Portraits

Cam took some pictures at Funtime recently. He sure looks grown up!

Back home.

We made a lightning fast trip back from panama city beach. 6.5hrs!

Panama City day 3

Huge waves today. Red flags kept us from swimming in the ocean but the surf was fun to watch.

Our first day at the beach started this morning about 730am. Cameron really loved watching the waves come in.

Panama City Florida!

On a whim we decided to take the kids down to Panama City Beach and stay with the Calverts during Lauren and Lindsey’s softball tournament. Kids are having a ball. I just posted pictures from their first trip to the water today over on my Picasa album.

iPhone 3G line waiting

 

My attempt at being a real Apple fanboy on Friday did not go really well. I thought I’d try my hand at line waiting for an Apple product and add another geek-feather to my hat. My wonderful wife Cindy watched the kids early Friday while I headed out early to the nearest AT&T store. I got there about 7:30am and was somewhat surprised to find myself about the 25th person in line.  Some of the people there had staked a claim in line at midnight Thursday. I chose this AT&T store because out of the 4 stores selling the new iPhone in Jackson it was the furthest away from all the hot shopping centers around Jackson, MS. and for some reason I thought it would be less crowded. Later I found out I was right when I heard about the insane crowds at some of the other stores in town but even so, our line quickly grew to about 50 or more. I waited in the early heat until about 8am when they let the first group of 12 enter the store to get their new phones. At this point we were all pretty excited, AT&T employees were handing out cold water and everyone was gibbering about the new iPhone, I thought, “Hey, this isn’t half bad.” Time passed while we talked but we knew something was wrong when 9am came and none of the first 12 had come out. A store manager came out, then ducked back inside. Then, a somewhat timid looking AT&T sales person did a quick count of people and told everyone in the line about 5 people behind me that they did not have enough stock for them but that they were more than welcome to stick around in case some one in the front of the line decided to leave. This did not go over well but even so, no one left the line. Shortly after this I decided to take a peek at www.tuaw.com on my current iPhone to see what the lines were like at other stores around the nation. Same story; hot, long lines with good natured Apple fans sticking it out to be the first to get the new iPhone3G. Then I saw the headline “Apple authentication servers pining for the Fjords.” Being an old Monty Python fan I knew this roughly translated to “Crucial Apple servers take dirt nap during world wide iPhone launch.” Needless to say, my heart sank, I knew what that meant. Sure enough, shortly after I read this headline the manager peeked his head back out of the store to announce the technical difficulties and to tell us that AT&T was told to expect “lengthy delays” in activating new iPhones. He kindly asked us to be patient and then quickly ducked back inside. Mass grumbling broke out in the line and a couple of people dropped from the line. I thought about waiting it out but then the following technical scenario unfolded in my mind: At this one store in Jackson, MS. there were about 9 AT&T employees serving approximately 12 customers at a time on 6 computers sharing one internet connection. Combine that with the thousands of other ATT and Apple stores doing the same thing across the internet and you have the recipe for one massive traffic jam. I was done. I sighed, wished those around me good luck and bowed out of my place in line. I dropped by the same store on the way home. The lady at the counter said they wound up selling out of phones about two hours after I left. They let me pay for the phone and put me on the list for the next shipment which should arrive by Tuesday or Wednesday. Sunday morning I checked my email and found that the iPhone had already shipped and I had a tracking number for it. They shipped it from Texas overnight and today it arrived. I got the call from ATT around 12:45pm that the iPhone had arrived. I took a quick drive over and picked it up. 

My first impressions:

GPS = NICE! I watched the glowing blue dot follow me on google maps on my way back to work. This is going to be VERY handy.

3G Data = Pretty darned fast. It seems about 4-5 times faster than loading pages on EDGE. However, I’ve already noted that 3G coverage is a bit spotty. I’ve heard they’re building it out all the time and should only get better.

Sound = Speaker grills over earpiece and bottom speakers make a pretty noticeable difference, seems to clearer and louder than my iPhone 1.0.

 

All in all = YAY!