To iPhone or not to iPhone

OK, though I’ve bought tons of iPods since they came out. (Hey my first iPod was so old, it actually had scrollwheel that moved! You kids today with your touchscreens!! Now, get off my lawn!!!)

Uh, what was I saying?.. oh Yeah, I don’t have an iPhone. There were several things holding me back, but the main thing was I was waiting for was the “version 2.0″ which was announced this week. And now that its here, I think I might be holding off a little while longer. Right now I am on Sprint, and have their SERO plan (the absolute best kept secret in the cell phone market.) I have a Motorola Q, which is a functional but sucky Windows Mobile phone. The only thing it does that’s worthwhile is push email/contacts/calendar with our Exchange server at work. I can get that now on the new iPhone (and the old ones too, but you can’t get those anymore.) My current iPod is a 32gig Touch, which is awesomely cool and all, but I still have to carry along two things most of the time. Could I squeeze into a 16 gig iPhone? Probably. The Touch could always go up on ebay.

The biggest that keeps me from making the leap is the plan cost. My current plan gets like 500 minutes, unlimited data and 500 text messages for $35 a month (I told you SERO was great.). The minimum iPhone plan is going to be $70 and that may or may not include any text messages. That’s a big jump in price every month for the same service. What I wouldn’t give for an iPhone that would run on the Sprint network.

So for now, I think I’ll hold on to my sucky Q and look for the eventually to be coming 32gig iPhone, and then think it over again. Unless some awesome applications show up that push me over the top. I hear there’s rumors of a wordpress client…

We’ve Got To Get In To Get Out

The other night I had the pleasure of attending the screening of the new Genesis concert DVD, When In Rome, in HD at the local movieplex. It was quite good. I would go again just to hear it on that sound system.

Genesis was the first band I ever got into at all, way back in 9th grade. That’s (lets see…) 22 years ago. I wonder how many times I’ve heard these songs in those many years. At least in the hundreds, and most likely in the thousands. Up until I discovered them, I wasn’t really that much into music. I had a few albums (I seem to remember I liked movie soundtracks), but I never listened to any of them regularly. Then one day, I clearly remember, I was walking home from the bus stop and humming something from Mama. “That’s a cool song” I thought. When I got home, I dug through my sisters tape collection (she was away at college then.) and found the “Mama” album – actually just called “Genesis”. Mama was on there, and That’s All (hey I remember this song.) but by the time it got to Home By The Sea I was hooked. I hadn’t really heard anything like this before. A few weeks later they released Invisible Touch, and I snatched that on up as well. I slowly worked my way back in their catalog as my limited finances would allow. Pretty soon I had just about everything, and loved it all.

But I never got to see them live.

After We Can’t Dance came out, I was really planning to go see them. I knew they wouldn’t come to Nashville, but I figured I could make the trek to Atlanta. But they didn’t come to Atlanta on that tour after all. A few years later Phil Collins quit, and after an ill-fated try at replacing him, they seemed to have pretty much hung it up. There were some box sets and greatest hits albums, and the Internet has become a great place to find concert recordings of various qualities. But I never expected much out of them again.

There were some decent message boards on the “Official” Genesis site, and I would check them out every so often to see if anything was going on. There was always someone speculating on some type of reunion, and lots of other people shouting them down with a “No, we’ve been over this!” It became known as the “R” word. But then there were some more specific rumors of something, and all the sudden there was to be a press conference. And what do you know, a Genesis tour of Europe and America!

Well, I wasn’t going to miss this. I told Pam that I had to see them this time, no matter where they played, and she agreed. She even offered to come along to wherever we would have to go to see them. In the end, the closest and most convenient concert was in Columbus, OH. We flew up for a Saturday night concert. We had pretty good seats that I got in a fan club presale (for $200 each. Ouch!)

It was awesome.

It was nice to relive a bit of the concert the other night. There were only 20-30 people at the theater, but still, with the surround sound, there were also 500,000 Italian fans there, or at least it sounded like it. Changes are that’s it for Genesis, but I sure am glad I got to experience at least one concert before they hung it up for good.

Here’s “Mama” from When In Rome:

TechEd is Here

Well, I’m here at TechEd. Just got out of the keynote, given by Bill Gates. It was OK, nothing earth shattering. Sometimes at the keynote they will make annoucements of new, upcoming things. Not this time. Just some demos of some stuff we pretty much knew about. I expect more meat out of the breakout sessions.

The last two days we have been at the parks. The first full day, we went to Magic Kingdom – which was awesome. I’ll go into details why in a post later on. Yesterday was Animal Kingdom, which was OK, but its probably my least favorite park at WDW. It was very hot as well, and Animal Kingdom doesn’t have that much in the way of air conditioned venues. We only stayed about half a day.

I’ll try to catch up on whats been going on later, but I’ve got to head to a breakout session. More TechEd to come.