WATCHING:
Biutiful
Starring: Javier Bardem

What’s this movie about?

Based in Barcelona, Spain, it’s about life, love and loss – and the brutal consequences of action/inaction.

Bardem – in an incredibly understated role (even for him)- is the father of two children. He’s basically a human trafficker, poor, paying off the police…yet he still has legal custody of his children from his wife. So, she’s a mess…and a factor in the movie.

This is an art-house movie (with subtitles, warning!!!), but good on so many levels.

And weird/unexplained on so many levels. Is he the human trafficker with the heart of gold? Can he really communicate with the dead? What is the resolution to it all?

One of those movies that sticks with you, makes you wonder what this or that means. Very very good.

All movies

Earlier today, I saw a car pull up in front of the house. A guy got out, and then I heard the mail slot open and close (it’s got a wrought-iron lid).

I figured someone was giving us mis-delivered mail. We live on North Emerson, and it’s not unusual for our mail to end up at the same number on South Emerson.

I checked the slot, and in it was and envelope with a handwritten note on the front:

515 N. Emerson
I found these photos of your house while going through my mother’s things and thought you would enjoy the history.
[signed] Mike (Ames??)

In the envelope were two pictures of our house; one labeled “1950s” (our house was built in 1950), the other “1970s”. See the pics, and one I took today to compare, below:

Circa 1950s

Circa 1970s

Taken today, 11/14/2011

It was fun to see how the front has changed – and, especially, how little it has changed. We thought the garage was an add-on, and maybe it was, but it’s been around since the first decade of the house.

I like the 1970s picture – look at that little bush with pink and white petals on the garage side of the house. And look at today’s picture: That’s the genesis of our 30-foot-tall (or so) magnolia tree.

I wish the guy who delivered the pics had knocked on the door or something – I didn’t pay too much attention, but he looked to be in his 50s. He could be one of the kids in the 1950s picture. He might have enjoyed seeing what became of the place.

But a nice blast from the past from Mike (?) – thanks!

Well, it had to happen at some point: I finally got a smart phone.

A little bit of history:

• I purchased my first cell phone – a real brick – in about 1998. The account, with AT&T, is still used (for Romy’s phone).
• In 2000, I was working with a start up, and everyone had cell phones that you didn’t have to pretend wasn’t check-on luggage. The phone of choice was Motorola’s StarTAC – the original flip phone.
• That same year, I purchased my StarTAC; I think it was $149.99 for the phone, ordered online. I went with Sprint; I can’t recall why except for Verizon access sucked in the office in which I was working. I’m guessing others had Sprint and were OK with same.
• Today, I picked up my replacement to the StarTAC – an iPhone 4s. Yikes!

Why get a smart phone now?

Ah, I’m a geek, but – while I do have gadget lust, I don’t need to be the first kid on the block with the new toy.

Don’t get me wrong – when the iPhone first came out in 2007, I lusted after same and said it would change the (cellphone) world.

And I was correct.

And each iteration of the iPhone – and the succeeding parade of Android phones – made me lust all the more. I confess!

At the same time, a better phone was just not something I needed – sure, it would have been useful to have the computer in my palm, but not necessary. I’m pragmatic.

Yes, I’m an idiot (to most geeks).

But I always said: When my built-with-the-steam-locomotives phone died, I’d get a top-of-the-line smart phone. As I did with the StarTAC (at the time, best in class).

The StarTAC – after 11 years – began to die.

Time to replace.

Replacement: iPhone 4s

iPhone vs. Android

OK, I wanted to get a smart phone as a replacement to my (dumb) phone, not just another flip phone etc.

Comes down to iPhone vs. Android.

It was a struggle – especially since, as I’ve outlined above, I’m not smart-phone savvy. Sure, played with phones from friends/co-workers and so on, but basically a novice.

Let’s leave price aside: The $149.99 phone I purchased 11 years ago has cost me about $13 a year. Not the kind of return carriers are looking for. I’ve known more than a few folks who paid for the iPhone, iPhone2 etc. Nice return for carriers (had to break contract or suck up cost of old phone).

OK, price aside: I want something that just works. Before today, it was a phone that worked as a phone (and better than my land line).

Overall, the iPhone just “works.”

Why Sprint?

Ah, this is the biggest “OMG I messed up” choice.

The iPhone is new on Sprint (the iPhone 4s is the first iPhone on Sprint; Verizon had the iPhone 4 and AT&T had all other iPhones exclusively). Agreed. So good and bad have happened in past (AT&T in San Francisco a nightmare, for example); the future may hold additional surprises.

At the same time, I’ve been with Sprint for 11+ years and have, overall, been satisfied. There was a period when I could get a signal everywhere except in my home office (yeah, that’s a problem…), but that’s cleared up.

I was able to – sometimes analog – call from weird corners of the US with Sprint; I’m hoping this keeps up (I’m sure I’ll be eating some of these words in the near future).

But the hardware and software is in place; we’ll just have to take from day to day, ja?

As the world continues to mourn the death of Steve Jobs (each in one’s own way), there are more than a few posts about Jobs/Apple on the intertubes.

Over at TechCrunch, MJ Siegler had a tribute of sorts to Jobs (Siegler is an unabashed, unashamed Apple fan-boy), in which he printed out the text of the original “Think Different” commercial.

He also embedded a version of the the ad voiced by Jobs; that was poignant.

However, it was the text that caught my attention:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

First – great text, and a powerful message.

But reading this – instead of just passively listening to it – I was reminded of a similar quotation from about a century ago.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
— George Bernard Shaw

People today are not that Shaw-friendly; I’d wager Jobs was.

Not surprising, but still a sad day in TechVille.

A visionary has passed.

Yeah, the Twitters and the intertubes are ablaze with same.

Yada yada yada.

Crap – iPod, iPhone, iPad…hey, there’s something there!

I’m comfortable that innovation will continue moving forward.

(Picture from www.apple.com)

What would Don Draper do??

vs.

Amazon introduced its Android-based Kindle Fire tablet today.

Priced at $199 (a price that’s sure to drop moving forward), this tablet pretty much makes every tablet but for Apple’s iPad obsolete.

It’s now a two-horse race, with Apple and Amazon splitting the table market share and revenues between them. What the revenue/market share split is hard to say – the iPad is more expensive and highly profitable, but Amazon’s offering is subsidized by folks who will then by more stuff from Amazon.

But the bottom line is all other tablets – at least for now – are toast.

High-end users will stick with the iPad, with its more powerful specs and large number of gestures; the newbies ore the non-techies will plunk down the fewer bucks and get a slick tablet to view movies, read books, listen to music and read email.

Amazon retains its e-ink Kindle e-reader, and it’s now priced at $79. They’re going to move a ton of those, as well.

Amazon seems to have done a really good job setting up for the tablet, with all their cloud services, as well. Apple did the same. The other tablet makers? Not so much.

Both Apple and Amazon make it all about what you could do with the unit, instead of how fast the processor was and so on. Other tablet makers didn’t get this, either.

Wonder how many Kindle Fires end up under the Christmas tree this year? I’m betting Amazon’ll sell 3-5 million Fires this year. Yes, in just three months. The higher figure is if Amazon does drop the price before the holiday shopping season. (Update: I just read that the Fire won’t ship until Nov. 15th, so that’ll mean Amazon will still sell quite a few units, but closer to 1 million.)

The tablet wars – for the moment – are over.

Amazon and Apple won.

Everyone else lost.

Really.

OK, I’ve been going through router hell recently.

I replaced an old workhouse with a new one, which seemed to fix stuff.

And then it didn’t.

Just one person’s opinion:

THE GOOD – Linksys WEFW1154 Broadband Wireless Router My first home router; worked like a champ for approximately seven years. Had only 801.11B coverage, but made it through the house fine. Little bulky compared to today’s models, but cooler running. Allowed unlimited time for clients via DHCP, so was effectively a DNS server (until a box or router was turned off for whatever reason). Again, a trooper. (Note the dust – actual unit!)

THE BAD – Linksys/Cisco WRT54G Wireless Broadband Router Same footprint as the B router; this G router (which I bought on sale to keep as a backup) is about one-half to two-thirds the height of the old router. Runs much hotter, and drops so much that I just bailed on it in less than a month. Piece of crap (but faster, when it runs…credit where credit is due). Also, the old router had six ports: Internet in; four switch ports; one uplink. This one (and subsequent models) get rid of the uplink port – any one can uplink (good), but steals a port (bad). Fortunately, I have space on my supplemental switch so this is not an issue (yet….).

THE PRETTY – Linksys/Cisco E1500 Wireless Broadband Router OK, this is a nice looking unit (hey, no external antennas!), and so far has been working well, but I’m kinda soured on Cisco right now. No front lights, so I have to look in the back to see what’s going on (I’m sure that’s to save $$ somewhere, but idiotic for home use), and it seems to run hot, so I have configured with some breathing room. (Awkward!) This will run 801.11N; I only have G running now, and it’s fast. Hasn’t dropped since I put it in a couple of days ago, so we’ll see how that goes. I bought this unit because I can assign MAC to certain IPs, so I might lose a terminal window, but when an IP is refreshed on said computers, the IP stays. Again, too early to tell how that is going (I have the max lease time going – about six days – so I should start to see stuff after ~ three days). Fingers crossed – which is always a (not) good way to run a network!

Put into place by a Democratic president (Clinton) yet loved by Republicans (who keep trying to keep it around or delay the repeal of same), the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (re: homosexuality) is no more.

Good riddance.

We didn’t have blacks in the military.

And then we did, and they contributed as well as non-blacks.

We didn’t have women in the military.

And then we did, and they contributed as well as males.

With sexual orientation, it’s a little different: Most people can usually tell if you’re black (African-American or whatever) or a woman.

Sexual orientation?

Not so much.

But there were/are homosexuals in the military, and they’ve contributed as well as heterosexuals.

Now they can serve openly.

What’s the big deal? I mean, really – it’s the 21st Century.

Let’s start acting like it.

I’m not a business type – I’m more concerned with building tools and so on than getting into the weeds with marketing issues – and here is an example of something I’m just missing:

This was today’s LivingSocial.com deal.

Ten bucks for $20 of Whole Foods’ stuff.

They sold a million of these deals. (And there was a viral aspect – get three to buy same, your purchase is free …).

$10 million loss to Whole Foods, and Living Social gets a cut of each coupon (not as draconian as GroupOn, but every penny counts, especially when you’re giving a portion of a million deals!).

To me, Whole Foods is a pretty well-established brand; does it need to spend $10m+ on this kind of promotion?

That’s where the lack of MBA in me gets lost…

© CNN

As today is the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it’s only fitting that I say a few words about these awful events.

However, I will keep them brief and only for the record. I have been making a point of avoiding all coverage of this event: this is not an event to be celebrated in any fashion; it should be for those who lost in these attacks to privately mourn. I didn’t know anyone involved in that Tuesday’s events; I was just a spectator – a distant one at that – to what happened that day.

This blog was operational at that time, but I didn’t get around to posting anything about the day until four days later.

I was at home that day, working on a freelance project. As usual, I got up and – before hitting the shower – checked my email and news/tech sites.

CNN was slow to load, and when it did, it was in crisis mode: Few images, just HTML links of the hot news. The one picture was like the one to the right – a plane-shaped gash in the side of the first tower hit.

I turned on the TV and watched for 15 hours straight. I was watching live coverage when the second plane hit the other Twin Tower, and that’s when you knew we were under attack. One plane could be an accident/the result of a mechanical failure, perhaps the result of a hijacking.

But two planes, coordinated like that. This is deliberate; there may well be more…

I have a handful of take-aways from the days and years following the attacks:

• Then Mayor Rudy Giuliani of NYC did a great job at keeping things in perspective and he helped the city and the country get back to what now passes for normal.
• Both David Letterman and Jon Steward delivered powerful soliloquies when they returned to air a week or two after 9/11. Both were heartfelt, classy responses and, to me, jump-started the healing.
• Our privacy has eroded to an enormous degree as a result of legislation like the Patriot Act (and other similar policies/projects). This is not good; we need to re-examine many of these security measures.
• On a related note, the whole flying process is now seriously messed up (Senator Ted Kennedy found himself on the “Do Not Fly” list and had to run the gauntlet to get on a flight). Noted security expert Bruce Schneier refers to all the security at airports as “security kabuki,” and says the two good pieces of security to come out of 9/11 are the following: Reinforced cockpit doors, and passengers accepting that they might have to fight back (as they famously did on United Flight 93 over Pennsylvania on 9/11). The rest really doesn’t do anything.
• Taking out the Taliban in Afghanistan (with that government’s sanction): Good.
• Taking our eye off the ball in Afghanistan to engage Saddam Hussein in Iraq: Disastrous in just about every way possible. This was reinforced by this year’s Arab Spring, when many countries’ people took to the street to toss out (or try to do so) dictators without any real outside help (Libya is a little more complicated).
• While 9/11 did briefly unite America, it also lead to a completely unacceptable level of hatred and prejudice against Muslims in the US. From claims that Sharia law is creeping into our justice system through the vehement push-back on the so-called Ground Zero Mosque in NYC to the Murfreesboro, TN, mosque lawsuits (and vandalism), these actions are a putrid stain on our democracy, our vaunted melting pot heritage.