The Daily Parker

The fuzzy dude is 3 years old today. Obligatory baby picture:

That's his Petfinder mugshot from when he was about 8 weeks old. Here he is today:

For his birthday he got extra soft food with breakfast, two Newman's dog treats, and some fresh ground parmesan on his lunchtime kibble. And an extra belly-rub.

Not me, this morning. Him:

He must have had a decent flight, too; the weather here today is almost June-like:

Parker has slept soundly most of the day after he and I walked up to Ribfest yesterday. The round-trip took us about 2 hours (not including stops) and 12.8 km.

We sampled five restaurants. Parker didn't give me any notes, so these are all mine, in descending order of enjoyment:

• Lincoln Restaurant, 4008 N. Lincoln. Tasty. Tug-off-the-bone, not too much sauce, tangy KC-style, good lean ribs.
• Irish Bistro, 3905 N. Lincoln. An Irish pub with ribs? Yes. And not too bad. Fall-off-the-bone style, with a "whiskey marmalade" sauce that had a good bite.
• Chicago BBQ (no address) certainly had the most entertaining sign (see below). Parker kept trying to bolt out of line because of the smoke their cookers put out. Tehir meat tasted good, and I liked both their "sweet and sassy" and chipotle sauces. Good smoke flavor. Apparently, though, I'll just have to wait for the next rib festival (Naperville this summer?) to try them again.
• Fireplace Inn, 1448 N. Wells. This was my favorite last year. This year, though, they phoned it in. I still liked their sauce the best, but this time the dazed-looking kid at the booth just gave me some random meat and bones with way too much sauce.
• Hickory's BBQ, 1234 N. Halsted. Not bad, but nothing special: tender but just OK meat, grilled dry with sauce added after. The sauce was tangy but not interesting. I couldn't tell what it needed, but somehow it just fell a little short.

Unfortunately, both Parker and I experienced some discomfort in fairly short order after leaving the festival. He had a tiny bit of every sample I had, so I'm pretty confident either one of the ribs wasn't all right or possibly a sauce was off. We are both undeterred, however, and we'll be back next year.

Photos and reviews of Ribfest tomorrow morning. Right now, though, I'm all about the novelty of updating TDP from my phone. Also tomorrow, I'll explain why this is a bigger deal than it seems.

The Guardian is reporting riots in Tehran following reports that the Iranian election monitors have declared yesterday's election fraudulent:

Iran is facing political turmoil after hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was confirmed today as the winner of the presidential election and outraged supporters of his chief rival took to the streets to protest against a "dangerous charade" after a record 85% turnout.

Tonight riot police in Tehran faced thousands of angry demonstrators shouting "death to dictatorship" amid shock and confusion after the official result backed Ahmadinejad's claim to have won, made barely an hour after the polls closed on Friday night.

...Ahmadinejad's crushing and contested victory by 63% to 34% is a grave setback for hopes for a solution to the crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions and for detente with the US now that Barack Obama is seeking dialogue with Tehran. Israel immediately reacted to the news by demanding intensified efforts to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

Is Iran heading for civil war? And what's Israel's reaction going to be?

Chicagoans: you haven't imagined it. This has been the coolest June on record, though the forecast calls for a warm-up this coming week:

The cloudy, chilly and rainy open to June here has been the talk of the town. So far this June is running more than 12°F cooler than last year, and the clouds, rain and chilly lake winds have been persistent. The average temperature at O'Hare International Airport through Friday has been only 59.5°F: nearly 7°F below normal and the coldest since records there began 50 years ago.

It's also been wet. Very wet. So far this year we've had 499 mm of rain, 35% above our normal 369 mm, with more falling as I write this.

Welcome to East Seattle.

I upgraded from a Dash to the T-Mobile Sidekick XL 2009 today. I'm returning it tomorrow.

I need three things from a SmartPhone, all of which my 2-year-old Dash has:

1. Access to email, through POP3.
2. Synchronization with Outlook.
3. Web browsing.

It does #3 incredibly well. Sadly, though, despite 90 minutes with two different support people at T-Mobile, I can't get #1 or #2. The support CSRs didn't know why, but I figured it out, and I have to say even if I explained to them they still wouldn't know.

Issue 1: POP email.

I'm in the unusual position of having direct access to Exchange POP logs. (The Inner Drive Technology Worldwide Data Center is across the room.) After setting up my POP account on my Sidekick—the very first thing I did when I got it charged up—I watched it tell me that it logged in and that it downloaded my messages. Then I saw an empty inbox.

According to the Exchange logs, though, it simply logged into Exchange and logged out again. Lots of Menu-U pressing later (the "get email" command, which had no effect, again according to Exchange), about half an hour later it again logged into Exchange and this time it sent the POP3 command for a directory of messages. Only, it didn't download any of them. It just logged out again.

I'll cut a lot of my sleuthing out, but it seems that my Sidekick isn't the entity logging into my Exchange server. No, that's Danger, the manufacturer, which is caching my login credentials and my messages.

I'll say that again: COMPLETE STRANGERS ARE CACHING MY NETWORK LOGIN CREDENTIALS. Does anyone else see the problem here? Excuse me for a moment while I change my password...

OK, that's just not acceptable. My Dash communicated directly with my Exchange server, so the only place the credentials were stored was on the phone. If I lost my phone, I'd change my credentials. That's Security 101. But giving them to some company in California? Um. No.

Issue 2 is related.

First of all, the two CSRs could not determine that I need to buy software called Intellisync from Danger (for $10). This software seems redundant, since again my humble Dash simply used Windows' Mobile Device Center, which is, as its name implies, part of Windows. Worse, no one told the CSRs that this software was required, so I had to sit on the phone while one of them actually searched Google to try to find out why I couldn't sync my phone.

Second, after reading more documentation and user posts on the T-Mobile support forums, it turns out that Intellisync copies a user's contacts, calendar, and tasks from Outlook up to—yes—Danger's servers.

Let me say that again: in order to use this Sidekick the way I used my Dash, I'd have to GIVE TOTAL STRANGERS ALL OF MY PERSONAL INFORMATION.

T-Mobile should be ashamed. On what planet do people require such a complete invasion of privacy just to use basic smartphone features? And why don't you tell your CSRs about how this works? I write software for a living. Let me tell you: it's a lot easier to debug something when you know how it's supposed to work. If your CSRs don't understand the basic premises of how the product works (e.g., hitting Menu-U does nothing to the Exchange server because the phone is communicating through an intermediary), they're hobbled.

I would like to have known these things before buying the phone, but none of this information is exactly easy to find. With good reason: I think if more people knew about this, T-Mobile would have trouble selling the thing.

First, it's interesting to see young voters partying down on election night in Iran. Second, did you know about the 32 polling places in the U.S. where Iranian citizens can vote? Third, here's a helpful chart from the Beeb explaining how Iran is ruled:

Via Beth Filar Williams, the Douglas County, Colo., Public Library has installed a device that brings daylight into the center of the building:

Just hangin' on the steps, shootin' the breeze, makin' policy:

(At the U.S. Ambassador's residence in Paris. White House photo.)