Nowadays I have settled into a nice suburb of Charlotte, NC. I couldn’t be any further away from the city’s center without being considered living in the next town. There are cows just down the road but this is one of those newer developments that have taken over the farm and wooded land as the city’s inhabitants continue to expand outward. As a kid, if I wanted to visit with the neighbors I had a good hike to reach them. The kids on my “block” were spread over a three mile stretch of road, and that was a total of 15 houses. Growing up in a rural setting meant that when I took a job delivering pizzas at the age of 21, I didn’t yet know that one side of the street had odd numbered houses and the other had even. I have definitely been a “country mouse” for the better part of my life. This may be the cause of my antisocial nature.

It’s not that I don’t like people, I just don’t understand why the houses have to be so close together. When I was younger the house next door could have burned to the ground without you knowing it. Today, my neighbor can inadvertently change the channels on my TV with his remote. It’s hard enough to live right on top of each other, but some people go out of their way to be a nuisance. I have a fairly well trained Yellow Lab that knows enough not to bark every two seconds for hours on end. I can’t understand why anyone would want that kind of companion. If the person you lived with would not shut up for a few seconds each hour, you would probably consider having them put to sleep as well.

And to my neighbor; If your little yappy dog is terrorizing my back yard, please get off your cellphone and call it home instead of watching me fight my way to my car to go to work. And if you are going to have a loud party until the wee hours of the morning, at least invite me to attend. My only participation should not be when your guests choose to relieve themselves on my lawn before kicking trash out of their cars and driving home drunk. I don’t feel the need to impose myself on anyone else and I don’t need roommates anymore. But if your activities are going to infringe on my life so much, maybe you should be paying a portion of my rent.

1. GPS – I currently have a Google Maps app I downloaded for free to find my way around. Since my current phone has no location functions, I have to know where I am and manually move the map to follow my location. Though it seems that “turn by turn” directions will not be available at first with iPhone, location tracking will be a feature I look for in my next phone anyway.
2. GREED – Steve Jobs is worth 5.7 Billion (at posting date). I myself would like to keep some of my own money in my pocket. The price drop offered on this generation of iPhone makes it very attractive. Even though some say the end cost of the iPhone is higher than its earlier release.
3. GOOEY – When it comes to Graphic User Interface, Apple gets it. People want to feel all warm and fuzzy about how the interact with a device. Aside from volume, “on / off” and silent, the phone essentially has one button. Apple is all about the “One Button World” in the never-ending quest to dumb down every human-being on the earth.

With little research about whether or not all these electronic items are giving us brain cancer or making us sterile, I myself do not want to carry 6 more things on my body. Then the question becomes: Do we really want one device for every function? What do we do when (and I do mean “when”) it fails us? What happens when that end-all-be-all product falls to the sidewalk and is smashed or is more likely stolen from us at gun point while waiting for the bus?

And what to do with your iPhone if you were duped the first time into buying this magical little candy bar of Phoney delight? Here’s a suggestion from our friends at Blendtec: