Blog of Josh Hall

A soldier marches into war for someone’s future,
But he has no guarantee of his own.
A soldier will give up his own life and chance to live it,
To save everyone he loves back home.
The collective sacrifice of these mostly youthful lives,
Makes you wonder how much progress we make when one dies.
To me, that’s the travesty of war.
They’re too young to know what they’re dying for.
Uncle Sam’s fight, or big brother’s battle.
All before they get to see their own kids shake a rattle.
It would seem that the young have a higher exchange rate
than cannon fodder to slow the progression of imminent fate.
There will be less resistance from a boy without dreams,
Than a grown man who has grown to learn what it means
To kill someone, to take from another,
To feel the effects of someone losing their mother.
To see the child play, but minutes later, turn to a corpse.
To know that these are the fruits of fighting wars.
I do not think that war spelled backwards breeds a coincidence;
I believe “raw” to be an extremely appropriate adjective for these incidents.
That’s the only way to truly understand what we do
And how we should be responsible for our actions too.
Flee from the group perspective and think of the implications
We impose on those in different nations
with different lives, jobs, and skin.
With different families and friends, and religion.
Some defend their homes by giving large weapons to their sons.
We take children from their homes and give them the guns.
We train them to think it’s noble, it’s their duty, it’s just.
But these are the words of man, not in God we trust.
If I am to die, it is by God’s design.
For he has given me all that I call mine.

Here’s a picture of what Deirdre’s white iphone 3G used to look like:

I won’t get into the discussions, but long story short, she gave me her phone, knowing full well that I was just going to fix it and sell it.

So, her screen was cracked, but the LCD was still completely operational.  I knew I could just buy the glass panel for ~20 bucks, but I found a nice kit at ifixit.com that came with everything I would need.  I highly recommend them!  They operate out of San Luis Obispo, Ca, which I visited in December, so I couldn’t help but envision some beach bum college kids running this operation out of their dorm room or something.

Anyway, the guides make this easy!  I had the phone all disassembled and put back together in under 30 minutes.  After a little charge, she was up and operational.  The home button was a bit wonky, you had to press firmly or just right to get it to work, but Deirdre said that is the way it was before she gave it to me.  I wish I knew, or I would have tried to fix that too, but since I already used the doublesided tape to get it all back together, I figured I may as well leave it alone, since there was no guarantee i could fix it.

So, with the phone looking back to normal, it’s time to jailbreak and unlock!  since it’s rocking 3.1.3 OS, a quick visit to Jailbreakme.com on the phone uses an exploit to jailbreak it in a snap.  no tethering or restoring ipsw files or anything!  Once cydia is on the phone, open it to record the SHSH for future jailbreaks, download ultrasn0w for the unlock, and BAM, you’ve got yourself a phone ready for any sim card you want.

It was really that easy.  take a few pictures for ebay, and away she’ll go!  This counts for #18 on my 30×30 list too!

It’s not true until Snopes says it’s confirmed.

Back to the discussion about reclining chairs when you’re on a plane, how do you normally handle the situation?  I’m thinking that most people usually avoid conflict, so they either don’t put their chair back at all, or they just do it and don’t say anything because it shouldn’t have anything to do with the person behind them.

More reading: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/12/09/reclining.seat.rant/index.html?hpt=C2

Someone needs to invent the technology to record dreams. I have so many ideas and write so many songs in my dreams that I can’t remember when I wake up. This is one of the ideas that I do remember.

I was involved in the creation and marketing of a device that added realism to movies. It was a simple box that could hang on the back of a movie theater seat or get placed on a stand in front of the movie watcher. The box (2 feet wide, 4 inches tall, 4 inches deep) had things like a water sprayer or mist creator, a fan, and even digital “voting” panel. It all sounds cheap, but it was put together well. Anyway, me and a few other people were marketing this thing to movie theaters as a cheap way to “upgrade” their movie theaters.

The idea is that when someone splashes some water in the movie, the audience would get a little spray from the box. The movie could also have “alternate stories” or something where the audience could vote what happens next and the movie would show that story line. This technology already exists when you go to theme parks like disney world and the “4d” shows that interact with the audience, but that’s the only place for it. My group was trying to break that into the real world theaters and even in homes by putting it in one simple box that was inexpensive. It would require some pre-production work to get signals sent to the device to sync up with the movie, but for theaters, you could even just have a man in a booth doing all the work for all the devices.

Anyway, I think it was catching on in the movie.

Talking in public restrooms should be avoided at all costs.  You have a job to do, and you should be focused on your task.  Talking across stall walls is completely forbidden.  That’s just weird for everyone involved.  Yes, talking on your phone counts as talking across walls.