JustinVoelker.com

Does the world really need another Apple vs. Android article? Nope, but I’m going to write one anyway. Being an iPod Touch owner with a new Android phone I have been asked by a couple friends which is “better” and which I prefer. Well, “better” depends on what you are looking for but hopefully the following can help.

I have been waiting for over 2 years for Apple to bring the iPhone to Verizon.  I am on my third iPod and wanted to consolidate my phone, music, and apps onto one device.  Growing tired of waiting and seeing Android pick up momentum with Verizon I decided to do a little research.  I didn’t really care for the original Droid’s slide out keyboard and it just didn’t seem like it had what it takes to replace my iPod.  Enter the HTC Incredible (or the “Droid Incredible by HTC” for those of you that buy into the moronic Verizon idea that any phone running Google’s Android operating system is a “Droid” which is not the case).  The HTC Incredible seemed like a device to actually replace my iPod so I pulled the hypothetical trigger and made my purchase tying me to Verizon for two more years.  After a month of thoroughly enjoying my new phone I have the following comparison to offer.  (If you want a technical comparison look elsewhere–this is purely from an end-user usability standpoint and doesn’t compare pixels and GHz.)

Physical Device

In terms of the physical device, the two are about equal.  The Incredible screen is slightly taller and when comparing the two side-by-side, the iPod does not look nearly as bright and vibrant as the Incredible.  They each will give you 16 apps per page (7 pages on the Incredible and 9 on the current iPod) but while the iPod can only have that many apps installed the Incredible can have many more apps, just not all displayed on one of the 7 pages; they can be accessed from the “All Programs” menu.  Both devices are extremely responsive to touch and scroll smoothly through web pages and anything else that needs scrolling.

Applications

Apple still appears to have the lead when it comes to apps.  I have a few apps on my iPod that aren’t available on Android although Android seems to be catching up.  Although Apple has more apps, Android doesn’t require developers to use a Mac and purchase their software.  Just as a test I built a quick Hello World application for Android and within an hour (that includes downloading and installing the software) had it running on my Incredible.  The real benefit here is that Google doesn’t approve apps before they are added to the Android Market in the way Apple does with it’s App Store.  Anyone can publish anything in the Android Market with minimal effort.

Overall Interface and Usability

The iPod’s interface is simple.  Really simple.  However, with simplicity comes lack of control.  You can only place shortcuts to apps on the different pages, and those icons must be placed from left to right, top to bottom.  With Android you can place any app icon anywhere on any page.  Also, you get Widgets–mini programs that run on the page without having to open an applications.  The calendar is a great example.  On the iPod, you click the “Calendar” icon to view your appointments.  On Android, you can have a Calendar widget–it takes the place of multiple icons but it shows your calendar without having to open an app.

Other

The iPod has just one physical home button while the Incredible has 4 touch-sensitive buttons for home, menu, back, and search.  After using my Incredible for a while, I miss having these buttons on my iPod.  Although I use my Incredible for nearly everything (email, facebook, twitter, rss feeds), I still use my iPod for my music.  So, I’m not able to completely consolidate my two devices yet, but, my Incredible follows me everywhere while my iPod sits at home waiting to go for an evening bike ride.

Final thoughts

There is plenty more to talk about when comparing these devices but some points I could not compare fairly as I do not own an iPhone but just an iPod.  The above points are valid for the iPod and iPhone so I think they can be made fairly.  I can wrap up this entire comparison by saying that I was a die-hard iPod fan and desperately wanted the iPhone to come to Verizon.  After purchasing my Incredible I haven’t looked back and no longer care if Verizon ever gets the iPhone.  There was a time when I’m sure Verizon “needed” the iPhone–I’m willing to bet that has changed and it is now Apple that needs Verizon as Android is gaining momentum and shows no sign of stopping.

To anyone wanting the iPhone on Verizon–go Android–you’ll be glad you did.  Apple had better watch what’s coming up from behind before it’s too late and Android takes over.

Today, a coworker pointed out that Harbor Freight had bicycle lifts on sale for $6.99 down from $14.99. I have wanted to snag one for a while but was not interested in paying $25 (price at other stores in the past). Imagine my excitement when I saw that such a lift could be had for only $7! Since I was heading there for my purchase, I offered to purchase a few extras for some coworkers–9 bike lifts in total.

Upon arriving at Harbor Freight, I saw the sticker for $14.99. I took one bicycle lift to the register, asked for a price check–not on sale. At the time I couldn’t remember if the website indicated $6.99 or $7.99 so I asked if they could check which it was for me. The cashier has someone check on their “Internet computer” in the back. While he was gone I remembered that I had a fancy new phone with a data plan and I brought up the Harbor Freight website–$6.99. At that same time the clerk checking the price walked back and said “Go ahead and give him the $7.99 price.” Really??? I’m not one to be a prick for $9 but… wait, yes I am. “Excuse me, miss, I can see right here on the website that they are $6.99.” “Oh. I guess I’ll give you that price then.” Damn straight! Did this guy fail to find the item on the website and just give me a discount out of the goodness of his heart or was he knowingly trying to screw me because I couldn’t remember the exact price? Call me a cynic, but I think he was trying to screw the customer on purpose.

Moral of this story–Harbor Freight is full of crooks that will screw you any chance they get. OK, not really, but you should definitely have your facts prepared when doing battle with a business; some business’ employee’s may lie to the customer just to make a few bucks. Was it worth it Mr. Harbor Freight Employee? Calculate the total of lost lifetime purchases from this customer. (Yes, I’m overreacting but it makes for a better blog post.)

I was trying to stay away from the financial/auto bailout–I really was. However, I just couldn’t resist any longer after seeing a friend of mine battle it out through Facebook comments with his high school teacher.  I hope that maybe I can convince just one more person out there that we have some issues in this country that need to be taken care of…

The graphic pretty much sums it up–American cars are inferior and because we won’t by them, the government stepped in to save the companies.  What right does the government have to give these failing companies MY money?  Who made the government an expert at running an auto company?  If a company fails to perform, it should go out of business, plain and simple.  If you (as an individual) are not good at something, do you just keep going on failing at it or do you try to find something else that perhaps you can do better?  I am terrible at designing an aesthetically pleasing website so I stay way from the aesthetics of web design at let someone else do that.  Rather, I will find something I am good at such as the mechanics and behind-the-scenes aspects of web sites.  Don’t give these companies money to keep doing something they suck at!  If another company can do it better, domestic OR foreign, then they should do it and we should free up our labor force to do something else that they can do better.

“In a truly free economy, profit and loss is a market’s objective measure of the value a business is creating in society” (Koch 102).

In other words, if your business is losing money it is because people do not see the value in what you do!

And another thing!  Although this post is about the auto bailout, why is it that these employees get so angry when they are asked to take a pay cut for a job where they are making twice what they should be in the first place.  Take a pay cut and keep making some money or don’t take a pay cut and lose your job as the company goes under.  You can’t keep asking for more money when the company is doing well but not go the opposite way when the company is doing poorly.  You can’t have it both ways!  I guess I shall return from this sidebar and get back to the point of this post, the bailout.  Time to switch gears from the auto industry to the financial sector.

Bailing out a failing company is just a bad idea.  Why incentivize bad behavior and poor decision making?  How about AIG.  Some AIG executives makes some really bad decisions and the company starts plummeting.  Uncle Sam steps in and tosses some cash their way to keep them afloat.  AIG accepts the money and proceeds to hand out huge bonuses to top executives.  Wait, what?  The very executives that drove the company into the ground are getting bonuses for doing so?  I think I’m going to open up a new business.  My only purpose would be to get hired into a company, run it into bankruptcy, collect a huge bonus, and dodge out of town.  But I digress… Because of this moronic spending, Uncle Sam stepped in and put a few criteria on the money AIG received (one criteria dealt with the handing out of these huge bonuses).  As a result, Robert Benmosche, C.E.O of AIG, threatened to quit and stated that he could not “retain top talent” if he did not have control over compensation.  Are you kidding me?  What “top talent?”  These people drove this company into the ground!  You have no “top talent!”  It boggles my mind to think that anyone believes their executives are “top talent” when they make such poor decisions that they can literally ruin an entire company.

This post has been more of an incoherent rant than I would have liked but this stuff just irritates me and I wanted to get my thoughts out there somewhere (you know, like a website that nobody will read).  This post won’t change anything and I realize that.  All I can hope is that someone will read this and at least start asking questions about how the government is spending tax dollars.

Koch, Charles. (2007). The Science of success. John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Starting today, I have decided to showcase my very first “Fail of the Week.”  Each week I will write a quick post about a fail that I think everyone should see and laugh at.  If I miss a week or post more than one in a week just deal with it–”Fail of the Week or sometimes more or less than once a week” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

I found this first fail while looking though tutorials on migrating from one permalink structure to another in this very blog.  If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it.  In non-techie terms, all of my posts have had a permanent web address and I am now changing that address.  Anything that points to the old address (for example, Facebook) would return the dreaded “404 – Page Not Found” error when looking for that post at the old address.  There are numerous WordPress plugins for making this switch painless and while reading through one of them I came across the following link that would supposedly help out:

That’s right–a supposed tutorial on how to avoid 404 errors returned a 404 error itself.  Fantastic.  How exactly can someone be so careless as to write an article about avoiding an error but then screw up so bad that it returns that very error?  I cannot even begin to describe how happy the unbelievable irony of this whole thing makes me.  I give this fail an ”A” for descriptive title but an ”F” for actually implementing the solution being (apparently) talked about.

Overall, I’ll give this fail 3 out of 5 “IE 6′s.”

(For the rest of these “Fail of the Week” posts I will be using a rating scale of 1-5–1 being a pseudo-fail and a 5 being a full-on fail.  This week I chose to represent the fail rating in terms of Internet Explorer 6.  IE6 was one of Microsoft’s biggest failures and even they want it to go away.  Spoiler alert, a future FotW will show just how bad IE6 sucked.)

Well, I hope you enjoyed this first Fail of the Week and look forward to more as I come across stupid crap on the Internet and perhaps even out in the (*gasp*) “real world.”  If you have a great fail that you would like me to showcase send it my way.

There I was, heading down US-10 on my normal half hour drive home with my arm across my stomach. “Well this was not always this squishy” I thought. “Maybe I’ll go home and get back on the bike since I haven’t done that in a while. Nah, it’s a little chilly so I’ll just do it tomorrow.”  It was at that very moment that I knew something had to change.  At that rate I would never make any progress on my squish removal and my dad’s voice kept ringing in the back of the head saying “You can find a way to say yes or a reason to say no.” Each day that I did not want to ride I found a reason to say no–an excuse to not go for my ride. Well, I was tired of it and something had to change.

Starting that night, April 8, 2010, I began biking with a new goal–300 miles of bike riding within 30 days. Yes, it is only 10 miles a day which may not seem very far to some but the idea is to continue for 30 days, no less than 10 miles each day without missing a single day. So, in actuality, I should end up with more than 300 miles after the 30 days.  In fact, after only 4 days of riding I am already on track to hit nearly 400 miles.

In my first few days of riding I have learned the following:

1. My iPod Touch has a “shake to shuffle” feature that does not like potholes.
2. Little kids are incapable of riding a bike in a straight line.
3. Little kids can take up all 10′ of a 10′ wide path.
4. Little kids don’t listen to parents when they are told to “get over to the side.”
5. Men need to walk with their wives.  She has he hands full with the stroller, 2 kids on bikes, and the dog.
6. The wind will change direction precisely when you are changing directions.
7. Little kids with sidewalk chalk are funny (drawing arrows to piles of dog feces and writing “poop”).

What is the point behind this post you ask?  Simple.  If you want something (in my case to be more fit) get off your butt and do something about it.  Nobody is going to look out for you except you and nobody cares as much about your success as you.  Also, stop making excuses for not doing something.  It is really easy to say “I’ll do it tomorrow” but you know that won’t happen so just get out there and do it.  No more excuses–make it happen.

I recently received the following chain-email and found it to be an excellent example of why socialism just plain does not work.  I hate forwarding chain-emails so I thought this to be the next best method of delivery–I’m not clogging your inbox and you still get to read a great story.

Some disclosures first… Although this particular email references Obama, the same concept applies to any socialist leadership whether it be in government, a local business, or anything in between.  Second, I checked the following story out on Snopes and it cannot be verified as a true story.  That being said, it is still an excellent example of how socialism does not work whether it actually happened or not.

Again, yes, this story may not have actually taken place but you simply cannot deny the lesson it teaches; socialism does not work.  Just as stated above, “…when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great…”

I can’t tell you exactly how you should spend your $9,500 but what I can do is offer a beginners guide to the task.  Think of this as a condensed version of a “Spending $9,500 in 1.6 seconds for Dummies” sort of thing.  Let us begin.

It is rather simple, really.  Begin by sliding your car sideways across the highway at roughly 55mph.  When you are turned completely sideways and can see oncoming traffic through your passenger window, try to find a guard rail out of your peripheral vision.  Finding a guard rail is absolutely imperative as you will use it as a bumper/fender/wheel/headlight smasher.  To really make sure you spend all $9,500 I strongly urge you to not simply glance off this guard rail but rather hit it at such an angle that you can spin approximately 90 degrees to crunch the rear end as well.  And of course, the pièce de résistance.  Make sure that when you hit the guard rail you are still carrying enough speed to not just crunch the sheet metal and bumper cover but to also do all sorts of damage to the internal structure/components of the car.  For added effect feel free to take a couple hand fulls of loose change, some sunglasses, and your lunch and toss them all around the inside of your car.  Even better–take things that were formerly in your back seat (say, some cds) and relocate them to the floor underneath your gas pedal.

Although I do not condone this sort of act, I will suggest a few items you should damage in the process to  make sure you spend all $9,500:

• Front bumper cover
• Lower grille with fog lamps
• Impact bar (to add a splash of irony)
• Headlamp assembly
• Splash shield
• Engine hood
• Right front fender
• Left front fender
• Fender liners
• Upper rails
• Door shell
• Belt and body molding
• Mirror assembly
• Door handle
• Door trim (black cloth, of course)
• Pontiac emblem
• Rear tail lamp assembly
• Rear quarter panel
• More body molding
• Rear bumper cover
• Lower bumper cover
• 17″ Chrome wheel

If you so desire, toss in an air conditioner condenser a few other things to give it your personal touch.

Now on a serious note,  no other cars were involved and nobody else was injured.  This ordeal could have ended very differently and I am thankful that in the end it was only my car that was damaged (well, totaled).  Thank you to the three people that stopped to offer assistance (no thanks to the person that caused this and continued driving).  Another thank you to Pontiac/GM for building a vehicle that can sustain enough damage to be considered totaled yet leave me without so much as a headache.

In closing, it is with sadness in my heart that I say farewell to my beloved G6.  Goodbye my G6, you’ll be missed.  ”She was a good ship.”

It seems that the call to action in my last post actually worked and drew in some comments (thank you for that!). As promised, I will continue using this blog for a while longer. If I keep getting comments (and maybe some comment debates) I will keep posting. This post is a bit long so I apologize for that–I will keep future posts shorter.  Without further adieu, I present to you my first actual post.

I shall dispense with the names to protect the innocent (and moronic) but will say that my cousin is in the 7th grade at White Pine Middle School here in good ol’ Saginaw Michigan. While spending an evening conversing with the family over pizza, my cousin and her friend began discussing their social studies class woes. Apparently, the teacher finds it appropriate to degrade the class and one day even wrote “worst class ever” on the chalkboard.  He has even said he “feels sorry for this country because you kids are the future.”  I’m fairly certain this is no way to treat 7th graders. That seems like something we can all agree on.  Although these types of comments are disturbing, something just as disturbing is what he is teaching to our youth.

During one discussion the teacher proclaimed that outsourcing is bad and minimum wage is good. I realize everyone is entitled to his or her opinion but really? Nobody wants to pay high prices if they can avoid it. If a company can use outsourcing to give you a lower cost, is that not a good thing? And don’t start with domestic job loss. What the teacher was actually referring to was offshoring although he incorrectly labeled it as outsourcing, but I digress. Yes, an individual may suffer temporary displeasure from outsourcing/offshoring but by saving money the business can lower costs. This can result in actually saving jobs because the company may have otherwise had to fire employees that they couldn’t afford. Outsourcing/offshoring is a good thing and needs to be controlled by the free market.

What about minimum wage? By forcing higher minimum wages the government actually stops businesses from hiring more employees. Let’s pretend that minimum wage is $10 and you, as a business, have $10 available to hire help. You can only afford to hire one person because of the government mandated minimum wage. If there were no minimum wage and the free market determined that fair compensation for that position was actually $5, you could now afford to hire 2 employees. With the government forced minimum wage you were able to hire one less person which resulted in one more unemployed individual. If that person was willing to work for $5 why shouldn’t they be allowed to? By the government stepping in and “helping” people they are actually hurting others.

No wonder people vote the way they do–they are being fed this sort garbage in middle school when they are just plain too young to know any better.

Originally writing this post in the heat of the moment may have resulted in misspellings, grammar mistakes, or just plain hard-to-follow thoughts. So, how about a few videos in case my incoherent rambling didn’t make sense.

John Stossel – Outsourcing

John Stossel – The Minimum Wage Doesn’t Work

It is a shame that the future of our country is being taught by such narrow minded individuals… Comments?

Call it a hunch but I have a feeling that this very post that I am writing right now will not be read by anyone. If you actually are reading this please head back to facebook (nodoubt where you found the link to this post) and leave a comment. If end up being wrong about the “nobody” part and I see that someone actually read this post I may just continue posting new entries every now and then. I have a juicy idea for the next post involving my little cousin and the garbage she is currently being taught in middle school so hopefully someone leaves a comment about this post and I can rant about the deceitful education she is getting.

After growing tired of not having anything at JustinVoelker.com I decided to erase everything that was out there and start over.  The question remained, what should be done with the site?  A blog.  It seems that everyone has a blog of useless garbage that nobody else cares to read so why shouldn’t I?  I have nothing planned for this blog but have a few ideas:

• My own Fail Blog – post funny snippets of life that I notice where someone (myself included) failed in a major way.
• Technology – With the recent release of the iPad there needs to be more talk about stupid technology.
• Politics – Someone (often) our government does stupid stuff and maybe I’ll post a few comments about it.
• Randomness – Staying awake until you can see the sunrise leads to strange thoughts, maybe I’ll share them.
• Seriousness – Perhaps I’ll post something serious from time to time, if I’m even still using this blog in a month.

If this blog is still here and I am still posting a month from now I’m sure I’ll think of more things to post.  If you have any ideas as to what I should post please feel free to let me know!

If everything went as planned with this first post there will be a new post on my facebook wall with a link to this full post.  Also, any comments made in Facebook should end up back here and any comments made here should end up in Facebook.  I hope it all works as planned!