Remember my little rant a few weeks ago? Well, if you know anyone on the Google side (Android), you can tell them that the lamentations they’ve been emitting can now be silenced. Google fixed the Marking Items Read issue. They write:

For those of you with Android phones, we’ve also fixed a particularly annoying bug that led to items not being marked as read correctly.

So that’s nice, they fixed a problem and even blogged about it to let us know. This little blog post, though, did more than inform me about a bug fix – it further annoyed me at the current state of Windows Mobile. My gripe today boils down to one thing: speed. Not speed of the operating system, but speed of the platform development. Using release dates from Wikipedia, I did a little calculation. It’s about 484 days on average between Windows Mobile releases. While this was plenty fast in the Pocket PC days, it seems painfully slow when you consider Apple keeps a roughly 365 day interval between releases of iPhone major OS versions. 4 months longer adds up over time!

There are many reasons MS can’t release these things faster (feel free to discuss them below) but the point of this post isn’t to ask why – it’s simply to point out that people WANT their gadgets updated faster. They like new features, new looks, and new uses. I’ve been saying for awhile now that Microsoft needed the next version of Windows Mobile available yesterday – and now more than ever that seems true. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be so annoyed over this if I didn’t feel that the glory days of Windows Mobile are ahead, not behind. I just think they need to get here a lot quicker than they seem to be arriving. Come on guys, if 100 reasons are keeping this a slow process, find 100 solutions to them, step up, and COMPETE!

This was originally posted at Pocket PC Thoughts, check out the the source for discussion.

If you don’t know, and I wouldn’t doubt you if you said you didn’t, Ghost Hunters is a show on the SciFi channel that focuses on a group of individuals who seek to document evidence of paranormal activity. Karey enjoys watching the show religiously, and I enjoy watching it was well (I don’t particularly like the cast of the spin-off show, Ghost Hunters International, so I usually sit out for that show when it comes on). Anyway, the Ghost Hunters go about “hunting” a bit differently than other shows I’ve seen on the subject, which is why I’m posting on it. The investigators firmly believe a core tenant of good scientific investigation: The best way to prove the existence of something is to try your hardest to disprove it. The logic goes something like this: If you exhaust all “normal” explanations for what you observe, then your observations are likely to be paranormal. This type of thinking isn’t anything new, it’s actually derived from core tenants of the philosophy of science

I’m a ghost hunter – see, I found the picture of two real ghosts!

So here are some guys trying to prove the existence of something by working as hard as they can to disprove anything seemingly paranormal they find. If they capture something on film, they attempt to explain it or even replicate it. If they capture sounds which may be contaminated by still-living humans, they throw the evidence out. This is in stark contrast to many other paranormal advocates which do not use science at all in their investigations (fuzzy science doesn’t count).

3 ‘phenomenal shots’ ended pirate hostage crisis – CNN.com

“The on-scene commander saw that one of the pirates still held that AK-47, was very, very concerned for the captain’s life — and he ordered the shots to be taken,” Gortney told CNN on Monday.Even with the small boat “moving up and down a couple of feet,” the SEALs hit their targets. “Remarkable marksmanship,” Gortney said.

I really hate to feel good about anyone dying, but I will admit to being a bit happy upon hearing that the three remaining pirates holding an American hostage were gunned down. I find myself wondering though – what does this tell the pirates.

Hopefully it tells them to stay away from boats flying under the American flag, which I would probably do if I were a pirate. After all, other countries seem content with paying ransoms while you wait it out. The actions taken by the SEALs should help dissuade pirates from going after Americans, but probably won’t dissuade them from going after anyone else.

In any event, it makes me proud to have two grandfathers who served in the Navy (making me an actual Son of a Son of a Sailor). And I remain proud to have two brother-in-laws serving in the Army (As you can imagine, I have tough decisions to make when cheering on a team during early December’s Army-Navy game!).

Here is the only real revelation or startling thought I’ve had tonight regarding the election. Last summer, I listened heavily to the song Pary like a Rock Star and while listening to it, I thought “The Obama campaign should really use this and sing it as “Party like Barack”. That was 18 months before the election.
The best part of the evening isn’t if your candidate won or the other guy lost – it’s that these stupid, protracted, and utterly draining election cycles are over. For at least the next 25-30 months or so. Hopefully.

Today was an interesting day. We had a near revolt that almost turned ugly in the last Windows Mobile session on MS Campus (Sorry, NDA probably covers why… suffice it to say your MVPs are sticking up for you (Look at me talking all old-hat, less than a month…:) )). Anyway, tonight was the party at the Experience Music Project (EMP, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_Music_Project) . Karaoke that was really cool (With a live band and rock and roll effects, guitar hero / rockband, and more). I spent around 2 hours there then hopped the bus back early – I need some sleep (Which explains why there are no pics from today. Perhaps more tomorrow!).
Night Everyone!