Tonight I decided to try to jailbreak my phone.  I’ve got to say that it’s not that hard thanks to a dedicated group of people known as the iPhone DEV Team.  I used the Lifehacker site for guidance.  I’ve since added the NES Emulator to the phone and have been able to ssh into it and poke around.

I downloaded the free AOL client for the iPhone today and gave it a spin.  I must say that I’m disappointed in what AOL delivered.  I think that part of the problem is due to Apple not having the infrastructure in place to handle the background notifications.

Things missed from the 1.0 version:

• Background Notifications - I.E. getting notices when you’re not in the app when someone sends you an IM
• Not logging you out of the service if you’ve been idle for 5 minutes or so.
• Being able to delete people from your buddy list
• Logging into multiple accounts

I had to take Rebecca to the airport for a 10:40 flight.  Later, I had to pickup Jonathan at 15:00.  As you can guess, it would be easier to just stay at the airport.  I.E. not having to visit the Southwest ticket counter twice and also pass through security twice.

No problem, I had a plan.  I’d get 5 hours to really play with my new toy and not have to worry about anything.  Sounded like a good plan, was a good plan.  Well, one small detail was missed.  The battery of the iPhone is rated for 5 hours of surfing, chatting on the phone, etc. running off a 3G signal.  I can say that I got the 20% low battery warning and even hit the 10% warning before 5 hours.  I stopped using the web, etc. at 4 hours.  I chatted a bit on the phone but was worried I’d run the battery dry before I got out of the airport.

I should have brought a charging cable with me or at least had one in the car.  I’m not sure how much more I would have gotten out of the phone had I pushed it but the big battery with the small sliver of red left sort of made me pause

I stopped by the mall to see what sort of cases the Apple store might have that AT&T did not have.  Well, there was a huge and yes I mean huge line snaking out of the Apple store and down and around the kids play area.  From the sounds of things, people were waiting for 5+ hours to get a phone.  That said, it also sounds like the store had quite a stock on hand to handle demands.  From the sounds of things, they must have had 500 or more phones available unlike the AT&T store who had less than 50.

My next stop what the AT&T store in the mall and as guessed, they were out before they opened.

Yippee, I am a proud new owner of an iPhone 3G.  The second generation iPhone’s were released on July 11th starting at 8:00 local time.  When the first iPhone was released just over a year ago, the lines wrapped around the buildings and there was not enough supply for the demand (Yes, a lot of very unhappy people those first few weeks).

I decided that I’d go to the AT&T store in Parole, MD.  This store is just a mile or so from the Annapolis Mall.  I’d guessed that most people who might camp out would go to the mall as it has an Apple store and an AT&T store (double the chances to get a phone).  Thursday evening around 18:00, I stopped into the store to see if a line was forming and also to work with Petra on choosing her new phone.  Yes, I did not think I’d get away with a new phone without her also getting something :)  There was a couple who arrived while we were in the store and started setting up camp.  They were going to get phones #1 and #2.

I’ve got to say that I was excited about getting the iPhone.  Petra was also caught up in the hype.  She drove back by the store at midnight and reported back that there were now three people out front.  I had this gut feeling that I needed to get there earlier so I adjusted my plans and got up at 04:00.  If you know me, that’s not normal under any circumstances.  I arrived at the store around 4:40 and was shopper #8.

The AT&T employees started arriving at 06:00.  They started asking questions and filling out paperwork.  I was assigned phone #12.  I wanted and got a 16GB Black model. They announced a last minute change to policy - one phone per person present.

By 06:30 they had assigned all of the 16GB models and by 07:00 their whole stock was assigned.  It sounded like they only and 40 or so phones.  People kept arriving and were quite upset that they were all gone and the store had not even opened yet.  At 08:00 they opened up the doors and I was part of the first group of 10 families.  I ported my cell phone number from Sprint, picked the phone that Petra wanted and was out of the store by 08:30 owning one of the first iPhone 3Gs.

Yes, I went strait home, started syncing it with iTunes to complete the activation process and then downloaded the first two of many new applications from the store.

I woke up this morning and tried to figure out just want to do as a family. We seem to always end up at some sort of mall or shopping center. What could I find that would be fun for the kids and maybe even include a bit of education? You’d think that living in the Baltimore/Washington coridor, we’d never run out of exciting things to do. We just don’t seem to do them. It’s time to (re)discover our area. Well, after a lot of brain drain, I came up with a trip to Port Discovery. Port Discovery is a Children’s Museum in Baltimore MD. At $11.75 per person 2 and older, it’s sort of pricey. In our case, a family of six costs $70.50. So, we decided to take another route and get a yearly membership for $125. The additional $54.50 allows us to visit other Children’s Museum’s that belong to the “Association of Children’s Museums“. This is over 150 children’s museums in the US and Canada. One of the museum’s is located in Annapolis, MD. Jonathan love’s visiting it. There is also another one in Tampa Fl. Between those two, we’ll get our monies worth.

Today’s outing was a lot of fun for the whole family. Thumbs up rating for this one.

Tonight I watched “The Bucket List” with my wife.  I loved the movie.  It’s one of those movies that brings a smile at times and tears at others.  The last movie that did that to me was “P.S. I Love You”.

So, what’s on your Bucket List?  I can honestly say that I’ve never given it much thought as there is always tomorrow.  Ask yourself, is there some sort of guarantee that tomorrow’s going to arrive?  Do we live our lives as if each day is our last?  I know that I don’t.

After having Netflix for over a year, I finally dropped it.  In that time, three movies that were returned never made it back to NetFlix.  The second problem was we’re just not watching them nightly.  I.E. I’d get a movie in the mail and it would sit for a week before we’d get around to watching it.

Roll the clock forward and I’ve decided to try out the RedBox.  It’s $1 per movie per night.  That said, I was paying almost $20 to NetFlix to have 3 movies out at a time.  I don’t think that in any month we received 15 movies so it seems that the RedBox solution is cheaper.  NetFlix has a huge selection of movies.  RedBox is very limited to very current films (maybe 100 or so).  I’m going to guess that a hybrid solution, I.E. getting a limited NetFlix like plan for say $5 per month allowing for one movie out at a time and use RedBox is the right mix.