Telling it like it is

Last time I upgraded the OS on a cellphone it was when I had a Winblows Mobile device. What a bloody nightmare. None of the apps were restored. None of the settings were restored. I spent the better part of a day sorting it all out afterwards, from ring tones, to clock preferences. It was awful, and it was the reason I never did it again. Cut to today, when I plug my Crackberry in and there's an OS update ready for it. I've not had the phone for long so apart from two customs apps and some ring tones, it's largely stock. So away we went, and I was heartened to see it backup all the data right off the bat. Anyway - long story short - the whole process took about 20 minutes and returned to me a fully working, fully customised Crackberry in exactly the same condition it was in using the old OS. I didn't need to re-customise anything - not the wallpaper, not the apps, not even the SMS alert or ring tone. Another black eye for Microsoft as far as I'm concerned. And a hu

Following on from the previous post where Microsoft discontinued Microsoft Money , I've just discovered that they're about to ruin yet another product. For years I used iView Media Pro to organise my photos. Of course they got bought out by Microsoft and the product was turned into Expression Media. Away went the free updates and in came the Microsoft extortion - to the tune of $199 for me. We had v1.0 which had all the same functionality as the old iView product but had somehow undergone a 79Mb bloat in installer size and a nearly 100% increase in memory requirements - probably all the bugs they added. Then we had v2.0 which was a mild improvement - it went back down in size to the original and most of the bugs were fixed. And now with the announcement of v3.0 - WTF? - Expression Media has been discontinued? Once again Microsoft buys out a perfectly workable piece of software, fucks it up then discontinues it. After raping everyone for $199 a piece. The solution I guess is ju

There's a sad joke here in Utah - it's called "Utah Drivers". The irony is that they don't realise they're the joke. Of the many peculiar, dangerous and lazy driving practices the people in this state adopt, the inability to park is a pet favourite of mine. Generally speaking, if there's any possible way to completely mess up the parking process, Utahns will be right there. Can't reverse park? Check. Can't park forwards? Check. Can't judge the length or width of their own car? Check. Don't understand which way to leave the front wheels when parked on a hill? Check. The picture here was taken yesterday in a local parking lot, and is typical of the problem. This rocket scientist isn't straight, has no idea of the length or width of their car and doesn't understand what the markings in the parking lot are for. As a result they've inconvenienced everyone else most likely because they just couldn't be bothered to do it properly.

My chosen route for an evening's cycling now is about 2.5 miles up a long gradual hill, followed by a long and undulating road along the threshold of the city and the mountain foothills, followed by a nice long downhill run back to the house. It's about 7 miles and takes me about 35 minutes. Nice.