Finally! (Sorry, I should have probably posted this positive story as quickly as I posted the previous negative one)

I popped back to my local Apple Store on Saturday morning; they mailed me on Friday evening to say they'd be open early on Saturday. True to their word they were open and able to acutally sell the iPhone this time. In fact I was in and out in around 25 minutes. For all the queues they'd seen the day before (they said most of their product launches went much better) I only heard one customer with raised voice; Apple appear to have escaped finger pointing on this occasion as clearly they weren't entirely at fault, and for once the Great British Public have realised that shouting at the person behind (or in the case of the Apple Store next to) the counter, isn't always necessary.

Truth be told they were a little bit late opening early, but they did have the courtesy to say hello when we met in the Starbucks queue and promised to be open just as soon as....

Anyway I'm now the proud owner of a 16GB 3G iPhone in (wait for it)...white; I figured the white would be less likely to show up the finger prints, would look better with the accessories (white power cord, white ear buds etc) and besides, everyone was telling/expecting me to go for black. I couldn't do that cause Free is the New Black and what would that make Black?

So what do I think?

Coming from a Nokia E61 on a PAYG Vodafone SIM the most obvious point of moving is to have a phone with mobile internet (to sum up 3G/Edge/AwayFromHome WIFI) without the pain of paying through the nose for data.. For example in the last 5 days of using the E61, I used up around £10 of PAYG credit on 10-20 texts and using the 3G connection as and when I fancied (that invovled four 15 minute train journeys and a 4 hour wait at the Apple Store). On the 02 contract I've got 500 pre-paid texts 600 voice minutes and all the data I can eat without making myself sick for £35.

The sign of a good contract is when your girlfriend (1) doesn't say "Eeek, how much? Well it's your money, you can do what you like with it." (2) does say (to her brother) "I might fancy one of those iPhones myself, it's only a little more than what I'm paying at the moment."

The integration with the Mac is seemingly seemless. My Google Mail and Sun email accounts appeared on the iPhone up on first Sync, my iCal calendar likewise (iSync worked well with the Nokia but iTunes and iCal are even better).

Probably the most under mentioned USP is that the software on the phone is maintained and developed. On my E61 I had to jump through hoops to get a firmware update onto the phone (and even then the chances of bricking the thing were significant -- had I not had an unlocked phone in the first place I probably wouldn't have risked it). With iPhone Apple (and now Developers) are providing real software updates and addressing RFEs in a way the mainstream mobile market hasn't really seen before. That made the purchase worthwhile aside from any other benefits.

Downside?

Still making my mind up about the battery-life. Using it as a phone with Edge access will probably be the way to ensure good battery life. I don't need or want to use it a my primary email client or browser (but it's nice to have that option wherever you find yourself wanting to browse, email or IM).

A car charger will probably be essential when TomTom or TeleNav get their GPS software on board (the much mentioned License restriction to the use of Google Maps by third party Apps doesn't prevent these two vendors delivering as they obviously have their own map data. However I tried the Google Maps GPS pinpointing from in the car and it was very good; clearly there is no underlying issue with the antenna size (which had also been much mentioned).

So if you hear the sound of a light sabre in or around a Sun office or behind you in the queue at the train station that might just be me (or one of the million others)!

So I decided to upgrade my Nokia E61 and in the process get away from PAYG and return to a contract. As I don't have a company mobile, the new iPhone 3G tariffs from O2 in the UK look reasonable (especially for the included 'unlimited' 3G and BT Cloud wifi).

As with most things Apple, being an early adopter has some pros (as with any new technology, the sooner you have it, the longer before it's superceded -- that's a boy's-toy's argument but I'm sticking with it.

To mis-quote Squeeze: This morning at 6:50, I took me rather nifty and 60 minutes later I was 13th inline at the Southampton Apple Store (this isn't something I'm particularly proud, however for a bunch of good reasons, it was better to bite the bullet and get to the Apple Store early than face one of the phone stores later in the day).

Despite the fact that Apple Stores were refusing to confirm they were opening early, by the noise coming from inside the store and the black curtain hung up at the front wind, they clearly were opening at 8:02 just as the O2 store was 10doors up.

At 8:02 we all went in (the AS staff clapped and cheered as they will) and we waited. The first 10 or 11 were taken to iMacs to have their details put into the O2 computer (a gateway website running in IE under Parralls).

At around 8:40 a cheer went up when the first customer's credit check (we thought) was finally completed, but by 9:00 still no-one had left with a phone.

There was a very nice man from O2 (in jeans and blazer, no polyester shirts and tie for him). He was keen to let us know the problem was with the connection to Experian for the credit checks and there was also a problem with another connection to another O2 system which kept going offline.

At about 10:00 they started agreeing to let people leave with a reservations. At 11:05 they let us at the head of the queue know that O2 were going to powercycle (I doubt it) their servers. I suspect they were probably just going to restart whatever app was running on the servers, knowing the type of servers O2 run their business on(!) power-cycling would take quite a while and achieve little more than would a good old "init 6".

The poor AS staff no idea how long it was going to take for that to complete, so they wouldn't know when they would be able to eventually start taking people through the credit check again.

Meanwhile down at the O2 store (and no doubt at all O2 and CPW stores) they were able to get passed this problem because they could fallback to a pen-and-paper system. Because Apple were effectively operating as O2 resellers for the contract side of things, they were only provisioned with using the online system.

To the Apple Store's credit they were really good to everyone. Although there is a Starbucks just outside the West Quay centre, but apparently on H&S grounds the WQ staff wouldn't allow Starbucks to provide free coffee (they have a give-away quota for promotions).

So instead the AS staff worked the line with pen and paper, took coffee orders and made coffee upstairs in proper cups. Then the most appropriate wearer of an Apple Genius T-shirt turned up with half a dozen boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts (you can't beat KK's). This was a step up from the pre-packed blueberry muffin and bottle of O2 from O2.

Despite some very flexible management (from Sun's end -- e.g. the Boss) I finally left my place in the queue at around 11:20, with a reservation against a 16GB phone (seeing as all the O2 & CPW stores will now be out of stock!)

I'll be popping back just as soon as I have chance and they've got themselves sorted out!

If I didn't have a conscience, a 1PM LCT slot and a sharedshell appointment for a clearfault on an M5000 at 4:30PM today I may well have called it a proper holiday and not a re-located and combined lunch hours from the past few days and would probably still be there!

Crikey, it's only a phone isn't it?

BTW Well done to all at Apple Store West Quay for making the best out of a bad situation. And respect to the guy from O2 who had what it takes to be on the shop floor explaining (as much as he could) exactly what was going on. It was bad, but you handled it better than BA seemed to deal with T5!

In future though, Apple and their partners should really ensure they have a contingency plan. It might be embarrassing to admit you need one, but it's a whole lot better than not having it one in the first place!

I just had to share this with you

More info at www.wherethehellismatt.com; basically Matt has a unique way of dancing. A few years ago, whilst travelling in Asia, a friend suggested they film him doing his "dance", a compilation video subsequently went on youtube and lots and lots of people watched it.

A few less years later, Stride gum paid for him to travel to a bunch of countries filming him doing is terrible dance. The resulting video went on the net too.

After being deluged with emails, he later convinced Stride to repeat that act of generosity, but this time invite the people who'd emailed him to join in the dancing.

"14 months in the making, 42 countires and a cast of thousands" later, we have the result...

Okay I'm sorry for recalling The Bay City Rollers at this (or any other) time of the day, but I promise you this is a rare occasion so I feel it may warrant it.

Last Friday my prized 1993 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 finally through in the towel with a broken (or near as needed) water pump. The engine temperature was through the roof, at one stage the big red CHECK ENGINE light was on, and by the end of the morning there was lots of water and steam in the engine bay. This was not a Cool Threads moment.

The local specialist Japanese import garage estimated 6 hours labour just to get to the water pump, as you can see, not much space is wasted in the engine bay. 6 hours labour + parts + labour + 6 hours labour == lots and lots more money. The car had just come from the garage the day before (for totally unrelated, but still expensive) servicing. It was time for an big decision.

I used a Japanese import garage for servicing ( www.tuningjapanese.co.uk -- sorry guys I won't be need your services anymore!). My Mitsubishi, however, hadn't come directly from Japan. I bought my headturner in 2000 form a friend in Dallas, Texas, when I was working for Sun in California. I brought the car home via Galviston, Texas and Southampton (England!) a year or so later, and I like to think it had been a head turner ever since (although my girlfriend absolutely hates it!).

So after 8 years could I really bare to be parted from COLSVR4?

The licence plate should be read as COL'S VR-4 and not COL SVR4 (which was never intended and was only pointed out by someone much more nerdy than I!).

Aside from the emotional attachment, we also had to deal with

• an MOT with only 12 left days to run (making it less attractive to potential buyers)
• a leaking/faulty waterpump (making it a lot less attractive to potential buyers)
• flaking, formerly chrome-plated, alloys thanks to 7 too many years of UK road salt!
• faded rear spoiler, thanks to 7 too many years of Texas sunshine!

So although it was difficult, I took the decision to call it a day, and list on eBay. Lots of people were as gobsmacked that I was selling up as that I was selling up on eBay, but I figured I'd reach far more potential buyers, could push to close the sale before the MOT expired and would hopefully avoid the time-waster agencies that seem to plague all classified sales in the UK.

This was the quickest listing I've every completed from deciding to list, taking photos, writing description and having the auction live (okay it was about 90 minutes from the last photo being taken to the auction being live, but this was also the most expensive item I've ever listed, so on a auction-writing/auction-value basis, I think we have a winner.

We also had a winner on the auction, just over 48 hours after listing we had a Buy-It-Now and within another 48 hours the car was gone!

Woh, that was quick! What can I say? It's a fast car!

A word about the buyer/winner (you win, now hand over the money!!). David and Greg came up from Southampton on Tuesday teatime, although like the car, they hadn't originally come from Southampton. You could tell this from their accents - clearly Polish (much better at speaking English than I am at Polish though).

David was the mechanic, Greg was the builder. Luckily Greg took a proverbial back seat and left David to fiddle with the coolant system, and after a 15 minutes of fiddling the way only people who know what they're doing can fiddle, Greg reckoned everything would be okay. They paid a deposit and we agreed they pay the balance and remove the car the following afternoon.

Not unusual, well maybe not but such a car sale in England would have by this stage typically seen the buyer sucking their teeth and offering 20% less than they'd already agreed, given the car's 'nick'.

These guys didn't even look at the tyres let alone start kicking them!

True to his word David the mechanic arrived on Wednesday afternoon, with another Polish mate, a builders lorry with 5 tonne hydraulic crane and a large wadd of cash. Once the money side of things was out the way, I explained a few little idiosyncrasies of the car and then the fun of getting the car onto the lorry started.

The car was pulled up along side the lorry and straps were threaded through the alloys(!). The lorry's stabilizers were lowered and then David started unpacking the crane. Everything was going well until a couple of pints of oil spewed out of one of the crane's elbows. He said a word that might have been Polish (but I understood the sentiment!). And then came one of those questions you know you'll probably never be asked again.

"Do you know we'd be able to borrow a fork lift truck from?"

Lucky for David we were about a mile from a busy industrial estate (an industrious industrial estate?) with builders merchants, couriers and a company that makes fork lift trucks.

Lucky for David's mate he had to drive the car (slowly) behind the lorry (I think he was trying not to act overly chuffed, given how cheesed off David was about his crane!).

So the last I saw of COLSVR4 was it driving down my road (which beats leaving on the back of a builder's lorry). I spoke to the Poles the following morning and they were already in Germany, enroute to Poland. Clearly someone was happy to turn a blind health-and-saftey-eye and help them load the car.

At least it's off on a new adventure, it beats selling it to 'some guy' in 'Somewhereton', 'Nowhereshire'!

For the time being I'm going to stick with just my just my daily drive (a 1998 VW Passat 1.9TDi - chalk meet cheese!). Next on my spare car shopping list is probably going to be something like this or this but not like this. Meantime I've heard there are some bargains to be had on the NASDAQ.

Every so often you just need to switch off, go somewhere else and get away from it all.

So we (me and her) are popping off to California and Texas for a couple of weeks of not being here. Texas is already planned (friend with water-front-condo + 7 days = batteries fully recharged). California on the other hand is proving a toughy.

I used to live in Mountain View (I arrived in town just a few months before the bubble did what bubbles tend to do) so I've seen quite a bit of California, enough to know that you can't fit California into a week (not by a long way!).

We're already booked up in San Francisco (in one of the Joie de Vivre Hotels for four nights) where I'm told we have to go to Alcatraz and drive over the Golden Gate Bridge. Not that I mind doing it again, I have actually been to Alcatraz around five times (on at least one occasion I selected a foreign language audio tour just to change the goal posts). 

I've been using a package called Knapsack for MacOS to start to get the inventory sorted out. So far far SFO we've got:

• Breakfast or Dinner at Top of the Mark
• Alcatraz ( and Angel Island if the Combo Tour is running)
• Telegraph Hill
• Helicopter Tour (I had no idea these even existed until I'd left CA)
• Seaplane Tour (the cheaper/maybe more romantic version of the above)
• Shopping (Apple Store, REI, NorthFace, Fireside Camera, Filmore St, Chesnut St, Somewhere else I don't recall)
• Alamo Square (To take another shot of Steiner's Painted Ladies)

• Twin Peaks
• Coit Tower
• Baker Beach
• Golden Gate Park
• And I suppose we'd better go to Fisherman's Warf (is the bush man still there?)

There's lots of other places I vaguely recall from 8 years ago, although I can't always remember the names of places -- that said, Google Maps has a great feature called Street View so I can navigate with street-level imagery, its so cool!

After our 4 nights in SFO, the jury is still out on exact plans. We've got a hotel booked in Half Moon Bay the evening before we fly to Texas (so we're close enough to the airport). At the moment  Knapsack looks like this:

Originally I'd planned to squeeze in a tour out to Yosemite, then over Tioga Pass to Mono Lake (which I don't ever recall going to) then down through Lone Pine and Bishop towards Sequoia and then over to Santa Barbara and up PCH. Then several things dawned on me:

• We spent a trip to Scotland a few years ago just driving everyday and hardly left the car
• 55 mph(!)
• Tioga Pass will so not be open by the time we're there (and I can't belive it can take two months to plough clear)

So the plan is to spend a day North of SFO, spend Tuesday head down to my old haunt on Tuesday (I need to pop into Frys -- luckily my other half was introduced to Frys a couple of years ago in Houston and it went down well!).

Then we'll be heading probably towards Morro Bay (Santa Barbara might be just too far) before a leisurely cruise up PCH. Hopefully will fit in  Hearst Castle and endless stops on the beach, its looking like Big Sur for Wednesday night, to be sure to get to Half Moon Bay in good time Thursday.

BTW I've been using Google Earth almost exclusively for finding stop over places (B&B's and Motels), the links to travelocity.com traveller reviews are indispensable.

Anyway if you have any ideas for a pair of thirty something Brits visiting CA to get away from it all for a little bit let me know!

I can't take credit for remembering, however today is kind of Solaris 2.0's sixteenth birthday, well at least its the 17th anniversary of Sun announcing 'the first shrink-wrapped distributed computing solution' aka Solaris. Actually I think Solaris 2.0 (along the same lines as the Star Wars films, 2.0 was first, and 1.0 was a follow-up!) was released until June 1992, but any excuse to celebrate!

I just hope you don't end up with Neil Sedaka's 1961 hit, Sweet Sixteen stuck in your head for the rest of the day, as I did last week when I heard the news. For that I can only blame former Radio One DJ Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart.

Roll on next year and I'll start quoting Beatles lyrics...

If you're wondering where I've got to, I'm still around just busy over here collecting and counting up the sponsorship money from our sponsored 100km hike we did earlier in the summer.

At the moment we're totalling somewhere just over our original target of £4000 (with the help of Sun Microsystems Foundation's Matched Giving scheme).

All our money is due with Oxfam by end of September, so if you owe us (or want to make a last minute donation) get in touch

This is my first post from my new MacBookPro (been waiting a long long time to make it back to an Apple) and I thought I'd just give this lunatic a mention:

This is Greg Packer he's first in line for an iPhone at Apples 5th Aveneue Store. Only 3 and a half days left to wait, hope no one jumps the line.

Hopefully the weather won't be as bad as when I was at the 5th Avenue Store in March:

This is a fairly blatant cross-posting to the other blog I've been penning recently.

My office-neighbour, John, and I recently cycled the South Downs Way, over 100 miles of off-road cycling, as recce (recon) of the route we'll be covering later this year as part of Trailwalker UK (an Oxfam/Gurkha Welfare Trust sponsored 30-hour hike, for which we've pledged to raise £4,000 between 8 of us!).

Read how we got on with the cycling over here

There's no denying it I've not been blogging for a little while; I've not been idle, I've just not been writing about it; sometimes I wonder if Web 2.0 is more suited to those with a laptop, a long commute on public transport and probably a flat data-rate on their mobile/cell contract; currently I've neither the laptop nor the commute and I opted back onto pay-as-you-go a long while back (even with an E61!).

I cycled to work for a while and then moved too far from the office to be able to safely/practically cycle in, so I figured I'd cycle to the local train station take the train and then cycle into the office. Almost the same week as we moved into our new house, the train company extended their cycle restrictions; from my local station they don't permit bikes on trains London-bound trains after 5:42AM and on trains leaving London between 4:34PM and 20:06PM. So when you're working a regular 9ish-to-5ish day, coming into work via the train on a bike is somewhat awkward to say the least!

I've come up with two alternatives; a folding mountain-bike or walking. A folding mountain-bike, I specify mountain bike as opposed to something like this Brompton cause they're quite expensive and they're not really built for cycling through Fleet Pond nature reserve. Instead I've opted for one line this with a proper saddle, a longer seatpost, and a Topeak Trunk Bag. The train company allow folding bikes on all their services, though I think I'll give it a miss this next week, I need to be in the office for 6:45AM, which means leaving home at 5:30AM if I'm cycling, as opposed to 6:20AM if I drive -- does this make me shallow?

The alternative to cycling is to walk. It's about an hour's walk at each end of the train journey, which would prove useful in preparation for this summer's major event, the Oxfam/Gurkah Trailwalker 60 mile hike. Read all about it at our team blog, subtitled 100km in 30 hours.

So that addresses the cycling-to-work question, now I just need to address the laptop question. Well, like so many others I was waiting for Leopard before buying into the MacBook Pro range (I guess it's okay for me to admit that, especially as we recently joined the Open Office MacOS X porting effort). For the moment I'm going to wait and hope that the WWDC keynote in a little over a month's time contains more than just the iPhone! It's nearly 10 years since I last had a Mac (my first was a PowerBook 100 -- it was so sweet!).

Seems some more features of the Apple iPhone emerged on last night's SNL:

• it plays 2 billion songs (billion, with a B)
• you can watch movies, whilst making a movie or watching the latest episode of The Office
• it holds 150 kabillion contacts
• you can watch the latest episode of The Office
• you can listen to your favourite U2 track
• it has a clock

Check out Steve Jobs showing off the Apple iPhone on SNL.

...and all over the United Kingdom, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, virtually no-one has been logging support cases, which is quite nice; especially for all of us who have been working today in the Technology Service Centre here in the UK (7AM to 7PM for me!).

So for those of you taking the time to read this, especially if you're working, Merry Christmas, Wesołych Świąt, geseënde Kersfees, 圣诞快乐, veselé Vánoce, glædelig jul, vrolijk Kerstfeest, hyvää joulua, joyeux Noël, frohe Weihnachten, kala christougenna, Krismas ki subhkamna, gleðileg jól, Nollaig shona, buon Natale, meri kurisumasu, Noela we pîroz be, sreken Bozik, god jul, C Pождеством, Nollaig chridheil, Chrismas joon wadhayoon, feliz Navidad, สุขสันต์วันคริสตร์มาส, Nadolig llawen, or just insert your winter holiday greeting of choice!

Hmm... wonder if Jonathan's blog is covering quite so many languages yet?

Yesterday I mailed an old friend (who sold me lots of Sun equipment when I worked in my previous job around 10-15 years ago). My mail client's address book is so old, it picked up the company's old domain name, and the email bounced back. Nothing unusual there!

As usual, for me, I only glanced at the Undeliverable mail and thought it was reporting that my friend no longer worked at the reseller; it was actually just telling me that the domain name was non existent. As it happens it wasn't relevant -- the end result was the same.

So being the inquisitive sort, I typed his name into my search engine of choice only to find this:

link to a justgiving.com webpage set up, in his memory:-( Mail servers aren't supposed to delivery this sort of message!!

Although we'd not spoken for sometime (he'd last been in touch when he'd sponsored me earlier this year) he was one of those low maintenance friends who always remembered more details about your life than you ever did his! So at the very least all I can do is remember him, and suggest that you don't lose touch with good friends!

RIP dppf.

PS: The chosen charity, CLICL Sargent is one dppf was keen to support, they are the UK's leading children's cancer charity, supporting children, young people and their families through cancer every step of the way. December is childhood cancer awareness month.

This next move is probably going to result in one of two outcomes:

• Realisation that the Statcounter code in my blog is fibbing big time
• Any good will I have left from the postroom boys going out the window - before my christmas shopping from Amazon turns up

but I reckon those two are mutually exclusive, plus the end justifies the means, so here goes.

Yesterday I got an email from a colleague to say that they would:

"Much rather donate money to Charity this year ... so, please don't feel the need to send me a [christmas] card"

This got me thinking, as at home we've already got lots of christmas cards ready bought and just waiting to be written (I know this because I hauled the five christmas boxes down from the loft on Sunday evening), how can I make a charitable donation and still continue to send and receive cards? It hit me when I was pulling off the M3 on the way into the office at 06h25 Friday morning (not much goes on up there at that time of day!):

For every card I receive at my work address, rather than sending a card back in return, I'll make a donation these charities:

• Home Start - the charity supported by Sun here at Guillemont Park via our reception area gift-tree giving programme. They provide support for families with young children in over 337 communities across the UK and with Forces families in Germany and Cyprus.
• North Hampshire Hospital's Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit (NHH Charities (EPAU)) - which does what it says really, but like most parts of the NHS is woefully underfunded

To make life interesting (like it needs to be!) the donation will depend upon where the card arrives from:

• Hand delivered/internal mail: 10p
• Received from UK: 23p
• Received from EU: 44p
• Received from rest of world: 50p

So apart from a nominal amount for hand delivered cards, the donation matches the postal cost to return a card.

Just to be crystal clear, this is lieu of you getting a card back from me in return, I don't want you taking me off your own christmas card lists!

Now for the not so small print: I don't have deep pockets and short arms, but I'm going to place a maximum donation of £50 (UKP) to each charity, but whatever the final figure, it should (if it's > $25) be doubled with the help of the Sun Microsystems Foundation Trust.

So if you work at Sun in the UK, I'm sure you can dig out my mailstop details. Otherwise, whether you're a Sun employee, a reseller, an existing, current or previous customer, a former work-colleague, a friend or relative(!) or an unrelated blog reader who's maybe received this permalink in viral form, please send christmas cards to me at our UK Head Office Address, and mark them FAO "ColinJ" -- don't forget the "J".

I'll be sure to keep you updated on how the postroom relationship breaks down!

Seasons Greetings (as per your locale!)