Hmm.

I ask second job or replacement job?

“Oh, replacement job!”

Ruh roh.

He says he has a second interview at a well established Oregon company (he told me which one and I know it.) If he gets this job, is the hotel gonna offer me his? Cuz I DON’T want it. No way do I want to make bricks with no straw to make the fucking owner and his WASP douchebag VP rich full time.

I’m only using this job to extend my UI bennies, if I was gonna work at a hotel it would not be this one at this location. As much as I hate corporations their bureaucratic mediocrity is often preferable to having the petty tyrant next door. Plus the bennies often, well, benefit from economies of scale.

Of course when I ask I’ll say I don’t have the experience to do the job well, which is also true. I wonder if turning down a promotion for that reason is kosher with UI. I hope so.

1. Why aren’t the fielders wearing hats?

It’s sunny out there and these girls are running, okay, mostly standing around with their eyes unshaded and their heads, have long hair mostly. Still, sun in eyes makes for problems. The pitchers are squinting like hell. Yes long hair typically doesn’t fit well under ballcaps but chick golfers tend to wear visors, why not softball players?

2. What’s with the batting helmets?

They have chinstraps and face grills. Are these girls linebackers or softballers? College baseball batting helmets may have chinstraps (I really don’t know) but I don’t think they have face protection. Are widdle girls afwaid? How often do underhand pitches from a level surface result in head shots, let alone blows to the face? MLB batters are pretty good at turning away from inbound pitches, maybe chicks can’t tell the big, yellow ball’s trajectory.

3. Why all the high fives?

It’s worse than the damned NBA, where stumbling gets a round of daps. This game doesn’t seem so bad but I’ve seen outfielders run to the bases for group hugs between plays. Man up, girls, this is a sport you’re playing!

4. They really do run like girls.
I wonder what a good OBP is for a chick. Because they throw like girls, too.

Breakfast Sloppy Joe, originally uploaded by JW Doom.

Because I’m gonna die anyway.

“What is clear is that AT&T’s role will always be that of parsimonious gatekeeper, dictating to its customers how much data they can have and how much they’ll pay for it. It is precisely the role the company hoped to avoid, the reason that carriers long refused to give phone manufacturers and software developers the kind of influence that Apple now wields.”

I’ve always felt kinda sorry for AT&T. They’ve been my only cell carrier and I’ve never had the troubles with them that other people have reported. Since I got my iPhone (I’m still on a first gen) I’ve always blamed Apple for putting a shitty phone into the world’s best pocket computer. Even as an Apple loyalist (not fanboy), I believe all problems here can all be placed squarely on the turtlenecked d-bag in the big chair at Cupertino.

Exclusivity:
As Wired says repeatedly, no carrier could have handled iPhone users. If Apple had gone to Verizon, vfail would be the hashtag instead of attfail. Letting iPhone users into your network is like throwing a Hell’s Angels party in a three bed, two bath ranch house. The toilets are going to overflow, the beds are getting broken, there will be holes in the walls. Only spreading the impact across all carriers would have prevented data problems. But then his Jobsness couldn’t have made the carriers come crawling to him.

Call Quality
Again, Wired: “[AT&T executives] say — and Apple sources confirm — that the software running the iPhone’s main radio, known as the baseband, was full of bugs and contributed to the much-decried dropped calls. What’s more, Apple had chosen to source the radio from Infineon, whose hardware was used widely in Europe but rarely in the US, where cell towers are placed farther apart and reception is therefore less forgiving.”

In my old apartment if I took a call without the headphones, whoever I was talking to couldn’t hear me. Now Apple admits they miscalculated the bars graph (which is probably all misdirection bullshit, but still…). AT&T’s definitely involved in this one and honestly I’ve always heard complaints of AT&T’s network, usually relating to dead spots. It’s just not a problem I’ve experienced a lot.

Phone Features
The battery fucking sucks! The camera is great in daylight and downgrades rapidly from there and there’s no flash (until the 4). My boy A/C just wasn’t interested in an iPhone prior to the 4 because of the peripheral equipment. Maybe the constant flashing of my iPhone (if you ever want to see how quick I haul it out, start a phrase with “I wonder” near me and you’ll probably see) influenced his decision to get a smartphone, but it was something else until a few weeks ago. Was AT&T involved in hardware decisions? Doubt it.

I just don’t see AT&T as the bad guy in all this. Even killing unlimited data plans was a reasonable move (although they have set the bar kinda low, even restricted to EDGE I consistently go over the first tier, glad I’m grandfathered) .

The article says AT&T pretty well knew what was about to happen to them. So why did they put their head in Apple’s vice? Well, remember the iPod? Kind of a big deal, right? Ford didn’t invent the automobile and Jobs didn’t invent the MP3 player, but did you own any pre-iPod MP3 players? Probably not, but I did. Two of them. A 15gb hard drive monster that was a piece of shit and a 256k flash device that was a letdown after my 15gb died. Then the iPod comes along and changes the game. “Revolutionize” is not too strong a word.

So That Guy says he’s making a cell phone. You run a cell phone company, what do your shareholders want you to do? To bend over for That Guy, so that’s what you do. AT&T is looking at hitting $50 billion in network upgrades this year (according to Wired) and all they get for it is venom from iPhone users who think hype is a food group.

In closing let’s consider this, from NY Times:
“This year, Root Wireless ran 4.7 million tests on smartphones for each of the four major carriers, spread across seven metropolitan areas: Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles/Orange County, New York, Seattle/Tacoma, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington. In every market, AT&T had faster average download speeds and had signal strength of 75 percent or better more frequently than did Verizon. (A Verizon spokesman declined to comment about these test results or those of Global Wireless Solutions.)

I asked Ron Dicklin, chief technology officer at Root Wireless, how these results, showing AT&T as the clear leader, could be reconciled with the negative appraisal of Consumer Reports’ respondents. He explained that his company’s tests of AT&T’s data network were done with handsets other than the iPhone, which does not allow non-Apple programs like his to run in the background. “

Not really something to celebrate, but better than nothing.

1. If you interfere with an arrest, you should expect to get fucked up.

2. This cop is terrible at his job. It takes him over two minutes to get a moderately sized woman under control. He can’t get an arm bar, the perp easily eludes his grasp several times. Even if she was on meth or something, the punch in question is weak. This guy clearly isn’t a Krav Maga student. Maybe his squad should pass the hat to cover his initiation.

I’m not normally a police supporter, I have significant problems with the theory and practice of civil police in a democracy. However, this time, the cop was right. No doubt. He’s just not good at it.

The move out inspection was damn near white glove. I’m pretty sure it was just setting me up to get soaked for the cleaning company they hire. But if they keep my entire deposit, that’s maybe two months difference between what I was paying in rent and what I’d pay anywhere else in that neighborhood, or anywhere in the city center. So it would be shitty, but not as shitty as it might have been. Not as shitty as it would be coming from a professionally-run building.

Then I went to the gym, where I got a call to an interview tomorrow. A crappy job that pays utter shit, but maybe that’ll narrow the pool so I have a chance at this one.

Now, after several Zyrtecs, a nap and wondering if my sneakers are ever going to be not green again, I say:

Fuck lawns, yo.

The song that broke them to American rock radio was “Leader of Men”, a respectable uptempo rocker. It doesn’t redeem their ouvre, but it’s a good song on its own.

I just finished lunch, which was built around a chicken thigh with no sauce, no gravy. A baked chicken thigh, at that. And it was amazing. Since you’ve read the title, you know why. Brining.

A brine is a salty solution. Here’s mine: 16 parts water, 3/4 part salt, 2/3 part sugar. The recipe calls for cups, I tried to do it with smaller measurements but it was a pain in the ass. So this last time I just made one full batch that I’ll portion out bit by bit.

The resulting thigh is pretty salty, I’ll warn you (which makes the original recipe’s addition of 3/4 part soy sauce mind boggling). I think it’s intended to be used with a whole chicken. So if you try it, maybe reduce the salt content even further.

But why, you ask? What’s the point? Ever had a piece of chicken so moist and tender you couldn’t quite convince yourself it was actually cooked all the way? Yeah, that’s what I just ate (30 minutes at 350 degrees, then left in the oven with the heat off while stuffing and veggies were prepared. It was deffo cooked).

In the middle of lunch I thought “I need to tweet this”, but I’m pretty sure I have already. So instead of laboring the point, I’m sharing here, so I can hopefully remember that I have and not keep bothering my audience with it.

Speaking of which, if you tend to eat holiday turkeys that seem awful sawdust-y, point whoever does your gobblers here.