One of the downsides of owning a Droid Incredible is the battery life. While I love the phone, it’s taken me a while to learn how to use my phone in a way that keeps battery usage at a minimum. Many people suggest using a task manager, but they don’t really work. Since I’ve had the phone (since April 29, 2010), I’ve went from getting about 6-8 hours a charge to 12-14 hours. Here’s how I did it. Read more »
When I first bought my Droid Incredible I used one of my lesser known Gmail accounts as my default account. I then purchased some programs via the Android Market with that account (which for the sake of clarity, it will be called “account #1″). I then decided that I wanted to use my primary email address on my phone as the default. To change this I had to do a factory reset. Once I changed the email account (which we’ll call “account #2″), all the purchases I had made under account #1 were not able to be accessed/downloaded. The following is an explanation on Android Market Help forums of how I was able to re-download the programs and install them.
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When I was a young child I could never find my art, my gift, my form of self expression. In 2002 I was at the deep end of a depression. That depression was from a divorce that stripped me of everything I valued, but in it I found my gift. I began writing more out of need, than want. I was at the lowest point in my life. It started with this post. It seems like a very simple post from a grieving parent to their child, and it was. But it was more than that. It was a scream from the very bottom of my soul. My blogging started a stream of posts to my children. Soon after I began keeping a journal at a journaling community (LiveJournal). The more I wrote, the better I felt. If I had not found my gift during that time, I have no doubt I’d be dead. But writing/expressing my feelings with passion just felt good. It felt like I was moving toward something. Soon I was writing blogs like Transadvocate.com and then on to Bilerico.com and others. I had found my voice, my love, and most importantly, myself in those many posts.
But recently I’ve stopped blogging with the frequency I have in the past. Much like a recent study says, people who are given facts only become more entrenched in their wrong ideas. If I express an idea and it’s only picked up by those that agree with me, who does that help? It may be soothing to a weaker person’s ego, but I don’t write for that. What’s been thrown in my face time, after time, after time is that minds won’t change with words and most certainly not with blog posts. I once thought Transadvocate.com could be place to change lives and motivate activists. Now I feel like I’m a single trumpet playing to an empty battlefield. To say that I feel like I’m wasting my time blogging is an understatement. Anymore it feels like a perverse sort of mental masturbation. I don’t believe my posts move people to do anything. That is why it feels like such a waste.
So I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’m considering either law school or going back to school to become a History teacher. I just want to do something that moves people. I want to help others. I’m in a place in my life that I can do what I want. I am searching for that station in life where I can do the most good using the talent I have. I’m still undecided about what path to go down.
That being said, I’m still writing. I’m just focusing on writing books instead of blog posts. My first (of many, I hope) book is about my life and the Abernathy/Abernathey line. Then I’m planning on writing about the lack of truth and the fall of a great nation. I’ll let you guess what nation. 
I still have the desire to probe, to question, and to seek answers. But seeking answers, truth, or honest debate in this climate seems pretty fruitless. I don’t want to stand up because I want to. I’ve never blogged because I want to. It’s always been a matter of passion and need. At this time in my life this feels like the right place where I need to stop.
Growing up in a super dysfunctional household, I had very little in the way of nurturing. Between working full time and regularly engaging in marital battles, my mom had little quality time with us kids. I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother and grandfather (who we affectionately called “Granny” and “Poppy”). Pop was a very mean man. I can remember times he would come home for supper and if Granny didn’t have the food on the table, he’d call her every expletive in the book (with “bitch” in first place). Many times Granny took to venting with me, telling me stories of how he’d been mean to her (especially the story of her catching him cheating).
He was also one of the most racist men I’ve ever known. I can remember him yelling at the TV and turning it off when Emmanuel Lewis came on television, grumbling about how the niggers were taking over the world. From what my mom has told me he also was probably in the Klu Klux Klan. There were so many dark sides to my Poppy, it would be easy to hate him.
But I don’t. While I saw all the ugliness, I also saw a side of him that made me love him. More than any person in my young life he nurtured me. He would often spend time with me one on one, offering me a father figure that was rarely present at home. I can remember many trips he and I took to White Castle to just hang out and talk. When I would complain about the way my parents treated me (a difference in how my parents treated me and my brother, of which Granny and Poppy both acknowledged), Poppy would tell me not to mind that. He would enthusiastically comfort me saying “you are smart and you are going to do amazing things with your life”. That may not sound very profound, but those words coming from Poppy were. Those words have echoed in the back of my mind for the past 35 or so years, giving me strength.
Pop taught me that people aren’t one dimensional. While he was an incredibly hateful to Granny, he was a loving and nurturing man to me. The duality of his life has made me look at people differently. Being a liberal Democrat on a Facebook account full of Indiana Republicans (mostly my Alumni from Southport High School), this skill has come in handy. I’ve been able to become good friends with people that are my ideological opposite. Poppy taught me to see the humanity in all people and life taught me what Bernard Meltzer knew:
“If you have learned how to disagree without being disagreeable, then you have discovered the secret of getting along — whether it be business, family relations, or life itself.”
With rumors swirling around that San Francisco’s Green960 is headed towards a format change and Air America is now defunct, is this proof that progressive talk radio is dead? In the conventional sense, it’s been dead a long time. Progressive talk has never had the mass appeal in the same way that right wing talk has. Part of the problem that Air America had was that it wasn’t home grown grass roots radio. It didn’t grow out of demand, it grew out of a business-political venture/idea. Stations around the country like Green960 and Madison, Wisconsin’s WXXM “The Mic” were both born out of Clear Channel’s move to to capitalize on the early success of progressive talk (especially given the fact that their early experiment, KPOJ, went from the bottom of the Portland market to the close to the top in less than a year).
The anger that grew out of the President Bush’s second term fueled progressive talk as a format. When that anger turned into a political campaign and elected a president, the usefulness of the format had run it’s course. Clear Channel has no interest in progressive movements, they only care about their bottom line. They are the Wal-Mart of talk.
This morning a received an urgent plea, urging me to contact Clear Channel and show my support for Green960. I’m not going to be doing that. Besides the fact that it’s a fruitless endeavor (take it from a long time listener/fan/supporter of Morning Sedition, Break Room Live, The Marc Maron Show, The Sam Seder Show, Lee Rayburn, Live From The Left Coast). Protests rarely work in radio. And really, I don’t have the time, energy, or enthusiasm continue to support Wal-Mart radio. While I love Thom Hartmann and the like, I’m pretty much over hearing about ATM Gold trading or “right size smoothies”.
I hope progressive talkers will follow the lead of Amanda Palmer and Leo Laporte. Both Laporte and Palmer have become pioneers in the use of social networking and the Internet to remove the need for corporate middleman. Progressive radio shows like Karel and Live From The Left Coast ( and video shows like GritTV and Democracy Now!) can continue to grow and thrive, but they’ll have to do it under this newly emerging direct access model. Liberal content creators have to take advantage of ALL social and online media tools to promote their shows. That means Twitter, iTunes, RSS, Facebook, Youtube, and any other place they can put their content and build audience ( especially through blogging at places like Firedoglake or DailyKos and online forums). I hope they realize that Clear Channel is not their savior, but their slave master.
If listeners truly want to support progressive radio, give Clear-Mart Channel a giant middle finger and start supporting progressive media DIRECTLY!:
Live From The Left Coast – here.
Karel Show here.
GritTV here.
Democracy Now! here.
Last fall when I heard you could try out Windows 7 release client for free, I signed up. I absolutely LOVE the product. As has been said in 15,000 different places, it’s Vista done right. What just dawned on me when modifying my desktop:
that the release candidate will start shutting off with 2 hours of use. After a bit of research I’ve found that if I had Vista Home Premium on this PC, I could upgrade to Windows7 Home Premium. But since Microsoft isn’t selling Windows7 Home Basic, I can’t upgrade my Vista Home Basic License.
The question is, do I spend $200 on the retail version or buy another PC? For another 200 hundred dollars I could actually buy a desktop (Inspiron Zino HD with Windows7 on it). I could downgrade to Windows Vista, but that’s not an option. It’s such a horrible OS, I can’t put myself through that. Microsoft you aren’t making this easy.
Action Bowling ($2.99 USD) is a fun bowling game. The ssound effects are awesome, you can design your own ball, and you can throw the ball like you do bowling at your local alley. Just be careful when throwing that strike that you don’t throw your device across the room. You can download it here.
This post is the second of the series (part one here, part two here) on the best iPhone/iPod Touch applications by categories of apps. All applications I’m review are currently running on my 2 generation iPod Touch. Today I review social networking applications and reference apps.
Social Networking
Facebook (free) I’m sure this is a great app for iPhone users, but for Touch users I find the user interface a bit clunky. I prefer using the Blackberry application on my phone. The only time I’ve used this application is when showing my friends at work pictures of my son. You can download the app here.
I’m sure that many people who received either an iPod Touch or iPhone for Christmas this year are looking for good applications for their device. This post is the second of the series (part one here) on the best applications by categories of apps. All applications I’m review are currently running on my 2 generation iPod Touch. Today I tackle ways to use your device to make your life easier and more productive.
Offline RSS reader
Byline ($3.99 USD) is one of my top five used applications. This is a great app. For a long time Google Reader had become an exercise in frustration for me. Leo Laporte has said that RSS is dead, and before this app I agreed with him. If I didn’t read my feed in a few days it would be come downright unmanageable. I’d end up missing a lot of content because I got frustrated and marked massive amounts of my feeds as read when I hadn’t viewed them. If I tried to, I’d be tied to the desktop for hours. This application basically mirrors your Google Reader feed and allows you to cache them locally on your iPod. Now when I’m standing in line at the grocery, or any other place I have to “hurry up and wait”, I’ve got content to keep me occupied. There are many other options to Byline of which you can see in the review below. You can download Byline here.
Android, geek | admin August 28, 2010 | 
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