Recently in Personal Category

I'm on my flight back from vising my family in Fort Lauderdale. I bought Plouffe's book The Audacity to Win a few weeks ago, and I thought I'd get a chance to read it on the plane, but I can't read about how awesomely run the campaign was without contrasting it to how much of a mess the administration is.

I was an early supporter of Obama, mostly by elimination. I didn't think Hillary Clinton could win. I felt the right wing had spent decades campaigning against her, and there just wasn't a way for her to overcome that. Edwards didn't strike me as sincere, and I'm still a little bitter over Kerry's loss. I picked Obama because I thought he could win. I knew he wasn't as liberal as I wanted, but I thought that given 8 years of really inspirational leadership from a man like Obama, the country would come around, and "liberal" wouldn't be a dirty word anymore.

I stopped giving Obama money after his vote for FISA. I never believed that he would fix it once he got elected, and that's turned out to be true - he's been as bad as Bush when it comes to executive power and civil liberties, but okay, we knew after the FISA vote that he might not be reliable on that.

What's really surprised me is how pathetic he's been in handling the health care debate. Electorally, he needs to pass something that actually helps people. As digby pointed out a few days ago - the health care reform needs to not only work, but people need to perceive it as working. If health care fails, the Dems loose in a tidal wave in 2010, and then none of Obama's agenda gets passed. I can't find the link to the post right now, but someone made the point that if the Dems loose in 2010, it'll be the blue dogs that loose, not the safe seat democrats. I don't see how this hasn't factored into the negotiations. Seems to me like, "pass the liberal bill we need, or loose in 2010," would be a strong motivator.

I don't get it. It seems reasonable that Obama could walk into the Senate (or the House) and say, "this is the plan I ran on, this is the plan we're going to pass." The plan he ran on was pretty weak sauce, but it was an actual plan (pdf), and it was only 9 pages long. What's coming out of the negotiations now is a total train wreck.

When it comes to the economy. The second he appointed Larry-fucking-Summers, I knew we were doomed. Somewhere there's a quote about how he shouldn't ever get a job with more responsibility than a fry-cook ever again in his life after what he did during the Clinton era. It's such a travesty. I read the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein last year - and really, never waste a good crisis. The current situation makes me want to bang my head through a wall. He had the chance to totally overahaul the banking industry - reverse the horrible mistakes of the Clinton and Bush years, and now it looks like we'll get nothing.

I don't want to give up on candidate Obama, I want Ax and Plouffe to walk into the Oval Office, and tell Obama he's loosing control of Congress in 2010, and loosing the presidency in 2012 if he keeps up on the path he's on.

I want the Obama I voted for back.

I was just forwarded this email. I'm not sure who could use this information so I'm posting it here and on my facebook - conspiracy theories aside, this is pretty scary. If you're hiking in Colorado, you should be aware.

In late April, I went searching for a friend's lost dog above the hogback west of Carbondale, Colorado. When I got back home I found a tick crawling on me and flushed it down the toilet. Three days later I developed a perfectly round flat red rash about 3.3 inches across in the back of my left hip. I had been bitten by ticks all my life--but had never seen such a thing--though I had seen pictures of the migrans rash associated with Lyme's many years ago.

So, I went to the Colorado Center for Disease Control website and was informed that there was no Lyme's disease in Colorado. Given this information from a source I trusted, I passed off the rash as an allergic reaction and tried to put it out of my mind. But, I was aware that I had less vitality, that my aches and pains seemed to be growing every day, first the small joints, then the large,cognitive issues, I suddenly had problems making a dollar out of coins--it was getting bad. I stayed active--aware that I didn't want to become depressed. Finally, I told myself, yes, I'm 49--but no one can expect to deteriorate quite that suddenly! I went to my doctor, told him about the tick bite and the rash. He ran a Lyme's test on me--it came back positive. My doctor claimed it was a false positive..there is no Lyme's disease in Colorado. Strand 23 of the Western Blot test came back reactive. That clinched it. My doctor--and he is a good doctor--is simply not trained to read the test...because there is no Lyme's disease in Colorado.

I am now three months into Lyme's disease. The chances of regaining energy and a pain free life dwindled with each tiny increment of time lost before I began treatment. I could have fought it from the word go,and early diagnosis has a huge impact on outcome, but because of the misinformation I got from the CCDC, I held off and dismissed the rash. Now what? I don't feel so good but hope for the best.

This weekend my daughter went fishing with her grandfather in the hills west of Carbondale. She came back in the evening and showed me a migrans rash on her inner thigh. She is on antibiotics and we are in contact with the only Lyme Literate doctor in Colorado. He says we both need to be on a dose twice as strong as we are on now, of the doxycycline. So, we are now arranging for a second appointment.

While we were in to our local doctor, getting my daughter examined and medicated--he happened to make a very interesting comment after he noted that he didn't think the rash was Lyme's. I asked him if he had ever seen a rash like it before--yes, he had seen several just like it in the past two days--and he felt sure that they were all spider bites. I am very grateful to the local docs for their willingness to treat the rash with antibiotics--but I want to say to any patient who gets a perfectly round flat, slightly raised rash after being in the wilderness--you need to research Lyme's whether you find that tick or not. We may be in the midst of a Lyme explosion. To get the rash is a sure fire sign that the Lyme's has entered your system. This is the one thing doctors can agree on. You are lucky if you get such a strong indicator,only 33% of Lyme's patients do.

There is an extreme reluctance in Colorado to say Lyme's has arrived. Insurance companies do not want to fork out for costly and difficult cures. Doctors feel helpless in the face of all the questions Lyme's presents. But, it is here. And, after a year where there is a bumper crop of acorns the mouse population explodes, mice carry 40% more ticks--you can imagine what that will mean to the larger mammals,such as deer. Lyme's eventually can attack the heart and central nervous system--we are not talking about a quick fix.

Furthermore, our dear children are in the front line. There are two kinds of doctors out there now: one group thinks Lyme's is easy to get and hard to treat--the other thinks Lyme's is hard to get and easy to treat. Find the doc that works for you. And, keep in the back of your mind this strange factoid: in Colorado last year 527 dogs tested positive for Lyme's. Do you know why? Because pets are not insured and there is no effort to suppress the Lyme's diagnosis. Only one human being made it through the red tape to be placed as a reportable case. If only this information had made it to the CCDC website! All I needed was one case to make it real and to begin strong antibiotics early in the game.

Mally C Strong
Publisher
Mountain Medicine
PO Box 904
Carbondale, CO 81623
http://www.mountainmedicinedirectory.com
970.963.2505

The last few days in DC we did some sightseeing. On Thursday we got a tour of the Capitol Building by one of the staffers in Jackie Speier's office. I woke up too late to get the Library of Congress tour. Instead I headed to the Westin City Center to check-in. Sara and I decided to stay there together since the hotel prices had dropped after the inauguration. Previously, Sara had been staying at her Mom's hotel and I had been staying with my little sister, Maria.

After the tour of the Capitol Building, we ran into the Right to Life March outside. Ugh. Stupid self-righteous fundies. We took shelter in the American Indian Smithsonian Muesem and had lunch at the restaurant there. If you're looking for food on the Mall, I strongly suggest going there.

That night we had a party for Sara's 25th Birthday. Sara and I were late because we decided to grab dinner at this place called The Grill from Ipinima. Cute name, but the food wasn't very good. Afterwards, we went to the hotel and crashed.

Friday we just luxuriated in sleeping in for most of the morning then we went to the National Portrait Gallery where we were able to see the Shepard Fairey original of the Obama HOPE poster. That night we went to sushi with Maria and her friend Hallie. The sushi was quite excellent, but Sara was confused by the spoon that came with her miso soup.

Saturday Morning we wanted to get up really early so we could see the sunrise from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I asked the hotel to give us a wake-up call at 5:30 AM, and then a follow up at 6:00. They screwed up somehow (or we slept through the first call), so we didn't get up until 6:15. We panicked, got dressed quickly and ran to the nearest Metro stop. It turns out that the Metro doesn't start running until 7 something on Saturdays, and we didn't see a Taxi around so we walked over to the Mall instead. We got there just in time to see the sunrise, but it was overcast, so it was less dramatic than I would have liked. Later, we took the tour of the Washington Monument, which I highly recommend if you're in DC. Saturday night we went to stay with Janet, and she made us an amazing Lamb dinner.

Sunday, before my flight out of Dulles Airport, Janet and I went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Annex at Dulles. It's an amazing collection of planes that they don't have room to show downtown. Included in the collection is a full size prototype of the Space Shuttle, a Concorde and an SR-71 Blackbird. It was truly and amazing exhibit and I'm glad I got to see it. I also got Janet to go in a flight simulator with me which was kinda fun. I was the pilot and she was the gunner so she just had to sit there as I kept turning us upside down and sideways.

To top the whole trip off, I got an Economy Plus seat with nobody sitting next to me on my direct flight home.

I've already written a lot about Tuesday during the day, so I won't rehash that. Tuesday Night I met up again with Sara for the Youth Ball. Sara and I got all decked out for this ball - me in a tux, and her in a beautiful ball gown. We got there pretty early. The doors opened at 8 and we were there before 7. We found some friends in line and waited with them for the doors to open. It was bitter cold outside, and since Sara didn't have a full length coat, her legs (and toes) were frozen by the time we got in. Thankfully I had remembered to wear my new topcoat, so I was generally okay, although it was really cold, and I would have liked to have been wearing my warmer hat. At the ball the next day, some of our friends showed up with sweatpants on under their dresses and boots that they changed out of at coat check - this was a pretty brilliant idea and I'd recommend it to any lady going to formal events in the dead of winter when they're going to be forced to wait outside.

The Youth Ball rocked. I hear that some people had trouble getting into the main ballroom, but Sara and I got in fine. They served a decent spread of food before the ball started so we weren't hungry all night. The ballroom was very nicely set up with two stages and a place for Obama to appear. They started out the entertainment with Kid Rock followed by Kanye West, then Obama made a brief appearance and speech followed by Fallout Boy. MTV broadcast live from the ball. After the main entertainment was over, we went into the secondary ballroom and danced to DJs until almost 2 AM.

I got home late after that and I didn't set an alarm clock. I was really wiped out and I ended up waking up at 2:30 in the afternoon. Sara had sent me a couple "are you alive" text messages. I got up, got dressed and headed straight to the Staff Ball. It started earlier and was the most well organized event that put on by the Inaugural Committee that I attended the entire time. We got through the line really quickly even though it was over a block long. They had lots of metal detectors which sped up the process. They also had, surprise!, volunteers directing the line. The ball was held in a huge arena size building called the DC Armory. The event was open bar, and they had a good selection of food from all around the world on the buffet tables. The only hitch there was that the blue cupcake frosting turned your lips blue too.

The best part of the Staff Ball was the speeches given by Biden and Obama. They both gave pretty long speeches that thanked the staff for all their hard work. Pluffe also spoke as well as a campaign surrogate who made fun of all the times staffers almost killed him. This was topped off by a performance by Arcade Fire and Jay-Z. The only bummer about the Staff Ball was that it ended so early. I still think it was my favorite event of the whole trip. I'm glad Sara was able to take me and not some "deserving volunteer".

After all those posts about the Purple Tunnel of Doom, you might think that I didn't have a good time on Inauguration day, or even during my trip to Washington, DC. The Purple Tunnel experience did suck, but the trip, and even Inauguration Day were redeemed eventually.

I have to start with the fact that I got to spend a lot of time with Sara during the trip. It was the first time since she got back from Albuquerque that we've been able to spend a lot of concentrated time together. It was nice to take a vacation with her. I also got to hang out a lot with my Little Sister, Maria. We haven't really gotten to spend much time together since 2001 when we took a trip to New York City after 9/11. My friend Janet and I also got to hang out as well (Janet and Maria were stuck in the Purple Tunnel too).

Monday of the trip, while exhausting was a lot of fun. Sara convinced me to go to RFK Stadium and be a volunteer making care packages for the troops overseas. I dragged Maria along with me too. It was a totally crazy project called Operation Gratitude. They set up a tent covering most of a football field and in that tent they built a huge set of assembly lines. As the "Volunteers" we helped "Participants" fill zip-loc baggies with various goodies and then pack the bags into cardboard boxes. It's really hard to describe the controlled chaos going on in the tent, or really just the amazing amount of work that was done. Overall, they made 85,000 care packages and a large number of letters to soldiers. This works out to over 3.37 packages per second for 7 hours. During the day several elected officials and cabinet secretaries-designate stopped by and helped. Michelle Obama also stopped by at one point. It was a lot of fun to be caught up in the Mayhem.

Monday Night, after stopping by for some cocktails with Sara's Emily's List Friends, we went to the Netroots Nation Ball. We were late getting there, so I don't think we really got to see as much of it as I would have liked, but if we hadn't been so wiped out from getting to Operation Gratitude at 8:00 AM, I think we would have had a good time. As it was, the food was good, and the last little bit of Howard Dean's speech was excellent. We went out to drinks after that and met up with some of Sara's friends from New Mexico. It was a fun little packed party at a bar, and I didn't end up getting home until almost 2 AM - in hindsight, I probably should have just gone straight to the Mall and gotten in line.

Last thought on the Purple Ticket Fiasco:

Overall the line was pretty peaceful, and I'm not really sure there was a huge need for a police presence. This changed however as we got closer to the event and people became worried that they might not get let in. People started challenging other people who were just trying to leave the tunnel and accusing them of trying to cut the line. Also, the crowd started booing and shouting at people trying to leave the line. I think that some people may have been cutting, but I suspect most of the people were just trying to leave. This was the only time where having volunteers and police around would have really calmed things down and made everyone feel better. The other thing that would have helped greatly would have been barricades along the line so that there was a clear delineation as to where the line would be and where people could walk. Signs stating where the purple line was supposed to be would have been good too.

Okay, that's the last I'm going to write about the Purple Tunnel of Doom unless some new news comes up.

First, there's a really good summary of what went wrong posted up on Huffington Post. (As a side note, Jason Linkins is becoming one of my favorite bloggers)

I just wanted to expand on what I wrote in my earlier post about what it was like in the tunnel. We got there on time at 6:30 AM. The gates were supposed to open at 8:00 AM, and the tickets told everyone to arrive early and be prepared for long lines. We got there and followed the line into the Purple Tunnel of Doom until we were probably somewhere under the Reflecting Pool.

There were 7 people in our group and we were just amazed at how long the line was. Sara's quote was something along the lines of, "I don't feel so special anymore". We figured there were at least 20k - 45k people in front of us. Janet thought the line resembled the kind of line you'd find at a football stadium and therefore reasoned that the line contained 45,000 people. Sara thought the number was closer to 20,000. I think it was probably somewhere between those two.

The line did move, it wasn't totally static, but it wasn't evident why the line was moving. We didn't know if it was just bunching up and getting wider and shorter, it was actually moving because people were getting in, or if it was getting shorter just because people were giving up and leaving.

At around 10:30 AM, the listed starting time for the festivities, I called my mom and tried to get her to put her phone near her TV so we could hear what was happening. At this point we were going up the ramp leading out of the tunnel and I thought that just maybe we'd get past the security gate in time to see the swearing-in. My mom couldn't get the audio to work well enough for it to be worth listening. Much later, we'd call my dad with my sister's phone and get it to work better.

The line was generally cheerful for most of the morning. The people behind us kept trying to start a wave. It sort of worked but it would die out after about 100 feet or so. We did some Obama chants and Yes We Can/Did chants. The worst part was the police escorts that kept coming through. They would come through with their sirens blasting and just expect this huge line to get out of the way. That and they seemed to alternate which side of the tunnel they came down. One of the motorcades was particularly awful - the third or fourth car back was a police surburban with its siren going full blast. The officer driving the car had a megaphone and was leaning out the window yelling at people to get out of the way or they would be arrested. It was totally stupid because by the time you could hear what he was saying, you were already out of the way. It just created unneeded tension.

I didn't see any police or volunteers in the tunnel. This was probably the biggest problem. If there had been baracades, signage, and volunteers keeping the line working like a real line, I think this whole mess could have been avoided (or at least it wouldn't have felt so bad). It's stupid that there was so little organization because I know of many people who would have volunteered to work the inauguration.

One last point: The people who got stuck in the Purple Tunnel of Doom ended up far worse off than people who didn't get a ticket. Not only did they have to wait in a tunnel in freezing temperatures for hours, but a lot of them didn't even get to see any of the inauguration. If they hadn't had tickets at all, they probably would have gone onto the mall with the general crowds or stayed in a cafe, bar, or hotel room to watch on TV. This was an epic fail on the part of the PIC and the Police. The fact that all of the Obama staff, the ones who put in 16 hour days, didn't get to see the inauguration turned a sad day into a tragedy.

These are pictures and video from the Purple Tunnel of Doom from my earlier post.

This is the speech that Obama gave to his staff at the Obama for America Staff Ball. It's missing the first few moments, and it's a little shaky, but it was an awesome speech and I wanted to share it.

A lot of people have asked me how may Inauguration Day went. Mostly family members and friends back in San Francisco. I haven't had time to talk to anyone yet because I've been so busy with different events in DC.

I've been planning to come to the inauguration since November when Obama won. Sara heard a rumor that she might get tickets to one of the Official Inaugural Balls, which sounded exciting, and I just wanted to be here to see Obama sworn in. It seemed like it would be an experience to remember - just to be able to say to my grandchildren, "I was there". It didn't turn out so well.

When Sara got her tickets to the Inauguration, she only got two tickets to the swearing-in ceremony, and two tickets to the Youth Ball. Since her Mom also came to DC, she decided to take her Mom to the swearing-in, and me to the ball. I planned on watching the swearing in from the mall with my sister, or with my friend Janet.

After I arrived in DC, I decided to call around to the Senators and Congressperson who represent me and ask them if they had any extra tickets. Fienstien's office said that yes, she had some tickets and they were on a first-come, first-served basis. I dropped what I was doing, and I dragged Maria to the Senate office building to try and get tickets for us. It took us awhile to find the correct building, but once we did, we found a line outside the senator's office. The line was pretty short, but it wasn't moving at all. It turns out that the senator had given her last "extra" ticket to someone about 12 people in front of me. Now we had to wait until 5pm to get any unclaimed tickets. I waited there until 5:45pm (about 3 hours) or so and they finally gave out tickets. I was really excited because, not only did I get a ticket, but I got one in the same purple section that Sara was in, so we would be able to watch the event together. Sara, in the meantime had acquired a ticket for me also, so this meant that we a ticket for my sister, Maria too. Altogether we had 7 people in our party and 8 tickets.

Our plan was to meet up at 6:30am at 3rd and D st and go the security checkpoint from there as a group. There was chaos at 3rd and D, so we met at 3rd and E, but we met up and went to the security checkpoint. There was a crazy line stretching back that we followed into what would be eventually known as the Purple Tunnel of Doom.

We ended up stuck there until about 11:10 when the line suddenly surged forward and we moved all the way to First st. For whatever reason, security closed the gate and started turning people away, but the Yellow Gate was letting Purple Ticket holders in. It was generally just chaos and confusion. Nobody knew what was going on or why. There was lots of misinformation being passed around. In the end, we never did get in. We listened to the inaugural address on Maria's cell phone set to speakerphone. She had called my Dad and had him put his phone next to a TV.

Overall, it was just a horrible experience. The thing is, the situation had just enough control to it that we were lulled into thinking they knew what they were doing. I think if it had been more chaotic, we might have just left and gone back to a hotel room or something. I should note that a lot of Obama's staff was stuck in that Purple line too. It's really a tragedy that the people who put in 18 hour days to get Obama elected didn't get to watch him get sworn in.

The day was redemed however later, but I'll save that story for another post.

So, I just spent four days with an iPhone 3G, the experience was enough to make me switch to a BlackBerry Curve as my only cell phone. I really wanted to like the iPhone, but it just didn't work out.

Here are the pros and cons from my standpoint:

Email (and Messaging):

Email is easily the number one application for "smartphone" users. It really is what the BlackBerry was created for. Back before they added the phone functionality to the BlackBerry it was an email-only device. I expected the BlackBerry to handily beat the iPhone here, and actually was surprised at how well email works on the iPhone. Honestly, it's probably its best feature. The biggest concern I had before buying the iPhone was using the on screen keyboard. I had used some of my friend's iPhones and I found it really hard to type on the screen, but after buying one I was able to type easily on the iPhone after only a few hours with it. The iPhone does have one small annoyance that I think they should fix. When you have a new message and you click on the Mail icon on the home screen it should take you to the mailbox with the message. I frequently had to go searching around to find which account had the new message in it.

The last thing about messaging is SMS and MMS. The iPhone doesn't support MMS at all. This is just a super-weak FAIL on Apple's part. I used to work for a company that all we did was MMS and really, it's a super simple protocol from the phone's perspective. Here the BlackBerry wins by default. On SMS - the iPhone does this cool thing where it makes your chat messages look like an iChat conversation, but I've had phones that do this for ages. My Sony Ericsson T68i did this back in 2001, and my BlackBerry does it too, although, minus the cute bubbles. My biggest problem with SMS is what AT&T charges for it. An SMS message is 140 bytes. It costs the carrier almost nothing to transmit an SMS message, but AT&T charges an arm and a leg for them simply because it knows that people will pay whatever. It's stupid to have to pay an extra $15 per month (on top of the $30 data plan) just to get a basic functionality. AT&T deliberately skips from $5 for barely any messages to $15 for more than most people use. On T-Mobile I can pay $8 month for what works out for me to be the "just right" amount of text messages.

Another big plus for the iPhone is its address book. The layout and general legibility of contacts on the iPhone is far superior to the contact list on the BlackBerry. It's just overall easier to use and understand. Also, the "me.com" syncing ability on the iPhone is great. I like having all my contacts available online, on my mac and on my iPhone. There was one major glitch. I have most of my contacts on my me.com account as well as in my exchange contacts. This makes them show up twice on my iPhone. This is pretty lame. If someone has two copies of a contact the phone should do something intelligent about that.

So here's where I'm really torn on the iPhone. The external applications are awesome. Pandora for the iPhone kicks ass, so does the Yelp application, and the Facebook one, etc. Just for this, I really want to keep my iPhone. Heck, I'd spend $200 just for a device I could carry around with me and have Pandora all the time. So, if iPhone applications are so fricken awesome, then what is the catch?

Well, there are several catches - the first one is that you can only run one application at a time on the iPhone. This means that if you're listening to a great tune on Pandora, you can't browse the web or look at your email at the same time. It also basically means that there are no useful instant messaging clients for the iPhone. You can access Google Talk or AIM (or both through Meebo), but as soon as you switch applications, you're logged out. The second catch is that a lot of great applications are out there for the BlackBerry that you can't get for the iPhone yet. The big one for me is Opera. Opera is basically the best browser for mobile phones out there. I'll explain more when I talk about the web browser below. There are more issues, but I'll highlight only one more. The Apple walled garden sucks. I want to be able to write software or download software from anyone. I don't want to need Apple to approve what I can run on my device. I paid for it, I own it, I should be able to run any software I please on it thank-you-very-much.

I really expected the iPhone to dominate here. I mean really, but in the end, it disappointed. Probably the biggest thing is that it's slow, but leaving that aside for a moment, there's a problem that comes from the "one app at a time" issue I mentioned in the last paragraph. On my BlackBerry, I frequently start loading a webpage and then switch to my email, then come back to my webpage a minute later once it's loaded. Since you can't run more than one application at a time on the iPhone, you can't do this. As soon as you exit the web browser, the page stops loading. This even happens if you switch to another "tab" without even quitting the web browser. The multiple tabs thing was just another case where I was really let down by the iPhone. Overall the web browsing experience just doesn't really make it.

Web browsing on the BlackBerry is a whole different beast. The default, built in, web browser for the Blackberry is very much a "mobile" browser. It's a stripped down browser that doesn't handle anything complicated very well, but it's saved by one thing - it's fast. On the other hand, the lack of the walled garden means that the web browsing experience on the BlackBerry can be saved by Opera. Opera is a full web browser that does everything Safari does - and it's fast. This means that I can have the best of both worlds, a full browser that handles AJAX and complicated web pages when I need it, and a stripped down browser for when I'm mostly dealing with text. That along with the fact that I can run more than one application at at time, means that I can multitask between the two browsers (I'd really love it if Opera implemented tabs, they were the first to do that on their desktop browser) and be even more productive. Honestly, I'd say that both phones have a way to go before they'll have the perfect browsing experience, but for now, I think the BlackBerry wins by a nose.

Maps are another place where I expected the iPhone to dominate. The iPhone has a built in GPS chip and the touch screen user interface looks very intuitive. The BlackBerry has to rely on either an external bluetooth GPS or just use cell tower triangulation to figure out where you are. Turns out all is not so well in iPhone land. I'm not sure why, but 9 times out of ten the map on the iPhone hasn't been able to figure out where I am, while the BlackBerry, while less accurate, has almost always been able to guess my location. It's nice to use the multitouch interface, but then, the trackball on the BlackBerry works almost as well and I can zoom in and out using the keyboard, which actually is more reliable than the multitouch interface. Another thing is that the version of Google Maps on my BlackBerry is at least one generation newer. On my iPhone I can't get directions for public transit, but the feature works fine on the BlackBerry. I'm sure this will come with the next software update, but it's not here yet. Finally, maps on the iPhone are just plain slow. The user interface seems to take forever to respond. One thing both could do better - I'd love actual spoken driving directions, like a real GPS, neither phone can do this yet.

I don't really use my camera on my phone. It's a nice to have, but really, eh. If I want to take pictures I generally bring a real camera. The only time I find myself using the camera ability on my phone is when it's more of a spur of the moment thing. I think both phones have crappy cameras. The BlackBerry has a flash, which is nice. Eh, I don't care enough about this feature to write any more about it.

Here's the thing - the iPhone is slow. The iPhone is running-windows-vista-on-your-mom's-old-pentium slow. The iPhone OS is buggy. The iPhone is running-windows-vista-anywhere-but-worse buggy. I've had Safari crash on me more times than I could count. Scrabble (the real, legit, paid $9.99 for Scrabble) crashes as soon as it launches. It just sems that in general I spend far too much time waiting for the phone to do something. Even with the fancy-shmancy 3G network that AT&T rolled out, the web browsing is slow. It's slower than my basic "EDGE" 2G BlackBerry. It's even slower than the BlackBerry when it's on a Wi-Fi network and the BlackBerry isn't. To steal a quote from a friend of mine "it's like watching turtles racing in peanut butter."

The iPhone also has terrible battery life. I have to charge it when I'm at my desk or I run out of power by the end of the day. I managed to drain a full battery in less than 4 hours the other day just listening to the iPod application. People keep telling me all these tricks you can do to prolong battery life, but honestly, the phone should do that automatically. Turn off 3G when it doesn't need high speed data, not actively search for Wi-Fi networks at all times, etc. I don't want to dig three menus deep to turn on and off different features every time I need them. If the phone really needs a human to tell it when to save power, then it should have a big, bright, "save power" button in the settings.

The BlackBerry supports this idea of "profiles" and you can basically have an unlimited list of them. It even comes with a few set up for you by default. The iPhone has two "profiles". These are "Silent" and "Ring". I actually really love the fact that there is a switch on the outside of the phone to switch between the two, but there's a catch. On my BlackBerry, I use four profiles really. I have Silent, Vibrate, Normal, and Phone Only. The iPhone should at least have a "Phone Only" mode. At night, I want my phone to ring, but I don't want it to beep every time I get a spam message, and it don't want to have to remember to set and un-set (two menus deep) a bunch of alerting options every time go to bed and get up in the morning.

The BlackBerry also lets you tether it so you can use it to access the internet

Honestly, both phones could use some improvement. I think the upcoming BlackBerry Bold will fill in some of the holes in the existing BlackBerry Curve. I expect some 2.1 software updates will make the iPhone faster and more stable. I'm sure eventually the iPhone will even allow some sort of multi-tasking, but for now, the Curve wins.

I just found this cycling blog: Bike Snob NYC
. What really got me to add it to my google reader is this paragraph:

"But what about the cars?," you may ask. "Surely I should fear the cars." Well, you should be aware of the cars, and you should know that many of them are driven by people so stupid they can barely operate them, but you should not fear them. Rather, you should know them and understand them. You're at a distinct advantage because, being stupid, most drivers are easy to figure out. It won't take you long to anticipate their stupid behavior in the same way you can usually figure out what your dog is about to do next. Oh, and don't let them bully you. Ignore the beeping. A driver honks to express one of three things: 1) I want you to get out of my way; 2) I want you to go faster; 3) I just don't like you. The correct response to all of these is, "I don't give a fuck." Drivers don't honk when they're about to kill you because when they kill you it's because they didn't see you.

Really, you should go read the whole post.

So, with Kayak and Farecast both getting acquired by bigger travel sites, it's time to look for a new, leaner, meaner startup. Tech Cruch posted a link to Mobissimo today, and just with a brief look I'd say it pretty much rocks.

According to this article from the NYTimes Nalgene is going to stop making water bottles with the chemical bisphenol-a. I've been speaking up about this for about a year now. Bisphenol-a mimics some hormones and could be particularly damaging for infants. We'll see where this goes.

While the chemical makers are claiming that not enough study has been done, it's clear that we should stop using the chemical until we know it is safe. There are plenty of alteratives - both plastic and stainless steel.

What I didn't know before reading this article is that soda cans are lined with an epoxy that contains bisphenol-a. Bummer. I guess I have to stop drinking soda from cans. That's okay, most of the soda I like comes in glass bottles.