Verizon still hasn’t released an update for the HTC 8x to push it to Windows Phone 8.1 that came out earlier this summer. The latest promise was October but that obviously still hasn’t happened. The Microsoft Band only works with 8.1 and above (and Android and iOS too) so I decided to take the plunge and manually update my phone. It’s not supported, voids your warranty, etc so do this at your own risk. I chose to update my phone but didn’t touch Tyla’s. Thankfully it has worked ok. This was my first real experience with with 8.1 so here are my thoughts after a couple weeks:
- Cortana is great! You can ask her anything and she’ll either search for the results or perform the action. One of my favorite capabilities is saying something like “Next time I’m at Safeway, remind me to buy bread.” It sets a reminder coupled with my GPS location. Super helpful!
- There’s now a notification center similar to what Android and iOS have. This feels like a “me too” feature that isn’t needed. The brilliance of Windows Phone is that you have live tiles giving you all the information you need at a glance. Now I have that but I also have this notification center giving me the same information in a less convenient fashion. It probably feels more comfortable for people switching to the platform, but I wish I could just turn it off. I should probably look into that more.
- In addition to the normal keyboard, you can also now use the “Word Flow” keyboard. This is like Swift Key for Android. You just drag your finger across the keyboard and it figures out what you’re trying to type. Pretty cool and really useful when your hands are busy or you aren’t looking at your screen the whole time.
- One big downgrade in my book is the loss of the “hubs.” They are technically still there but all the awesomeness about them is gone. For instance, I used to click on the “Me” tile and be able to make an update that went out to both Twitter and Facebook. Now I need an app for that. I used to be able to click on a tile for another contact and see their Facebook and Twitter updates without opening anything else. Now I need apps for that. Boo. This was one of the things that made Windows Phone more awesome than Android and iOS. Now we’ve lost that differentiator.
There are lots of other tweaks and changes and overall I’d call it a big win. It feels a tad sluggish on my phone but my hardware is over two years old now so that’s not terrible. We should be up for some new phones soon. More on that later but I’m thinking I might drop Verizon after being a customer for 14 years and switch to AT&T who appears to have much more love for the Windows Phone platform. Plus, AT&T doesn’t track you anymore.
Thanksgiving seems like a good time to give an update on our Little Man who isn’t so little anymore. Elijah is now 17 months old. When he’s awake, he’s jabbering almost non-stop. We can’t understand 99% of what he’s saying but that doesn’t deter him. We can pick out a few words like woof, car, quack, daddy, etc. His best one is probably “thank you.” He’s really gotten the hang of this and even says it at the appropriate times. For example, if you take him to the grocery store, he says thank you every time the bagger puts a bag in our cart.
The Seahawks defense finally looked good for a solid 60 minutes. And look what happened… a victory against a tough opponent! The secondary is back and healthy and it’s a good start to a grueling end to their season. Just making the playoffs is going to take some luck so let’s start with that goal and see where they go.
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I came home the other night and found out that I had a dead hard drive on my main file server. D’oh! That machine carries every one of our photos since we got a digital camera and a ton of the print photos from early in our childhood. It’s irreplaceable!
I’m proud to say that I was part of the first fan-funded television show in history! Many of you know Zane Lamprey from previous shows like Three Sheets and Drinking Made Easy. He travels around the world, learns local drinking customs and has a good time doing it. I previously wrote about his Kickstarter to fund a new TV show. His plan was to put in a bunch of his own money, raise money from fans, and then produce a TV show that he would market to networks. It was an easier sales pitch because their cost to produce the content was $0.
This was the first year of the new NASCAR playoff scheduling system. Every car still races in every race, but towards the end of the season, they start knocking people out of contention for the championship. In the last race, points are reset for the top four drivers and whoever finishes the best, wins.
I picked this up from MattB’s recent Facebook post. It’s a Forbes article entitled “Why Don’t More People Work As Programmers?” It does an excellent job of describing what it takes to be a great programmer. Programming is not something that you can learn by taking a class or two or ten. Give it a read if you’ve got a code monkey in your life. Our profession is a mystery to a lot of people. The article won’t explain the mystery, but it might help you appreciate the complexity of the trade.
I ordered a
More Power!
I have some very generous friends. For the front yard project, Tim and Brent loaned me their tractor, Don loaned me his Chevy 2500 diesel truck, and my neighbor Randy loaned me his dual axle dump trailer. We ran all that equipment very hard on the first Saturday of the front yard project. We moved 50-60 yards of sod and dirt in 14 loads. Each load was at least an hour round trip to a spot where Tim’s friend let us dump it for free (saving us $1500-2000!) The only catch was that getting up to the dump spot required powering straight up an extremely straight driveway towing 5-6 tons. We had to put the truck in 4 low just to make it up the hill, and man, you should have heard that diesel screaming up the hill! It was nothing that the truck couldn’t handle, but it was pretty impressive.
On the final run, Tim stuck his phone out the window to record it. Of course the video doesn’t even come close to doing it justice. The hill looks way steeper in person. Before you watch it, picture that you’re driving $50-60K worth of somebody else’s equipment on somebody else’s property and if you slide back down the hill you’re going straight through somebody else’s house into the river. No pressure.