Saturday, July 12, 2008

7/12/08 Games Night

Games Night was at MY place! This is our sixth Games Night and I got to play hostess. It's actually my second time to host 'cuz MRM and I co-hosted back in April. Whooop! We started on the verandah and actually just sat around and ate, yacked, and drank for 2.5 hours until the darkness and the mosquitoes got to us. Then we went inside and played Tri-Bond and yacked, ate, and drank some more. People brought chairs (I was worried I wouldn't have enough), food, games, and FLOWERS! I liked that part! Here are roses from Michelle:

and here are sunflowers from Pearia:

7/12/08 iPhone 2.0

On June 9, Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone and all the new features in iPhone 2.0 software. The good news for those of us who invested in the first iPhone is that most of the new stuff is available for us, too! Because the iPhone is software based, a software upgrade gives us most of the new features. Whooop! So I've been anticipating the new software for quite a while now. and yesterday was the day. My techno-geek friend Rodney and I promised each other that we would upgrade our iPhones together. We tried but there were so many people upgrading on that day, plus we both had additional issues (my laptop hard drive was almost full and so it wasn't operating fully; he had just received a replacement iPhone and it hadn't been activated yet), that we didn't have any luck on Friday. But we got together today at the library (free wireless Internet) and pretty soon we were both up and running. Actually, he eventually got his up and running last night without me and had already downloaded a bunch of the new apps. Twit.

For all the details about the upgrade, check out my technology blog. (You'd think I already have enough blogs, but I'm thinking one can't have enough.)

So now that we both have the software, we wanted to find a place where we both could play on a wi-fi connection. The library was closed and in my office, only I can get it. So we headed over to The Big Burrito, a little restaurant in West Farmington that has free wi-fi. Here's Rodney sitting across from me at The Big Burrito (notice the wall-e watch).
He's totally engrossed in his iPhone while we're waiting for our lunch. We both were. At this point, I think he's installing Loopt software which I also installed. It's supposed to allow you to see where your friends are using the GPS or (in our case . . . on the older iPhone) cellular phone triangulation. It should probably be called "Stalker" software because if you didn't have the ability to block people from seeing you (you pick who you want to know your location and you can turn off the ability to be tracked at any time), it really would be software for stalkers. The funny thing about it was, it showed us to be 7 miles apart. That's a really big table at the restaurant! We figured the cell phone triangulation software only had 1 or 2 cell towers to work off of out here in rural Maine and that was as close as it could get.

And how are the burritos you ask? Well, to quote Trig (one of my fourth graders from a long time ago) when he found out I was in Maine, "My best advice is, 'Don't eat the Mexican food.'" I can highly recommend the ginger lemonade at The Big Burrito and the food is really good unless you're expecting spicy Mexican food.