Simply put, this was long overdue. Travis sung the praises of a jailbreak over a year ago, but I hesitated because I viewed it as a hassle when it comes to installing firmware updates and things of that nature (which I still haven’t quite figured out how all that will work, but I will). Since then I have felt the frustration of all that the iPhone doesn’t (thanks Droid ads for pointing this out over and over again), I have gone ahead and done what was necessary. I now introduce you to, Jeff’s iPhone 2.0:

(FYI – I was charging the phone when I took these screenshots)

Kinda neat, yeah?  Nothing mind blowing, but I love that I can run multiple apps (notice the radio icon in the bottom right corner as a “waiting” tab on it, meaning it’s running in the background), have 5 apps in the dock down below, a theme/skin (custom icons, a background other than black, my own name instead of AT&T in the upper corner, etc…), a simplified lock-screen…  Simple stuff that’s apparent right away, and very very nice!

The jailbreak process is incredibly straight forward.  I used the Pwnage Tool (google it and you’ll find a plethora of information), made sure I had current backups in iTunes (which is essential if you wanna keep your Apple App Store applications where you left them), and followed a couple different tutorials (one for when I worked on my phone and a different one for Jason’s – only really because I lost the first link).   This is why I can’t call myself a HaX0r…  The real geeks made it easy for schlubs like me!

Really, a key feature is being able to run multiple apps at once – something the phone SHOULD be able to do but Apple keeps it from happening..  I installed an app called Backgrounder (off of Cydia, the jailbreak app store) to run the multiple apps, and another called ProSwicther which gives me the fun look and feel of a Palm Pre when switching through applications, including the same touch gestures (see below – to close an app you can hit the (x) or slide it off the top of the screen).

While some of that stuff is just aesthetics (btw, did I mention my ring-tone is now the hidden door sound of the original Legend of Zelda? Major shout-out to Derek Christensen for the idea), there are some serious tweaks going on in the background.  To name a few, I’m running open SSH to gain access to my file structure, NetaTalk (uses Apple Protocol) to allow wireless access to my iPhone’s file structure, 3G Unrestrictor which gets past the “You Can Only Use This App on Wireless, not 3G” stuff, and SBSettings (see images below) to have easy access to turning features on and off as well as free up memory or kill applications.

(Note the “Available Memory” in the first image.  I hit “Free Up Memory” and it cleared a considerable amount that was being wasted.  Also note that the SSH toggle on the right only exists because I have Open SSH installed)

Finally the iPhone is what it should have been, arguably, from the beginning!  Does everything work perfectly?  Surprisingly, it’s pretty close!  Apple continually spews lies about how running multiple apps will kill the battery or destroy the memory management, but it seems pretty obvious that the jailbreak community has figure some of this stuff out.  MAYBE my battery dies a bit faster than it would otherwise, but I have to charge it every night anyway…  And with the ability to quickly turn off 3G, location awareness, and wifi in SBSettings, it’s really easy to actually conserve more battery that way.   This is the only reason I have some hope for the iPad – Apple made a fail of a product, but perhaps the jailbreak community can actually make it cool!

Oh, and my favorite jailbreak app?

WHAAA?!  You mean I can haz texts in appz?!  (Sorry I’m using you as an example Aly!) I didn’t take a screen shot of the actual reply function, but essentially I just hit that reply button and an overlay of the texting screen pops up and I can immediately respond without going to the texting application (don’t fool yourself, it’s an app like the others but with a push notification like setup – it is NOT like the phone or email clients that are constantly running).   This is a HUGE plus for me!  HUGE!  I get text messages throughout the day, and I hated having to close whatever I was working on to reply.  Granted, now that I can run multiple apps I could just move from app to app, but this streamlines the process even more!  Why does this not exist in the native iPhone OS?  Ask El Jobso, cause it freakin’ should!

All in all, I’m happy as a clam.  Yes, the novelty of it all has kind of worn off, but that doesn’t mean I’m not super happy about it.  Really, truly, this is the kind of stuff the iPhone should already be able to do.  If Apple adds a majority of these improvements to the standard OS then maybe I’ll switch back at that point, but right now the jailbreak community has figured out how to truly unlock the power of the device.

At Merriam-Webster Online you get the following definition:

1 a : the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires b : the expression or exhibition of such emotion
2 : a state of happiness or felicity

It’s interesting to see what types of things can bring us joy in life, but the one I continually think of is when we, as human beings, are a part of something unexpectedly positive (see: “good fortune” in 1a above).  Those moments are the ones that stick with us and consistently bring a smile to our face. 

Here’s an example, The Coca-Cola Happiness Machine:

I recently had a similar experience (and I apologize if this looks like I’m focusing way too much on getting “free” things, because that is not the point):

On December 30, 2009, I was talking to a romantic interest of mine…  *embarrassed*  She called and told me that her family wanted to fly me to where they were for New Year’s so I could meet them and spend some time with her before she went back to school.  Within about 30 minutes we went from being excited at the idea, saddened that I felt I couldn’t afford the airfare, and then ecstatic when her parents offered to help with my travel expenses as a gift to their daughter!  About 24 hours later I was on a flight to Milwaukee, WI.  Excited?  Ummm, YEAH!  Was I joyous?  OF COURSE! 

This will likely be a story I remember forever (whether Nicole and I end up going the distance or not), NOT because someone else spent money on me, but because someone made a gesture to give of something they have in order to lighten my load and share of their good fortune.  Not only did I get to spend a full weekend with someone who means so much to me, but I was overcome by the generosity of her family.

Think back on memories where someone else served you in a capacity beyond the expected..  When I was struggling with personal issues one night back in college, a quick call to my friends Jason and Erin ended up with me staying at their house until late into the evening just to talk.  Jason had both school and work the next day, and Erin had classes of their own – but their sacrifice to be there for me when I struggled still gives me great joy to this day.

When I served an LDS mission, I remember the joy of seeing someone make life changes in order to become closer to God and Jesus Christ – and it was an even greater ecstasy when the most unexpected of people decided to make life changing commitments!  That I could be a part of those experiences is incredibly rewarding to me, and those memories fill me with joy to this day.

One last example, and I’ll call it quits…  Those who know me well know that I consider myself to have at least three families.  My parents and sisters mean the world to me, and I certainly don’t mean to marginalize them by suggesting that there are other important people in my life, so I hope they don’t feel that way…  But I’ve already mention Jason and Erin (with my little niece Aliya) who have been my family in Texas, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Travis and his family…

As I was heading into High School, Travis and I quickly became inseperable once we learned he would be moving into the same high school boundaries.   Everything we did, for the most part, we did together – it was just more fun that way.  His parents became Mom & Dad #2, and his brother and sisters quickly became family as well.  It’s been 12+ years, and this is still the case.  Where did I spend Thanksgiving this last year?  With Travis, his wife Annie, Mom & Dad #2, and sister Becky with her husband and kids.  You’d think I would feel the odd duck, but it was quite the contrary!  It’s not quite the same as when I’m with my own parents and sisters, but that difference is almost indistinquishable (especially if you were to see how Becky and I chide each other)… 

Families like Jason and Erin’s or Travis’s that have pulled me in and provided me with love and acceptance have given me more joy than I can express.   Well, I could try expressing it, but it’d likely annoy y’all to death.  As we move forward in our lives, there are so many ways in which we can bring a smile to another’s face or listen to those who need a listening ear.  The Lord has put it into our hands to act in His name, so let’s go forth and bring joy to whomever we can. 

That’s my goal for 2010 – share joy.

With respect to the awesome action flicks of the 80’s and early 90’s, I present to you Sly Stallone’s latest project: The Expendables

UPDATE: Thanks Jason for pointing out that the older video wasn’t working. Hopefully this embed works for the time being…

UPDATE: Looks like the internets just can’t handle such a sweet movie trailer. Look for it yourself, somewhere else. I don’t know why it keeps getting pulled, but I know I’m not going to repost it every five minutes.  Here’s a picture of a kitty that exemplifies how I feel:

Well, now it looks like some waiting and prayers have paid off! MY DOCUMENTARY IS HAPPENING!!!

More updates to come soon.  I’m feeling a good blog post coming on…

8:30am -wake up and harass Crystal for taking so long to wake up. (btw, my friend Crystal Gerber, from BYU, came out to celebrate and visit!)

9:15am -harass Crystal for STILL not waking up

9:45am -harass Crystal about getting off the couch, getting her swimsuit and such on, and getting in the car

10:00am - leave for Galveston Island! FYI – the drive is longer than I remember… Not a problem normally, but Crystal was STILL sleepy…

11:05am -realize I need money to park at the beach… Or at least that is what the high school age’d youngin’ told me when I got there. I asked if there was a birthday discount and he looked at me like I was speaking french… So, we went to Walgreens and bought suntan lotion (which I didn’t use) and lemonade and got $10 in cash back at the register.

11:15am - park at the beach! Note: swimming at said beach is fun, but realize you will end up a mile down the beach since the current runs diagonally rather than the way you’d expect.

12:30pm -Crystal says, “Ewww!!! I’ve got crabs!”

1:00pm -leave the beach and drive to Saltgrass Steakhouse on Seawall Blvd (still in Galveston). I got the half-rack of ribs off of the lunch menu and just about died… If you haven’t had the ribs at Saltgrass, do yourself a favor!

1:45pm -leave Galveston Island. This is when I realized that I was super sun burned… Actually, I realized when I got inside the 610 loop in Houston and noticed that my left arm was tingly. I was adding to my burn with some trucker tannage on the way home. ick

3:00pm -realize I don’t have a checkerboard cake pan set! Annie and Travis stole mine (though I guess I originally lent it to them for Travis’s birthday last year… Anyway, I love Williams & Sonoma because they had one for $25, thus saving the day.

4:00pm - go to Target to get supplies and argue with Crystal over a “It’s My Birthday” button that she insisted on buying and demanded that I wear the rest of the day.

6:00pm - leave for Buffalo Wild Wings and meet up with about 15+ of my awesome friends! I love BWW, and I was really happy to see everyone there to celebrate with me. I got to catch up with a few people I haven’t seen in a while, and I ate some of the most delicious food…

9:00pm - return to the house for cake & ice cream deliciousness! This is when everyone decided to embarrass me by going around and individually telling me why I am loved… It’s awesome in theory, and I certainly appreciated it, but holy cow was I embarrassed… Yikes!

10:00pm -did NOT get a kiss from Chera. I just want everyone to know – she’s been making a big deal about me “dreaming about a kiss” from her on my birthday, and I didn’t ask for one nor did she offer one. End of story.

11:30pm - got all kinds of phone calls from great friends in Utah, and made a couple call backs as well. I really do have a lot of quality friends in a lot of different places. I’ve seriously been blessed!

12:30am (the 7th) - End the night by watching The Fugitive w/ Crystal while we both fell asleep…

I really feel blessed to have such great friends and people who care about me. I didn’t include info about my family, but my parents and sisters were calling me all day long to share their love for me. I got one of the coolest gifts ever in the form of a Luau Murder Mystery Dinner set! I’m pretty excited to pull that one off someday! haha… Thanks again to everyone!

Here are some attached pictures of the festivities:

RosenBlog for Gamers
So, I don’t officially call my blog the RosenBlog, but I very well might in the near future…  The point, however, is that you can now view my blog in an optimized format on the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Playstation Portable (PSP), or the Apple iPhone.  Each browser displays a tiny bit differently, and now I’m set to optimize for each of those browser configurations.

(Sorry, I don’t have screenshots…)

Greet Box
The Greet Box is kind of fun and new. Depending on how you get to the blog, you may find a semi-personalized message for you as you access a specific post. For Example, when coming from a Facebook.com link you might see the following:

These messages are pretty discreet and are easily closeable.  I think it’s kind of a fun way to encourage spreading the word…  This also works for those who come in from Digg, Reddit, or all by themselves (displays a recommendation to add an RSS feed).  Nothing too huge, but kind of fun.

Sociable
Sociable is a simple sharing tool that gives a reader quick access to the correct link in order to share a specific post with the rest of the world. You should see the following buttons beneath every post if you visit the actual post page (not just the main page with multiple posts listed).

Facebook Connect
Now my readers can post comments with their Facebook ID which does a couple different things… One, it makes them a “user” more or less that can have their comments tracked on the site (I think – pretty sure). The other is that it allows users to post directly to their Facebook Feed that they have visited my site and commented on one of the posts.

You’ll notice below (if you’re on the single post page, not the main feed homepage) that you now see the Facebook Connect button:

(Note that I hate the way it is currently formatted and I will be modifying it as soon as I can find the right code… The padding and the text above the button are hidden away in some .php file within the plugin, and I’m not finding it.)

Once logged in, you’ll see this fun addition to the corner of your browser window:

Once you’re logged in and setup you just jump down to the comments box, input your text and it will post your information while your credentials come from Facebook.

You’ll have the standard Facebook stuff pop up and ask you a couple questions (like if you want to post a note in your profile feed or not) and then your comment will be up for moderation. Nothing super amazingly spectacular, but I’m all about providing options to people, and I think this one is kind of cool.

Statpress
Ok, so this one isn’t one that the rest of you can see, but I think it’s cool enough to share… I installed Statpress to do some simple analytics work for me. Nothing super spectacular (though I can install a couple other plugins that would work in coordination with this one to provide a LOT of info), but I think it is pretty cool to get some basic information from my users in terms of how they got to the blog and what they’re checking out. I don’t get tons of traffic, nor do I care all that much, but I like to feed my curiosity every once in a while.

(click on the image to embiggen and actually see the text)

That’s about it! Just thought I’d share some things. Nothing huge to update in the personal life other than that I’m enjoying the summer and my friends. Definitely looking forward to Travis and Annie visiting (likely) around Thanksgiving, and I’m pumped for Tony’s wedding in September. Also, I turn OLD on July 6th… Weird…

It’s no major secret that Fiddler on the Roof is probably my favorite musical…  I have been dying to see it in a professional show for years, trying to satiate my love for the story with the movie and semi-decent high school performances – but the wait is over!  Not only did I get to see the show performed by a professional company, but I got to see the greatest Tevye of all time – Topol!

When I first moved to Houston I took a look to see what shows would be coming through the area (not sure whether or not to trust the people who told me that the Theater District is one of the best) and I saw that this tour was coming through.  I pretty much Mountain Dew’d my pants on the spot and added 2 or 3 reminders to my calendar to check for tickets.  Eventually they come up on the ExxonMobil discount page (we get a small discount by purchasing group tickets) and I snapped up some good seats in the lower section towards the middle.  I got 4 tickets in my excitement!

My new best friend, Jenny, and I went with Matt Anderton and his wife (who was in the dark until we walked into the theatre and she finally saw a sign telling her what show we were there for – she was pretty euphoric).  Honestly, I had probably about 20 nerdgasms during the show as I tried to hold myself back from singing along and cheering during certain dance numbers.  Topol was everything I could have hoped to see in person – at the 74 years old he still has an incredibly powerful voice, a ton of character, and the energy to keep going!  Jenny and I noticed in the playbill that he has performed the role over 2,500 times throughout his career!  We may as well have been watching the real Tevye from the original short stories…

This was definitely one of the “Before You Die” goals that can now be crossed off.  I’m still smiling on a Monday morning back at work – and I hope the smile lasts for a looooooong time! :-D

Anyway, I used this as an excuse to update the main page. I’m thinking of ways to modify it a bit more than I have, but I had about 15 minutes at work to play with something new, so this is what I went with:

click the image to enbiggen

Let me know what your thoughts are – I think I like the general “landing page” look to it. I’ll most likely change the image, but the guitar certainly works for the time being.

————-

Quick Update:

I’ve modified the look a little…. :-D

Click the Image to Enbiggen

Here a SimpleViewer Flash gallery should be displayed. Click here to open the post in your browser to see the gallery.

Seriously, some people are crazy creative – and it make life a wonderful thing!

Now that I am fully disclothesed (this spelling makes you wonder…) on my history with Ayn, I suppose I have to apologize for defamation and continue onward with why I feel as though I’m all of a sudden complicated.

I am no longer predictable to myself. I can no longer walk into a situation and feel as though I know what emotions and thoughts I might be having once I exit. I have found myself getting angry over things that never would have angrified me, feeling passive towards things I am often passionate about, and saying things I would normally not. Perhaps this is an evolution of how I choose to interact with the world, but the interesting thing is that I’m not sure it is for the better!

For example, I am becoming increasingly passive with many of my friendships. Normally where I would have fought to maintain a friend, I am deciding that a friend breakup might be the better option. Instead of outwardly claiming that I have a ton of friends and declaring that I like everyone around me, I’ve become more selective of those I spend time with in realization that very few people in my area are just not the type of people I really enjoy being around. Perhaps we’re talking about different core personalities or different life ambitions, but either way I have become pretty apathetic. Does that sound like the Jeff you’ve all known for years?

I don’t want to paint like Goya and suggest that I am suffering from all kinds of inner turmoil that is ripping me apart from within, because that is simply not the case. I’m not particularly bothered by the way I am responding to daily stimuli; I’m intrigued by it! Some of the emotions and thoughts that have coursed through my veins in recent months have been novel and new – and I’m moving away from the version of Jeff that was somewhat of a pushover because I was so concerned about making everyone around me happy. I think I could be moving in the right direction, but I need to take consistent evaluations to validate that I have not veered towards some form of destruction.

This has mostly been running triathlons through my brain over the last few weeks since it is apparent that few people get me. I am consistently surprised by how those around me choose to interact with me based on some sort of social perception of what my character must be, given that others with somewhat similar personalities have preceded me. I don’t get the Chris Farley thing as much as I did in High School, but I certainly feel like I am compared to other individuals within my sphere of sociality.

Now, this could be that I am becoming increasingly more diverse in my individuality, or it could be a condemnation of the laziness of a society that feels it is easier to discern the soul of someone by creating Venn diagrams and going through the compare and contrast process that we were all taught in grade school. I am guilty of this as well, though hopefully to a lesser degree… It seems as though social convention is to now categorized people by specific predominant personality traits and then to interact with them, and all others within that category, in a predefined manner. As the world grows smaller, we interact with more and more people, and I would argue that our interactions become increasingly more shallow. No longer do we attempt to search the bottomless depths, it is more economic and productive to surf along the surface.

I find human psychology interesting… :)