Today is my wife’s birthday. I usually take her birthday off so we can hang out and do whatever she likes. Whatever it is, as long as we’re together, we have a great time.
Happy birthday to my best friend. You’ve made my life insanely great for over 11 years of marriage.
Like many people, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to lose weight. I’ve consistently put on weight year-over-year since we got married 11 years ago. I decided to break the cycle this year. Heck, if Jennifer Hudson can do it, so can I.
So back in January, Alli and I started Weight Watchers Online. I’ve never been very good about watching what I eat, so being forced to enter my points every day was something I had to get used to at first.
But the progress I saw initially was pretty great. I lost my first 10 pounds in 4 weeks and felt better. Alli said I almost immediately stopped snoring, which made me feel even better.
Over the year, I’ve lost an additional 25 pounds, prompting me to get a tattoo as a reward.
Since I got over the first 30 pounds I wanted to lose, I have kind of floundered. I haven’t put all the weight back on, but I haven’t been losing anymore. It’s easy to identify why…I’ve stopped tracking my points, being less diligent about watching what I eat.
That hasn’t caused me to balloon up to my original weight, but I haven’t gotten past my initial 35 pounds, which is frustrating.
My last weigh-in, though, a small miracle. I lost 2 pounds and I finally feel like I’m back on track. This has been a challenging weekend since it’s Alli’s birthday today, but my hope is that I can make up any ground I might lose this weekend during the week.
We’ll see. My weight has been a battle for much of my life. I love food and I particularly love nights like Saturday night that are spent around a dinner table with people that you love, talking, eating and enjoying each other’s company. Honestly, if I gain any weight this week because of that, I won’t be mad.
Still, I’m hoping for more progress and less plateaus.
I love finding new music. I do. (I promise this isn’t turning into a music blog.) I love particularly when recommendation engines work. The other day, I was browsing the Amazon MP3 music and they suggested an album to me by Sarah Jarosz. It’s reasoning? Because I previously purchased music by: The Civil Wars, The Belle Brigade and The Head and the Heart (thanks for that one, Tyson). Since these are probably my three favorite discoveries of the year, I purchased the album sight unseen.
What a great recommendation! Since I’m in this Americana/Bluegrass/Folk mode right now, this album is right up my alley. Loving this song, Come Around, particularly, but the whole album is pretty great. Jarosz is a less-sleepy version of Norah Jones. Check her out if any of this sounds good to you:
I want to take pictures as beautiful as Allister Ann, the photographer who has accompanied my new favorite band, The Civil Wars, on their tour this summer.
When they came to KC’s Crosstown Station, I tried to get some of my own, which were fine, but when I compare them to the ones that have been posted to The Civil Wars’ Tour Diary…they’re just not quite as engaging.
The top photo is Allister Ann’s from the Newport Music festival, the second one is a shot of John Paul playing his guitar that I took. Clicking that one takes you through to the whole set of shots I took.
You can decide which you like better.
I saw this video from Mindrelic (via Cameron) and I just fell in love with it.
Last week, Alli and I saw Woody Allen’s latest film, Midnight in Paris, and I adored it. It was one of those movies that just makes you smile the whole time. During the movie, there is a conversation between two of the characters where they talk about the life of a city that is independent of its inhabitants — that a city lives and breathes like an organism does.
Now, I’m no fan of Woody Allen’s, but this idea was something that I really remembered from the movie. I thoroughly enjoyed the film (by far my favorite of Allen’s 586 films he’s made) and if I took anything away from it, it was this idea that we much like the blood cells of the living organism that is the place that we inhabit…we have a structure and life all our own, but we contribute to the life of something larger.
On the way home, I had my iPad on shuffle and came upon Sara Bareilles’ fantastic track off of Kaleidoscope Heart, Bluebird.
What struck me when listening to this song was how similar the first few bars on the piano are to the banjo notes that we all know from our childhood.
What was funny about that realization was how it reminded me of another song comparison from when I was much younger.
I remember when Oasis was one of the biggest bands on the planet and their sophomore album, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, was (and continues to be) one of my favorite albums of all time. I remember the comparisons that were continually made to The Beatles and I particularly remember how Noel Gallagher caught a lot of flak because the opening of his opus, “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” sounded so much like John Lennon’s iconic, “Imagine.”
And it does. The comparison is obvious.
You know what I have to say?
Who freaking cares.
There’s a big difference between inspiration and derivation.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 states:
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
I don’t agree with this statement. While our lives are informed and inspired by our experiences that precede us, we are blessed with the ability to build and to create something anew.
We all have that ability. That’s why out and out stealing other people’s content and repurposing it as your own is so unfortunate.
There’s a lesson here somewhere.
It’s OK to be inspired by others, to even use something as simple as an opening hook to a song to help you tell your own story. “Bluebird” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger” may be inspired by “The Rainbow Connection” and “Imagine”, respectively, but that doesn’t make them any less great on their own.
Find inspiration in your life and use it to create new things, things that are your own. What inspires you?
I’ve had this song in my head for a couple days now, mostly because of the brilliant lyric that closes the song:
I wanna have pride like my mother has,
And not like the kind in the Bible that turns you bad.
And I wanna have friends that I can trust,
that love me for the man I’ve become and not the man that I was.
The song is off of The Avett Brothers’ terrific album, I and Love and You, which is great if you like Mumford & Sons and the like…
On the rare occasions that I’m not listening to The Civil Wars these days, I’m finding myself in a very Americana kind of mood.
Currently, the band that is best filling that for me is The Belle Brigade, also known as brother-sister duo Ethan and Barbara Gruska, who describe themselves on their Facebook page as such:
Barbara and Ethan met when Ethan was born. They knew they were brother and sister but they did not know that 19 years in the future they would form a band. The future happened and now they have a band, a facebook page, a myspace page and some other stuff they’ve acquired over the years.
I’m really digging their song, “Losers,” a lot, which they recently performed on Conan. Here’s the official video.
And while you’re in a music-listening, video-watching mood, check out this fabulous video I caught at The Civil Wars at The Bottleneck in Lawrence. I love that I caught Joy Williams telling the story of how she and John Paul White met. And then, there’s their amazing performance of “Falling”.
What are you currently listening to?
I’ve been a Sprint customer for a long time. I have good friends who work there and I try to support them and my hometown company just as I hope they prefer AMC Theatres when they can.
However, for the past month or so, I’ve been testing out the Verizon iPhone (DISCLOSURE) thanks to the Verizon Midwest office. Sure, it’s a bit ridiculous that I’m carrying 3 phones right now (work Blackberry, personal Sprint HTC Hero, iPhone), but it actually gives me a nice opportunity to compare and contrast the various benefits and drawbacks of each phone. I also tested a Sprint EVO Shift when I was at SXSW and I’ll be using that as a comparison as well.
Let’s start with the bottom line: I love the iPhone. This should come as no big shocker to people who follow my blog. It isn’t without faults (and I’ll share those here), but overall, my experience with the phone has been great. (In fact, I’ve been delaying writing this post for a while now with the hope that I won’t have to give back the demo device until it is done.)
The advertising for Verizon is all about “the network” and I’ll say, it’s solid. I never really had connection issues for the phone, although there were times when I found the 3G service affected inside of buildings. However, the 3G service was pretty fast, particularly loading web pages, although I’m not sure I can attribute that to the network or to Mobile Safari.
One nice feature that I was able to use was the Mobile Hotspot. As we were driving to my in-laws’ house in Iowa, I switched it on and Alli was able to connect via WiFi and check her Facebook account while we drove. This is an extra charge on every phone it is available on, including the iPhone on any network. It’s kind of a bogus charge, because it still counts against the data that you are already using. I don’t understand why they should be able to double-charge you for a feature that is built-in.
It’s simply the best App Store on the planet. Higher quality applications, easy payment, easy purchase on your computer or on your device. There are so many great applications that have been handcrafted with an eye for user experience and design. In comparison to the applications I’ve used on Android devices, the best ones have been applications that were first built for iOS devices. Despite how rigid Apple’s App Store requirements are, there’s something to keeping developers to a standard. Android’s “openness” in their Market just leads to lots and lots of crapplications (trademark pending).
My favorites have been some that were favorites on my iPad. I love the official Twitter application (formerly Tweetie). I love Reeder for reading RSS. I love Instagram, Beluga, Dropbox and especially Gowalla. I love the Weight Watchers Mobile application for tracking my food and activity as a part of my weight loss program. I love that U-Verse has an application that allows me to manage my DVR remotely.
Honestly, two of my favorite discoveries have been games. One I knew about: QRANK Social Trivia and another that I discovered as a more addictive version of Angry Birds called Tiny Wings. I also absolutely love Facebook’s official iPhone application. While on the iPad, I tend to use the full site, but on the iPhone, the application is so efficient and well designed that there’s no reason to go to the full site.
Another thing that I absolutely love about the iPhone is the form factor. It is well designed and an appropriate weight in my hand. It just feels right. It’s bigger and heavier than my HTC Hero, but thinner. It’s slightly smaller than the HTC EVO Shift, which is thicker on account of the slide out keyboard. The device that the iPhone gets compared to most is probably the HTC EVO 4G, which I’ve seen but never used. The EVO feels massive to me…too large to put in a pocket. The profile of the iPhone is almost unrecognizable when I stow it.
The iPhone is now the most popular camera in the world. More photos are uploaded now to Flickr via the iPhone than any other camera on the planet. It just goes to show you that “the best camera is the one you have with you.”
And the iPhone camera isn’t just a serviceable portable camera. It’s a good, 5MP point-and-shoot camera (rumor is the iPhone 5 will have an 8MP camera) that also has the ability to shoot video just as effectively as the point-and-shoot equivalent (and now Cisco-murdered) Flip. If you need proof, check out this video that I posted to YouTube from when we went to see The Civil Wars at Lawrence in the Bottleneck. I didn’t edit it at all.
I know a few people who don’t like the iPhone almost solely because it requires Apple’s iTunes to manage. Since I’m in an all-Apple household, that doesn’t bother me even a little bit. In fact, when it comes to using other phones (Blackberry, Android, or Palm-based devices), the fact that they don’t integrate with iTunes is annoying. I love my iTunes library. I don’t want to move it entirely to another library and application. Also, since so many applications on the Mac now integrate with their mobile counterparts, moving documents, photos and files is so easy through the iTunes interface. Sure, it’s bloated, but a lot of software is these days (just open Firefox).
The iPhone was originally presented as an extension of the iPod line of devices. But as anyone knows, it has become an industry unto itself. Still, that iPod application is still one of the ones I use just as much as anything else. Not having to carry a separate iPod for all my music is brilliant and I can carry a ton of music on my iPhone and iTunes allows me to switch it easily. This is one benefit to the phone that gets discounted a lot, but having to carry one less device is a huge benefit for a gadget hoarder like myself.
Here’s the rub. When it comes to pricing, I’m in a bit of a pickle. See, I have friends who work for Sprint and I can be a part of their plan for a reduced price. Even Sprint’s unlimited plan at $69.99/month is lower by about $30 than a comparable iPhone plan, either on Verizon or AT&T. The most frustrating aspect of the up charges when it comes to iPhone plans is unlimited texting runs an additional $20 per month on top of your normal monthly fee. Texting costs these phone companies virtually nothing. Charging $20 a month is akin to highway robbery. One benefit of Verizon is they have a Nationwide Talk & Text plan that runs $60/month for 450 minutes and unlimited texting, but it doesn’t include data. That runs you another $30/month and doesn’t include the nice ability to share your connection as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to 5 devices for another $20/mo. By my calculations, that would cost somewhere in the range of $110 per phone. The 450 minute limit on talk time and the additional up charges for data are the real killers here.
Despite the significant increase in cost, I’m coming to the point where the iPhone is becoming an extension of me. Alli no longer calls me on my normal phone because she knows that I leave it in my bag now. If I was picking up the bill, I am not sure if I could bite that bullet, especially with the Nexus S coming to Sprint this weekend.
But the bottom line is this: as predicted, I have loved the Verizon iPhone. In fact, I’d probably love it even more with more time spent using it because I would further customize it to my liking. I’ve been hesitant to do so with a device that I knew at some point I’d have to return back to the good people at Verizon. It’s been a little ridiculous carrying 3 phones around for the past month, but getting an extended period of time with a fully-functional non-AT&T iPhone has been totally worth it. I’m looking forward to seeing what the iPhone 5 brings in the fall.
So what phone do you carry and what do you love about it?
