Well, we finally got real snow. I’ve been here three years now and this is our first official snow storm that has shut down the surrounding areas. Schools are canceled, businesses have shut down, the roads are empty.

Yesterday I drove to the store (being one of the few people in the area with 4-wheel drive) and was amazed how many people were walking from the surrounding house farms, and, being in the south, was also amazed how many 4-wheel ATV’s were at the grocery store.

The one day every few years that the locals can feel superior to the “city folk”. They were all decked out in their full camo hunting gear, with their son/daughter tucked in snugly behind them having a great time.

Meanwhile, I passed no less than 10 cars that had been abandoned along the roadsides. Keep in mind that I live exactly 1.2 miles from the grocery store… 10 cars.

Looks like the next two days it will be pushing 50 again, so all this snow is going to melt within 48 hours and then we’ll have flash floods. Then the day after, it’s scheduled to rain. More floods.

Going to be a fun winter.

Two months after switching from AT&T to Sprint, and still getting billed by AT&T, I finally closed the door and will pay the final $6.02 I owe and move on.

When I first purchased the new phones and switched to Sprint, I was actually pleasantly surprised when the customer service rep said that they would handle canceling my AT&T account for me. I was not pleasantly surprised when, 15 days later, an AT&T bill came into my inbox asking me to pay them a full month’s fee.

Well, 10 phone calls later, I finally talked with LeAnn – a rare, competent customer service rep at AT&T – and she resolved the issue in 10 minutes. Amazing how it still takes finding someone who gives a crap about their job to get things moving. Those other 9 people gave me the runaround and got nothing accomplished.

Customer service is king. Still holds true.

Looking at the feature list, I think I may actually be interested in buying my first Apple device. For book/magazine reading it would be ideal. As a general purpose device to have around the house that my wife and I can use to get information when we’re not at our computers, read a magazine, browse the internet, do some quick shopping, etc.. it sounds great.

Here’s some thoughts on issues raised on the NYT live blogging of the announcement.

1. No ability to play Adobe Flash animations, widely used on the Web.
Yeah, this is a huge drawback for me. I can’t imagine any device not supporting Flash.

2. No camera, still or video
Eh, no deal breaker here. Being able to use a built-in camera to do video chat with the wife when either of us are away would be nice, but not needed. Also, why on Earth would you want a still camera on this thing??

3. No non-Internet phone function
Again, it’s not a frikkin phone people. Use your phone to call people.

4. Unclear whether you can bundle your AT&T iPhone plan with an iPad data plan
This would be very nice.

5. No removable battery for a device that can suck a lot of power
Agreed. Big drawback, especially if I’m on the road.

6. No removable storage
Meh.

I’ve been obsessed lately with reading about Agent Oriented Programming (AOP). I’m fascinated about the concept of making objects autonomous and capable of responding to environmental changes, rather than predefining what they will and will not do (as opposed to what they can and cannot do).

It is interesting, for me, to note that AOP and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) started to gain momentum around the same time, and yet the interest, and advancements, in SOA quickly outdistanced those for AOP.

In my opinion, this is because the practical applications for AOP are minimal, while the concepts of SOA can quickly and easily be grasped and implemented in many business environments.

I can’t really find any white papers from someone who’s actually implemented a project with this kind of architecture, so it all seems stalled in the theoretical phase still. Of course, I can’t think of a project that I’m working where we could use this.

I still find it fascinating, though.

What Is An Agent?
Properties of Agents
Agent Oriented Software Engineering
A Taxonomy for Autonomous Agents
Jam! Agent Architecture