in all fairness, lack of time has been playing just as big of a role, but the two kind of go hand-in-hand. anything interesting really can be said in 140 characters or less and that’s where our attention deficit disorder is taking us. i really don’t have time to spend more than 140 characters talking about what i’m doing, and that’s about as long as you can hold someone’s attention for these days. it’s a win-win situation for communication, but a slow death for this and all my other blogs. they actually are still making the same amount of money, but if i don’t dedicate some time to them they won’t be for long.

there are also so many different microblogging and social networking sites to keep friends and family up-to-date with. i post most of my pictures to flickr, my videos to youtube, general information on facebook, and my day-to-day life on twitter. once taka and the baby join me down here in dallas, i’m sure there’ll be more family stuff to talk about and neat experiences and places we find here that will be blog worthy. i’m definitely going to have to consolidate or reduce all my other blogs though, because there’s no way i’ll be able to keep up like i used to.

unlike some traders, i’ve had love for my iPhone ever since i got one. i admit i was a hater until i was an owner, but since then, we’ve been like peas and carrots. the phone obviously had some serious short comings, but love is blind and we worked through our differences. finally now though with the latest 3.0 firmware, the iPhone is everything i ever wanted it to be.

of course the simple, obvious things like cut-and-paste, and the ability to search throughout the phone and through my imap email server should have been there from the start, and while i’m happy to have those capabilities now, i still resent a bit that i had to wait for them. and while the other features also could’ve been ready a while ago, i’m not quite as bitter, probably because i’m enjoying them so much. the full stereo a2dp support (and my growing gut) has got me back to the gym. i used to hate that stupid wire between my ipod and the headphones. they’d always stick to my head, or get pulled out when i got on a machine. it also meant i usually had to have the phone within 2 feet or so. now i can set it in the corner of a gym, rock out with no wires and control the ipod from the headphones themselves. i’m living in a better future (although i’m living in texas, so maybe it’s a wash). i also like that i can actually chat on my phone now while doing other things. ironically, i’m too busy to be chatting from work though, so i hope in time to use that feature more. finally, i’ve found xGPS, a free app available through cydia (the jailbroken version of the app store) that makes my phone a full-fledged turn-by-turn navigation device. the best thing? it uses google maps, so everything is very current and accurate. it also also has text to speech, so it tries to say the names of the streets instead of the general “turn in 100ft” like most lower end models. the speech is pretty robotic and could use some work, and the auto-rerouting feature doesn’t work very well, but it’s better than my tomtom 100, and if this is the beginning, i can only imagine where it will go.