(no subject)

Big news yesterday was Verizon's announcement that they will soon be offering the (previously ATT exclusive) iPhone.

It didn't mean much to me at first. iPhone does some impressive stuff, but it has its flaws. I've heard too many reports of poor call quality, dropped calls, etc. It also requires a hefty data plan. There are times when having a smartphone would be handy, but not enough for it to be worth it for me. In fact, it turns out I can actually live for an hour or two without checking email.

Frankly, I'm not much for Apple products in general. Macs are designed to be user-friendly above anything else. Which is great to a point, but can also be very limiting when the software keeps assuming that you're a clumsy fool who shouldn't be allowed to do anything outside the parameters of the baby-proofing. iPods got huge market share despite a field full of better, cheaper, more feature-rich competitors... mostly because of iTunes. iTunes has a large library and is convenient to use, but is insidiously pervasive (nearly to the point of being a virus, IMO) and puts such restrictive copyright protections on everything that you can't even listen to your own music after you've legally purchased it.

All of which means that when I heard the news, I shrugged it off, thinking it wouldn't affect me. And then I watched the Daily Show's take on the matter, which focused on the call and signal quality issues. And it reminded me of the reason for that: the iPhone is a major bandwidth hog. Part of the reason it can do so much is that it pulls in a lot of data from the network. More than the cell network can handle, especially when you have a city full of the dang things.

AT&T tried to stop selling them in New York City (basically telling customers that they were on back order) because the volume of usage kept crashing their network. Israel tried to ban them entirely for that very reason. Both measures were quickly shouted down by a demanding public.

Verizon already has Android phones. (Droids use an open-source software platform designed by Google. The name is licensed from Lucasfilm.) They aren't quite iPhones, but they have many of the same capabilities. But now everyone in the city with Verizon is going to rush to get an iPhone. And a fair number of people who switched from Verizon to AT&T specifically to get an iPhone (I know a few, and they're far from alone) will switch back to get the better network while keeping the phone. Which means...

The Verizon network will soon be bogged down with bandwidth-draining iPhones. Which will hurt signal and call quality for everyone in the city with a Verizon phone, whether it's an iPhone or not. And yeah, call quality in general will be better with a phone that's actually designed to be a phone (as opposed to a mini-netbook which also happens to sometimes sort of function as a phone), but it won't be as good as it was. Data packets (including snippets of digitally transmitted voice calls) will be lost, signal strength will drop, and areas of the network may even start to crash like they did when AT&T first introduced the iPhone to their system.

It's not the cellphonepocalypse, but it is bad news for Verizon customers who don't care about the shiny overpriced toy.

I can only hope that Verizon learned from AT&T's problems and managed to shore up their network in preparation for the flood.

(no subject)

In other news:

1. I kind of wanted to make something - probably an animated GIF. It would go like this:

COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU

JONATHAN KENT IS

[scene from Chi of Steel where he holds up the cape, mystified, after burning a hole in it with a flat iron]

IRON MAN

And then it loops back to the first line, which works neatly at the beginning or end.

But I couldn't find a decent screencap of that scene online. I thought maybe I could do a second or two of the actual scene, but it's been so long since I've done any vidding that I'm not even sure where the episode files physically are. (Turns out my old external drive didn't get copied over to the new one.) So you'll just have to imagine it. Because, really, it was just a quick gag with no lasting purpose.

2. When I was a kid, I used to break my wrists a lot. Sometimes, it was justified, like the time I was biking at top speed, swerved into a bump, did a 270 degree flip in the air, and landed on my wrist. Sometimes, it was much less so, like the time I decided to practice a jump kick... while wearing socks on what turned out to be a freshly-waxed floor. I slipped on the landing and broke my wrist.

Eventually, we realized that the problem was that I wasn't taking in as much calcium as I should. I'd somehow fallen out of the habit of drinking milk. Nowadays I still don't drink much milk (a glass at breakfast, but rarely more than that). It's not quite as important right now - I'm too old to be growing and too young for serious bone loss, especially since males are less susceptible to that particular problem - but it is still a good idea to maintain calcium intake.

For a while, I took Viactiv. It's a readily available chocolate-flavored chew with calcium, as well as vitamin D and vitamin K (which help the body absorb the calcium). Much better than swallowing yet another large pill, but still not that tasty. I used to keep them in my pockets so that at least the body heat would soften them a bit.

And then my sister found a new brand. It's called Adora. It's made by a relatively new company, with limited distribution so far. But you can buy it online. (I even found a 10% off coupon with a quick net search. That nearly paid for the shipping.) It tastes like chocolate. Good chocolate. (Not the expensive gourmet stuff, but better than most of the plain chocolates you'd find in the candy aisle of the grocery store.) But each one has half your recommended daily calcium, along with a good amount of vitamin D, some magnesium, and even a bit of vitamin K. Their motto is "crave your calcium," and I'd say they live up to it.

Most of you reading this are female, and it's even more important for you. Bone loss can start surprisingly early in women.

So... think about it. At the least, it's a darned good excuse to have (a little more) chocolate twice a day.