And now I own an iPhone

As an avid mac enthusiast you probably just assume I’ve had an iPhone since the first version of the device was launched.  You’d be wrong.

I’ve been using a Treo650 on Sprint for many years.  Before that, the Treo600.  Before that a Treo 300.  When I started using a QWERTY phone T9 wasn’t even invented yet.

My Treos over the years have been nothing less than a faithful companion.  PalmOS has let me select from a wealth of applications, both free and paid, that help me do anything I needed.  IRC, IM, better email than a blackberry (IMAP IDLE).  I used it as a time tracker when I was a consultant.  I used it as a Twitter device.  I used it for everything.  Games, tools, utilities.  SSH, FTP, RDP and VPN are all stupid acronyms that have been taken place within my Palm-based phones.

A few too many drops casued some of the keys on my Treo650 to finally give out.  I take my mobile devices seriously so the idea of having a broken yet usable phone didn’t appeal to me.  It was time to make the jump.

Before I knew it I was on the Apple web site filling out a form.  They were getting me an AT&T account, I didn’t have to set foot in anything branded with them… it was awesome.  I finished up the form online with it finally asking me what time i’d like to be at the Apple Store, I said 11:30.  I went durring lunch and they knew who I was when walking in the door.  “Can I help you?”  “Yes, I’m here for my iPhone.”  “Oh you must be Gabe, we have everything ready for you.”

A guy then walked through verifying everything I typed in online, took my credit card, and I walked out with an activated iPhone.  Done.  It was really that easy.

I’m still getting used to the thing.  It’s not easy to type on.  But others got used to it, and so will I.  Now I just need a case for it.

Here’s my iPhone home screen:

February updates

This weekend I actually setup my music equipment for the first time since I moved here.  That’s a big step.  I verified all my hardware works, all my files are there, and now I’m ready to finish an album five years in the making.  We’ll see if I do.
It’s only February, but the spring concert season here in Omaha is getting scheduled.  Lots of tickets to purchase.  So far on my plate:

March 12: Har Mar Superstar
March 21st: Bayside (I promised @schaft)
March 25th: Ratatat
March 31st: The Faint

Tweply is actively being used, by more than myself… how about that?
mysql> SELECT count(DISTINCT username) FROM users;
+————————–+
| count(DISTINCT username) |
+————————–+
|                       11           |
+————————–+
1 row in set (0.09 sec)

I had to to go back to my SMS aggrigator service today and purchase more SMS outbound credits since the 400 I originally purchased were all used up.  But that means it’s being used, but that also means it’s not exactly financially supportible by myself.  I’ll worry about that later like any good service.  I might just use Twitter direct messages instead of SMS.  That’s free, but not as nice.

Tweply – since nobody talked me out of it

I was hoping someone would talk me out of another stupid idea.  Damn you all.

So this is what you get.  An alpha thingy of Tweply.  http://www.real-ity.com/tweply/

No promises how well it’ll work, but it should work ok.  It looks ugly.  Well.. actually it looks more like nothing.  That’s how my design skills are.  Couple header tags, a center, some text and not close out the body.

Again, you have to give out your twitter password to use it.  But that’s how all twitter app things work.  Hopefully they’ll build an API that would allow 3rd party services login without having plain text credentials.  That’d be cool.

So try it out, use it for good things. Let me know any changes you’d like to see.

I’m going to make a thing for twitter

Anyone who knows me knows I’m addicted to Twitter.  I won’t go into details of my love affair with the beautiful beast, but let’s just say it’s a pretty integrated part of my lifestyle work flow.

However, there’s things I wish it did that it doesn’t do.  It’s not very flexible.

For example, you can send tweets from people you follow to your phone via SMS, and that’s a great feature.  But sometimes I only want things sent to my phone that I care about.  So you have two options.  When you make a tweet, and someone replies… you either don’t see it while you’re mobile, or you turn on mobile updates and see everything just in case someone replies to you.
In my case the third option is to every once in a while check the mobile twitter site and see if anyone has said anything, but sometimes you may get a @message without expecting it… you won’t know that even happened until you check the web site later.  All those options suck in my opinion.

So that’s when I took it upon myself to build a service called “Tweply” that simply looks at your incoming tweets and text’s them to you if it’s something you’re looking for.  That way you can tweet via sms, and get replies to that tweet via sms without being completely immersed, or completely shut out.

That’s where the story should end.  Damnit.

But now I decided to turn it into a service tha others can use.  There’s probably others that want to see just @replies to tweets they’ve sent as well when mobile.

I’m not planning on going crazy with this, but who knows.  The game plan is this:

Web page.  You put in your twitter credentials (sorry, but that’s how twitter rolls… ).  You then put in what string you’re looking for (generally will be @username, but whatever), and the method you want to be notified of it.  Eithier SMS or email.  I guess there will be a thing where you can turn it on and off too.  Every 5min or so you’ll get a notification if someone replies.

However, there’s still time for someone to talk me out of this.  Any takers?

Irregardless, it’s time to cowboy up

So I haven’t blogged anything about my job since I’ve moved to Omaha I don’t think.  Well, here’s my first.
Met our new “uber manager” today, or the manager of my manager.  Let me put it simply, i’m scared shitless.  I can’t think of someone I can relate to any less.

For hobbies, it’s Huskers football.  He also likes to fish and cook game.  He said the word “irregardless” and told us to “cowboy up”.  I don’t even know what “cowboy up” means and I refuse to google it.

He’s pretty hardcore and has pretty rough expectations of our teams.  That’s fine.  But seriously, I think he’s the reason there’s a sign on our building that says “firearms are not allowed here.”  I think he’d use shotguns to threaten our lives.

He’s the first guy in management I’ve ever met, anywhere, that has specificly told us not to go to him if there’s an issue.  You can only go to your direct manager, and if you ever want to talk to him… you have to tell your management first to tell him that you’re going to be talking to him.  I’ve never ever heard of anyone less accessible in my life.

I’m really not sure what to think.