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Date chosen for Backslash Race Night 2008

Clear your calendars on June 27th for Backslash Race Night 2008! We'll be celebrating 10 years in business, too, so the party should be hoppin'!

Do your part for the environment

We love us some Doritos!

DORITOS!!! DORITOS!!! DORITOS!!!

(Found on our training trip to Davenport.)

New "competition" for FM store

While shopping for a Wii last week, I ran across this amazing discovery at the local Shopko. I guess another Big Box thinks that offering a "heard of" brand and as few specs as possible is the key to selling high tech. Well, good luck, Shopko. We'll be happy to get your service work....

Daniel decides to stay for a while longer....

Daniel has decided that he couldn't yet bear to leave all of his smiling coworkers. He'll be staying for a while longer as a (mostly) part-time wireless sales representative. Randy will still become - actually, he already IS - the manager of the location.

The move is a great help to Backslash as it allows us to take our time finding, hiring and training. And we all get the benefit of seeing Daniel's face a little bit more.

I'm a wuss

Call it chickening out or call it coming to by senses, either way I wussed out. I'm still on firmware 1.1.2 on my iPhone.

Yep, I guess I'll just sit around feeling depressed about not having enough guts to go through with it. I'll probably just read an ebook. Or I might spend some time going through strangers' wallpapers to add to my phone.

I'm sure I'll get over it.

Thinking about going to 1.1.3

For some inexplicable reason, I'm thinking about updating my iPhone to firmware version 1.1.3. Everything's working just fine but my icons don't wiggle. I gotta gets me some of them wiggly icons. I'm probably just inviting trouble. But that's just the I am - I live on the EDGE!

Wish me luck!

Long lost rep found!

When former i wireless rep Phillip Luebke went MIA a few years ago, he was feared dead. But this blurry photo proves that he is actually being held captive in a warehouse somewhere deep inside the northern city of Davenport.

A three-man team led by former Navy Seal Patt Mopejoy attempted a daring rescue of Luebke yesterday afternoon but failed to secure his release after several hours of tense negotiation.

"It was frustrating to get so close to bringing him home yet to end up empty handed," said Mopejoy. "It must be a terrifying ordeal for the prisoner. You can see how he was forced to smile by his captors for this photo."

Mission Specialist Randy Butler added, "We're not going to give up. This man needs our help and we can't fail him."

What about the third man? A ninja.

Hang in there, Phillip!

Much better!

Lunch was a lot better. We stopped at Ruby Tuesdays before venturing on.

Yuck!

Well, breakfast isn't all that great.

Hmm...

http://poopypodcasts.com/

Does anyone else smell something?

Bye, bye Analog!

http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2008/02/Cellphones-Timeline3.jpg

Today, the nation's remaining analog cell phone network will be shut down. It's ALL digital now. Good-bye, static. Hello, poopy coverage!

We'll miss you... I think.

Adding two and two on the iPhone

Some of you may not care about this subject, but I wanted to share my thoughts.

Rumors are hot and heavy on the net the past couple of days about the iPhone. Some people are saying that the long overdue Flash support is just days away. Others claim that firmware 1.1.4 is about to be released. And the official word from Apple is that the software development kit (SDK) is going to be released this month - although I've even seen a rumor that it will be delayed a bit.

Now, just taking a look at all of these things as a group, I can tell you my opinion. I think that a new firmware (1.1.4?) will be required to run official SDK apps. It will also do a much better job of locking down the iPhone so that jailbreaking will be extremely difficult or - dare I say it - impossible.

So you'll be faced with a choice: Run official apps (purchased via iTunes, most likely) or stick with the hundreds if not thousands of free software programs available with the current version of the firmware. Geez, that's a hard one. The choice will be much more difficult when Apple throws in a little feature that everyone is dying for with that new firmware: Flash
support in Safari.

You'll need 1.1.4 to run Flash yet you'll be stuck with having to buy official apps because you won't be able to jailbreak it to run all the freebies.

Now, that all said, I think it will still be possible to unlock the phone to use it on different carriers. That may not seem possible without a jailbreak at this time, but things can - and often do - drastically change with new firmware updates.

It has been estimated that 18% to 33% of the iPhones sold to date have been unlocked to run on non-AT&T networks all over the world. To lock them permanently would cripple Apple and prevent them from reaching their stated 10 million sold goal by the end of the year. This could have devastating results to future iPhone support from the public and - probably more importantly - Apple's stock price.

That's where I see things going. I really hope that I'm wrong but it wouldn't surprise me if that is exactly how it all plays out.

Congrats to our new manager!

Backslash is happy to have a familiar face in the top spot at the Westland Mall location. Randy Butler will be taking over the helm as Daniel Newkirk steps down as Store Manager.

We wish Daniel the best of luck and look forward to watching Randy screw up things royally! Good luck to both....

18 preregistered!

As of tonight, we have 18 preregistered contestants for the GH3 Shootout! That's great considering we've only been taking names for a couple of days. And a surprising number have signed up for the "Expert" division. Apparently the word is out that Patt Mopejoy is the guy to beat!

Are you ready to ROCK?

Several people are, as excitement builds in anticipation of the first ever GH3 Shootout! We have a few preregistered and I have fielded quite a few calls.

The Daily Democrat ran both our eyebrow ad and an article about the event last night. And The Hawkeye called for a 15-minute interview yesterday. Both newspapers indicated that they plan to be there to cover the event on Saturday. That's all on top of the live radio interview I did the other day with KAYP.

I stopped by the Comfort Inn, the bowling alley, and the food pantry yesterday - everyone was excited and very supportive if our efforts. And we're bringing in the Wii the rest of this week to generate interest at the Fort Madison store.

I'm definitely excited and hopeful that we have a great turnout. Hope to see you there!

UPDATE: Is EDGE in FM?

An anonymous company representative has confirmed that they are indeed beginning to test EDGE in the Fort Madison area. Hooray!

Is EDGE in FM?

My iPhone shows a nifty little "E" in place of the normal "G" for GPRS
thus morning. And when I ran a quick speed test, it showed that I was
capable of 156.5Kbps instead of the usual around-40 numbers...

Can it really be true? Have we finally been blessed with higher data
speeds on i wireless?

I've contacted company officials for comment. I'll keep you posted!