We're #1

The University of Florida is the best party school in the country, again.

As a graduate of the place, I wonder how we don't win this thing every year.

In the news

Yet another edition of stuff I'm reading and enjoying.

• For some reason I like articles about crazy, indulgent parents and their spoiled children, a seemingly growing phenomenon. The Weekly Standard calls the country a "Kindergarchy." The article's long and tedious, to be frank, but I'm with this Joseph Epstein guy: What happened to just having kids and letting them grow up? Nowadays, they're pruned and pampered like showdogs, to the detriment of both children and parents.

• Going to the Olympics this summer? You might want to read up on how to use the local facilities. "Rule One: Exhaust all other possibilities." I started laughing hysterically at that sentence and didn't stop until the end of the piece. A friend of mine who's in the Marines was kind enough to send me a picture of one of these from Iraq; I'll be kind enough not to post it on the blog. Suffice to say: Nasty. And he reports that he did, in fact, have to use one.

• The National Enquirer claims to have caught former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) visiting his "mistress" and "love child" at a Los Angeles hotel. This story raises all sorts of interesting issues for us in the so-called MSM. First, is it believable? The Enquirer isn't exactly known for its truthiness. But in this example, they appear to have legitimately caught Edwards skulking around a hotel late at night where a female acquaintance of his was known to be staying, and where he was not a registered guest. Edwards had no ready explanation for his behavior and freaked out when confronted. Given all that, the second issue for us MSMers is: Should we pursue this as a news story? Edwards holds no public office and is no longer a candidate for one. I say it's a story because he is a public figure, though not an elected one. Third, how do you pursue such a story? "Illicit sex" stories are notoriously difficult to report. I doubt Edwards, his wife, or his lady friend are talking, and I doubt he'll be caught in circumstances like these ever again. So short of citing the Enquirer's work -- which most news organizations are loathe to do -- there are few sources to work with. That's why you haven't read much about it.
  

My brave quest to procure ... an iPhone

Readers will recall my regret last week over not lining up with all the other idiots outside my local Apple store on July 11 to buy an iPhone 3G the day it came out.

I'm happy to report that my quest is complete. I have acquired an iPhone.

It was an arduous, yet heroic journey. It began late on July 18, when I saw on Apple's Web site that the store at the Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax County, Va. would have iPhones in stock the next morning.

I woke up at 7:15 on July 19, thinking the store opened at 10. I got there at 8:30. A line of roughly 250 people stretched out the door. The store had been open since 8. They sold out by 9, but thought they might get another shipment. An employee finally told the crowd at about 9:30 that "if you're in line here" -- gesturing to about where I stood -- "you're probably not getting a phone today."

I left, despondent. For the next two days, Apple's Web site showed that every store in Virginia and Maryland was sold out. But I read some message boards. People were saying that the Web site wasn't correct -- that stores sometimes got shipments early in the day, after the Web site was updated. You had to call.

On Tuesday, I called the Clarenden store. They had iPhones. The line was about 20 people long. I dropped what I was doing and ran to the Metro. I missed the train to Clarenden. Heartbreak. Plan B: I took the train to Rosslyn, then got off and flagged a cab to Clarenden. I ran to the store. The line was only maybe a dozen people long. The store employees told us that they only had one model in stock: black, 16 gigabytes. Exactly what I wanted. I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

An hour-and-a-half later, I bought an iPhone.

A friend of mine who's too smart for these stupid lines and instead ordered an iPhone from an AT&T store (delivery takes about two weeks) asked me for a review today. Here's roughly what I sent him; warning, it may bore you if you're not a gadget freak:

So it goes without saying that the iPhone is the greatest advance in personal communications technology ever, and it makes my six-month-old BlackBerry (top 'o the line at the time) feel like a goddamn pager.

It's an amazing feeling to have your music, your phone and your e-mail all on one device -- and to have an Internet browser and GPS thrown in there too, and to have it all run on a fairly quick network.

The good:

• Phone clarity is fine, much better than my Razr, and reception in DC seems to be pretty good. Deep inside buildings and elevators, the signal goes out, but everywhere else I have at least a few bars, including, crucially, my basement apartment.
• Music sounds fine, as good as any iPod, even on the tinny earbuds that are provided with the phone.
• The maps function works pretty well. For a while the phone was convinced that I was in Six Flags over Georgia, near Atlanta. Don't ask me why. I instructed it to look for me in DC a few times and that problem seems to have cleared up.
• The apps I've played with so far are okay. There are some crucial apps still missing, like a good chat client (AIM for iPhone sucks, apparently) and a voice recorder that allows you to download recordings. I haven't been blown away by any that I've downloaded, so far. I do have this funny one that makes use of the accelerometer to slide a pint of beer down a bar (called iPint), but I wouldn't say that it's real useful.
• AT&T's 3G network isn't broadband, by any means, but it's reasonably fast. NYT Website loads in maybe 15, 20 seconds; Google in maybe 5 seconds, tops.
• Safari browser is okay. Size is a severe limitation; even zoomed in on Web pages, it's difficult to read on an iPhone -- you have to constantly move the page around with your finger, AND you have to be careful not to click on any links or ads while doing so.

The great:

• Size and weight is perfect. Fits in a pants pocket fine, and feels great in the hand.
• The touchscreen is simply a piece of art. I could swipe through my contacts or my music all day long.
• The e-mail client is tremendous. Takes gmail or Yahoo!, both fine e-mail clients by themselves, and scales them down without losing any functionality that I notice, except for gchat. I prefer using Yahoo! mail on the phone, in fact -- it's faster than Yahoo!'s interface (one reason I'm trying to migrate most casual e-mail to gmail).
• Texting is easier on this thing than on any other phone I've owned. And the text interface is pretty cool.
• The phone can sync with my Outlook calendar and contacts at work, and with my music at home. Calendar and contacts work great.

The surprising:

• The keyboard is smarter than I thought. I had a lot of problems typing on it when I first got it, but either I'm improving really fast or the thing is actually somehow learning to adjust to my finger pokes and produce more accurate results. It's also got a built-in, on-the-fly spellchecker that works well, once you put your trust into it. I don't think I'll ever type as fast on iPhone as I can on a BlackBerry, but it's possibly not going to be as painful as I thought.
• Battery life hasn't been a problem. I intentionally ran the battery down to zero yesterday, and to do it I had to leave music running most of the day, even when I wasn't listening to it, and needlessly surf the Web and send e-mails even when I was sitting in front of my computer. 3G was on all day long, as was wireless network detection. It finally konked out at about 6:30 p.m., and it hadn't even been charged the previous night except while I was transferring music.

The bad:

• No Flash or Java. That means no StatTracker. [A little Java applet by Yahoo! that tracks NFL stats in real-time on Sundays -- ed.] Sucks.
• No copy-and-paste is a pain for things like filling out contact info.

The really bad:

• [Here, I went on a long and profane diatribe about a little problem I'm having with my employer's IT department, the upshot being that they inexplicably won't let me connect my iPhone to the company's Exchange server and thus I have to continue to use my BlackBerry to fetch my corporate e-mail when I'm out of the office. It's a real pain.]
  

So for the time being, I'm still stuck carrying two devices around. Major bummer.

In the news

A round-up of good stuff I read today. Enjoy.

• Comeuppance: I remember reading about this douche bag a few years ago and immediately hating him. Now he's broke, and that's awesome. No surprise; first expense he ditches is child support. Jackass.

• Would you buy a house from this man? One thing I love about mafiosos is how they always complain that they're just being stereotyped because of their name and their nationality and their appearance. It's never because they're engaged in slimy, criminal-sounding activity.

• Here's a story on people who are saddled with massive amounts of consumer debt. No doubt, credit card companies are largely evil, predatory enterprises that don't give a damn about their customers' financial well being. But I'd be a lot more sympathetic for people caught in the current economic downturn if they didn't do things like buy houses they couldn't afford or whip out the plastic every time they saw a knick-knack on QVC.

Enjoy, and good night.

Blown away

My 15-second review of the latest Batman movie:

"The Dark Knight" is the best summer action movie I've ever seen, and should at least be nominated for Best Picture in next year's Academy Awards (right now, it just barely beats WALL-E on my scorecard). Heath Ledger is a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actor. Aaron Eckhart might deserve a nomination in the same category.

Also, it's nice to know that they'll never have to re-make the Joker-Batman movie again. Christopher Nolan's version is the definitive one.

Go see it, if you haven't already.

Bathe it, and bring it to me

I want an iPhone 3G. I want one so bad my teeth hurt. But I can't get one. Why? Because every single store in Virginia and Maryland is sold out of the model I want (16GB, black).

If I had known THIS was going to happen, I might've been crazy enough to do THIS last Friday:

Photo credit: ABC News

But I didn't. So now all those crazy fuckers have iPhones, while I -- who thought I was sooo smart for waiting a couple days, when I'd be able to stroll into an empty store and grab a new phone -- I'm sitting here with my thumb up my ass and a shitty, three-year-old Razr in my hand.

Don't I feel stupid.