
I leave you with this...who is cuter? You decide.
Brad
This is the most ridiculous crap ever. So apparently we have been waiting almost an extra week to get our home loan documents. I finally got an e-mail today saying that they need one form filled out by Laura and sent back. The thing is, though, that the form is a request form for SOMETHING THEY ALREADY HAVE!!!!! Nevertheless, they need it anyway. Seriously? I HATE the FHA. "Sure, we'll insure your loan, but you have to fill out mounds of useless paperwork for NO reason!" I'm surprised I didn't have to go to the doctor and get a verification of breathing. "Well, we can't take your word that you are alive and you breathe; maybe you're a vampire! We need a verification." This is ridiculous. Whatever.
On the plus side, Sammie (that's the new dog's name) is fitting in pretty well. The cats aren't fans of him, but they'll adjust; he doesn't attack them like as my parents' dog Kita used to. Scout is adjusting; we're still trying to make sure he gets loved on first, and Sammie second, but Sammie isn't trained yet and doesn't quite understand that he's second. He's a goofball; he likes to climb on the back of the couch. He can jump onto our bed, which means we're not going to be able to have him sleep in our room unless we want dog-in-the-face. Anyway, he's doing well.
All-in-all, it's been an interesting week. Saturday evening is Derek's bachelor party at the A's game, which should be awesome. The weekend always seems so far away on Wednesday.
I leave you with this...who is cuter? You decide.
Brad
Tired + Weird Suggestive Advertising
Monday, June 1, 2009
I couldn't sleep last night at all. Yeah, I played Baseball Superstars on my iPhone until 2:15, but I still couldn't fall asleep for another hour and a half. While trying to fall asleep, I kept feeling my leg tingle, and couldn't help thinking about those stupid commercials for "Restless Leg Syndrome". Did I have Restless Leg Syndrome? What the crap is that supposed to mean? My leg was "restless" because I had eaten a sugar-packed frozen yogurt before bedtime, not because I had some disease to be cured with some magical medication that no doctor has ever heard of before. It pisses me off when companies advertise products on TV that clearly no person needs, but dumb people keep buying the stuff. Some of the stuff is useful, like Aqua Globes, Green Bags, etc., but some of it is literally useless. Who needs a Ped Egg? Hasn't anyone ever heard of pumice? Do they ever wonder why if they go get a pedicure the Vietnamese lady isn't using a Ped Egg? How about the AWESOME AUGER! Drilling holes in the ground so you don't have to bend down, except when you have to...actually put the plants in the holes. You're going to be on the ground anyway! And how hard is it to dig up dirt? If your dirt is so hard you need this metal spork to do it, you probably don't have the soil for a garden to do very well. My favorite useless item, though, is the handle that you can put wherever you want. They say you can put it in the bathtub to help you pull yourself out! Now, it's not the concept of a handle wherever you want that's the problem; it's the reality of these As Seen On TV products. I bought my dad one of those spatulas with the top piece so you can hold onto sausages and hot dogs instead of them rolling off the spatula; the only problem is that it's made with the cheapest plastic ever. This stuff is NOT high-quality merchandise. If I put a handle in my bathtub to help me get out, I'm going to be pulling on this thing with all my weight behind it. If the handle *gasp* breaks? OUCH. And I assume they probably have some darn good lawyers ready to combat the possible lawsuits. "Yes, well, did you read the fine print? It does say the handle isn't guaranteed, and that you should only use in situations where it would still be safe without the handle". Lame. Anyway, that's enough about useless gadgets; for some reason I was thinking about this crap last night while trying to sleep, and trying to decide whether I should get up and start my blog last night or not. I went with sleep.
On much more exciting news, we are bringing home our new dog this evening! He still doesn't have a name, and now our name list is even longer! We are between around ten names, and that's if something better doesn't come to mind before he has a name.
We are between the following right now:
Kirby
Remy
Jamie
Elvis
Mojo
Blackjack
Gunner
Token
Ozzy
Izzy
...or something else if we think of it (or if YOU come up with it!). That's all for now, so until next time, that's my Stream of Consciousness. Literally. It's whatever the crap I was thinking about that's interesting enough to share but not dumb enough to make me sound like a moron. Late.
Brad
On much more exciting news, we are bringing home our new dog this evening! He still doesn't have a name, and now our name list is even longer! We are between around ten names, and that's if something better doesn't come to mind before he has a name.
We are between the following right now:
Kirby
Remy
Jamie
Elvis
Mojo
Blackjack
Gunner
Token
Ozzy
Izzy
...or something else if we think of it (or if YOU come up with it!). That's all for now, so until next time, that's my Stream of Consciousness. Literally. It's whatever the crap I was thinking about that's interesting enough to share but not dumb enough to make me sound like a moron. Late.
Brad
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