I’ve had an iPhone for a while, and always liked it, but never really thought of it as much more than a phone, and I used it for little more. In fact, I mostly used it in the elevator at work to keep from having to talk to people. But beyond that, it really could have been almost any other phone. And part of that is because as it got older, the software kept getting more complicated, but my phone stayed the same speed, so things started getting really slow and pokey. And then the battery stopped holding a charge.

So I was out in California, and decided it was time to upgrade, so I made Phil take me to the Apple store and I got an iPhone 4. And let me tell you, it is just about the best piece of technology that I have ever owned. It was so much faster than my old iPhone, and so I finally can use it without getting frustrated. My applications now open in a timely fashion, so I’m more likely to use them. And some of the more intense games wouldn’t run at all before, and now they blaze away.

Plus, the screen is amazing. I don’t like buying into the marketing hype about a “retina” display, but the screen really is amazing. You can’t see the pixels. It is such a strange and wonderful thing.

Anyway, now that I have this awesome little piece of technology, I find myself using it where before I’d use my laptop. I surf the web on it, keep up with my tech news on it, email on it, facebook on it, listen to music and podcasts on it, read books on it, watch movies and tv on it, and play games on it. About the only things I can’t do from it is real work in the form of programming, or long form composing of any type of writing. It is just too tedious for that.

So yeah. I love my little phone. And if you’re on the fence about whether or not to get one, I’d definitely say you need to get one.

For those of you who don’t know what a Kindle is, it is an eBook reader. I know what you’re thinking. “In this day and age, who would want an expensive device that just does one thing? Especially when you already have an iPhone.” Well let me tell you why. Reading books on it is unlike reading on any other electronic device that I’ve ever used. In fact, I would say that it is pretty much just like reading a book. Except better, because instead of having to go through all of the effort to actually “turn” a page, you just press a button. And you can have a bunch of books in your bag at once. I think right now I have around 30 books on my Kindle. And the screen really does an amazing job of looking like paper and ink. And it is super easy to get new books from amazon, right over the Internets!

I would say that there are a couple of things that would be really nice. I wish that there was a rental system. So like, I pay $1 and can read a book for like 3 days, after which time it goes away. Kind of like a library system. And then I’d also like a “gifting” system. So after I finish a book, I could give the book to someone else who has a kindle. That’s something that I could do with a real book, and I should be able to do the same thing.

I’ve only had it for a little over a week, but so far I’m really happy with it, and have plowed through two and a half books already. If you’re thinking about getting one, I would definitely recommend it. But only if you like, you know, reading.

Why am I mentioning this? Because I can’t get DSL that is any faster than 1.5 mbps. That is ridiculous! It is the 2nd slowest that the offer! Mom and Dad had 6 mbps at their old house, just right across Forest Park from me. And at Dad’s work, way out in the middleofnowhereurbs they are going to get fiber. FIBER right to their company.

Now I know the reasons for this. I’m far away from the switching place, and it is a pain to redo infrastructure in the city while it is easy to do it out where things aren’t as old or developed. But still, it is really pissing me off. Especially because I just signed up for Netflix and have been downloading shows and movies to my xbox, but because my connection is so slow they don’t always look that great.

I could also switch to cable, but they cost quite a bit more than I want to pay. Their introductory rate is fine, but after 6 months it goes up to like a bajillion dollars a month. What I want is to pay $10 more a month to the DSL people and get just a little bit faster DSL. Why can this not happen?