Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Divorce

I was speaking to a co-worker this morning and I came up with what I think is good advice:

"Don’t let little irritations turn into big problems in your marriage, resolve them while they are little. Divorce is hell."

This comes under the heading of "Experience is knowing a lot of things you shouldn't do again." Oh yeah, that's the point of this blog, isn't it?

So many of our problems started out many years ago as little tiny irritations or annoyances, and I let them slide because "it wasn't worth the battle". Well, I shouldn't have, because as time went on they became bigger irritations, and then mutated into problems that have become insurmountable obstacles.

People ask me "when did your problems start?" And, over the last month I have come up with various answers: 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years ago. Really, after a lot of introspection, I believe that they started soon after we got married, if not before, because we both were willing to "let things slide". Both of us dislike confrontation and avoid it whenever possible.

Many times, avoiding confrontation is a Very Good Thing. But, there are times when it becomes necessary, and I am beginning to believe that facing confrontation in a marriage from the beginning is a Very Good Thing.

If I could do it over again I'd have fought the battle back then. Or at least started looking for a solution or a compromise. Individually, in the beginning, all of them could have been solved and we wouldn't be in this situation now.

It's kinda like a cancer. If you catch it soon enough it can usually be solved with some kind of treatment; minor surgery or medication or radiation. But if you ignore it long enough then amputation and/or death will result.

Divorce is hell.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

iPhone

The iPhone takes a giant step closer to being the phone I need. Not sure where this came from, it was emailed me by a colleague who knows I've been researching iPhone useability:
Developer shows working iPhone 3.0 tethering over USB


Published: 06:30 PM EST

Confirming what Apple had hinted at in its iPhone 3.0 presentation, a developer has successfully, if unintentionally, enabled data tethering on the new iPhone firmware.

Irish programmer Steve Troughton discovered the phone-as-modem feature's presence in the beta by accident earlier on Wednesday after uploading a custom Carrier Settings file to overwrite the defaults for O2, his local provider.
While understandably spotty due to its beta state -- the phone initially hard-locked on making the computer connection -- tethering has successfully given Troughton's Mac 3G data access over USB as though it were another network adapter. The feature is exposed in the iPhone's network settings as a simple slider and describes the feature as only requiring a USB connection or a Bluetooth pairing, though the latter hasn't yet been tested.

When connected, an iPhone shows a blue "Internet tethering" status bar below the clock to remind the owner that the tethering link is still active and consuming data, much as existing iPhone firmware will display a green bar to indicate an ongoing phone call.






The exposed feature, noticed by MacRumors on Wednesday, confirms remarks by senior iPhone software VP Scott Forstall that tethering is present in iPhone 3.0 itself but would depend on commercial and technical support from individual cellphone carriers before it could become a simple option for subscribers.

At this stage, it's not possible to tell which if any carriers might already be enabled for iPhone tethering, though only AT&T has set out plans for the data modem link to become an option sometime in the future. Some providers, like Rogers Wireless in Canada, already factor tethering into their plans for most smartphones and wouldn't have any pricing limitations as a result.

One Sentence

Found an interesting website; http://www.onesentence.org.   Reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway's short story "For sale: Baby shoes, Never worn."; the website showcases original one sentence short stories.  Some are quite illuminating.  A recent post I enjoyed: "Promptly after arriving at college and trying to clean up after my roommates, I phoned my mom and apologized for 18 years of not helping tidy the kitchen more."  Or, how about "My 8-year-old sister proudly declared that she knows that "WTF" means "Wow, That's Funny" and has been using it all over the internet."

Monday, March 9, 2009

Gran Torino

Went to see Gran Torino yesterday. Not at all what I expected, but an incredible movie. It was emotionally and visually riveting, not a dull moment or bad scene. The ending, while not totally unexpected, was unusual and moving.

What a story.