Jace Cole (dot) com

I’m starting my countdown to more iPhone withdrawal , according to the Wired & other great sources there will be some nice and modest upgrades in the new iPhone. I’ve been relegated to a Blackberry since my firm will simply not wake up and support Microsoft ActiveSync.

I’m thinking of at least taking it for a spin … too bad AT&T is the only choice for these things.  T-Mobile’s service is far superior but unfortunately T-Mobile has put their 3G UMTS on the 1700/2100 MHz freq … AT&T’s is on the 850/1900 MHz.  The iPhone does not support T-Mo’s 1700 MHz band

Still … It’s something for me to get geeked out about and look forward to, even if it ultimately it is not compatible in supporting my work mobile life. I’ll be sticking to my antiquated and ugly Blackberry 8900.

I’ve been working with my RAGBRAI teammate Joe to create our new team site.   We’re dropping our beer sponsor title name “Fat Tire Army” this year after diminished support from our tasty beer sponsor New Belgium Brewery.  Each year they’ve been sponsoring more teams and giving us less.

When Mike James & I purchased our team’s 1987 Ford School bus we affectoniately named the POS the Perineum Falcon.  The bus is a big pile of dog shit and always breaks down like the Millenium Falcon on Star wars.  And the Perineum is your taint (the area of your body that kills you after a long bike ride) …  So we just decided that Perineum Falcon would be a good fit for the bus and our RAGBRAI riding crew.

Check out our new site,  and if you’re interested in partying by bike across Iowa with us this year … we’d love to have you join us!

Is it just me,  am I the only that has been seeing this new Pepsi logo plastered everywhere and the first thing that comes to my mind when I see it is the Korean Air logo?

New Pepsi Logo

Korean Air Logo

That is the name of me and the writing I’m doing on this blog … sorry to neglect it.   I’m not a very good blogger. I just post when I’m traveling, pissed off, or when I’m really bored.  So anyways here’s the bullet update…

• I’m still in consulting, currently working for a major home improvement retailer based in BFE North Carolina
• I’ve now been in my condo for a year … REALLY a Year!?! Where does time go
• I just bought a new bimmer (this week) … it’s my nearly 30 life crisis and I love it.  I’m refusing to participate in this recession
• Pete & I are planning a trip to Thailand (imagine that , Thailand) … but I can’t wait WAIT!
• I’ve been forced back to a Blackberry because my firm will no longer allow us to expense mobile bills, I’ve been in iPhone withdrawal for about a month now
• We adopted an amazing 5 year old English Bulldog named Blanche

Loving the job,  the travel is wieghing on me,  but I’m learning something new everyday…  currently working on Payment Systems and learning the world of plastic transaction systems.  Can’t wait to be home every weeekend to hang out with Blanche & Pete …  both of them are amazing and make this life worth living!

Blanche the Bully

Da New Bimmer - 2006 BMW 330xi

I’m starting a new entrepreneurial business  … we’ll see if I get rich slowly!

Chicago Marathon 2008, originally uploaded by JaceCole.

It’s officially fall in Chicago … you know this time of year, every year when the marathon comes around , it’s the official sign of fall in Chicago! I love this shot I took this morning while waiting to cheer on good friends looking east down Adams street by the United Center. Nice view of the foliage changes with Sears Tower sticking its head out.

Looking forward to celebrating fall (with no Cubs) it’s time for football and Halloween parties!

So I’ve got the new 2.1 iPhone 3G firmware installed and immediately there is a noticeable difference in the 3G reception in my condo.   Pre 2.1 I would be very lucky to get more than 1 bar of 3G signal strength in my condo.  With the new firmware I’m now getting full bars.  I think to throw some “lip stick on the pig” Apple also changed the 3G signal strength logo ,  it’s no longer in a white box, now just pretty letters.  There is also noticeable improvement in the speed of navigation between SMS messages, contacts, and your e-mail.

It’s a wait and see now on battery life improvement.  My hope are up.  I want this thing to work like I’d expect of an Apple product.

It’s good to see lot’s of other Chicagoians are seeing the same improvements based on the comments from Scott’s iPTIB blog at the RedEye.

Update: According to Engadget Poll it looks like I’m not alone in seeing remarkable better reception / fewer dropped calls.  One of two of my biggest peeves with the new iPhone 3G.   According to the poll over 13,000 are claiming better reception and fewer dropped calls.

It’s too early tell on battery life,  it appears to be better , but won’t really be able to tell until I have a full week of normal use under my belt.

Amazingly and as promised, Apple has released the iPhone 2.1 firmware through iTunes this morning. The iPhone 2.1 contains the following updates as listed by Apple:

• Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
• Significantly improve battery life for most users
• Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• Improve email reliability, notable fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• Faster installation of 3rd party applications
• Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications
• Improved performance of text messaging
• Faster loading and searching of contacts
• Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation

What’s even more amazing is they actually call out all the flaws I’ve been seeing,  rather than the standard line of “Bug Fixes”.

I’m installing now … I’ll give a full report after a few days on the new firmware.

After a long stint of working various sales and business development activities (aka the beach) I am finally moving back into a consulting and delivery role.  Starting next week I’ll be working for a client in North Carolina where our team will be augmenting and helping transform the client’s IT business analysts.

A bit of a stretch from the user centered design arena but still in the heart of my core competency area of design and analysis phase of Systems Development Life Cycle SDLC.  I’ll be working with this client through the end of March and what promises to be at least 4 days of better winter weather than the chi-town.  We’ll see what type of havoc mother nature will bring this winter with the travel in out of our favorite airport: ORD.

So I need some help from the tech world of my 22 average monthly blog readers.  We are trying to transform this team of sharp industry BAs and I’m just the person to help do that.   Do of any of you have any good suggestions for methods or traning that you’ve built or that can help ramp up a code junky turned BA?   I’m looking for things to build and strengthen typical BA skill sets.   I’m going to be creating training modules for requirements gathering, analysis, and management,  best practices for use case development,  tips on how to collaborate and work with offshore development teams,  unit and user acceptance testing methods, process mapping, and any other key components that make up a truly rock star BA.   Please, if you have any good suggestions, visions, materials, tips, shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment.

How much longer until they charge us to use the lav?

United to stop free meals in coach on overseas flights — chicagotribune.com.