5 Thoughts for October 31, 2015

1. The election of Barack Obama (and his subsequent re-election) was much more than a win for African-Americans and the racism they've endured; America was flipped upside down and now we've come to expect people who look like us, representing us, everywhere. I look at Bernie Sanders, and even though I share many of the same beliefs as him, he doesn't represent the new America. On the Republican side, the only two people who could possibly represent the new America are Fiorina and Rubio, but everyone knows that Fiorina has a ceiling of her own making: HP.
2. For the last 5 months Clear Wireless has been sending out periodic reminders that it will be shutting down -- thanks, Sprint -- come November 6. I'd known about this impending shutdown for roughly 18 months, and was hoping that Google Fiber would be in place by now, but alas, it wasn't to be. Last week I finally grabbed myself a refurbished, open box SB6141 for $40, and yesterday I got around to going online and signing up for installation with...bleh...Comcast. Talk about good timing, as the earliest slot available was the 6th; imagine if I had waited one more day! There's an 8~10 hour gap between the time they shut down Clear service and when the Comcast person installs (plugs in the cable in the common area box) it, but because I have my phone with mobile hotspot, I won't miss a beat. Now for the better news: The timing was perfect as Comcast changed its "best" offer to a 10Mbps service for $29.99 for 12 months, which is actually $10 less than what I was paying to Clear for 6Mbps. If you're wondering, the reason why I stuck with Clear is because it was wireless and I like having fewer wires...plus Comcast throttles certain edge providers (Netflix).
3. I have completely perfected my vault-building skills in Fallout Shelter, as I've now had three shelters soar past the 100-occupant level. My first one reached the 200 capacity ceiling before it was erased when the app crashed and wouldn't allow itself to restart. My second one was at about 170 when it crashed and the vault was erased. This third one is already at 184 and is absolutely unbeatable with my crushing kill zone on the first level -- no Deathclaw can escape the first level. I now know why FS has a 200-occupant ceiling: The larger the vault, the more taxing it is on the device. In the beginning my device won't heat up, but by the time I'm at roughly 70, heating issues begin to show, and the closer I get to 200, the faster the heat build-up is and the more sluggish the device gets. All this points to very bad coding.
4. The WSJ reported that Google was ready to merge Android and ChromeOS into one -- Android absorbing ChromeOS -- and would show off the new OS sometime next year. Today Google came out and said that this wasn't accurate. Instead, it appears that ChromeOS will continue to be supported -- how much more effort does it take to support a browser that is sandboxed in a Linux base, when they're already supporting Linux and their browser? -- while a third OS will appear, which will merge Android with ChromeOS in order to make better use of Google Play Store, a keyboard, a mouse (or pointer), and a large screen. Let's be honest though: Eventually you'd want this third OS to replace all large-screen devices whether Android tablets or ChromeOS laptops; anyone with a tablet 10" or larger knows that Android wastes space and isn't well-optimized for such large screens; ChromeOS is well-suited for large screens but running apps from the internet isn't so useful. Suddenly that Pixel C starts to make sense and you can imagine how Google will push this new operating system to Pixel C devices.
5. So I finally worked around the split of Google Wallet and Android Pay. I added my Google Wallet card (the physical card) to my Android Pay, then made it the default option; with this setup I was able to make it work at Trader Joe's yesterday. It still takes longer than the old Google Wallet, as I need to separately enter my PIN on the card swipe POS, unlike before where this step wasn't required; I often wonder why I even bother using Android Pay, actually. And my banking institution's credit card does not support Android Pay, so even though I have my credit card and Google Wallet card both associated with Android Pay, it's essentially operating like Google Wallet on the back end of the transaction with a unique virtual card number. Dumb, right?