I am pleased that the portion of my brain reserved for sitting through a lecture was not completely wasted after I received a degree. For the most part, I can still pay attention and follow along. The instructors are not quite yawn-inducing, but if I try to cram in another lecture (or even half of it) after sitting through the first, my vision begins to blur and I feel a bit drowsy. My goals for all of this are really undefined, but it would be good move to at least understand the fundamentals of another programming language and development framework. In this case, that would be Objective-C and Xcode.

While I do not maintain any illusion that I will write the next killer app and retire to some island in the Caribbean, I think it is a good use of my free time.

If you are browsing a contact list and your finger slips, it dials a number. Touch a call from your recent call log and it dials instantly. When using a Web application or one of the new native iPhone applications, touching a telephone number places the call immediately. Apple made it very easy to place a call, even if it is unintentional.

My proposal is to add a setting (hidden in the Settings widget) that allows you to set whether all apps or just certain apps can dial a telephone number without user interaction. Otherwise, a modal window pops up and says “Call (555) 555-1234?” In fact, it would be helpful if you could do this from the included Contacts application as well. If you are using the touch pad, there would not be a need for the confirmation.

If Apple does not want to add it to the firmware, at least application developers could include such a prompt in their product. Until then, if you get a call from me and I immediately hang up, please forgive me.

I am exhausted from a long day of riding all over Nashville in “celebration” of iPhone Saturday. I have had this one on my calendar for a while because it means I got my first new gadget in quite some time. There are a few facts I learned today.

iPhones are pretty nifty – Mine is turned off for now to let the battery recharge, but the apps I picked out a while back work great and I am sure I will find a few more worth having. Other than test calling my wife, I have not actually used the phone portion yet.

AT&T uses Equifax to verify credit – Last December, someone broke into the Davidson County Election Commission and stole a laptop containing the private information of every registered voter in the city. We are among them. In response, we put credit freezes on both of our accounts through all three credit bureaus. AT&T uses one of them, Equifax.

The Apple Store is not accustomed to dealing with frozen credit files – If you go to purchase an iPhone (even if you completed the online process and it says your credit was checked), the store employee will have to go to a back room and call AT&T’s service line. The agent on the other end will ask for the pin number to temporarily access your records.

Equifax cannot unfreeze your credit on weekends – I was able to call the other two agencies and have the freeze temporarily lifted. Neither was the one that AT&T wanted to use. Equifax only processes such requests between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday – Friday.

We are not con-artists – Contrary to the uneasy looks we got the second time trying to complete our rather expensive purchase, we just wanted to hurry up and be done with the process. Even after driving back to Goodlettsville to retrieve our files, we were still unable to satisfy their credit verification needs.

The AT&T Store is slightly better prepared – Two failed attempts at the Apple Store put us right down the road to the AT&T Store. They were able to verify our credit through alternative means (we passed) and also merged our bills with our home phone and Internet service.

Debix will actually call you – While at the AT&T Store, an off-site credit analyst went about an alternative means to verify our credit. They called the phone number on file with Equifax, which was a line monitored by Debix. Debix took their information and then called me on my cell phone and asked for a security pin. After providing that, I was able to complete the rest of the process.

Lint and protective screens do not mix – Just ask my wife, who spent close to an hour trying to figure out how to de-lintify her case for the iPod touch. I dropped the static cling side to my pants leg while bouncing down I-65, so it ultimately winds up being my fault.

A margarita and a quesadilla takes the edge off a long day – We stopped by Rosepepper Cantina & Mexican Grille in East Nashville on our way home. I highly recommend it.

Society, and often our religious faiths, teaches us to overcome our human nature because without the idea of generosity and a supportive community the world in which we live would be hard pressed to maintain order. Of course, there are always shades of gray in such clear-cut viewpoints. When a people struggle for freedom, some of these human tendencies are advantageous to possess. If you are content with what you have (oppression) then you will never strive for more (freedom). Finding a way to channel those inborn traits for a greater good is true mastery of your own human nature.

My wife (and a couple of pop stars) refers to this time in our lives as “the quarterlife crisis”. It is a time when you look at the world around you with a bit of disdain, look to others with envy, and want to hold on to everything you have, spurning charity and generosity. I can come clean and say I am certainly not immune to it. So what do I do? To settle a bit of this, the better question may be “what are your goals?”

(For this list, you will have to overlook my obvious selfish premise of “I want …” Call it a generational thing.)

I want development in my professional life.
I am in the process of getting a fairly heavy dose of this right now, but I always see it as an area for improvement. Now, this does not necessarily mean more pay or promotions. Development can come from improved knowledge or honed skills. I want to continue to enjoy the work that I do at a place that I spend about a third of my waking hours. A good portion of that responsibility lies with me.

I want development in my personal life.
Hobbies are the work you do for little or no pay. They are work because one spends time perfecting their abilities. The only payment one may receive for a hobby is that sense of fulfillment from a job well done. I wish finding a hobby was as easy as going to a store, because that sense of fulfillment always seems to allude me when I do what I consider hobbies. I really need new ones.

I still have a lot of work to do for researching graduate programs and finding one that will fit my schedule. I have a couple of days off this month, so at some point I will get serious about looking into it. It is starting to become clear that it is something I want to do.

I want to redefine family and community.
For almost two years now I have had what an outsider may call an “epic struggle” with my family of origin. To me, it is more of a diplomatic collapse ending in a whimper. To move past that, I have a desire to redefine what “family” means to me. My wife is obviously family. We consider many of our mutual friends like-family. When you strip away the sense of entitlement and obligation that comes with the word “family,” it becomes a rather pleasant concept.

I am still looking for that sense of community you find in close-knit groups that you encounter up through college. Our Sunday trek over to the east side for church services is the most promising opportunity lately. I have learned to have a bit of patience on this topic as well, because I know that it will be unmistakable when I find that sense of community that I seek.

I want to improve my surroundings.
This is a ridiculous title to encompass several different goals. The most trivial of which comes in the form of a portable device from Apple: the iPhone. It is trivial in the sense that our commercial culture has managed to convince me that the latest trendy gadget from Cupertino is exactly what I need to feel happy. My wife doubles as a financial planner, so I have been wearing her down for quite some time to get one. Still, I realize that the over-hyped mobile phone/PDA/music player is really just a foil for a much bigger desire to improve my surroundings.

More vitally than the iPhone, we need to make more inroads into becoming home owners. This is mostly a financial decision (paying rent is not the ideal option), but it will probably also help us feel a bit less out of place. Our cars are about to have a combined 300,000 miles on them (statistically tied at 147,000 apiece right now), so I may finally stop being the childless guy who voluntarily drives a minivan to work every day.

A final thought …
Going back to the original topic of human nature, envy is probably the most difficult to recognize and even more so to put back in its place. I have met people who are successful at their profession, have wonderful children and spouses, supportive extended families and have a very strong sense of inner peace. While envy rarely sees anything negative in that picture, you start to wonder what steps you can take to make your reality closer to the way you perceive theirs. I do have a good job and a wonderful wife, so now is the time to sort through what I should be grateful for having and what I should be striving to have.

iPhone Applications

I do not own a device that can take advantage of the new Application Store in iTunes. Our Verizon contract comes up for renewal in February, but despite my perhaps unhealthy desire for an iPhone we do not plan on switching to AT&T. The reasons are fairly simplistic: Verizon has a better network outside of metropolitan areas and AT&T has not had the best scores when it comes to customer service. If you have evidence to the contrary, please forward it on to my wife.

Regardless, I am intrigued by the device. I have never actually used an iPhone or its phone-less cousin the iPod Touch. I have secured the green-light to get the Touch (when it is inevitably updated in September) from my household accountant and financial planner. In the meantime, I have downloaded a couple of free apps to install when the time comes to buy one.

• AIM – Instant messaging client; handy way to get in touch with college friends.
• Facebook – Social networking; same as above, but hipper.
• Google Mobile App – Search engine; Where would any of us be without Google these days?
• Loopt – Location-based social networking; A friend-finder on steroids.
• Mobile Banking – Bank of America client; To watch the money drain from my account after buying one.
• Mocha VNC Lite – Remote desktop client; My stuff from anywhere.
• Nearby – Location-based search; To find a Starbucks no matter where you are.
• NYTimes – News and information; I cannot go a half hour without wondering about current events.
• PayPal – Money transfers; Fast way to pay.
• Remote - Remote control for Mac; Why not?
• Twitter – Social network messaging; I have over 200 tweets.
• WordPress – Blogging platform; Update this blog from anywhere.

We will see how it all turns out in mid-to-late September. I am hoping to bum a little bit of time from a co-worker to see how she likes hers.