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I’ve spoken before about the awful flushing habits (or rather non-habits) of some of the galoots that I share office space with but now I am curious about something: what is the proper etiquette for disposing of the toilet seat protector ?

Now, I don’t use one. My ancestors felt it was ok to put their ass on the same piece of plastic as the previous person and they seemed to to survive, plus those things are shiny – how do you stop yourself falling off the seat? Anyway, a lot of people do use them and there seems to be three strategies:

1. Leave it on the seat for me to enjoy when I come in after them
2. Flush the toilet and then put the seat cover in the lavatory and leave it there for me to see
3. Flush the cover with whatever else needed to be disposed of

I’m no Emily Post but I’m pretty sure option 3 is the way to go, but I would say number 2 (if you pardon the pun that you had to know was coming) is more prevalent, and option 1 happens way more than it should (i.e more than zero).

So if you use a seat cover, what do you do with it? And why?

I’ve been an iPhone user now for 2 and some years, totally loved the experience for the most part and I certainly don’t think I could give up the “internet anywhere” that I have gotten used too. However I have been thinking about switching from the iPhone for a couple of reasons:

• AT&T sucks, on the train from New Orleans to Palm Springs, coverage was poor to zero even when others had service on other carriers
• Apple’s increasing strategy of closing down their devices to just the things that they want me to do; I just don’t like that

Now, today in the iPhone OS4.0 grand reveal we learned that the Big New Thing, multitasking, will be out soon but not for the 3G version of the iPhone that I have so this seals the deal: time for a new phone.

I’ve had my eye on Android devices for a long time, Android 2.1 sure looks pretty and the app store is growing, and no one censors what I can or cannot buy (I’d love to see Apple approve the Mini Opera app, for instance). I know a couple of people who love the Droid and today’s rumour that the HTC Incredible is coming to Verizon sure looks promising.

But then there will be a new iPhone announced in June, maybe we’ll see the long awaited “extra carrier” (I’m assuming it will be T-Mobile) which could keep me the phone I like and still ditch the carrier I don’t.

The gadget buyer in me wants me to get something now but I know whatever I do I’ll regret it in a month. But then again, if I wait until June I’ll still probably regret it in a month then, too.

Ever since Josh put me onto Misery Bear, I’ve been loving it, although to be fair it doesn’t feel good to be enjoying the poor creature’s misery. Doesn’t look like Misery Bear is going to have a good Valentine’s Day either.

Alas, the embedding doesn’t seem to work so instead I urge you to go watch it at this here link

I’d been looking forward to this event all year, had even decided that I was going to buy it almost no matter what it cost. A device that bridged the gap between smart phone and laptop, with the Apple style and design, how could one not want that? Unfortunately, after all was revealed I was left sadly wanting. Sad, because it was not the device I was hoping for. And sad because this might be the first time ever I’ve found an Apple product undesirable. Anyway, let me count the ways:

• no multitasking: I can see me sat on the sofa enjoying a movie on the awesome big screen, decide to tweet what a fantastic device it is, so have to quit the movie, launch EchoFon, tweet, restart the movie, find where I was and carry on. Oh wait, what time does the Pizza place open? Quit the movie, open Safari, find the answer, call them (on the iPhone), and back to the movie. No, guess not.
• Apple says what I can do: The closed nature of the device in hardware and software means I can only do what Apple says I can. Surf the web with a tabbed browser? No, sorry, Safari only. Want to edit your photos, well there’s probably an app for that (but not iLife apparantly) but once I’ve edited them I can’t stick a thumbdrive in and copy it to my non-standard website. Not unless someone writes an app for that (and Apple approves it).
• Still no Flash: Like it or not, Flash pwns the Internet. No Hulu for the iPad owner, either. Or Vimeo or Viddler. No Facebook other than leaving each other messages, can’t run any FB apps. Yes, HTML 5 could make Flash obselete but thats still a couple of years and by then I am sure the iPad will be a very different beast.
• Assisted GPS: The iPad has the possibility of making an awesome Electronic Flight Bag (all the charts, regs etc, flight planning tools) but with a real GPS it could have replaced my aviation GPS into one awesome EFB. But assisted GPS won’t cut it in the air so I still need a $800-$2000 piece of kit for that, and it can run some apps as well….

I don’t hate it. On the contrary, it’s sexier than Megan Fox on the beach and I bet the experience is to die for. But it doesn’t do anything for me at this price point that I can’t do on my iPhone or MacBook Pro; I don’t see that it fills the gap between the two in any way like Steve said it does. So for now I’ll pass but with iPhone OS 4.0 coming out (with multitasking??) and future revisions likely I certainly don’t expect to be iPad-less in the long term.

These guys do a good job at expressing some of my thoughts: Engadget on the iPad.

It’s a new year (in case you hadn’t noticed) and although I don’t make resolutions these days I did make some promises to myself. The first of which is to lose weight. Ever since I stopped the competitive latin dancing (and increased my burger and fry intake to make up for it) I’ve been putting on the pounds (and stones) and by the end of last year I had reached a weight that I would never have thought possible.

So, I (re) signed up for Weight Watchers online, which I had done quite well at back in 2006, at the beginning of the year and am therefore back to counting points, working out if I can have that triple baconator or not. I’ve had a good start so far but it will soon get harder to get the pounds off. But since the beginning of the year I’ve lost just over 8 lbs but I’ve a long way to go.