Hamvention, Day 1

After dire warnings about thunderstorms and tornadoes the flights were uneventful.  I've had bumpier rides flying over the Sierra Nevada mountains in wintertime. 

Dayton itself is best described as sub-rural (as opposed to sub-urban) and spread out.  It reminds me of areas I've been in Eastern Tennessee.

Hara Arena, the traditional site of the Dayton Hamvention, is...interesting.  It's a very outdated facility with old linoleum walls, water-damaged ceiling tiles, and a smell of age.  I wonder really how much use it gets outside of Hamvention, because apparently Sierra Radio Systems had the same booth last year (#406) and a plug-strip they accidentally left behind was still here.  I've worked a lot of tradeshows in a lot of places, but this is the most unusual.

Staying at a hotel downtown.  Nice enough, but they rented the adjoining room to a bunch of teenagers.  I had to call hotel security at 12:15am to complain, and an hour later they're still making a ton of noise.  So much for their much-touted "Executive Floor".  Management and I will be having a chat tomorrow morning.

Strange Sightings: They have a bank here called "Fifth Third Bank" -- we're not sure what that means.

iPhone Beer Goggles? Gawker Media may be guilty of grand theft

If a California law dating back to 1872 is applied, then employees at Gizmodo (a web property of Gawker Media) may be guilty of grand theft for paying $5,000 to obtain the iPhone prototype famously lost by Gray Powell in a Redwood City bar.

This isn't the first time that Gawker Media has crossed the line from "aggressive journalism" into douchebaggery; in 2008 Gawker published screenshots of Sarah Palin's email after her Yahoo account was hacked.

Posted in reference to: Lost iPhone prototype spurs police probe | Apple - CNET News (view on Google Sidewiki)

Skype Mobile lameness continues in Android

During the past week my wife and I upgraded our mobile phones and made a major shift away from Blackberry to Android.  This ends (for me) an era which began in 1998 when RIM gave me an Inter@ctive Pager (aka the RIM-900) as part of a pre-sales effort to convince Verifone to use a RIM data module in their Omni 3000 handheld credit card terminal. 

I'll have more to say in future posts about why we made this change, but for today I'm focusing on the ongoing lameness that is Skype Mobile.  You'll recall that I wrote last month about how Skype Mobile's privacy features are sorely lacking because it doesn't allow you to block IM from people not in your contact list.  It also doesn't offer you the ability to report abuse via the mobile client. 

During the switch from Blackberry to Android I'd hoped that these limitations would prove to be a limitation of the Blackberry client, but alas the lameness extends to the Android client as well.  Queries to Skype support have proven fruitless; they basically have said "Skype Mobile doesn't filter non-contact IMs.  Thanks for using Skype Mobile."  This needs to get fixed.  I'm going to launch a Twitter campaign against @SkypeMobile to put pressure on them; if you're interested in lending your voice then follow @W6DTW.