When an iPhone becomes a party saver

So on Saturday evening, I headed south to Mt. Baker for my friend/co-worker Ben's annual Grand Autumn Gathering (he makes some homebrew in its honor). I'd been to Ben's once before, but it was several months ago, so I used Yahoo! to give me driving directions and wrote them down. They looked a bit more complicated than I remembered, but I'd entered Ben's address correctly, so I just shrugged it off.

Once I got off I-90, I took a few turns off Rainier Blvd. After I'd gone several miles, I suddenly came upon the on-ramp to the West Seattle Bridge. Yikes! I'd obviously gone waaay off course. So I pulled over and fired up the Maps program on my iPhone. It pinpointed my location, and then I entered Ben's address, and it mapped my route to his house. I made a U-turn and was on my way, keeping my phone in one hand so I could turn it as I followed the route (the little pin that marked my location moved in real time on the map). I was even able to improvise a bit when the route dead-ended on a road that was closed for construction.

Finally, about 30 minutes after I'd intended to show up, I made it to Ben's for the party. Yay for the iPhone! And yay for Ben's party!

Was I in upside-down world?

In the late afternoon today, I set out on foot to run some errands. First up was my doctor's office to pick up some prescription refills. Being that it was late afternoon on a Friday, I figured it'd be super busy at the pharmacy, so I packed a book in order to avoid dealing with out-of-date, grimy magazines (the book was "The End of Faith," which I've been reading sporadically for at least a year. It's got WAY too many endnotes, and is a little too high-brow for my tastes; I'd recommend "The God Delusion" over "TEOF" if you're looking for something in that genre). Once I got to the pharmacy, though, there were only a handful of people. I took a number -- it was number 94. I looked up, and they were on number 93! So I had to sit for a grand total of about one minute before I was called up to the window.

Then I headed on down the street to the mall. One of my stops was an official AT&T store. Usually, you only need to be within shouting distance of a cell-phone store or booth before you've got someone coming up to you to "help," but this time, I actually had to wait several minutes. And this was after I wasted about 10 minutes by slowly walking around the store and pretending to examine each phone. Yeesh! And it wasn't that they were overstaffed -- in fact, I think they had at least eight employees in there -- they were just really busy. Anyway, once I finally got some help, the employee confirmed what I'd feared: I'm not eligible to upgrade my phone until mid-September. I know I mentioned a couple posts back that I was obsessed with getting either a Wii or an iPod Touch, but now the Touch obsession has been replaced with an iPhone obsession. This is mainly because the idea of having an all-in-one device (phone + mp3 player) is really appealing, not to mention the idea of being able to access the Web and e-mail while I'm on walks or the bus, or waiting at a bus stop (I'm doing a lot more of all three now). Plus, a co-worker gave my officemate and me a little demo of his iPhone and it just looks like so much fun.

So unfortunately, I'm now forced to engage in one of my dad's favorite situations: "delayed gratification." Yay. I guess the silver lining is that as I also mentioned in a previous post, mid-September is bonus time at work. So maybe I'll get a Wii sooner to satisfy one obsession, and the iPhone later for the other! I've obviously been without a new toy for a little too long..