Yep, that was a big earthquake. A whopping 5.4 on the old Richter scale, although that's still not the biggest one I've ever been through. (That, according to Mom, would be an Alaska quake of 5.6 when I was but a wee baby boy, and I don't remember it at all.)
I was in a Lightwheel meeting with Marc and Buffie, and I'm sure we all went through the same set of thoughts at the same time: is that just a vibration of the building, or is that--?; whoa, yeah, that's a--!; um, this is a lot stronger than the ones before...; should I be getting under a doorway?; no, nothing's falling off any shelves, I should be okay; man, this thing's going on for forever....
It only lasted for about thirty seconds, actually, though of course it felt as though it took a whole lot longer than that. And there seemed to be a lot going on during that time--a little bit of rolling from side to side, a little bit of bumping up and down, plus of course a whole lot of just general vibration. As the above-linked USGS page states in its summary, none of this is a surprise: this particular quake had characteristics of both kinds of major faults: a strike-slip fault that would produce a sudden jump, and a "reverse fault" that moves from here to there.
And yet as strong as this one felt (Buffie reached out, startled, and grabbed both our arms), nothing fell off any shelves, I saw no damage at all when I got home, and news reports tell me there were no injuries and no real damage to speak of, citywide. Which is both reassuring and worrying at the same time.
Reassuring because the local construction standards seem to have held up very well indeed during what was, from my limited experience, a hell of an event. But worrying because the official agencies have all dubbed this a "moderate" quake, and I can't help thinking--if that was moderate, jeez, do I even want to know what a strong quake is like?
Astonishingly, within five minutes of the earthquake we could find information about it on the USGS's website (which I have bookmarked because, you know, I live here). The local news had gone all-earthquake instantly, but since there really wasn't anything to report yet, it was just more of the usual saturation-news blather. So we three either called or e-mailed our families to let them know not to worry, then got back to work.
Still. Damn, that was something...
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
The Wanting of Toys: The Inevitable Sequel
Okay, I’ll admit it: the iPhone is kind of great. (Come on, you knew this one was coming.)
Bear in mind, I never owned a Blackberry, so this whole notion of being able to check email on my phone is new to me, and I’m enjoying it like crazy--particularly since I’ve been away from home a lot recently, and it’s nice to know things I wouldn’t ordinarily know unless I was at home--how well Zen Noir is selling today, for instance. And when our composer, the estimable Steve Chesne, sends an email with a question, I can respond right away.
Plus, you know. It’s a toy, and toys are good. Didja know you can download this free application that’ll make your iPhone sound like a lightsaber? That’s awesome! And the “More Cowbell” application is so silly it’s sublime.
The question is, was it worth standing in line for three hours? (Particularly after my little diatribe several days ago.) Well, see, here’s the thing: those lines are deceptive. No, really. I happened to be in Century City last week, so I wandered by the Apple Store. There were fewer than ten people waiting outside and I didn’t have to be anywhere so I figured, What the hell? Got in line, the line soon edged forward a little, so it wasn’t moving fast but it was moving. Enough time had passed since the chaotic launch of the phone, surely the wait wouldn’t be so bad these several days later.
Of course, there were about thirty people already inside the store. (The window advertising pretty well obscured what was going on inside.) Then something happened, with the servers or whatever, and suddenly the line wasn’t moving at all, for an astonishingly long time. (The Apple employees blamed AT&T, and AT&T put out a press release that essentially said it was all Apple’s fault.) Now, by this point I’d already been there for a while and was invested in the time. It felt like an even worse crime to discard the hour I’d already spent waiting, so I waited yet longer. At least there were some entertaining folks in the line around me, and by the time we were done we’d all gotten to know each other reasonably well. And of course we were all questioning our sanity by then, but hey, at least we all got iPhones.
And as I say, it’s a pretty incredible little object. The secret key is also joining MobileMe, Apple’s online service. I don’t need their me.com email address and haven’t given it to anyone, but MobileMe is what allows my email to find me on the phone without actually syncing the phone with the computer. It does the same with my contacts and calendar items as well, so that I can add something to my calendar on the iPhone and it’ll automatically add itself to my desktop computer’s calendar as well, and vice versa. As things get busier, this alone will become invaluable. Plus there’s the GPS-in-a-phone thing, which will help when I get lost and am not in the car where I’ve already got GPS. I get lost easily, see. My sense of direction is permanently discombobulated now that I live on the west coast and the ocean is on the wrong side.
Plus, the toys. Eight gigs of music that now come with a phone, web browsing at will, the whole deal. I make no secret of being a bit of a gadget freak (yes, the Engadget site is bookmarked), and this one is I think up there with the TiVo in terms of general terrificness. Does the iPhone fit anywhere on the chart of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Of course not. But still. Toys!
Bear in mind, I never owned a Blackberry, so this whole notion of being able to check email on my phone is new to me, and I’m enjoying it like crazy--particularly since I’ve been away from home a lot recently, and it’s nice to know things I wouldn’t ordinarily know unless I was at home--how well Zen Noir is selling today, for instance. And when our composer, the estimable Steve Chesne, sends an email with a question, I can respond right away.
Plus, you know. It’s a toy, and toys are good. Didja know you can download this free application that’ll make your iPhone sound like a lightsaber? That’s awesome! And the “More Cowbell” application is so silly it’s sublime.
The question is, was it worth standing in line for three hours? (Particularly after my little diatribe several days ago.) Well, see, here’s the thing: those lines are deceptive. No, really. I happened to be in Century City last week, so I wandered by the Apple Store. There were fewer than ten people waiting outside and I didn’t have to be anywhere so I figured, What the hell? Got in line, the line soon edged forward a little, so it wasn’t moving fast but it was moving. Enough time had passed since the chaotic launch of the phone, surely the wait wouldn’t be so bad these several days later.
Of course, there were about thirty people already inside the store. (The window advertising pretty well obscured what was going on inside.) Then something happened, with the servers or whatever, and suddenly the line wasn’t moving at all, for an astonishingly long time. (The Apple employees blamed AT&T, and AT&T put out a press release that essentially said it was all Apple’s fault.) Now, by this point I’d already been there for a while and was invested in the time. It felt like an even worse crime to discard the hour I’d already spent waiting, so I waited yet longer. At least there were some entertaining folks in the line around me, and by the time we were done we’d all gotten to know each other reasonably well. And of course we were all questioning our sanity by then, but hey, at least we all got iPhones.
And as I say, it’s a pretty incredible little object. The secret key is also joining MobileMe, Apple’s online service. I don’t need their me.com email address and haven’t given it to anyone, but MobileMe is what allows my email to find me on the phone without actually syncing the phone with the computer. It does the same with my contacts and calendar items as well, so that I can add something to my calendar on the iPhone and it’ll automatically add itself to my desktop computer’s calendar as well, and vice versa. As things get busier, this alone will become invaluable. Plus there’s the GPS-in-a-phone thing, which will help when I get lost and am not in the car where I’ve already got GPS. I get lost easily, see. My sense of direction is permanently discombobulated now that I live on the west coast and the ocean is on the wrong side.
Plus, the toys. Eight gigs of music that now come with a phone, web browsing at will, the whole deal. I make no secret of being a bit of a gadget freak (yes, the Engadget site is bookmarked), and this one is I think up there with the TiVo in terms of general terrificness. Does the iPhone fit anywhere on the chart of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Of course not. But still. Toys!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
The Wanting of Toys
So the brand-new whoa-golly iPhone 3G was set free into the world on Friday, and the world accordingly said Gimme! And because hype works, people said Gimme! in mind-boggling numbers.
I was completely able to resist the iPhone mass madness the first time around (only one short year ago), but this time it's got more of the stuff I'd want, plus my needs have changed and it would be a nice thing to have. So on Friday, since I happened to be nearby, I figured what the hell and wandered over to the Apple Store in Century City.
And was surprised to find that it really wasn't so bad. I'd heard all the stories about activation problems and "bricked" phones and delays delays delays, and figured that would mean that hundreds of people would still be lined up outside. Turns out there were only about fifteen people waiting, in a line that barely reached to the entrance of the store next door. "Well then," thought I, "maybe I'll just go ahead and get one." I got in line. Five minutes passed. A couple other people got in line behind me. One woman said she'd come by a few hours before and there'd been people herded in an improvised holding area at the opposite corner of the mall, so she was amazed that the line was now so short.
We were just beginning to speculate on why that might be when the security guard approached. "Are you on the list?" he asked. "What list?" we asked.
Yep, the cowpen was still active. Six hundred-plus people on the list (representing the whole day--they had moved through about five hundred of them already). So I got out of what was not in fact a proper line outside the store and, knowing that I would not be buying an iPhone today, decided to walk over to see the line. And was rewarded with a string of hot, weary people who looked pretty thoroughly bored and miserable, and you just had to wonder: why on earth?
I mean sure, it's fun to be the first on your block with a whatever, but when thousands of people line up across the city, you have to admit you're just not gonna be first. So, then, what's so awful about being second? Or 10,000th? Shouldn't the thing itself, the iPhone, be more important than the over-hyped aura surrounding it?
The activation troubles reveal the truth.
Apple made a colossal mistake: they tried to do three major things at once. Four, actually. They tried to launch the iPhone, they tried to launch a new 2.0 software update that would work on the original iPhones as well, and they tried to roll out a major upgrade of their online service .mac, which is now called MobileMe. They also made a catastrophic decision to try and force people to activate their new phones in the store rather than at home as they did last year. What this meant was a massive load on their servers that affected every single one of these initiatives, drastically. The MobileMe rollout was supposed to take six hours; it took well over 24, and the service still isn't working terribly well. Trying to active the phones in-store when the activation servers had gone phfft! meant that it took forever to process each customer, until finally they just started sending people home and telling them to active the phones at home, whenever they could. And people trying to download the new 2.0 software ended up leaving their phones useless, only able to make emergency calls, for several hours on a Friday afternoon.
People howled online, because that's what people do online. The freedom to howl, oh joy. "I've got a business to run and now I don't have a phone!" several of them shrieked. But really, you've got to wonder: if their business is so important, why did they download the new software at the first possible moment, early in the morning on a weekday? If you've got business to do, hang out for a day, do your stuff, maybe check online to see how the software is working out, then download it Saturday, or Sunday morning, sometime that isn't nearly so critical.
"I've got a business to run" is, of course, the excuse they use. The real truth is simple: "I want my toy and I want it now!" The infantilism of America reached yet another crybaby threshhold on Friday, and probably some hapless project manager at Apple will get fired for it.
Me? Nope, no iPhone yet. The lines were certain to be long again this weekend, all those frustrated Friday people, and why bother? I just don't need the thing that badly, I can wait a few days. I'll be back in Century City later this week, and I'll probably run by the store, and if there's not a line I'll probably stop in. Get a phone, set it up, and get on with my life.
I say all this not because I'm so wonderful, so immune to the hype (yeah, sure, I'd like a toy, too), but because--because I feel the desire, I do, I remember going into a store and running to the aisle with the toys and that kid is still inside saying "Gimme!" But sometimes, I mean come on, if we're going to be adults let's be adults, shall we?
I was completely able to resist the iPhone mass madness the first time around (only one short year ago), but this time it's got more of the stuff I'd want, plus my needs have changed and it would be a nice thing to have. So on Friday, since I happened to be nearby, I figured what the hell and wandered over to the Apple Store in Century City.
And was surprised to find that it really wasn't so bad. I'd heard all the stories about activation problems and "bricked" phones and delays delays delays, and figured that would mean that hundreds of people would still be lined up outside. Turns out there were only about fifteen people waiting, in a line that barely reached to the entrance of the store next door. "Well then," thought I, "maybe I'll just go ahead and get one." I got in line. Five minutes passed. A couple other people got in line behind me. One woman said she'd come by a few hours before and there'd been people herded in an improvised holding area at the opposite corner of the mall, so she was amazed that the line was now so short.
We were just beginning to speculate on why that might be when the security guard approached. "Are you on the list?" he asked. "What list?" we asked.
Yep, the cowpen was still active. Six hundred-plus people on the list (representing the whole day--they had moved through about five hundred of them already). So I got out of what was not in fact a proper line outside the store and, knowing that I would not be buying an iPhone today, decided to walk over to see the line. And was rewarded with a string of hot, weary people who looked pretty thoroughly bored and miserable, and you just had to wonder: why on earth?
I mean sure, it's fun to be the first on your block with a whatever, but when thousands of people line up across the city, you have to admit you're just not gonna be first. So, then, what's so awful about being second? Or 10,000th? Shouldn't the thing itself, the iPhone, be more important than the over-hyped aura surrounding it?
The activation troubles reveal the truth.
Apple made a colossal mistake: they tried to do three major things at once. Four, actually. They tried to launch the iPhone, they tried to launch a new 2.0 software update that would work on the original iPhones as well, and they tried to roll out a major upgrade of their online service .mac, which is now called MobileMe. They also made a catastrophic decision to try and force people to activate their new phones in the store rather than at home as they did last year. What this meant was a massive load on their servers that affected every single one of these initiatives, drastically. The MobileMe rollout was supposed to take six hours; it took well over 24, and the service still isn't working terribly well. Trying to active the phones in-store when the activation servers had gone phfft! meant that it took forever to process each customer, until finally they just started sending people home and telling them to active the phones at home, whenever they could. And people trying to download the new 2.0 software ended up leaving their phones useless, only able to make emergency calls, for several hours on a Friday afternoon.
People howled online, because that's what people do online. The freedom to howl, oh joy. "I've got a business to run and now I don't have a phone!" several of them shrieked. But really, you've got to wonder: if their business is so important, why did they download the new software at the first possible moment, early in the morning on a weekday? If you've got business to do, hang out for a day, do your stuff, maybe check online to see how the software is working out, then download it Saturday, or Sunday morning, sometime that isn't nearly so critical.
"I've got a business to run" is, of course, the excuse they use. The real truth is simple: "I want my toy and I want it now!" The infantilism of America reached yet another crybaby threshhold on Friday, and probably some hapless project manager at Apple will get fired for it.
Me? Nope, no iPhone yet. The lines were certain to be long again this weekend, all those frustrated Friday people, and why bother? I just don't need the thing that badly, I can wait a few days. I'll be back in Century City later this week, and I'll probably run by the store, and if there's not a line I'll probably stop in. Get a phone, set it up, and get on with my life.
I say all this not because I'm so wonderful, so immune to the hype (yeah, sure, I'd like a toy, too), but because--because I feel the desire, I do, I remember going into a store and running to the aisle with the toys and that kid is still inside saying "Gimme!" But sometimes, I mean come on, if we're going to be adults let's be adults, shall we?
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