Musical phone

Jr. has been encouraging me to go for the iPhone 5S since the day it was released. We even went and stood in line at the local Apple Store. There were 100 guys still in line for the 33 remaining phones in the store. We left after the "line keeper" lady gave us the scoop. Apparently she said the same thing to all the other folks in line! So they were all hoping that somehow the folks in front of them magically drop off? The takeaway from that experience was "we live in a world full of hope" and "always do the math before standing in line the next time".

We learned later that Jr.'s real motivation for daddy getting a new phone was to get my iPhone 4 as a hand me down. At every opportunity she reminded me (her mom is made of tougher stuff and they both know it!) that she is now a middle school going girl, all her classmates have their own phone, how she "needs" an iPhone, how it is going to make our life easy etc. etc. 

Finally we went to the local store which promised an exchange program of sorts where they give you money back for other Apple products. We took with us an iPhone 3GS and an iPod which my BIL had gifted San with a personal engraving. San loved the engraving so much that she decided to store the iPod and pray to it daily than play it. So the thing died without being used.. or so we thought.

The story guy powered up both devices and declared "you get 2$ for the iPod and 5$ for the iPhone"

I said "really? 2 bucks?" and he goes "you would have got $2.60 if it was not engraved!".. btw, the battery is not dead, it works fine!

The little one put the headphones on and declared "This is awesome! such good sound and it is like the entire iTunes is in this little thing! I am going to use it.. " and has been inseprable from the iPod since this discovery.

We told him to give the 3GS back. I might as well keep it at home and pray to it instead of parting with it for 5 bucks. 

The phones are all set. I now have a nice 5S and Jr. has the 4 which she has been customizing since morning. In other words, she is removing all traces of me from that phone and is succeeding rather well. 

I told the little one "You see this 5S.. that is what you are going to get in 3 years when you go to middle school". She was not impressed. 

Oh yes.. forgot all about the title.. It was not just a take on Musical chairs. The new phone and the 4 have been updated to IOS 7 and we as a family love the iRadio. The clarity is amazing and the song selection so far on the Bollywood channel is nice. For some reason it plays so well on bluetooth in our cars on the 5S compared to the 4.

I was on the fence on this purchase even after I was already eligible for an upgrade for more than a year.  

Was a good decision to wait for something after the iPhone 5.. 

Good job Apple! 

That was Jr. inaugurating the camera on the 5S. Considering the background was so bright, would have expected a washed out pic on the 4. This one practically took a High Key image.. Nice! 

Now I have higher expectations three years from now.

The new hook

The kids are now hooked to "Cut the Rope"..

It is amazing how they pick up this game step by step.

It is pretty tricky and one has to have a good intuition for predicting trajectories to play this..

Currently restricted to 15 minutes maximum play time per day on weekdays and 30 minutes on weekends..

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When your kid takes over your iPhone

At work, I use notes app in my iPhone to take short notes and that way I don't have to carry my laptop around.

Wanted to go back to my notes two days later and was surprised to find out that most of my notes were edited by the little one!

In fact she had inserted words into some of the notes.

Apparently she has decided to use that as her journal of sorts!

found this gem.

Apparently she wrote that when she was angry that I was still working when she bugged me to get off the laptop. Well the rest of the notes are kind of a cross talk like thing where serious work meets serious anger. So cannot share them..

She is also into writing letters now. She writes as she hears and it is interesting to watch her spelling patterns. We are going through this after a three year gap and it is giving us a deja vu feeling..

She does not like it when we correct her spelling, because she is so sure she is right. That is the only difference between the two kids, but a big one!

She makes up for her stubborn nature when she dresses up and poses..

We are now into matching sunglasses!

The little one is going to be a lot more difficult to handle than Jr. That is for sure!

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Size trends

An old post was remembered and dug out of the Archives ..

The new trend seems to go in the opposite direction!

There was a company provided Samsung blackjack prior to the iPhone which definitely fits in the gap like a missing data point in the graph.

The phones seem to be growing longer, wider and thinner. They seem to stick out of our regulation size pockets!

That made me think for the first time in my adult life about pockets!

Why are pockets in T-shirts and shirts the same size?
How come they are the same across the world? How come Americans didn't say all American shirts will have pockets on the right side instead of the left? In a world where people drive cars differently, have no universal connector for electronic devices, have multiple measurement systems across the world, the pocket has managed to stay the same size? how come? what is the secret behind it?

and while pondering about the pocket went back to doze off!

Soon we will need bigger pockets to carry these thinner ipad size phones. Can totally imagine a conversation with my tailor in India..

Me : Shirt'oda sEthu pocket'a konjam perisa thaiyunga saar! (just like the shirt stitch the pocket also one size bigger)

Tailor : Why?

Me : Valarra phone! (growing phone)

If it happens, you read it first here...

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The Android newbie..

Have been a bit on the busy side the last couple of days. One main reason is that my company gave me a brand new phone. It is a phone new to the company as well and I have volunteered to be the Guinea pig on this one..

After getting so many complaints from me about poor AT&T service on my iPhone (note we live in Cupertino, the birthplace of apple but the iPhone has the worst signal coverage with AT&T in this area as the locals have banned the cell phone towers around us as it will be an eyesore on the mountain skyline!) switched me over to Sprint. Also this happens to be an android phone.

Right now there are 4 bars on the phone and the phone works as a phone very well. (Duh?)

It took me two days to figure out the menus, the look and feel of the phone as well as andoid quirks. Have almost made the menus and screens look identical to what was on my iPhone! We are creatures of habit and the fingers automatically to to a certain spot on the phone to check calendar, mail or make a phone call... so now we have an Android phone with 4 rows of 4 apps which look 1:1 like the iPhone screen.

The kids helped me find their stuff too and it is all in there on the second and third screen..

Only issues so far?

No way to see Tamil Fonts. People write stuff in Tamil in emails sent to me, google+ etc and all I get is a bunch of rectangles. Don't know if there is an easy way to support complex fonts or the Android guys simply havent provided support for Tamil fonts yet..

The iPhone was showing Tamil fonts fine. It just didn't work well as a phone...

Also this thing has two cameras, one on the front as well and should enable video chat! Except the gtalk has no videochat enabled on this. So we have to download some other app to do this and sign into google through that app. Do not know how safe that is. So if you have figured out a way to do gtalk with video on a Photon 4G, let me know as well.

Thanks in advance.

Also, many thanks to all of you who gave us tips on the whole birth certificate thing. Really really helpful. Much appreciated!

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