Written by Michael Lankton Tuesday, 09 March 2010 14:23
I am blessed with a very bright four year old son named Valor. We never spoke to Valor like a baby, and as a result he began speaking pretty maturely at a very young age. Don't take that as meaning we didn't let him enjoy being a goofy toddler. Val has a blast, he's just very smart and he speaks so well it's a little disarming for some people.
Val looks just like his dad, but he has his mom's ice blue eyes. As if it wasn't enough to love your child I am really head over heels for the boy. One, he's fantastic, and two, every time I look in his eyes I see his mom, who I love very much.
Val and I have developed a kind of language of our own. Everything is based on English, but we have created some unusual idioms of our own that have entered and stayed in our repertoire. Here are some of Valor's contributions to our vocabulary. Some of them were inspired by me, some were simple mispronunciations, but honestly some of this stuff I have no idea where he came up with it.
Written by Michael Lankton Monday, 08 March 2010 19:34
As cool as I thought the iPhone was, I never had a problem getting obsessed over it. You see, I live in a rural area, and ATT's network just wasn't going to cut it for me. Easy not to get overexcited about something that wouldn't work for you.
Fast forward a couple years and Android devices are popping up like mushrooms. Droid is what opened my eyes, and when I saw the Nexus One I thought I had found my phone. Then, practically by accident, I got my hands on Palm's webOS and it was all over for Android. When I say practically by accident, I mean that I was aware Palm had new devices, but I didn't really care and they weren't on my radar. Until I tried webOS. Then I could never be happy with anything else. Damn you Palm.
You see, as much as Android is kind of "iPhone for the rest of us", webOS just takes it all to another level entirely. It's smart. It's logical. It's well designed. It looks good. It can handle just about anything you can ask from it without crumbling. It has the greatest contacts and notifications implementations of any device made by man. It just works.
Written by Michael Lankton Saturday, 30 January 2010 13:05
I've had a hard-on for a new phone ever since the Droid came out in November. The Droid wasn't the "it" phone for me, but it got me to start paying really close attention. I figured I would wait until some Android phone with a killer form factor and a fast CPU came along, and I would be in. I was kind of thinking that a Nexus One on Verizon would fit that bill.
So it just barely got my attention that the Palm phones were debuting on Verizon on Monday this week. I kind of noticed at the last minute, but I did the same thing I did with Android. I downloaded the SDK and started playing with it on my Mac. Holy crap! Not only was Palm not even on my radar, this operating system destroyed Android! Totally shook up my whole frame of mind on phones.
So I spent the whole weekend obsessively reading and watching everything I can find on the Palm Pre. That obsession continues into the week. Lucky for the world, because I quit smoking on Monday. The Palm Pre is not only a kick ass smartphone, it saves lives. Saves lives because I am pretty sure I would have killed somebody for a cigarette this week, but didn't because I went out and got a Palm Pre Plus instead.
