Month: November 2011

Sure, i was seduced by the iPhone for a long time, but because I was locked into a, um, long-term deal (i.e. If you die and no one is using the phone, they’ll still be billing you until you re-animate Frankenstyle and cancel… oh, of course only after the expiration of said long-term deal…) with Big Red. Anyway, my old Windows Mobile phone, a Samsung Omnia, was working just fine, but it was a little short on the cool factor. So, in the Springtime of my technology loving this year, I began research for a new phone. I should note that my research efforts delve to a depth and breadth that makes me wonder how I ever get to purchasing anything at all…

[On a related note, I’ve had the same blade in a Gillette Fusion Power razor since acquiring it in May of 2010. It’s a “weekend at the Happy Hollow” backup, so no, I’ve not been ripping my face off with it. Anyway, have you seen the price of blades for that freakin’ thing? I have, and I’ve been holding out, researching for a price somewhere South of the 4/$16.29 at CVS… That’s $4.0725 each for those of you not doing math in your head right now… So yesterday, the lovely Joyce and I am at an Estate Sale and I see a grungy, used model… Gross, right? Yeah, but underneath were 2 pristine replacement blades. I approached the lady doing the “slips” and held up the razor (hiding the blades) with a high degree of contriteness… I think I bowed my head a little. She looked at the gross, soap scummy razor and said, “fifty cents?” Folks, you do the math on that one. Woo hoo!]

Oh yeah. The phone thing. So, blah, blah, blah… There I am in the local Big Red store in May, and they finally had the iPhone. It’s a cool little device, and I get the whole “it just works” (unless you have the AT&T version and want to use it as a um, phone) thing, but it’s a little too slick and a little too vanilla for me. Plus, I’ve been using computer technology since before Windows, and I gotta tell you, none of it “just works.” That’s OK. Over the years I’ve become very self reliant (nod to all you Emerson fans), and from custom “bat” and “ini” files to “cooked” “ROM’s” for smartphones, I’ve learned to love technology tinkering. You really can’t mess with an iPhone. That baby is “locked down,” as they say in the biz. Yeah, yeah, you can “jailbreak” it and then customize, but Apple make it very difficult to do so. Plus, when I picked it up in the store, it felt too small and somewhat toy-like. No. I was going for an Android phone.

The three major hardware contenders were Motorola, Samsung and HTC. My Omnia was a Samsung product and had some issues, so it was nixed. Motorola and HTC seemed pretty even in terms of build quality, but the design, and especially the “Sense” interface software gave the edge to HTC. I liked the product I purchased, but the name was just so silly, I couldn’t say or write it until I read something funny referencing it on an online Android forum.

My experience with the phone has been a good one, but others have had serious issues including:

– Multiple, random reboots
– No voicemail notifications
– Dropped data connections
– A slow, and then botched rollout of the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) upgrade
– Poor battery life

The random reboots was a real PITA for those experiencing it, but I wasn’t one of them. Nor did the voicemail thing affect me. The battery life is poor, but i usually have the phone plugged in whether home, in the office or driving, and I do get intermittent data connection issues, but that’s mostly when I’m using the phone as a wi-fi router. Yeah. Down the Cape we don’t have Internet, so my phone provides it. Just this morning Joyce was surfing on her laptop and I was Facebooking on my iPad, all via wireless Internet from my phone. Its fast, too. Just like at home. Then my now 20 year old son called. While we chatted with him via speakerphone, we remained connected to the Internet… Yep. Simultaneous voice and data to both devices. I’m not sure whether any other Big Red phones can do that yet, but mine was the first.

So while some phone website recently awarded my phone the Android Lemon Award for the worst phone of 2011, I disagree. In fact, I’m no longer embarrassed to say its name.

“Why yes, ma’am… That is a Thunderbolt in my pocket.”

The late evening walk from the Boston Garden to the Park Street Station was always an enjoyable one, especially after a Bruins win. He usually grabbed a slice at Halftime Pizza on the corner of Causeway and Friend Street, then walked along the dark Friend, wallet front pocketed, alert to any threat lurking in a doorway or alley. Once out to Congress Street headed toward Boston City Hall, things got brighter and there were always lots of cars and cabs around to suppress the crime rate.

Climbing the long stairs from Congress up on to the large, red brick field surrounding City Hall felt good, but it was mostly a head down exercise. The architecture of City Hall looks like it was designed for a 1970’s version of “Batman” by a set designer inspired by only a cinder block and a bad interpretation of Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s better to simply avoid eye contact and focus on the red bricks under foot.

With the lifeless rectangles of brick passing below, he thought about his family… his children, and the love of his life. It didn’t take concious thought. They were always “there” and always would be. He remembered that article about November being “write a novel month,” or something like that. Would he ever muster the courage to try? A couple of guys waited to cross Tremont Street as he approached. A stream of taxi’s passed and when the sizzling sound of rotating rubber skimming wet pavement faded, he didn’t wait for the light and blew past the pair. He thought mid-stride if that was rude. They didn’t say anything, so apparently not. Much of that stretch of Tremont is under cover, so the last misty wringing of clouds would not freshen his face. As he approached two sauntering women from behind, one white and one black, he swayed a bit away from them so not to startle. They were talking about a show they’d just seen. They liked it. It made them think. The best kind.

With the Granary Burial ground on the right, he could see the subway stop ahead and sped his stride. Just a quick hop across Park Street and he’d soon be in a sideways seat heading home. He took a quick look to his left to check traffic and saw a taxi turning the corner. Instantly a mis-step sent him lurching forward without balance. Taxi inertia and head gravity met at an exact point in space. There was no time for a highlight reel of life. Later, pensive workers moved him from the cold, wet slab to a dry one.

I’m not sure why that story popped into my head Thursday night. I’ve been thinking about a sick friend lately. Death isn’t being suddenly kind to him. It’s teasing and tormenting. It’s inflicting horrific physical pain on my friend, and worse mental anguish on him and all who love him. Death has many faces and infinite creativity. I’m pretty sure I want to see it coming. I want some time to think about it…

I stopped short of the curb. The taxi passed. A wonderful life would continue to.

November snuck in while I was staring at a large, alien-like object lying dead in my yard. People that see the giant oak just repeat the same three word phrases to themselves as they try to process 1. the sheer enormity of the thing, from its giant, slithering tentacles to a four foot thick trunk, and 2. the odds of it falling precicely between two homes it could have easily crushed. Laying on it’s side, the massive branches still hover thirty feet in the air, and the footprint covers my entire yard, roughly one hundred feet long by fifty wide. Oh, one of the sayings is, “OMG!” The other is “WTF!” Yesterday my mom saw it and went with about ten repetitions of the former.

I always worried about that big, beautiful tree falling on the house. Several long, thick branches inched closer to the asphalt shingles as the years passed. A stinging 2008 December ice storm produced the scariest night ever in my home. For hours, as tree limbs exploded shards of ice and splinters in the woods behind my home, the large limbs of the oak pressed against my attic bedroom skylight. When the biggest arms of the old tree survived that night, I stopped worrying about one of them reaching unwelcomed through my roof.

The October snowstorm not predicted by the Farmer’s Almanac dumped over a foot of heavy, wet snow that knew it’s days were numbered. This was not January snow that knew temperatures would keep it solid well into March. This was snow that knew it was lucky to be alive, but was realistic enough to know it wouldn’t see Christmas. It infiltrated every crevice of the mossy bark and clung desperately to thousands of leaves, also desperate to remain connected to life just a few more weeks. I imagined some aristocratic leaf like the Caladin Hoxley character in “Titanic” shaking snow off and yelling, “you’ll swamp the boat!” The snow kept coming…

Part of me wishes I heard it, but the part that slept downstairs during that ice storm is glad I didn’t. The weight of the snow and the high winds teamed with gravity and inertia to send the celebrity of our landscape into a sway so powerful, it ripped the entire century old root system out of the ground into a chaotic ball of soil, rocks and torn arteries. The impact sliced a long section from the top side of the trunk length. The twenty foot severed section now hovers above the trunk like an airborne, riderless surfboard. One hundred plus years of life was over in less than five seconds. Then nature carried on; her snow and wind no longer impeded by life in that particular space.

In some ways, the old oak tree was a natural extension of my now 81 year old Craftsman bungalow. They grew up together, and now sadly the clock ran out for one of them. I have many family pictures with that tree… its branches, the strong, wide trunk, or simply the shade it provided to prevent overexposed snapshots. I took several off my deck during all of the seasons featuring one outreaching arm. Over the next few winter’s, that arm and much of the rest of that tree will warm a family in a nearby town.

I’ve got images.