William Petruzzo

That was me. I owned the iPhone for three weeks. Like so many who use Verizon, I was fed up with their crappy customer service, mediocre phones and restrictive hardware. I left for the golden shores of AT&T and their wonderful Apple iPhone. It cost a little more. But worth every penny.

In three weeks I nearly completely forgot the old ways of Verizon’s network. I could check my email any time. There were tons of free applications I could install on my phone. Some useful. Some just plain fun. But so many of them completely free.

So, you might be wondering why I’m speaking in past tense. The reason is, Verizon has won me back. Yeah, I know. It’s like going back to an abusive spouse. But, their offer was just too good to pass up. Free phone. Free two months service. Half off my bill. Not too bad, if you ask me.

So, this afternoon I said goodbye to the iPhone… with tears in my eyes. Now I’m holding a brand new phone from Verizon and in contrast to the iPhone, it honestly feels like something from the stone age. That’s right the iPhone really is that far ahead of the game.

But, while I’m at it, I will say just a few things.

If you were to purchase a brand new Lexus. Fresh off the lot, the works, heated seats, gps, voice recognition, tiny in-dash cupcake oven, and for some reason it didn’t have air conditioning, you’d probably be shocked.

Well, Apple really left the AC out on a few things and even now, I just don’t get it. So, Apple, I’m coming back. Give me a year or two for the iPhone hype to die down and the cellular market to evolve a little further and I’ll be back.

But in the meantime, here’s my wish list of things I’d like to see you have when I return:

1. Picture messaging. I don’t know who was snoozing during that developers meeting, but I hope they were severely reprimanded.

2. Turn-by-turn navigation. Even the stone-age Verizon phone I just bought has that.

3. A complete GUI that turns on it’s side. It’s great in Safari and all, but lets be honest, it’s pretty annoying to send text messages with the squished keyboard.

4. Longer battery life. You made such a sweet phone, I use it too much and it runs out of batteries needed to keep it running… as a phone.

5. How about a better camera? Really, the current one is a serious pain in the butt.

6. Video. Just, again, let me refer to my stone-aged Verizon thing.

I think that pretty sufficiently complete’s my list. Wait for me Apple. I’m coming back. In due time. I’m coming back.

My sister has been dating a man long distance who lives down in Florida. He has been a youth pastor at a large church, but in order to be closer to my sister, he’s taken a job in this area at a very small church. He’s set to move in to his new house this month. The house is provided by his new church. It’s vacant now, so we have access to it. So, my sister and her boyfriend plan to use it to store some things that she doesn’t have space for otherwise.

Tonight, my sister and I were making a trip to his new house to drop off some things for storage. The final stretch of the trip takes us down a pretty long two lane road. By the time you get to the church things have gotten very rural.

But what is so striking about this stretch of road isn’t its zoning. No, in the five or six mile stretch of road, we passed roughly two dozen churches of varying denominations and religions. It was like something out of the twilight zone. They’re often situated directly across the street from one another, or right next to one another with a clearly erected dividing fence between them.

Then, just as I was thinking it’d been a while since I’d seen a church, we passed an empty lot with a big construction sign announcing the plans to build… you guessed it, a church.

Now, I’m not convinced that church unity necessarily condemns splintered church denominations. But this was excessive. It just had me thinking, what church planting team sits down in a Starbucks to think and pray about where to plan their church and lands on a place where church buildings outnumber gas stations?

It’s weird. It’s very weird. It seems like someone ought to be taking a step back and asking some tough questions. Not me. Just someone.

I don’t usually use this blog as a sounding board for frustration with trivial matters, but today, there isn’t much else I can bring myself to think about.

There are three things I need my computer to do:

2. Run Photoshop
3. Don’t throw a temper tantrum

For some inscrutable reason, mine won’t do either. Frankly, I’m not surprised. It spends more time not doing what it’s supposed to be doing than otherwise. Every six months some computer component demands some decent chunk of money from me. About once in every four times that demand is made, I nearly lose sensitive information and lots and lots of time attempting to correct the problem, or at the very least to damage control.

It seems that this will be no exception. You see, last week, one of my hard drives started to click. Now, for those of you who don’t know what that means, I won’t explain. I’ll just say this: it’s a very bad sign. Something like your computer physically screaming, “the British are coming, the British are coming!”

So I responded tactfully, I went online and purchased replacement hard drives. I also purchased an external hard drive to run automatic backups of the important files. Wise thinking, if I do say so myself. Of course, I was kidding myself to think this would go over smoothly. There’s no way. It’s never happened in the past and it’s certainly not going to happen now.

I installed my new drives today. The computer has come to a standstill. It still starts up, but has become quite useless. Like a body rejecting an organ transplant. The computer just sits there looking ill and being totally unproductive. My best efforts cannot seem redeem her.

There is little doubt in my mind that this has something to do with Microsoft. I run a shotty Windows XP 64-bit, which it turns out is the pinnacle of incompatibility a poor planning. When software runs, it’s amazing. When it runs without error, it’s a miracle. Now, who would have thought that this great new Windows XP 64-bit system would have trouble with a few minor hard drive upgrades?

I will say it again. Microsoft is a joke. They make a joke product and if it weren’t so expensive for user’s to switch platforms, they’d be out of business. I’m getting a Mac, the first chance I get. Scratch that, I’m getting two.

Picture a room. There’s a group of people standing around a table. Their cell phones are sitting on the table. We’ll say somewhere around 15 cell phones are on the table.  All of them are set to vibrate. Whenever one of the phones ring, it rattles and moves in some direction slightly, based on the slant of the table and the shape of the phone.

Well, each time one of these phones vibrates, it gets a little closer to the edge of the table. Each time this happens, the people around the table erupt into cheering. The closer the various phones get to the edge of the table, the more excited the people get. Eventually, one of the phones falls of the edge, thereby proving its superiority. The owner of the phone cheers and rubs it into the faces of his peers standing around him. The other people around the table grumble at their defeat, but are hopeful for the next time when they’ll have surely purchased a new model with a more powerful vibrating device inside.

Don’t you think that sounds like a pretty stupid scene? Yeah, I think it does. But that’s the only way I can manage to look at professional sporting events. It just doesn’t make any sense to me, trust me, I’ve tried. But in the end, I just keep wondering, why would I care whose phone falls of the edge of the table first?

Unless if it were my phone.

That’s the kicker for me. I don’t get how its fun to watch a game. Shouldn’t it be fun to play a game?

I don’t mean to be judgmental. I know people like different things—a lot of the time for weird reasons. But this is one that’s so popular and I seem to be the only one who really doesn’t get it. I’m the only one seeing the vibrating telephones. Maybe someone should explain it to me so that I can get in on the fun too!

Sheesh.

Occasionally, the idea the life is a one-shot deal freaks me out. Essentially, no ones going to make it. In a totally naturalistic sense, no one is winning cause everyone’s gonna die. I suppose they’re the same thoughts Solomon was pondering when he penned Ecclesiastes.

People say life is about making mistakes. But that seems stupid, even for a non-Christian. The idea of mistakes implies a standard of correctness. If the standard of correctness were determined by a person’s intention in doing whatever it was they set out to do, then they’re whole life could be evaluated based on their success of that thing. As far as right and wrong are concerned, black and white would just be gray. But as far as success and failure are concerned, there couldn’t be sharper contrast.

But I think that’s what gets me.

No one is getting a second chance at this thing. Yet, everyone (including myself) really seems to embrace the idea that it doesn’t need to be done right. As if we’ll do it better the second time around. That seems to be a pretty big logic gap. It’s not like this is really a learning experience. What good is knowledge if it can’t ever be used?

Since I was about fifteen, I was building my own computers from self sought components. I’ve been the resident computer guy for my family and friends pretty much the whole time. I’ve always done my own upgrades and done a pretty good job of staying near the technology curve when it comes to computer parts.

In years past, Macintosh computers were only used by a weird niche crowd. The available software was slim at best and so their practical usefulness was very limited.

More recently, Apple entered the arena more openly as computers for professionals, and now, for home users who don’t know what they’re doing.

I’ve been an adamant defender of PC computers ever since Apple started to launch its attack on the average computer user. PC computers, toting similar specs, can be purchased for a fraction of the price of Apple computers. Their interface has long been more intuitive (the right mouse button? seriously, it’s a no brainer). And, with just a smidgen of education, they can stay clean and useful for a long time.

But today is the day. I am flipping my opinion. Mark it in your calendar.

Today, my PC computer failed. For the second time in six months. Not just failed. Died. Hardware, died. That doesn’t mean annoying software adjustments. It means shelling out actual money to repair the thing.

Now, let me make one thing abundantly clear: I know what I’m doing. I’m not the flippant savvy-less computer user that most often manage to blow up their computer. No, I’m a well experienced user and well educated in the realm of hardware and software issues.

My point? The problem is not the user.

You see, I’m a photographer and only half of my job happens behind the lens. The rest happens in front of a computer screen. So, I can’t afford to have equipment I can’t trust. That makes today an important day.

Today is the day I give up defending PC computers.

I used to equate Apple computers to Volkswagen cars. Vehicles that are over-priced and under-perform but look so cool. I used to consider PC computers more like Hondas. Not as cool, but affordable and practical. I realize now that I had it wrong. PC’s are really more like American cars. Practical, but the built in obsolescence will get you eventually.

So what now?

Mark my words, as soon as business finances are freed up, all PC equipment and software will be upgraded to Apple computers and I will say farewell to PC’s reign of terror forever.