So, You're Playing Draw Something, Eh?

This post is dedicated to dedicated reader (and potentially only reader) Chris. Hopefully this will fill some of the downtime at his work.

"Draw Something" is the next big asynchronous 2-player iPhone game (and probably any other touchscreen phone, but let's not split hairs... people are going to start using "iPhone" the way old people call every single video game console a Nintendo), and has taken the throne from previous holder Words with Friends, which takes way too long and gets annoying in like 3 minutes. Draw Something, as its title would suggest, has one player draw something and the other player then guesses. Then the second player draws something else and sends it back. The game offers you 3 choices of things to draw of varying levels of difficulty, and then it's up to you.

Now, you probably have played and are thinking that the object of the game is to draw your picture well enough to get the other player to correctly guess it. But you would be wrong. The actual point of the game is to screw with your friends' heads and convince them that you aren't quite right in the head. Because I am something of an expert in this field, allow me to assist.

One of the most obvious ways to abuse your friends is just to draw the wrong thing. Sure, you may have chosen "tennis" as your drawing subject, but no one says you have to draw something related to tennis at first. Try drawing an elephant, adding a whole bunch of details and taking a really long time to do it. Then erase the whole thing and draw a tennis racket. Your friends won't know what hit them!

Another option is to pick an object with a very distinctive characteristic, but not to draw that characteristic until the end. I was supposed to draw a cyclops for Matt, so I drew a head and muscular arms, then added some ragged clothing. Not until after about 45 seconds did I add the single eye, which would have given away the answer too early. You worked hard on your picture, so make those jerks wait it out. Another fun idea is to pick something easy like pig, but then draw a really detailed picture. Draw a barn and some roosters. Maybe stick a farmer holding a pitchfork in there. It's probably a sunny day, so put the sun up in the sky. Perhaps some clouds if you're feeling that particular vibe. The important thing is that the little piggy isn't part of the picture until the end.

You can also mess with your pals when it's your turn to guess. The first thing is to try to guess the word before the drawing has started. This gets easier as you play more rounds and see more of the options, but it's not too difficult with the shorter words. If it's a 3-letter answer, just start plugging in "cow" or "pig" or "log" or whatever you can from your letters. Once the drawing has started, you can keep trying to guess, but I prefer an alternative tactic: try to form insults or curses so that when they watch you try to solve it, they will feel insulted. Depending on your opponent, penis is almost always an appropriate choice, but go with your gut.

Another option includes some abstract thinking. Sure, the game is probably expecting you to draw a bluejay or cardinal or something when you pick "bird," but why not draw a green tank top and put the number 33 on it? This has an added benefit of letting you know if your friend knows who Larry Bird is, because if they don't, it's time to end that friendship.

If you're really up for some mind games, just don't draw anything for 30-45 seconds. Put a little dot in the corner of the screen to make sure the game thinks you're drawing, then just sit there. Watch a few commercials or something. Then it's time to draw. They'll think something is wrong with their phone. Suckers!

There are lots of other ways to abuse your friends' game time, so think of your own methods if none of these are to your liking. Just remember - even though it's a cooperative game, there's always room for mental abuse.

-Jon

You're a Real Asshole, Autocorrect Inventor

Seriously, what is your deal? I'm trying to be a good citizen, texting as fast as possible before the light turns green, and your stupid bullshit makes me send loads of nonsensical texts. Yeah, I probably should double check before hitting Send, but the guy in the Explorer behind me has been tailgating me for the last 3 miles and I'm thinking that pissing him off is probably the wrong move. Dammit, Autocorrect, you're going to get my ass kicked!

More baffling than some of the corrections are some of the things it leaves alone. In a given day/week/month/year, how often does someone really use the word "tine"? Obviously that's supposed to say "time" you cockgobbler!! Do you think I have some sort of weird fork fetish? Is tine suddenly a common word in everyday speech? Maybe if you live in Atlantis and are talking about tridents a lot, but last I checked that isn't the case for anyone I know. So the phone will leave gibberish like "What tine are you going?" but feels the compulsion to make me look foolish by autocorrecting to "Hey, where the he'll are you?" Nice one, you son of a bitch.

I get the same problem with "hone" versus "home," which seems to fall into the same category. No normal person uses the word "hone" in a text message. And nobody, normal or not, says something like "Ok, I'll be hone in like half an hour." This expensive thing should assume that I'm going to be using common words as opposed to writing fancy things about honing stuff.

In other news, when the he'll is Slick going to be posting something? He's probably sitting at hone right now, all the tine in the world, and not writing. How selfish.

-Jon

Fruit Fone vs. Fruit Fone

I had to spell "phone" incorrectly so that I could make all the words start with F. And it's been almost a full year since the last ___ vs. ___ topic, which makes me sad about all the time I've wasted by not writing hilarious blog posts. My life, while still awesome, has not lived up to the level of awesomeness that I've come to expect from myself.

I recently had to acquire a new phone after mine decided to stop working in the most annoying way possible. My options were to pay several monies for a fancy new phone, pay less monies for a less fancy phone that was actually the precursor to my phone (which would have actually made my "upgrade" a downgrade, and I said "fuck that"), or pay some monies for a phone that was outclassed by a newer model, but still probably at least as fancy as my current phone/paperweight.

If you were able to follow that last paragraph, congratulations! You're at least as crazy as I am! That's probably not a good thing. Grapefruit monkeys!!

Anyways, I ended up switching from my Blackberry Bold to an Apple iPhone 3GS. Let's see which one is superior! Obviously a categorical breakdown is the best way to settle this.

Blackberry Bold (with some numbers) vs. Apple iPhone 3GS

Ease of Texting

I'm talking Day 1, just out of the box ease. Obviously after a few months with any phone, you're probably going to get pretty good at sending messages to people.

My old Blackberry had the full keyboard that you could touch all the keys, as opposed to that weird one that you could actually click the screen. I like being able to touch the keys. Especially when I have to type the same letter twice in a row. In the 3 days that I've been using the iPhone, I have not once successfully hit the same letter twice in a row. Apparently I type too quickly for the iPhone to pick up my clicks. That's dumb.

Goddam touch screens.

On the other hand, if you and the person you're texting both have iPhones, you can send them whales. That's pretty cool. Big whales, medium whales, little whales, it's all possible with the iPhone.

Round 1: While whales are awesome, this round goes to Blackberry.

Camera

It's 2011, and somehow I own a phone whose camera doesn't come with a flash. What kind of ridiculous bullshit is that? How am I supposed to take hilarious pictures of a dopey-faced Odin without a flash? It's just going to look like I'm taking pictures of darkness.

Round 2: Blackberry

Calling Someone While Driving

When I wanted to call someone on my Blackberry, all I had to do was start typing their name and their name would pop up. Then I could click the green phone button and that was that. Calling someone from my iPhone requires all sorts of shenanigans. I am pretty sure I can do it by using the Search feature, but I'm trying to drive here! Maybe I can set up voice-dialing or something. Otherwise, you're going to have to call me if I'm in the car. Also, the top ridge of my iPhone sort of digs into my ear. What's that about?

Do people even still use phones to call each other, or is it all texts now?

Round 3: Blackberry

Texting While Driving

Texting while driving is illegal, so this round cannot be decided without violating the law. Which I don't do. Even though texting is super easy, and shouldn't impact your ability to drive a car.* But if it was legal, I think it would be easier on the Blackberry since you can actually touch the keys instead of randomly guessing where on the screen your stupidly fat thumbs might be.

Round 4: Tie, I guess. That's sort of a copout, but I've heard that it's not a good idea to promote illegal activities on the internet.

Apps

Is this round even a contest? I am pretty sure my Blackberry does not have Angry Birds. Even if it does, there's no touch screen so how am I supposed to make pinpoint accurate shots to trash those stupid pigs. I'm also very sure that Blackberry App World sucks donkey balls compared to the App Store. I can't remember exactly, but I think you have to download an app so that you can download apps. What kind of ridiculous bullshit is that?

Round 5: Apple

Talking to Someone on the Phone

Call quality seems better with the iPhone, but I haven't tried doing other things while talking on the phone, which I could do with the Blackberry. That was especially useful when I had to check my calendar to decide if I could take on additional officiating assignments, because it's always nice to acquire more assignments as they often lead to more dollars. The iPhone still hurts my ear sometimes though.

Round 6: Tie pending future testing of the iPhone's multitasking capabilities.

Battery Life

My Blackberry usually could go about 3 days between charging, although that could sometimes vary depending on how much I did with it. That was also assuming I turned the phone off every night, since I wasn't going to be taking any messages while I slept. It also had an awesome feature where you could set an alarm, and it would automatically turn itself on to wake you up. That is a genius idea.

So far, the iPhone seems to have a battery life of around 40 hours. However, I don't know if this is going to be a consistent amount since I haven't really gotten many apps yet and this 40 hour estimate is only based on 2 chargings, not exactly a large sample size.

Round 7: Blackberry. Having to charge my phone annoys me when I can't do it overnight.

GPS

The GPS on Kate's old iPhone was absolute garbage. It gave you a route, but if you missed a turn or weren't exactly where the phone thought you were, it didn't update, leading me to several instances of rage when we were in unfamiliar places. So I wasn't exactly expecting great things on my new phone.

Turns out that there have been some updates or something, because it works a little better on my iPhone. The GPS on my Blackberry was pretty good, but it usually took a really long time to figure out where I was, and often told me that the GPS was unavailable.

Round 8: Neither are great, but the iPhone one seems a bit easier to use. Apple wins this one.

Internet Browsing

The built in browser for Blackberry is garbage. The built in browser for the iPhone is Safari, which I find to be much better than garbage. I also tried getting the Opera browser for my Blackberry because it was supposed to be kickass. Instead, it constantly crashed, stopped responding to clicks, and would not shut down unless I pulled out the battery from the back of the phone. So I went back to the regular browser, which is about as fast as Chloe climbing a flight of stairs. Nice work Blackberry.

Round 9: Apple

Calendar

It's really easy to sync my iPhone with my computer to keep my calendars updated. It was not really easy to sync my Blackberry with my computer to do the same. This might be because both the iPhone and my computer are Apple products, but the important thing is that I like things that should be simple to actually be simple.

Round 10: Apple

Ok, that was a fairly extensive series of tests, but phones are serious business. Especially when you use them for a calendar, text machine, email, etc. We live in a constantly connected world these days, so you can't risk falling behind because you're rocking a Zack Morris phone.

Winner

And the winner is... my old Blackberry for now, with the caveat that I am pretty sure I'm going to end up liking the iPhone more in the future. After 21 months with my Bold, I was very comfortable with everything it did and how it did these things. After 6 days with my iPhone, I am still a little overwhelmed by everything. Plus it made moving my super sweet "Frog's Theme" ringtone from my computer to my phone a huge pain in the ass at work the other day.

Check with me in 3 months, and I might be singing a different tune.

-Jon

*Unless you are from CT, in which case your driving ability is already terrible and you should focus exclusively on driving when you're behind the wheel. No phones, no food, no music, just drive your car in the way a normal human being would do it. Which means not doing 60 in the left lane.

A Challenger Approaches

Remember that certain cable company that we've had such fantastic dealings with in the past? You should, since it's literally the last post that was here. If you don't, you may need to get your brain examined, since it's not working correctly and may be a sign of a more serious issue. And more importantly, a new company has entered the fray in the competition for "Who Can Piss Me Off the Most By Providing Shitacular Customer Service." It's a prestigious award. This new company shall be known as Shmay Shmee and Shmee, just so that I hopefully won't get creepy stalker guys commenting.

My phone randomly started a neat new trick, which was to constantly assume I was pressing the center "Confirm" button. This results in continually starting email drafts, sending half-typed text messages, making me nearly unable to call anyone, randomly muting and unmuting me when someone calls, and lots of other sweet benefits. As you can probably guess, this does not make me happy.

So Kate tells me that I can check online if I'm eligible for an upgrade. That seems like a pretty useful feature. I haven't ever tried to access the account online, so obviously I'll have to register first. This consists of entering my phone number and the last 4 digits of my SS number, both of which I know. Also, since I'm on the account as an approved user or whatever stupid asshat policy they enforce there, this should go smoothly.

Why, oh why, do I ever think things will go smoothly when dealing with large corporations?

Of course it turns into an absolute disaster, involving one of the slowest helpers of all time. She was very friendly, but everything took like 5 minutes. And then they sent me a temporary password so that I could log on. Which wasn't that helpful, since every time I try to open a text message, my phone starts clicking all crazily and makes it nearly impossible to read anything.

I did finally get logged in, and it looks like I have insurance on my phone. Hopefully it covers the phone getting stuck in the drywall, since that's about 3 minutes away from happening. Sorry this wasn't funnier, but I am so angry right now that I can't be humorous.

-Jon