Hawkeye Coffee

Iowan raised. Immigrant to Wisconsin. Likes coffee.

[hawkeyecoffee]

Why I'm Reluctantly Waiting for the Next Generation of Fitness Trackers

I'm gotten very close over the last month to purchasing a Fitbit Charge HR. It has most of what I want in a fitness tracker for someone that is casual on fitness. One, it has a display with a clock. Two, it is slim with a clasp. Three, battery life is acceptable. Four, monitors my sleep habits. There are some sticking points for me though. It has a proprietary USB connector. It isn't micro so when the connector is lost, you're screwed. My thought is the next generation will start adopting USB Type-C. It's thin, reversible, and has multiple functionality. My thought is the next generation Fitbit will also adopt a few more smartwatch functionality now that the Apple Watch is coming to market. The Apple Watch for me is a no-go due to the proprietary charging, the measly one day battery life, and way too many functions (it's not simple). The Fitbit isn't waterproof either. My dream watch would be my Timex Ironman watch, but with the fitness tracking built in. Timex does have a smartwatch, which looks designed by a third grader.

[hawkeyecoffee]

Very Able Wears

I haven't thought much about wearables until recently. I'm not a super active guy. I'll go for a run every week or so. I like to cycle when I can, but with a one year old daughter, time is limited. Tracking metrics isn't really my thing. I do like wearing a watch though. That glance-ability of the time on your wrist in your boss's office is priceless. Something you just can't get pulling your phone out of your pocket. Many wearables have been just wrist straps. Something you have to use your phone or computer to do anything. Plastic jewelry. There are smart watches, which I see as overkill. I don't need to have glance-ability for text messages, email, turn-by-turn directions. I need the time, stopwatch, timer, and date... oh and some tracking things on the side are a nice bonus. The Activité Pop (http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite-pop.html) really got me excited recently. It's a traditional hand and arm watch, but with sensors and bluetooth. It's elegant, not terribly expensive ($150), uses a normal watch battery that can last for up to 8 months (opposed to all others that go from charging every 5 days to nightly), and no one would know it's a fitness tracker. A good YouTube review is here: http://youtu.be/QJINljvwTW4 There's also the FitBit Charge HR. It has glance-able digital time and sensors. It also has a heart rate monitor which many have stated isn't very accurate. It requires charging every five days and the charging port is proprietary and not standard micro USB. At this point, I don't know what I'd like. I have my basic Timex Ironman watch that works fine for time. I think I'll wait to see how the landscape moves when the hideously designed Apple Watch comes out in April.

[hawkeyecoffee]

T-Mobile: A Cheap Date

John Legere is a showman masquerading as a CEO. The top exec at T-Mobile and former higher-up at AT&T has been turning heads over the last year for his swagger, branding T-Mobile as “The Un-Carrier.” So far, it hasn’t hurt. T-Mobile subscribers are up. They have separated phone plans and phones out of the U.S. carrier based subsidy model.

Yet, you won’t see many of Americans make the switch from Verizon or AT&T anytime soon (maybe Sprint customers… sorry Sprint). Because regardless of the modest deals on phones and great deals on data plan pricing, cell phone plans always are going to come down to coverage.

People who have had reliable service like myself with Verizon Wireless forget about the dark days of coverage. Dropped calls. Voice cutting in and out. No signal at all. When any of these happen now, I’m infuriated. I have to call my wife back. I don’t have turn-by-turn navigation of Google Maps. I don’t have Pandora cranked to 10. I’ve come to expect the best service, albeit at the highest carrier prices.

For people that haven’t had good or any cell phone service in the past, T-Mobile may be a great option depending on where you live and if you travel. If you are used to decent cell coverage though and don’t live within WiFi networks 24/7, inexpensive cell phone plans will remain that cheap date that doesn’t invite you back to her place for what you really want.

[hawkeyecoffee]

How Google+ Is Harming Google's Brand

How Google+ Is Harming Google’s Brand

Google relies on ad revenue to survive, thrive, and take moonshots. Ad money is dependent on getting clicks and the key to getting clicks is to know the people seeing those ads and making the ads personal enough to click on.

Gmail does this with searching your email for keyword and phrases and then delivers targeted ads on your Gmail page and across all of Google’s other domains. I’m OK with this. With Google+, I am happy to do this too… if I wanted to use the service. But I don’t. I don’t want to have a different social network that is with the same company as my email. Google doesn’t like this.

Google Buzz was Google’s first attempt at social networks and it couldn’t have been more than a flop. It launched with major privacy concerns. Google’s second attempt was Plus (or +). They learned from Buzz (if only briefly) privacy concerns and had a unique way to handle sharing. You now didn’t have to share your binge drinking photos, baby pictures, or your boring status updates with all your “friends” on your network. You had “circles” of contacts that you could granularly manage. If you wanted to share something with a group of friends but not other friends, family members, or co-workers, you could do that now. Facebook quickly followed suit. It changed all social networks for the better. The social network would still get the much needed information on who you are to sell to advertisers while you could feel a little more comfortable with providing that information online.

Since the launch of “Plus” or “+,” Google has been forcing the service on its users. First, through YouTube requiring commenters to be Google+ users. Then, through Google Hangouts (an updated service of Google Chat). Now, through enabling Google+ users to email (not message) any user they want. This is an opt-out function which shows their motivation is not in the users’ best interests.

[hawkeyecoffee]

Mobile Access to All of Your Baby's Photos (For Couples)

Sharing photos somehow is still a pain. It's not if you have one or two. But what if you want to share every photo you've taken with your significant other and right away? This was my delemia with having a newborn and two iPhones taking differnt pictures. Sharing an iCloud account just wouldn't work. But what about a Dropbox account? I've been a big fan of Dropbox for awhile. It's supported on all desktop platforms (Mac, PC, Linux) and mobile (iOS, Android, Blackberry?). Having such support means you can use Dropbox in a variety of ways and with a variety of people you know. I have been using Dropbox for backing up my wife's and my recent iPhone photos to Dropbox. Dropbox puts it into the cloud and my computer and automatically renames the photo files to the timestamp of the photo which is a great feature. Later, I move the files from my laptop Dropbox folder to another folder on my hard drive. I don't trust Dropbox or any cloud service to sync correctly my files longterm. Once I have moved the files to Dropbox to my separate hard drive folder, my backup program (CrashPlan) backs up my photos to the cloud. It's unidirectional. If a mistake is made, I only have myself to blame. At that point though, I can't see the photos she's taken and vice versa. Then, I came up with an idea on how to get all our photos (old and recently taken) onto both of our phones. It's an unconventional way of using a backup program, but it works and is super slick. Step 1- Download Dropbox to your mobile devices. Both devices have to be logged into the same account. Download Dropbox to your Mac/PC. Step 2- Enable Camera Upload, Use Cellular Data, and Background Uploading. Step 3- Take pictures. Dropbox will upload these automatically. Step 4- Once you are ready to take ownership of your photos, go to your Mac/PC and move the photos from the Dropbox folder "Camera Uploads" to the folder you normally keep photos in on your hard drive. Step 5- Be sure you have a backup solution for your Mac/PC. Multiple backups are always best. One locally on an external hard drive. Another in the cloud. (A very good cloud option is CrashPlan.com) Step 6- Install a separate backup program on your PC/Mac for the sole purpose of using photos with Dropbox (I used iBackup). Step 7- Select your photo folder on your PC/Mac hard drive you want backed up to Dropbox. Select the destination folder to be within Dropbox I labeled mine "Photos on Mac". Step 8- In the Photos section of Dropbox, you will see all your photos. The ones from your hard drive you are backing up to Dropbox, the new ones you have taken on your phone, and the new ones your significant other has taken on their phone. The nice thing about Dropbox is that all photos are displayed under the Photos section and they are sorted by date taken. This means you won't be going to different sections within the Dropbox mobile app regardless of photos being in different folders within Dropbox (Camera Uploads and Photos on Mac). This solved my problem of having all of our pictures on all of our devices instantaneously while still not having all our photos dependent on the cloud. Hopefully, this is useful for you too.

[hawkeyecoffee]

iPremium

Apple to great fanfare released their new iPads and Macbook Pros. Want and wallet. Let’s take a look. $399? Apple is still selling the iPad 2. iPad 2 was originally released March 11, 2011, nearly three years ago. The iPad 2 was discounted from $499 to $399 in March 2012. That’s crazy. Nearly two years later, with all the advancement in the tablet marketplace that the iPad 2 (which has the very old 30 pin connector) is still being sold for this dollar amount. It’s awesome for Apple. Cost of manufacturing the iPad 2 is a fraction now what it was three years ago. The profit margin on anyone dumb enough to buy one has to be huge. $399? (again) The new iPad Mini with Retina is being sold at $399. With the new pixel density of 326 psi and new innards, it is $70 more than the entry level iPad Mini from last year entry level. Just $100 more, you can get the new iPad Air. This newest iPad gives much more screen size at 9.7” vs. the 7.9” iPad Mini. The iPad Mini was a much easier decision to buy last year with $170 separating costs. But with the lighter iPad Air, the main reason not to shell out an extra Benjamin for a bigger screen is gone. 16 GB Jesus. 16 GB just isn’t enough for phones, tablets, and all the software, apps, photos and video that goes along with them. It just doesn’t cut it for entry level. I’m unsure why 32 GB isn’t the default entry level now. SSD cost at that size is nothing of what it was a couple of years ago. 16 GB intentionally hampers what the end user can do. I know Apple is trying to push users toward iCloud (lol). This isn’t going to work (just like iCloud). Final Thoughts With most, if not all, of Apple's software going free with free upgrades, the cost is all going to be on the hardware side. The Macbook Pros are surprisingly not so unattainable for price. Only a little bit more than the Macbook Airs, you're getting a kickass screen and heavy duty internals. With consumers wanting more mobile and less traditional, supply and demand is going to fuel the price points for iPads for the foreseeable future.

[hawkeyecoffee]

Concussed NFL?

Link to Roxanne Jones’ opinion: http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/15/opinion/jones-nfl-head-injuries/index.html?sr=sharebar_facebook I don’t believe the NFL is going away and it isn’t going away for me anytime soon. I’ve never played organized football but I grew up enjoying it. The passes, the athleticism, the strategy, the formations (which I still don’t really grasp), the highs, the lows, the hits. It is a sport that brings excitement on nearly every play because of the versatility of the game, of which other sports do not come close to on the length or intensity. I haven’t watched “League of Denial, The NFL’s Concussion Crisis” on PBS. I’m sure if I did, I would find out what I already know. The NFL knew about concussions. They tried with all the padding and equipment to protect players, it only motivated players to be bolder. Launching themselves head first through the harsh Fall air to place a hit on a co-worker like they were bighorn rams head-butting. So to battle this, they started making rule changes. Before the 2011 season, the NFL changed the kickoff line to the 35 yard line for fewer kick returns and fewer players running North-South towards each other at full speeds. And it has change the game but few are talking about this third season into this change.See: http://espn.go.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/35597/kickoff-rule-change-has-big-effect-on-nfl Some hits are more tempered. Many players are now thinking before a hit. Maybe they are thinking about fines or penalties instead of the players safety, but it is reducing hard hits. Announcers argue this is fundamentally changing the game. Probably. However, there is no way around it. I do think there is room for change. If you don’t think football can evolve from what’s been past down to us, just go and join the Tea Party. A final thought. When brain injuries became the scourge of professional boxing, mixed martial arts and the UFC filled in the void with full contact, violent fists and knees to the head to an opponent lying dormant on a mat.I absolutely hate the violence the UFC casually displays for children to see on commercials for matches. I do believe the NFL can evolve to be a relatively safe sport that offers tough athleticism that adults, children, and players can enjoy for many generations to come.

[hawkeyecoffee]

Didn't know this was an actual movie until now...

[hawkeyecoffee]

The Dilemma of File Preservation and Interoperability

Microsoft Word has been a trusted word processor ally for me for a long time. After a brief time in college with Microsoft Works (which didn't have automatic spell check at the time), all my school, professional, and personal writings have been saved in the ".doc" format. Then suddenly one day, you realize that you have been gradually using online word processors (Google Docs) more and more and have way too many files in another proprietary format. Where do you save all your files? What format do you use? Can you mass convert them or is it one by one? Are these needed files? Should you print them all out? These are questions to which worriers have no answers.

[hawkeyecoffee]

TRAVELING WITH TECH

I'm not a frequent traveler. I go on true vacations once to twice a year and travel to family within a three hour drive every couple of months. Here’s my thoughts on tech on our recent eight day trip to Florida and Atlanta... E-TICKETS This vacation, we flew to Florida. The tech started off with checking-in through the Delta app on my iPhone. After checking in, I downloaded the Passbook boarding tickets (QR codes). I've always been a little worried about e-tickets vs. printing out the ticket. If you have an unexpected battery drain before your connecting flight, your phone app or OS completely crashes (frequent with Android, rare but not unheard of with iOS), or your phone gets lost or stolen, you could be in a bind. It was super simple though. I had both mine and my wife's boarding pass on my phone and it scanned easily when checking luggage and boarding. For someone without a printer (or ink for the printer) or someone on the go, this is the future. NAVIGATION I have four turn-by-turn apps on my phone: Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze, and Scout. I shouldn't have all of these but let me explain myself. - Google Maps is easy. It's tied into my Google account with saved places and easy search integrated into the app. - Apple Maps. Can't uninstall it. It also is the only turn by turn integrated into all iOS apps. - Waze is great for "outsmarting traffic" and re-routing. - Scout has capability of saving offline maps for different regions. I didn’t use Waze or Scout at all on this trip. Waze is great if you want to make sure you don’t get into a traffic jam. It’s great for a one location drive. However, the overall need for me to search and save locations and then come back to them to navigate always led me to Google Maps. For Scout, same reasoning. In past trips, I would be worried about data coverage but this wasn’t an issue this time on Verizon. I never lost a signal. Apple Maps I tried once. It got me in the vicinity of where I wanted to go, but not to the front entrance. Also the suggestions it gave for search item didn’t yield results in the area and many times, outside of the country. It doesn’t make much sense to have turn-by-turn from current location in the US to somewhere in England. Google Maps was very consistent but not flawless. A couple of times, it wanted me to turn on small one-way streets (a problem I have around home as well). However, it was very good and easy to save places we wanted to go and come back to them on the fly. NAVIGATING GOOD PLACES I tried using Google Maps many times to find good places to eat or things to do. It tries to integrate reviews from Google Plus and Zaggat into their results, but I never found the reviews useful and sometimes found the locations were wrong. Above all, Google Maps gave too many results to choose from. Yelp was my go-to app for restaurants. I never use Yelp at home, but on the road it provided very good results for restaurants and reviews. It provided if the restaurant, bar, coffeehouse was open or closed on the map and had a good interface (whether in map or list mode). “Trip Advisor” seemed to be a better suited app for “things to do” and attractions. Reviews for these places were helpful and gave us a good sense of where to go and what to expect. Another Trip Advisor app I used was “Trip Advisor City Guides.” This was a good app for the cities we were in, but only select cities are in it. If you go to a suburb, you won’t have results. It includes an offline mode and the best part is it is more map oriented to find and click on results. The regular Trip Advisor app seemed more list based to find places. I frequently went back and forth between the apps. I hope in the future, they combine the apps into one. TECH: THE HARDWARE This was the first time I haven’t taken my laptop (currently, a 2012 13” MacBook Air) in awhile. A couple of reasons I felt safe without it this time. First, this is the first time I’ve had a tablet (an iPad Mini) on vacation. In the past, there would be undoubtedly be hotel or restaurant websites that just wouldn’t work well on mobile and my iPhone. With the iPad Mini and also the Google Chrome app that has a “request desktop website” mode, I didn’t have any issues with getting the information I needed. And it was good I had this level of tech on my vacation. One of our confirmation emails for a B&B had the wrong dates on it that I hadn’t caught a month prior when receiving it. I still had a previous email that had an email thread with the correct dates with the B&B. The iPad made it easy to have the email up while I was giving the B&B a call to confirm we had a place to stay for the night. Unfortunately, WiFi is still an area of hit or miss when on vacation. My recommendation is to have a solid cellphone provider with good coverage. I curse how much we spend on cellphones each month, but having consistent coverage with a mobile hotspot is a must these days. I have Verizon Wireless. WHAT NOT TO DO TRAVELING WITH TECH I learned this a long time ago: make sure all your apps are functioning properly before leaving and never update apps when traveling. It seems harmless enough to update an app on the road. However, if signal is lost, the app is somehow corrupted, or the app is too large to download on a cellular connection, then you have an app that won’t work and you’re stuck. I’ve had this happen on multiple trips in the past. Whether it is your podcast app that you need for flights or your maps app. Don’t update if it is working fine. The only apps I messed with were either ones I didn’t have already that I wanted to try out (didn’t harm me if they didn’t work) or apps that absolutely weren’t working already and I had to delete and re-download (didn’t harm me since they weren’t working to begin with). Nothing will piss you off more than if you screw up a functioning app for the rest of your trip. CONCLUSION While tech did distract me several times on vacation when I should just put it away and relax, it helped enormously to navigate and find places that we may have not found by ourselves. This is one of only a few major trips I’ve had where I haven’t bought a guide book such as Lonely Planet, Frommers, or Eyewitness Travel Guides (my favorite). I probably forwent this because we weren’t visiting any major historical site or going overseas. I believe I still will buy physical travel guides in the future. For this trip, having all the information you need on something that easily fits into your pocket was great. This was also the first vacation we didn’t really use our regular camera. We used our iPhones for 99% of our photos. In only some circumstances, I had wished I had optical zoom (there are attachments you can get for your iPhone for this). Once optical zoom (not digital zoom) comes in phones, I think it will be game over for point and shoot cameras. It will be interesting in seeing where tech will go in the next 10 years for traveling. Google Glass I’m sure will fit into some part of this but perhaps in a different form factor. Also, checking-in and catering to travelers with tech I’m sure will rise, partially due to the fact that travelers with tech probably will also spend more traveling. Unless you have vacation with your itinerary all planned out, tech is here for the traveling future.

[hawkeyecoffee]

FLORIDA / ATLANTA VACATION 2013 (July 6th to July 14th, 2013)

>>> Photos of the trip >>> SATURDAY Armando picked us up at 5:15 am for our flight. When we return, he, Tara, Isa, and Eva will be living in our house while their new one is being built. We got our vanilla lattes at the airport (Katie's decaf) and took our first flight leg to Detroit. The second leg, we watched “Oz The Great And Powerful” on the iPad Mini. It was an awesome movie. At baggage claim, a man named Kenny approached me. He said he came up to me because my Green Bay Packers t-shirt was the first thing he saw when he got off the plane. He said he married into a Packer family. He just returned from Wisconsin burying his wife of a year and a day. He showed me pictures of them together on Facebook and started crying. He said he was lost but said he felt so good he saw me. We got a white Nissan Sentra for a car rental and took off. We flew into West Palm Beach but were staying in Lauderdale By The Sea, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. We got a bite to eat and drink downtown and took the leisurely way down the coast on Highway 1A. After a couple of rain storms, we arrived at The Sea Lord. Very nice place on the beach... SEA LORD IS A WINNER We stayed at the Sea Lord for 6 nights in July (the offseason). It feels upscale for the price. Nice tiling everywhere. Nice furniture. Very friendly staff (I believe many are from Montenegro or other parts of Europe). Breakfast is free continental (bagels, English Muffins, juice, fruit, and coffee). Decent service. The Sea Lord does also offer lunch and dinner (not on the house), although we never tried it out. I wouldn't describe it as a full restaurant by any means. The outside pool is small but refreshing with outside seating facing the beach and ocean. The hotel is within walking distance of many of Lauderdale By The Sea's restaurants, bars, and shops. The area feels very safe and not nearly as busy as Fort Lauderdale proper. The only downside is Internet connectivity. They have free WiFi but it is in and out. Sometimes great speeds. Sometimes acts like not even connected. I believe this is more due to the structural material of the building than anything else. I sometimes had trouble with my cell connectivity in several parts of the hotel too. Not integral to a beach vacation but still expected in this day and age... Had dinner by the pier and turned in early. SUNDAY We went out for brunch (after eating our free breakfast) and decided to take it easy for part of the day. Sat by the pool. Took a trip down to downtown Fort Lauderdale and then went to the beach boardwalk. We walked out to Blue Moon Restaurant but couldn't go in because of a dress code (I was in pretty ratty clothing) so we walked back to The Village Grille downtown. I had some wine and shared a rack of ribs. MONDAY We took a water taxi along the Intercoastal Waterway, which is a very interesting construction by the Army Corps of Engineers. We got dropped off at a stop though and got stranded. No restaurants at that stop were open on Mondays and the next water taxi that was supposed to come by was out of service. All in all, we spent 90 minutes sitting around a place we didn't want to be. We finally got another ride downstream, had some lunch, walked around a little, and got back on board for the long ride upstream. TUESDAY We went to The Flamingo Gardens. It was downpouring most of the way there, but stopped soon after we got there. It's an amazing bird sanctuary. We went to a mall somewhere and ate at a chain restaurant called Lime Mexican Restaurant. It was OK. Similar to Qudoba. WEDNESDAY We headed down the coast to Miami Beach. Hung out on the beach for awhile. Got a bite to eat and then went to Lincoln Road, which is an outdoor pedestrian mall that stretches for about eight city blocks. Very cool place. Bought a collared t-shirt. THURSDAY We just took it easy for the morning and stayed by the pool. We had a couple of salads by the pool for lunch. Two mentally challenged people and their caretakers were at the hotel. The caretaker took one down to the ocean and the other in the pool. They looked so happy. Afterwards, we took a break in the hotel room watching HGTV for awhile and then went downtown for some yogurt and to buy some cigars for Katie's dad's birthday. At night, we went to Mai Kai Restaurant. It's a Polynesian restaurant with a dance and fire show. Katie went there when she was in high school with a friend. Good drinks and great performance. MAI KAI RESTAURANT The Mai Kai impresses from the very beginning with the grand build with a straw roof and entrance which is valet optional. Once inside, it will take several minutes for your eyes to adjust. It is quite dim in the restaurant, adding to the Polynesian ambiance. Once you are shown to your seats (reservations only... days in advance), you are shown the drink menu. If you want a strong rum drink, you'll get one here. The waiters and hosts seem to be divided into several classes. There are the servers with the same Hawaiian shirts on. There are servers with blue sport jackets on. And there are hosts with white suits on that sometimes made me think it was a mafia owned joint (a positive thing). The grounds and show are amazing. Could go on... FRIDAY After breakfast, we took off for West Palm Beach for our flight to Atlanta to see Andrew. Had a scare last night and in the morning. I had requested the bed and breakfast in Atlanta for Friday and Saturday by phone and email. The confirmation email I got (and didn't read) stated Saturday and Sunday. One the way to the airport, it was straightened out. Got to the airport way too early. Went to Chili's and flight got delayed a little. And got delayed on the tarmac. Got to Atlanta and went to our bed and breakfast... MEG'S BED AND BREAKFAST My wife and I spent two nights at Meg's Bed and Breakfast in Atlanta and were very impressed. The townhouse, located in the Glenwood Park neighborhood of Atlanta, is owned by Meg, Moe, and Floppy (a friendly dog). It is a spectacular three level townhouse. We stayed in the California Room on the first floor. The area consisted of a large bedroom, adjacent closet and full bathroom, a hallway closet, and a kitchenette in back. Everything in the kitchenette was free. This included an assortment of liquor, soda, and light snacks. I only had a little of the provided items because the cost of staying there was so reasonable. The common area was on the second floor and had a balcony. The breakfast are made each day by Meg and Moe. The are very fresh breakfasts ranging from omelets, fresh fruit, bacon, sausage, orange juice, coffee, etc. It is very apparent that they are very much in love and are doing this for themselves and their guests, not for the money. Very good people. The only thing guests should be aware of is each room does not have a separate lock other than a chain. This means if you leave house, you are trusting others in the house with your belongings. Not a huge issue for us but just something to be aware of. Overall, we had a great experience here and if we come back to Atlanta, this will be the only place we consider staying... We met up with Andrew and went out for dinner, drinks and conversation. SATURDAY We went with Andrew to the Jimmy Carter Museum. It wasn't nearly the size of Bill Clinton's Presidential Library but was interesting nonetheless. We spent the rest of the say seeing some of the sights of Atlanta and having good conversation and eats. SUNDAY We had a great breakfast again at the B&B and got our bags out of the house. Again, we scheduled our flight for too late in the day. Not enough time to do anything meaningful in the day but too much time to kill. We went to "Drip," a coffee shop near there. Had some coffee, did some reading. We drove around a little of downtown Atlanta (an armpit) and then headed to the airport. Had issues in the TSA checkpoint and in the terminal with overcrowding. And we went home to where Armanda, Tara, Isa and Eva would be spending the next few months with us. Katie and the baby grew so much during the vacation. It was a great connecting vacation before our new life comes to us.

[hawkeyecoffee]

Final Frontier for Phones

The next big thing in smartphones has to be wide angle camera lenses with optical zoom. I don't know if that's even an option with how how thin phones have to be, but it seems like the only tech left remaining needed (other than better battery life). Screens are already very crisp and maxing out sizes to be able to fit into your pocket. Speed and experience seem to be close to where they need to be. With social sharing and video calling becoming bigger, a superior experience for photos and video is the calling of the next generation of devices.

[hawkeyecoffee]

There's Always a Faster More Powerful Ship - A Spoiler Rant of Star Trek Into Darkness

WARNING: SPOILERS I love Star Trek. I grew up watching movies on Laserdisc for God's sake. I watched The Next Generation on VHS Monday after school (the syndication for me was at 10:35 on Sunday nights). I've never gotten to a point where I would dress up and go to a convention, but I love Star Trek. When "Star Trek" came out in 2009, I loved it. It paid homage to the original series and to the previous movies. It was the right amount of new flavor mixed with old flavor mixed with awesomeness. "Star Trek Into Darkness" continually wants to revisit the past though, until the entire cast of characters and plot are caricatures of themselves. Scotty is Extreme Scotty. Bones is Extreme Bones. Toward the finale, it is Spock this time that yells "Khaaaaaaaaaann!" I laughed, and that's not the mood you want at that moment. I'm also so tired of each Star Trek movie recently being up against a vastly superior vessel compared to the Enterprise. The Enterprise is The Federation's flag ship vessel. In this movie, it seems now to be just a broken prop. The Enterprise can't do shit, and it's sad. At least they don't dump the Warp Core to save their assess this time. Perhaps, I'm just getting old and don't like Hollywood messing with what I've liked in the past. All movies from Star Trek to Iron Man 3 to probably the upcoming Man of Steel make me leaving the theater mildly entertained but severely unsatisfied.

[hawkeyecoffee]

Review of Trouble With the Curve

Clint Eastwood hasn't been at his old man crazy like this since the Republican Convention. Complete with swearing and talking to inanimate objects, Clint Eastwood pulls off his character, aptly named "Gus," with gusto. An old man, moderately estranged from his only daughter Micky (played by the lovely Amy Adams) tries to keep his job as a talent scout for the Atlanta Braves. The movie is predictable. Justin Timberlake comes in as a possible new love interest for Amy Adams character and acts very J.T. like... bringing sexy back and such. She struggles with her dad, while her dad is up against the Braves front office doubting his baseball wisdom. Overall, it's an okay movie. If just from the perspective of laughing at old people with no consequence.

[hawkeyecoffee]

When is it time to move on to a new smartphone?

Years ago, I used to have a HTC Droid Eris. It was new an engaging for awhile. What it wasn't, and what I believe your phone has to be, is 100% rock solid reliable and fast. Reliable and fast from the standpoint apps have to work like you expect them to when you need them. Camera, reward cards, boarding passes, email. You don't have an opportunity to wait around for these things when you need them. Out of pocket, done, in pocket. When I upgraded to the iPhone 4 in 2011, it was this. I've noticed within the last six months and more recently though, it isn't so rock solid. Most native apps are OK like Passbook, email, and calendar, but the camera is taking its time to load. Also, all non-native apps are taking forever to load. The Netflix app takes about 15 seconds now. Other apps are sluggish to launch when before they were snappy. I'm not sure exactly what it is. I had a great experience initially when upgrading to iOS 6 last year. I don't know if it is the hardware just getting rundown, iOS 6 not running as smoothly anymore, app makers making their apps more intensive for the higher specs of the iPhone 5, or something else. I've reset the iPhone 4 numerous times but hasn't made a difference. Maybe that's the nature of tech. When you can't trust your go-to device, that's when to upgrade.

[hawkeyecoffee]

Tablet Traveling is Still Crap

I can't remember the first time I started to take a laptop on vacations, but it was years ago. Gone are the days when a community desktop in a hotel lobby or an Internet cafe near by was a necessity to check email, confirm flights, and to find the best places to go at night. Having a smartphone and tablet lends itself to handling those tasks easily. 97% of the time, the Internet works. But traveling often involves frustration: going to new, strange websites to discover, research, and book places. Some of the discovering and research can be handled through Trip Advisor and Kayak, but not everything. The major problems start with non-chain hotels and restaurants with websites designed in the early 2000. They are Flash intensive (although many are starting to switch away from this) and were designed purely for a desktop computer with a mouse for input. Some have been updated to include a mobile site version. But many times, it feels like more of an afterthought. On one hotel's mobile website I visited recently, the page's margins took up half the page and there was no section to make reservations. That's crap. While Windows 8 I feel is a disaster of epic proportions for Microsoft itself, I do believe it will force webmasters of rinky-dink websites to be more forward thinking with touch. Soon, touch devices will outnumber non-touch devices, and the role of websites will be reversed. Here's hoping it will be sooner rather than later for lean travelers.

[hawkeyecoffee]

Aiming High, or something

Well, the Zombie Apocalypse didn’t happen (at least yet) and the Mayan Apocalypse didn’t happen. So now what? Well, NFL playoffs but what more? The New Year brings a sense of a new beginning only to probably end a month later. A bettering of self only to end on the couch covered with potato chip crumbs. But I think I’ll kick it this year, because I don’t give a shit. I care about the bettering of myself, but not what it’ll accomplish. I have no expectations that taking online classes will further advance me at work. That running a couple of times a week will give me a six pack. That reading more will make me as smart as a person who earned a doctorate. My view for bettering myself this year: it won’t accomplish anything except keeping potato chip crumbs off my shirt.