This was one of the first movie parodies that MTV put together, it's in the spirit of "Se7en" [Seven].

Apple released an informative 20 minute video (make sure you have a good connection, it's 175MB) of the features of the new iPhone. All I can say is that I want one even more now! It looks like no device you've ever seen before, and it's apparent that Apple has put a ton of research into the user interface. The video covers the phone, ipod, and most of the internet features.

It even dipped into a bit of the settings screens that have not been public until today.

I'm just worried that getting one on launch day is going to be more difficult than Apple or AT&T realize. I think I'm going to hire a kid to stand in line for me.

Yeah, I know... I have a problem. ;)

So if you're away from your music, or just looking for a change... check out Pandora. It's awesome, you can start by choosing a song, artist, or genre, and they will play songs based on the type of music you like. I created a 'station' called "Green Day Radio". Since I'm such a huge Green Day fan, it's fun to hear other artists (as well as Green Day) that have similar sounds.  If you're not digging the track they are playing, skip to the next. Very cool, and very good sound quality considering it's all streaming over the internet through your browser.

You can see some of the other stations I created below: U2 Radio, Barenaked Ladies Radio, The Crystal Method Radio, Galvanize (Chemical Brothers) Radio, and of course the Green Day one. Very cool site. It's kind of creepy how good of a job they do of matching other artists to the stuff you like.

I just checked and this works in Safari! With an unlimited data plan, it will be interesting to see how this is going to work on the iPhone.

I just downloaded the (free) Opera Mini ver. 4.0 Beta. Just direct your mobile device to http://opera.mini.com/beta/

There are various options to get the download on to your device. Once you've installed it, it will go through, run some tests and determine how your mobile device accesses the Internet. I really think Opera has figured out the mobile stuff better than anyone else, we have yet to see how it will work on the iPhone, but Opera's implementation is similar from what I've seen from iPhone's Safari so far.

You can enter an address and a full version of the page is pulled down to your mobile device, you can then move a small box around to areas you'd like to zoom in on. You can click links, and use most sites just as you would from your desktop. I've already noticed that YouTube does not work in the Opera Mini, but even if it did, I can't imagine wanting to use it, or wait for video to download.

It will let you bookmark your favorite sites, so you don't have to type them in every time. Another thing that is nice is that it keeps a history of the sites you have visited, so if you didn't bookmark it, and you have not browsed a bunch, you should be able to quickly find other sites you've visited.

When I initially set mine up, I got a message about a failure to connect. I closed the application and had to launch it a few more times before it finally got through it's setup, but hey, it's a BETA right?

For the die hard RSS person, Opera Mini will even handle RSS feeds. It's a very nice browser, and I'd bet you that it's better than anything that is on your mobile device today. Check it out.

I thought that this was hilarious:

But seriously, Apple announced the actual battery statistics for the iPhone.

Now I realize that these are probably the BEST circumstances for battery life, like if you were in a vacuum in space? But, it's encouraging to see that it will have a decent amount of battery life.

Standby time 250 hours.
Audio play back 24 hours.
Talk time of 8 hours.
Video play back of 7 hours.
Internet usage of 6 hours.

The screen is also going to be comprised of some form of glass surface, rather than plastic. This will hopefully be a good thing to prevent scratching and provide better clarity.

AT&T Stores will be closing @ 4:30 PM until 6:00 PM on the 29th of this month to prepare for the rush of people going to purchase a phone. They plan to stay open till very late in the evening to support the demand. We'll just hope that they have enough phones to go around.

I'm planning to go to the store around 3:00 ish... if there is a HUGE line, I'll be leaving, if not, I'll probably wait the three hours.

For a few years prior to this post, I had played in a poker league called The Northwest Poker League. It was a great league when it first started. People respected the game, generally played well, and were enjoyable to be around. As word spread like wildfire there was this poker league you could play in that was free, the league began to fracture. You'd get the drunk person (as most venues were in pubs or taverns) that would sit down at the table and play terribly, and be belligerent and irritating.

The Northwest Poker League accrued around 6000 players, and decided there name "Northwest Poker League" was too short minded, they needed to be able to expand. So they renamed themselves "The Great American Poker Tour". Kind of a stupid name, but from that point on things just got worse. Their business model relied on bringing players into 'venues' (bars, restaurants, night clubs, etc.) so they would purchase food and drinks. I always would buy a drink, or a meal, or something to support the league, but most people did not. It's a tough business model, they're offering a free service with very high operating costs. Generally each venue had 2 poker tables, 2 dealers, and an investment of 5-6 to pay those dealers.  I know some venues paid upwards of $250 a night to have the league operate from their location.

The Great American Poker Tour (GAPT) began to experience a mass exodus of sponsors. Venues could not justify the expense. And despite the weekly emails from the founders BEGGING people to buy food and drinks, the league went from 12 or so venues to 5 ish. I finally got fed up with seeing the familiar faces of people that would not pay anything to play. I stopped going. Hence no real poker posts on the blog for quite a while.

Well, there's a new league in town and they are doing SEVERAL things I tried to get the GAPT league to do. Here's a breakdown of how the new National Poker Challenge league (NPCPoker) is doing that I think is GREAT for the game, and for the league.

• NPC Poker has rented a physical place and it's a dedicated poker room. (NO GAMBLING is going on here, and it's all legal) This solves the problem of being reliant on a retail establishment to cover the expense of having the league operate out of it.
• NPC Poker is NON SMOKING. This is so huge, most of the venues I played from previously allowed smoking. That was another reason I quit playing. Even with the retail non-smoking bill that's coming up for vote, it's still nice to be able to go home smelling like I did when I arrived.
• NPC Poker limits the amount of games you can play for one of their leagues. Thus a player can only play 10 games per month and are not able to skew their stats by playing more frequently. Unlike the GAPT where players can play every night of the month (almost) just showing up and signing in, these players have an edge on someone who plays a few times per week, no matter how crappy the play.
• NPC Poker has multiple leagues and ways to play.
• NPC Poker has other games than just Hold' Em.
• NPC Poker allows you to schedule your games weeks in advance, and you can show up minutes before the game starts. GAPT required you to show up almost 45 minutes prior to the game starting, (in order to get you to buy food and drinks supposedly). This was time generally sitting in the smoky environment just 'waiting'.
• NPC Poker charges a monthly fee to play. Looking at their fee schedule it may seem expensive, but if you play well, and finish high, there is a lot of money to be won. If people feel like they have something at stake, they're generally going to play tighter, and potentially give off more tells about their game.
• NPC Poker encourages people to respect the game and play well

So I've played two games so far, finishing 3, and 1st respectively. It's been refreshing because I've actually been able to bluff, steal pots, and play good poker. Unlike the GAPT, where people were just looking to suck out on you, the people at NPC have something at stake and something to strive towards.

After talking with the four guys that started this league, I've come to find out they are all ex-airline pilots from Northwest Airlines. They pretty much got dropped from NW after the whole 9/11 thing, and they've been looking for their calling. This seems to be it. NPC Poker started in Nashville, TN. The Bloom brothers (the owners) have bought a franchise right from the NPC parent organization in Nashville. You'll soon see many other cities coming in the future.

I read a book called "Poker as Life: 101 Lessons from the World's Greatest Game"; on page one it says, "If there is nothing at stake, there is no point." Amen.

Today, my machine seemed slow. Not the normal slow, but excessively slow. Our IT department does a good job at what they do, however, I think there's a lot of overhead in some of the applications they've chosen to make their lives easier. I understand, it's a tradeoff between keeping our systems functioning, and them having time to deal with more critical business issues.

It just seems ridiculous that opening IE takes so long, or typing in Visual studio has laggy moments. I opened up my Task Manager, and went right to the Processes tab. "AeXRSAgt.exe" sucking up 168MB of precious RAM. What the hell is that? For a moment, I'm worried. Did I get some spy-ware on here somehow? Do I have a virus.... hmm.

A quick trip to http://www.processlibrary.com/ and type the process name into their search. It tells me they have not reviewed the security implications of this process, however, it's author is Altiris, Inc. That's our backup software. It runs all the time continually backing up my  laptop. It has saved me once or twice, but I start to ask the question, "Is the data loss I could experience worth taking the risk of not having this software?" My source code is all backed up in Subversion, so what am I really protecting?

The really important stuff in My Documents is project documentation, and once it's been client approved, it's stored on an extranet.

I understand why they want to have this software, I just wish I could work without it sucking up all my resources. I just looked again, and it's calmed down, but between that, virus, and other IT mandated software, I'm guessing I give up at least a quarter of my available RAM at any given time.

Sigh.

I'm very intrigued about the impending iPhone release from Apple. I think they've gotten it right, it's being dubbed as a phone on your music player. Most people with music capabilities on their current phones can be described as a music player on their phone. One device that does almost everything typically has been a huge failure, but I think Apple has a lot going for them.

Here are some of the reasons I'm interested, and possibly will get an iPhone close to it's release (if possible without standing in line, etc. etc.).

• iPod - Movies and Music.

Sure, it's only 8GB, blah blah blah. I've only got about 15 GB on my current 30GB iPod. I'm ok with keeping my favorite music, photos, and movies on the device. It's not like I'll be crossing the Sahara with this thing. One very nice feature I've read about is letterboxed movies, if you prefer to see them fill the screen, just double tap the screen and the iPhone will resample the video on the fly. Pretty slick.

• User Interface and Design

I love the fact there there are a minimal amount of buttons. The UI can adapt to almost any situation due to the touch screen interface that Apple has developed. The designers they have really do a great job in bringing revolutionary products and interfaces to the market.

• Email, Web, and Voicemail

Sure, it's NOT 3G, but AT & T is promising to beef up their Edge network (hmm can't seem to find the supporting link for this at the current moment) to support faster data transfer times. A full version of Safari on the phone will be sweet. And now with Safari support for Windows, we have a great sandbox to develop AJAX and other web technologies targeted for the iPhone. (And we can test it out on our Windows dev boxes too...) Shiny.

The voicemail is a first as well. Seven voicemails? Skip to the sixth without having to listen to the other five!

Recently I've setup all my email to go through Gmail. I'm very hopeful that Gmail will develop some sort of push technology to address instant email and synching for the iPhone and other mobile device users.... it's got to be coming... right?

• Technology

I'm a total geek. Just the small touches they've added to this phone, like the fact that when you talk on it, the screen turns off to save battery life, or that when you tilt it to landscape it in turn adjusts the screen to that orientation is wonderful. I recall way back in the day having a Casiopeia running Windows CE and to adjust the screen sizes and orientations, required a 3rd party software package I had to pay for!

Now I'm really not an Apple FanBoy, I swear. It took me a long time just to get an iPod. There are several things I'm not excited about in this phone, or things that could be serious deal breakers for me.

• No support for 3G, what the hell? We're on the crappy AT & T Edge network that they are supposedly revamping.
• The soft keyboard is kind of scary from what I've heard so far. If I can't type an email, or web addresses, what's the point? I'll be trying this out in the store for sure before I drop that much cash.
• The hype. Can you imagine how hard it's going to be to get one of these on June 29, @ 6 PM? Let me just say this, there is no way I'm camping out for this thing. I might consider going a few hours early to 'wait'... but I'm not a huge stand in line, or crowd kind of person. So is this going to be like a 6 month Xbox wait?
• No telenav, or GPS integration?
• The price. Let's face it, very expensive. But I supposed if you have a $300 ipod, and a $150 cell phone, plus something to browse the web or do email, or whatever, you're getting close to their price point. And early adopters just pay to be in the game at the beginning.

So with that all said, I'll be there at some point, hands on, considering a purchase. If the rumors of 3-4 million units at launch are true, it should not be too bad. I kind of doubt that there will be that many... I can see Apple wanting to create a huge demand by introducing a small amount of units into the market.

Discuss, tell me what you're impressions are.

Let me start off by saying I could blog for pages about all the things that went wrong. I could complain incessantly about how things should have gone better and how stupid some of the issues we experienced were. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to say we can see the light.

Kitchen
The kitchen appliances are in working and looking very well. The new Corian countertops are in, and also look and are functioning well. There are a few things left to do. I'm going to have to pull the appliances and baseboard up and install the new flooring. Everyone that has done laminate flooring is a breeze, so I'll be doing that. We're also waiting for the cabinet doors to arrive.

Master Bath
The new vinyl flooring is in. It looks great. I've also installed the door trim and baseboards. We just need to putty up the nail holes, paint the baseboards, do some wall touch ups, and then wait for the new cabinet doors in there.

Katherine's Bath
This room's vinyl is installed, and baseboards and trim has been installed as well. Some putty and paint, and we're done in here.

Downstairs Bath
The vinyl is down, that's about it. This was one of the areas that sustained water damage. (Long story, and not my fault.... I guess there was something on 20/20 about Home Depot contractors... but I'm not gonna go there). This room needs all trim installed, and about 4 sq. ft. of drywall installed, taped, and blended into existing. We'll have to repaint in here as well.

Laundry Room
The new appliances arrived this time, without dents! Wooooooo :) It's amazing what makes me happy about things now. We got the new front loading washer and dryer, they will utilize 67% less water and electricity! The new units are set in the corner in a stacked configuration. Using the stacked config allows us to add almost 6' of counter space. This counter will be so helpful for doing laundry and wrapping gifts, etc. Under the cabinet, I'm building a 50" cabinet with three doors. Inside one door will be our garbage and shredder, for destroying all the stupid credit card applications we get. The very left of the cabinet will have an open section that a laundry cart will slide in and out of to hold dirty laundry. The ceiling needs painting and spackle work, again from the water damage. The trim is all installed, caulked, and painted!

Garage
This area was never even part of the remodel plans, but due to the water emergency we had to open up the ceiling. This area needs new insulation around the furnace ducting, new insulation in the ceiling, and new drywall in one major section. Once I get my claim serviced, I'll be more likely to get aggressive in here.

So summing up, the really major stuff is done. I think we can knock out a lot of this 'punch' list this weekend. I'll be starting on building the custom cabinet tonight, and hopefully installing it by the end of the weekend.

If you're thinking of updating/remodeling your house, post here, I'm happy to answer questions/share experiences.

I've been away. Too busy. Remodel has taken a lot of time. Kids even more. I'll try to post more often, I'm hacking around with some fun AJAX stuff, so maybe some posts about that soon.