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So the big convention speeches are done and I didn’t see one of them, but I did read the news, the blogs, the tweets and I must say that I am astounded at how polarised this country is. It seems like you are either crazy for Obama and think everyone else is plain stupid, or crazy for McCain and think everyone else is plain stupid. And if you think both candidates are equally poor then you are just even more stupid than the other two groups. Whoever wins, how can any good thing come out of this situation? Half the population is going to be permanently unhappy – and neither candidate gives a hoot.

I don’t know how it is here, but in the UK when a new party takes power they do ok for a while but the longer they stay, the bigger the eventual backlash – think Thatcher and Blair, both despised by everyone by the time they left office, though much cheered when they started. To me, this is just how it is.

So, let’s say we get 8 years of Obama. It’s guaranteed that he’ll make lots of unpopular decisions during that time [*] so will there be big demonstrations outside the DNC when he becomes unpopular? Or is that strictly a democratic party supporter thing ? I suppose it doesn’t help that all the unemployed hippies who have time for protest are democrats? 🙂

Just some thoughts on this Thursday night. Ok, next time I’ll go back to the puppet theatre!

[*] though given his speeches so far it may be that he isn’t able to make any decisions of any kind, just talk about making them [**]
[**] I’m a liberal, no doubt about that. And when Obama first came on to the scene I thought how great this fresh air was. But, months on, I am still waiting for more than that, and the longer I wait the more sour I become. [***]
[***] Yes, I might end up voting for Nader! [****]
[****] There are no more footnotes.

I’m struggling to come up with a good plan for my music listening during the day at work. Right now:
I listen to a lot of music on the PC using iTunes which contains all the free CDs I get from Sony; MP3s I have bought from Amazon; free music from Starbucks (tied to my iTunes account). Listening off the PC is quite convenient and isn’t using up charge off any portable device.

All of my music, however, is on my iPod, significantly more than is on the PC and contains all of the above, every CD I own, and a lot of music that I have purchased from iTunes. Over the last few months I’ve found I listen almost exclusively to the PC rather than the iPod and when I think of something I want to hear on the iPod I find that it’s often uncharged.

And now I have the iPhone which currently has no music on it. It seems silly to me to have two music playing devices taking up space and weight in my bag but 26GB of music into an 8GB iPhone obviously does not go. And yet clearly I’m only listening to the same few MBs of music so it should be possible to come up with a good set for the iPhone and leave the iPod at home.

Making this more difficult is that the iPod syncs with the Mac Mini at home, and has all the music on it. The iPhone syncs with my Macbook Pro in the apartment which has no music on it at all. So to get things working is going to require a lot of copying, syncing, authorising which just seems like a lot of work.

Nothing is ever simple.

So WordPress released a plugin for the iPhone that looks pretty neat. If I could only type well on this thing I’d say it works great!

I must admit I am digging the phone, it almost makes calling people fun!

Ever since working in New York, my daily carry has been a DJ Bag from Manhattan Portage. I used to have one of only two purple ones in existence but some scumbag stole it one New Year’s Eve at San Diego airport (along with my 60GB iPod, passport and cherished stuffed bear). I decided I couldn’t be without so now I am the owner of a grey(ish) one that I try to protect.

Last few days though it has been feeling darned heavy to lug about. So I just took a look inside….

• iPhone
• Anywhere Map ATC (aviation/street GPS)
• SPOT Messenger (GPS tracking/rescue device)
• Flip camera
• Targus mount for Flip camera
• Regular iPod 30Gb
• Bunch of thumb drives, 1 – 4GB

Surely this is too much for one person to be carrying around?? The SPOT Messenger is moving to my flight bag but the rest I kinda need hanging around. Hmmm… and I can’t even think about what would happen if this bag got stolen.

Regular readers of these ramblings will remember all the to and fro-ing over the last few months, will I get an iPhone, no I won’t, yes I will, Apple sucks, I want to give them a kidney.

Most of the reason for not getting one so far has been the effort required, getting in line early in the morning – not much worth doing that for. But today I read on one of the Apple sites that AT&T was now offering the iPhone for sale for business orders. I checked out the website and it invited me to enter my business email address to see if I was entitled to any discounts. I did – I was!

Turns out my employer has an employee discount scheme with AT&T and that was enough to get me in! From there I could add the iPhone to my shopping basket and, better still, the plans were discounted by about 15% so I ended up with the second cheapest plan for the same rate as the cheapest one.

The order went through and I was told 7-10 days. So imagine my surprise when tonight I got an email saying it had shipped already! Will arrive Monday or Tuesday, I guess.

Since I am a little late getting to the party I shall try to resist all the iPhone posts that have come before me.

I am rapidly falling apart.

• Got a rash on my feet and ankles that has been there for maybe 9 months, keeps going away and coming back. Now it’s starting to look nastier
• Got at least two teeth that have toothache, only mild right now but I feel total dental meltdown coming on
• Half my fingernails are turning white, the skin underneath is growing out, pushing the nail up slightly.

Obviously last year’s MRSA has nothing to do with item 2 but I wonder about the other two. Anyway, next couple of weeks will see a few medical appointments. I also have to see an FAA medical doctor to renew my aviation medical.

Good show tonight, only low-light, for me, was the Jive which was very under-powered but I understand these guys and girls are verrrry tired!

Anyway, my wish for the top 4:

1. Katee
2. Joshua
3. Courtney
4. Twitch

but my prediction….

1. Joshua
2. Katee
3. Twitch
4. Courtney

Great show!

Here in San Diego, Fox used to broadcast on channel 6, and the CW on channel 5. But thanks to some corporate shenanigans, they’ve swapped channel numbers. No big deal, except on Dish satellite TV, CW is on 6 and Fox is on 69, in both standard definition and high definition.

Reprogramming my DVR for this week’s So You Think You Can Dance final I was surprised to see that SYTYCD was not available in HD, only in SD. A little further investigation and, sure enough, the program guide lists America’s Top Model will be showing on the HD Fox instead of SYTYCD. Huh? So I emailed Dish about it and got the following response:

Thank you for your email. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and confusion caused by this issue. Unfortunately, CW is not available in HD which will be showing the programming. FOX is airing CW’s normal programming and CW is airing FOX’s. Because of the swap there have been programming changes. CW will be showing standard definition programming that used to air on FOX as HD

Ok, so that cleared that up!

Well I pretty much got it right. I’m very excited that Courtney made it through instead of Chelsea and I really didn’t expect Mark to out-vote Twitch. Going to be a great top 4: Katee and Joshua for final 2, I’d say……

Round 1 to: Mark and Joshua, Katee and Chelsea.

Wow, Mark and Courtney were on fire in their jazz number – Twitch probably has the popular vote to carry him through but he should be worried. I feel bad for Courtney, great dancer, awesome tonight, but I don’t see her having the support that Katee or Chelsea have.

Round 2 to: Joshua and Mark, Katee and Courtney

Based solely on tonight, I think it should be Joshua, Mark, Katee and Courtney (Chelsea loses solely on her lame ballroom solos) but I think Twitch and Chelsea will make it instead. We’ll see!