Froyo so far

Most of you out there won't care about this but for those of you with Android phones I wanted to give my first impression of Froyo (Android 2.2) so far. The main feature that was touted (at least in the news sources I was reading) was the speed improvement. I can say that this is definitely true. I notice things going faster, apps opening faster, scrolling happens faster, etc. It's not mind-blowingly faster but I do notice a pronounced difference. Then there's the Flash 10.1 support (or lack thereof). Android 2.2 does come with Flash support, however you can't actually download it from the market which will probably have a lot of people confused. I know I was at first. Then I remembered a post from a few weeks ago on droid-life.com (probably the best Droid-specific site out there) that there was a developer's release you could download. So I did that and presto-chango, I had Flash on my phone. It is a neat feature but not one I'll probably use all that often. It's just nice that I have the option to use it (Steve Jobs would not approve). Chrome-to-phone is another neat feature. If you have the app installed on your phone and the extension installed on the Google Chrome browser you can send webpages or maps straight to your phone and the corresponding app will open. Good idea if you're looking up directions on your computer right before you need to leave. There are little UI tweaks here and there but for the most part everything looks the same. I did notice that Arabic charcters display properly now. This means that even though I have no idea what they mean, I can see the title's of Olivia's photo albums on Facebook on my phone now. Another feature I haven't really messed with is the app-to-sd where you can install and/or move apps to the SD card rather than having everything installed on the onboard memory, hogging the little space there is to begin with. Those are my thoughts so far. Supposedly there's another update coming in the very near future to possibly fix some bugs already but everything's only a rumor at this point. As I said earlier, droid-life.com is an amazing resource for anyone who has a phone in the Droid family. Over and out.

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My Wake-up Call

Do you ever have one of this epiphanies where something seemingly heavy (not weight-wise) but painfully obvious gets dropped on you? I had one of those moments. I realized it's time for me to grow up. Maybe most people realize this earlier in their lives or maybe this is normal, I don't know. I only have my own experiences to go off of. But I now understand that I need to be better prepared to deal with the future and that means it's time to make more responsible choices and get myself into a better position to do the things I want in life.

Not that I'm a particularly irresponsible person. I just have to better prepare myself for what I can do in the future. I need to believe in myself. I know a lot of people do and that's comforting to a certain extent, but that only goes so far. If I don't believe in myself and my capabilities, I'm not going to get anywhere. For a long time I've been crippled by self-doubt. I think it started when I graduated from college. When you start school in kindergarten you have a clear path. Go grade by grade until your senior year and then you graduate. Then you either find a job, join the armed forces or go to college. Many people end up going to college because anymore that's what is expected of you, even if you have no desire. Now I'm not one of those people, I did very much want to go to college; but I think that there are people who don't want to go and do anyway because of societal norms. These people don't belong in college and that's not because they're not smart enough, but it's because they don't want to be there. It's going to be a waste of time for them because even if they are capable, they won't gain much from it if their heart's not in it. That's mostly a tangent and doesn't have a lot of bearing on what I'm writing about but I thought I would put in my $0.02. I went through college, chose a major, changed things around, added another major and then BAM, I graduated. Had I thought about the practical applications of my major(s)? Only very little. This was my fault entirely, my professors had given me ample opportunities to explore the options for the future but I had never really been sure that archaeology/classical studies was what I wanted to do. I in no way regret the work I did in college. I enjoyed all of my classes and professors very much and I learned a lot. But I had no clear career path.

So here I am after graduation and I have nothing lined up. Up until that point my entire life had been one long string of events all connected together, one stage following the next in a logical progression. I always knew what was going to happen next. Now that progression had been broken. And that's when I lost confidence in myself. What do I do now? I've always known what was next before, but now everything's hazy? What am I supposed to do? I began to second guess what I was capable of, what I could be good at, what I should be doing. When you're not sure what your direction in life is it's a very unnerving depressing thing. In the movie Unbreakable Samuel L. Jackson's character tells Bruce Willis: "Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you're here." My sentiments exactly. Of course, Sammy L. (as my good friend Evan likes to call him) goes on to explain that he basically became a super-villain and committed quite a few terrorist acts to draw out someone who was his opposite so he would know who he was. I don't think I'm really the type to go Lex Luthor so no one reading this needs to worry that I'll come up with a secret lab somewhere in which I come up with dastardly deeds against humanity. Besides, I'm not very good at building giant robots or chemistry so my career in super-villainy is very limited. But in all seriousness, when you don't really know what your purpose is it's a scary thing.

My response has been less than admirable and very counter-productive. I've basically shut down. I doubt myself so much that I don't want to try anything new. I don't want to change anything because the evil (or stagnation, in this case) that you know is better than the evil that you don't know. When I look back over the way I've been it's pathetic, really. But I've never bothered to change. I've let down people that I love and I've just not been myself for a long time. But that's going to change. I'm tired of making excuses. I'm tired of wallowing in self-doubt and self-pity. I'm tired of not feeling like myself. I'm tired of not knowing. I'm not getting any younger so it's now or never. I've got more than myself to think about. This is it, this is when I've got to separate who I've been from who I can be. To the people I care about who've never left, thanks for sticking around. I love you all and thanks for doing the same.

My favorite song for a while now has been Baba O'Riley by the greatest band to ever play music, The Who. After listening to it time and time again I realized the third verse is very pertinent to what I'm trying to get across. I take it to mean the narrator is leaving behind the things he's comfortable with in order to move on to better things before it's too late. I don't know if that's what Pete Townshend intended when he wrote those lyrics but that's what I'm taking from them. I'll print those lyrics below but the entire song is amazing and I get chills every time I hear the intro. Check out the song here.

Sally, take my hand
We'll travel south 'cross land
Put out the fire
And don't look past my shoulder.

The exodus is here
The happy ones are near
Let's get together

Before we get much older.