Dear Matt’s Alarm Clock,

We haven’t known each other long, you and I. Just this summer I noticed that my old alarm clock was losing a few minutes a week and since it was a good ten years or so old, I figured it was time for a new one. I found you and fell instantly in love. Nice big speakers, a port for my iPod. Even though your LED display is so bright I have to put something in front of it to sleep, I think we’ve gotten along well. Don’t you agree?

So it is with heavy heart that I must write you about the incident we experienced last weekend.

One thing you’ve learned about me, Matt’s Alarm Clock, is my propensity for lateness. Curse your snooze button! (j/k) Well, the autumnal change from Daylight Saving Time is my one day of reprieve from that. On DST Day (as I like to call it) I can count on being on time for church for a change. Early, even.

Every year I look forward to turning my alarm clock back an hour and giggling as I fall asleep, resting assured that I’ll either get an extra hour of sleep or my internal clock will awaken me early in the morning.

And so it was this year. I changed your time, remembering to go back an hour (a common mistake). When I awoke, it wasn’t even 8:00 yet, so I lounged around for an hour and a half before getting ready for church. At 9:30, the time clearly indicated by your display, as I got ready for a shower I looked at my new cell phone and noticed that it showed 10:30.

Thinking that it hadn’t gotten the update from the tower, I turned it off, waited a few minutes, and turned it back on. Now it was 10:34. I checked the internet. 10:35. WHAT? HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?!?

It wasn’t until later in the day that I realized that you must set yourself for DST Day, and that you were two hours back instead of one, causing all sorts of confusion and frustration in my life. I was 30 minutes late because of your self-setting ‘feature’ that you didn’t bother to remind me about!!!

Consider yourself on notice, mister.

Just five more minutes,
Matt

I posted last September about a trip to King's Island (an amusement park in Cincinnati, Ohio), and included a picture of me scared out of my wits on a children’s roller coaster. It’s a trip my sisters and I take our nephews on every year. Our oldest sister had to leave with her son home before the picture was taken last year. (He was a half inch too short anyway.)

This year, the three of us with all of the boys were able to ride the Fairly Odd Coaster together, and through the magic of overpriced amusement park ride portraits we have a picture of all six of us in one shot.

Repeating what I said last year: It’s a really, really scary ride. Swear to gald.

click image to WHEEEEE--

Okay, maybe that’s overstating it a little bit, but I’ve had my LG Dare ¹ for a couple months now, and I’m still digging it.

Overall, the design is well executed with the necessary buttons placed intuitively. From what I understand the Dare is a bit thicker than the iPhone, but that’s not a major concern for me. There’s a nice weight to the phone, which is one of the things I’ve always loved about LG products. My last phone felt like a toy, so this is a nice change.

Measuring 3″ diagonally and 240×400 pixels, the Dare’s touch screen is exceptionally responsive. Initially, I was concerned about not having an actual bank of buttons other than the virtual ones, but LG has offset that with vibratory feedback with each screen touch. The vibration strength is customizable, allowing me to set it where I need it. They’ve also given the option of audible response, but after a few days getting used to the phone, I found that unnecessary. Another nice feature is the virtual QWERTY keyboard that pops up when you turn the phone horizontally. It’s a must for texting or browsing online.

One of the major draws of the LG Dare is the phone’s phenomenal digital camera. It comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera complete with a Schneider-Kreutznach certified lens ², face detection, flash, optional manual ISO adjustment, face detection, multi-shot mode, and Smart Pic technology. The maximum image size is a whopping 2048×1536. The most disappointing surprise, considering all these features, is the lack of a simple lens cover. I’m not sure why that was omitted, but it’s a major error.

The Dare also comes with some fairly advanced on-board image editing capabilities, but I found them unnecessary, and have only used the feature a couple times. It’s much easier to download the image to a PC and edit there.

My sad little corner. (Click to zoom)

The most glaring feature omission is the lack of access to Verizon’s Mobile TV service. Rumor is that there was a design problem with the touch-only interface, but Motorola’s release of a touch-only phone that does include optional mobile TV capabilities would seem to indicate that the problem has been overcome. Hopefully we’ll see a software update in the near future to correct the lack of access.

While the phone can’t get Mobile TV, it does allow access to Verizon’s V-Cast pre-recorded video service. I’ve found the feature quite helpful, though the quality of video is understandably low. That said, V-Cast’s video quality is miles ahead of the quality from Youtube. It’s nice to have some access to video content, but holy cow is it ever low quality. (Part of the problem, of course, may be my location. I’m hardly in a major metropolitan area.)

The biggest problem I have with my LG Dare is the browser. It flat out sucks. I don’t expect PC capabilities, but the internet experience is dismal. Verizon only permits firmware on their phones (though that’s scheduled to change next year), so the we’re stuck with the Teleca Obigo Q7.0-1.3. It’s technically a full HTML browser, but response time and scrolling capabilities are unimpressive at best. The phone’s capable of aping the iPhone’s ‘flicking’ response in other programs (address book, V-Cast), so why isn’t that possible within the browser? Especially on longer pages, the endless inch-by-inch scrolling is maddening. And for some reason LG has included a standard font that doesn’t render properly. Apostrophes, quotation marks, and sometimes colons are rendered as spaces.

The other major aggravation with the phone’s browser is the handling of cookies and browser history, and to be honest, I don’t know if it’s a fault of the browser or the phone. All I know is that if I log in to a message board I register as logged out within three clicks. Same goes for other functions that require a log in, though rendering in mobile mode rather than full HTML seem to work better, presumably since the page isn’t using as much memory. I’ve seen several hacks to get around the deficiency, but honestly, I don’t trust myself to make them. One that I was surprised to find out isn’t possible is to reroute the cookie handling and browser history to an sd chip that could handle the amount of data.

Finally, some blessed soul’s put up an LG Dare icon-based homepage creator, and I’ve found that to be a nice alternative from the Favorites list that isn’t customizable or re-orderable. Find it here. He gets you started with over a hundred common preset icons , but you could always make your own.

The LG Dare is a darn good phone, even with my complaints. From what I’ve heard, it’s no iPhone killer, but for my money it’s a good substitute. If they’d work out these flaws, LG’d have a true winner on their hands.

Oh, and you can use it to call people, too.

Isn't she lovely?

¹ Before anybody asks, yes, I wanted an iPhone, but I needed to switch to Verizon to take advantage of an employee discount. ⇧
² They tell me that’s good. ⇧

Dear Freezer Cake Sales Giant Sara Lee,

It’s not often that I write to companies that sell freezer cakes, but I was at the grocer’s last week and saw something in the freezer section that I almost couldn’t believe. I’m talking, of course, about your Sara Lee Cheesecake Bites.

I just stood there for a moment, standing a little bit on tip-toe, mouth agape as I tried to process the taste sensation that must accompany such a wonderful confection. My hand started to shake and my knees buckled in anticipation as I opened the freezer and reached in to pick out my container of frozen joy.

They're better than you could ever dream.

That’s when I realized that there was more than one variety. You don’t just make original Cheesecake Bites. You also make Strawberry Cheesecake Bites and Chocolate Cheesecake Bites. That’s just ridiculous!

Well, Sara Lee, it’ll come as no surprise to you that I picked the Chocolate Cheesecake Bites. You’ve known me long enough to know that chocolate is my anti-drug. I took the container to the checkout area, and the cashier asked where I found them because she wanted to get some too. She took my money and I managed to drive home before I opened the container.

It’s at this point that I get a tad emotional. It’s not often that a food that could have been custom made just for me. It’s as if you knocked on the door of my dreams and found my best hopes and warmest fuzzies, and spun the glories that you found there into little bits of digestible heaven.

So thank you, Sara Lee. Thank you for creating the best food since God Himself sent manna from heaven. If you were here (and a dude), I would totally open mouth kiss you to within an inch of your life.

Never mind the saturated fats,
Matt

I hadn’t even heard of The Third Man until Netflix told me I’d like it. I decided to give it a shot. I mean, it’s got Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten from Citizen Kane, and the reviews are pretty darn positive, so there must be something to it.

Fortunately for Netflix (we’re still on the outs since The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), I liked The Third Man quite a lot. The zither music throughout the film set it apart as a film, and I was delighted at what I saw. (BTW, it’s rated A for Adults.)

Set during the post-World War II occupation of Vienna, the film follows American author Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotten, below) as he tries to figure out how his friend died. Before long, Holly is caught up in a web of lies so complex that even the audience isn’t sure if he’s right.

click image to enlarge

And that’s the film’s first success. Before I got the DVD I knew that the accident that killed Harry Lime, and even the fact that he died, was in question. I also knew that the part of Harry Lime (what a great name) was played by Orson Welles, so Harry would obviously be making an appearance. Still, I found myself questioning everything right along with Holly. Was Harry murdered? And by whom? For what reason?

Alida Valli, the actress who played Harry’s love interest Anna, has a haunting, troubled beauty. She knows things as they are, not as she wishes them to be. In occupied Vienna, she knows that things like the black market and forged papers are necessary. But with American ideals that see the city from across the ocean, Holly would claim that morality is binary; either a thing is right or it is wrong.

click image to enlarge

The occupying forces, of course, agree with Holly. They’re bringing Vienna back from the brink of barbarism, and their rules are there for a reason. What they cannot see, or at least cannot acknowledge, is that their laws may work when looking at the grand scheme, but also crush the people with their rigidity.

Major Calloway and Sergeant Paine (pictured above) are, then, in an impossible position. They’re the middlemen who see the hardship on the street while also seeing the ideal being propped up. They understand why people must circumvent legal means of trade, but see the importance of shutting down the black market.

click image to enlarge

And that’s where Harry Lime comes in. Harry is the underbelly of the black market personified. He’s in Vienna to make a buck, plain and simple. If someone gets hurt in the process, then that’s just the price we pay for society’s advancement.

This is what makes The Third Man successful. It’s a seemingly simple problem, but writer Graham Greene and director Carol Reed present it within a story of intrigue that both complicates and finally answers it with a breathtaking chase through the sewers of Vienna and a long walk after a funeral.

Dark and humorous, beautiful and cynical, this classic noir is a film of contradiction. Give it a look and see if you agree.