Today kids we’re trying something quite different.
We’re blogging by iPhone.
When you have fat fingers (well, like most men I imagine. Except for the unfortunate girly men with their teeny-tiny delicate hand extensions that they mistakenly call fingers).
Wait. Where was I?
Right. Having fat fingers means you’re going to be making a LOT of mistakes when using the iPhone. And that means a lot of editing-as-you-go.
The iPhone technology tries to be helpful of course and it will prompt you with words that it thinks you really wanted to use and not the szxxqe word that you actually typed. You type “fuck” and it’ll come back with “duck”.
Ducking iPhone.
So I’m typing this from the back row at a Microsoft seminar. (Check the tweets at the right of this blog). I’ve noticed a few things here:
1) Many are as bored out of their minds. Which means I’m in great company.
2) It’s amazing how many fellow techies have their iPhones out right now. Like me. At a Microsoft seminar.
Has the iPhone become so ingrained into our culture that no one gives it a second thought? Do we forget that it’s an Apple product? Will it become like Kleenix – a structural pillar in our collective lexicon? Do we care?
I’m hearing the presenter at the front talk about Informational Manager, XML, alerts and resolutions and all I’m hearing is “blah blah blah”. Really wish they had a girl in a bikini making the presentation up there. At least I’d pay more attention.
So why did I come here?
1) Free stuff. Sometimes Microsoft gives out free software like Windows 7 or Office 2007 as a way of getting techies familiar with their products.
2) A day away from my boring job.
Results:
1) So far I’m not sure it’s worth it
2) Yeah. Out of the frying pan…
Right now the guy is talking about clones. Cool.
Wait. Damn it. Not those kinds of clones. Technical clones. Not the zombie types.
“Mmmm. BraAains”
Speaking of eating – they fed us some cold lunch today.
Tasted *just* like brains.
I learned from one of the other guys at our table that he hasn’t personally used Microsoft products in years. This puts an exclamation point on my observation that the majority of my fellow work techies either have an Apple computer or are planning to buy one.
Man if they don’t hand out free stuff at the end of this torture I’m going to be pissed.
Right now though – my iPhone battery is too low and I have to close this off. So after this is posted I’m going to get out my sunglasses and try to find a chair near the corner of the room. Find some place to place my head. And I’ll pretend to play rapt attention to the dynamic speaker at the front.
Please God – don’t let me snore.
View from a Wolf 
Now this is a post I can relate to……well except for the iPhone part.
I’ve been to a few of these Microsoft Seminars, just for the free software they give you (SQL Server, Visual Studio, etc). One thing I’ve discovered is that the bastards make you wait until the seminar is over before they let you have any of it. For me the day off work sounds nice, but I end up having to get up an hour and a half earlier so that I can go all the way to Toronto, and then trying to catch up on work the next day anyway. So that kind of ruins that part. Plus, now I get all my Microsoft Software free through MSDN (gotta love work for that one) so even the free software isn’t enough to get me to go now. Besides, as you know, free software rarely ends up being worth sitting through all that crap for hours on end. Going to work flies by in comparison to listening to those guys blather on all day.
As far as the blogging from your iPhone, how are you finding it? I’ve done a few blog posts from my blackberry and as long as you’re keeping it simple, sticking to just text, I find it works pretty well. For the record the blackberry has no doubt that you mean to say Fuck when you write it either. I guess blackberry users are expected to be angry and cursing where as iPhone users should be calm and joyful from all those wonderful apps they get to play with, ha.
Maybe I should attend the next seminar you go to just so that you’re not so bored, hahaha. Or at least so you can have company while your bored.
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The writing on the iPhone works as advertised but if course the level of fat fingering is much worse than the blackberry.
It used to be that attending one of these events was pretty cool mostly because of the free software. Now though – not so much.
Or maybe it’s that I’ve changed. Yes that’s likely it. Maybe the rest if these geeks here are intelensely interested and I’m the odd man out.
It takes me a bit of time to get here from home as well so the day off work thing is a bit of a misnomer. Oh well. 2 hours to go.
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I’m gonna follow your first tangential thought.
I was recently in the hospital for some tests and the guy who was hooking me up to the machine had a deep voice and the tiniest little hands I had ever seen. I was mesmerized, couldn’t stop watching them. He had to stick these electrodes on my chest and his fingers kept brushing my skin. I didn’t realize I was making a face until he said, “It’s not suppose to hurt. What’s wrong?” I had no idea what to say. I mean, the guy was regular in every other way except for that great big voice and those itty bitty handsies. It’s totally wrong of me to be so freaked out ; I’m sure he didn’t CHOOSE those itty bitty hands but… Well, they were PERFECTLY manicured with a nice coat of clear polish, even. Anyway, I bet he can type with his thumbs just fine! Maybe, in this techno-texty world, itty-bitty man hands are a bonus?
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I think you should have told him. Unfortunately there’s not much he could do about it. Maybe try one of these squeezy tension toys. Or masturbate a little more often.
At least if you told him, he’d no longer wonder why chicks giggle at him. You would remove the mystery.
You know it’s worse when you shake hands with someone like that. Feels like you’re touching cold McDonald’s french fries. Like you’re caressing them.
Ew.
No it’s not a bonus to have those, technical world or no. I’d rather mash those keys for the rest of my life than have girly fingers.
I’m grateful for your choice of tangents.
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Squeezy toys and masturbation wouldn’t have helped. This guys hands were downright dainty. They belonged on a 5’1″, 90 pound woman not on a man. And, seriously, having him touch my body was WAY worse than shaking hands with him. Trust me on that. You’re a guy so maybe you don’t get it but he was brushing my naked breasts with his soft-lady hands and talking to me in that deep voice and I was TOTALLY creeped out.
Close your eyes and imagine for a moment that you’re a woman… Oh, never mind, you won’t do it!
By the way, I’d MUCH rather have had cold McD’s french friends touching me than those handsies. No contest!
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Uh…I just tried your imagination suggestion and it worked out a little differently for me.
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LOL, Abe, I had a feeling it wouldn’t translate very well.
Here, try this: Imagine YOU are on an examination table, wearing one of those wonderfully fashionable and modest gowns, while a woman reaches up under your gown to attach electrodes to your chest, and she has these HUGE man hands with hairy knuckles that keep brushing against your skin. Does that work? Maybe it won’t. Men and women think about these things very differently, methinks.
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I once had a much worse medical experience involving a nurse with mannish hands…she got the job done, but I was definitely not thinking about her hands.
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I see you two have been keeping the imagery alive. Thanks for that.
I’ll just sneak out here quietly.
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Seminars are the worst. Particularly technical ones… though I love technology?!?! Anyway, did you snore? Did you actually post this from a phone? I couldn’t do it. I’d go nuts trying to type on a tiny phone. iPad, now that’s what I want… but I’m going to wait a year or 2 for them to work out all the quirks.
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I really did nod off. Finally decided I couldn’t stay ’till the end. They were offering free stuff but I didn’t care. I went out and did some shopping instead. Bought a couple of bottles of wine, some light bulbs, some duct tape and a pot-bellied pig.
(Ok just kidding about the duct tape.)
(And the pig.)
Also bought the first two seasons of Californication.
So you know – it wasn’t a total waste of a day.
P.S. you’ve got more will power than me. I’ll be getting an iPad just as soon as they offer the 3G version here in Canada. And yes, I did write this from my iPhone. Not in a browser though – there’s a WordPress application for the iPhone. Seems to have worked quite well, too.
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LOL!
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I once took my Project Managers to a leadership seminar. It sucked balls. I never took them again.
I think phones got too small. I didn’t get an iPhone because I think my fingers are too fat for screen typing. But my Windows Mobile smart phone has buttons that were designed by aliens from the planet of tiny human-like people. They’re small. So…perhaps the technology trend will allow for a bit of enlargement. Hence, the iPad, right? But…you can’t answer it like a phone, right?
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Right. You can’t. But you make a good point about the enlarged keyboards for the iPad. Which is one reason I plan to get one.
Right now our firewall at work prevents us from doing too much on the net (like answer emails) so I’ve had to use the iPhone for that. Takes me about, oh I don’t know, 30 minutes to get a sentence out on the thing – if you include the time it takes to keep correcting every second letter.
Hopefully the iPad will work in our favour.
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I love it! I find I text a lot during those events! The battery thing tho…bummer. Need that up and running. I guess you will just have to soak up all that knowledge like a sponge instead. No sleeping. People put straws in your nose when you do that.
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You know what? All during my school years, that was my hope – that I could just soak up the knowledge. To a large extent it seems to have worked even though I *sucked* at getting projects done.
It’s ok to sleep as long as you do it right. Our director-general held a cross-country teleconference, and there were about 300 attendees or so. Someone left their phone off of mute, and you could hear him (I assume it was a him) start to breath heavily.
When he started snoring, I had to put my own phone on mute to prevent broadcasting my own laughter.
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I remember sitting in the back of the room trying to meditate at a conference and being shook several times by some who just didn’t appreciate the snoring by one who was in Bliss.
Can’t remember the topic I did not listen too. But, do remember the looks on people who were either irritated with me or proud of my antics.
michael j
didn’t matter which way they felt. I got through with the presenter never the wiser.
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