Ok, this afternoon I scouted out a few locations for next Friday.  I checked out an Apple Store and an AT&T Store.  I like these choices because they are near each other.  No one seemed to know much.  The guy I talked to at the AT&T Store said a couple of people had asked about camping out.  I’m not that crazy, but it is interesting.  The Apple Store has Wi-Fi, so if I hang out there I can at least work / browse the web / blog more effectively.  At least until my battery died – I didn’t see any power outlets outside the store.  Doh.

Anyway, if they haven’t put together a line strategy yet there may be problems.  Like are they going to give numbers?   How does one leave to use the facilities?  I don’t think I have someone willing to hang out all day with me.  That would make things easier. 

Right now I’m leaning towards waiting at the Apple Store. 

I have two things I’m curious about with regards to the iPhone and what will happen after release:

• Why isn’t Flash on it?  How long will it be before Flash is on it?  Is this some licensing issue (Apple doesn’t want to pay Adobe) or a technical issue (seems like if the iPhone is running Mac OS X this wouldn’t be the case)?
• How long will it take someone to hack World of Warcraft to work on it?  It’s got 8 GB, if you don’t care about music you might be able to get WoW to run on it.  WoWPhone or the WoW iPhone….. The iPhone is 320×480 resolution and the lowest WoW setting I have is 800×600 – so that may be an issue. 

See iPhone Tech Specs for more info – they say it is running Mac OS X there.

Well it’s a week and a half away.  I’ve made the decision – I’m going to wait in line for it.  Here is why:

• Verizon is really pissing me off.  My Q keeps running out of battery life in my house (bad signal) and I get bad reception at home and work.  No guarantee AT&T will be better, but I doubt it could be much worse.
• I have an abnormally high addiction to shiny new gadgets of the technical variety.  I can’t help it.
• I am really curious to see how the interface works – I think it could be a big step forward.  And well, like bullet 2 I just want to know and must have it.
• I want to test my new game on it….. vaguely legitimate 😉
• I have no self control on this issue.

So there you have it.  I’m plotting my strategy, which really consists of:

• When do I show up?
• Which store (2 Apple Stores in Austin or do I go for an AT&T store) do I go to?

I’ll keep you informed.

I think there are some pros and cons to each.  I know a ton of people that just stay logged into ventrilo (a common voice server) all day.   I’m not that enamored with the voice chat, but it is definitely useful in World of Warcraft.  Certainly for action and socialization, voice chat is pretty cool.  Text chat is kind of a nice way to retain anonymity and casualness.  Anyway, this article from wired.com is pretty interesting:

Voice Chat Can Really Kill the Mood on WoW

Should be exciting new season 2 rewards (and you can carry 5,000 arena points with you into season 2).   The new armor is nearly identical (slight color changes) to the Tier 5 armor for each class.  I guess this is because it’s similar in stats/power to Tier 5 armor.  (That and creating a ton of new visuals is expensive.)

All the ratings get reset so it’s off to the races again for unknown rewards.  This seasons top .5% got super-fast armored netherdrake mounts as rewards – that’s pretty cool.  So I’m assuming season 2 will have really cool rewards for the top players as well.

When the stats for the new armor and weapons gets posted somewhere I’ll link to it.

So I like the Sopranos… I don’t worship it though.  It’s a pretty good show and I’ve watched it on and off.  I’ve been a little bit more of an avid spectator for the last season because, well, it is the last season.  Now it’s over.  And let me say:  the finale kind of sucked.  I mean last week was pretty good and built up to what could have been a compelling end.  But really nothing got wrapped up.  I guess that’s ok but (vague spoiler) when a show ends in such a way that you think your DVR screwed up and cut off…. well that is just dumb.  I mean it wasn’t even a fade to black.  It was just black.  WTF.  Oh well, I guess it’s different.  But I hope it’s not a trend, shows that end with a straight cut to black after years – that’s a cop out in my opinion. 

Windows / MSN / Live (Whatever the branding is today) Messenger is something I use a lot.  Right now I can’t login.  I upgraded to a new version because it implied that might be the issue.  It wasn’t.  The message I am currently getting:

Signing in to Windows Live Messenger failed because the service is temporarily unavailable.   Please try again later.

Error code: 81000314

I got a similar message on the Windows Messenger I had before I upgraded to the Live one.  Anyway, so there is a “Service status” option which takes me to http://status.messenger.msn.com/Status.aspx and it says:

All systems are stable and running.

It even has a nice little check box.

So my quesiton is:  What is the point of having a stauts page if it lies?  Clearly the service is down, how could the status page not now?

BTW, Microsoft isn’t the only one that is at fault for this.  Blizzard’s World of Warcraft Realm Status pages routinely say things are up when they are down.

My plea:

If you are going to have a status page for your service:  TELL THE TRUTH – I mean, we are already using your service and we care enough about it to check the status page.  At least tell us the truth about what is going on.  K THX.

/rant