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So a few weeks ago, I went to visit my dad, and we became delayed in Tampa (as I was flying from Tampa to my dad’s house) we were delayed for a few reasons, A) The ramp people had to recount the bags to make sure that we were legal to take off (I was on a very full flight, on a older generation Boeing 737-300). In addition to having to check the bags, they had to put extra fuel on the plane, in case we diverted (there was dense fog in Texas). So People+bags+extra fuel= almost overweight. If we were overweight, they (SWA) would have to kick a non-revenue passenger off, someone like me, but as I was ahead in boarding than another person, they would of kicked her off. But we were not overweight so we went ahead and took off. That is the background story. And here comes where the nerver racking part is. So on approach into William P. Hobby Airport, we were cleared for the final approach, and we (the plane) needed to burn to the extra fuel off before we landed, so the captain called for full flaps and gear to be dropped early. The First Officer was flying, and he was a very junior pilot. As the landing gear and flaps dropped, the airspeed started to bleed off, rather quickly. The plane before the flaps and gear was ~10 knots above target approach speed, the speed at which you should be at on final approach, but as the combination bled off the speed, the plane got dangerously close to stalling. The stick shaker didn’t go off, but by the time the FO figured out that we were getting too slow, he threw the throttle all the way to max, from flight idle. As the plane was and older generation, the engines spooled up at different rates, and the plane banked to the left at 35* and pitched up at around 20*.  The  nerve racking part, other than what just happened, was to think what would of happened if we had stalled, as we were only a few hundred feet above to ground…

The rest of the flight was uneventful, but that is probably the most eventful flight I have ever been on.

Tyler Travel Florida, Houston, Southwest, SWA, Tampa, Texas, Trip

Wow! 8th grade already! It seem like just yesterday that I was starting 6th grade, knowing no one, and now, having an interconnected web of friends between the friends that went to my elementary school, and go to a different middle school then me, and all of my friends in my middle school. I’m friends with a lot of people, from a few of the most popular girls in school, to kids on the other end of the spectrum, and everything in between. I have learned a lot about everything. From learning physical science today, to learning how to ask a girl out. I came from a school that was extremely strict. I don’t think anyone officially asked anyone out in 5th grade, now you can watch down one hallway, and you can see at least 5 relationship beginning and ending. I have learned a lot. I came into the school in 6th grade wearing glasses, no hint of designer clothes, long socks as opposed to ankle socks. If you looked up “geek” or “nerd”, it would show a picture of me. When I heard a cuss word I flinched and almost told a teacher. I have changed quite abit in about 2 1/2 years. If you have known me for all three years, you will know. I now have a girlfriend and feel wanted, instead of a nobody and am not the biggest nerd in the world… well at least I don’t show it. I think that this year is going to be the most fun year of school yet! I mean, the way it has started has been great, and I am not going to let any boring Language Arts classes stop me from having fun. I love both my electives this year, first being Spanish, and the teacher is AMAZING, and second being Drama, with my most favoritest teacher ever (she taught my 6th grade geography class and she was amazing). So as you can see, I’m going to have an amazing year, with amazing friends, and (mostly) amazing teachers.

Tyler Home 8th grade, school

Well, I got the iPhone 3Gs on Thursday morning after a week and a half of waiting. FedEx said that it would come Tuesday before 10:30 AM EDT but the customs in China held it up for a very long time. Let’s just say it shipped Thursday with priority direct shipping and didn’t get to the USA until late Tuesday evening. But enough with the griping, onto the actual phone. I would of done an unboxing video and speedtest comparison between the 3Gs and the 2G but I figured that there are enough of those already on the Internet that I don’t need to post those. If you really want to see them just goto YouTube and search for “iPhone 3GS Unboxing” and “iPhone 3GS vs. iPhone 2G or 3G”.

When I got the phone I was really excited and I opened the shipping box without scissors or a knife out of pure excitment. Inside was the iPhone 3Gs box, which looks a lot alike to the original iPhone and 3G’s boxes. I ripped the plastic wrap right off the box in no time at all. On the top was the 3Gs, never touched by uncovered human hands, then the Getting Started booklet and warentee information which also contained the “SIM removal tool” which is not a paper clip but a specialized tool for taking out the SIM card. Under that were the headphones, charging cable, and wall adapter. I was so glad to get a new pair of headphones and charging cable because my old charging cable was on it’s last wire and my old headphones were dieing.

I plugged the new phone right into my computer and called my Step-dad up so I could activate it. He gained control of my computer via LogMeIn. I then copyed over all of my music, apps and videos that I wanted on the phone. If I didn’t say so before, I got a black 16Gb iPhone. I still have 14Gb of free space. Already I had noticed it running a lot faster than my old iPhone. When the phone was syncing, the backup was made I’m guessing about 75% faster, and when it was done, I started up a game of Marble Blast Mobile, a very graphics intensive game that used to take at least 30 seconds to load the game on my old phone and takes about five to load on my new one. When I chose a level to start, the game loaded in about 2 seconds on my new phone. Once the game loaded I noticed how responsive and high frames per second it had. On my old phone it used to have about 15 fps and on my new phone it is about 30 fps. That is a 2x upgrade. That is all thanks to the 600mhz processor and 256Mb of RAM it has. To put it in perspective, it has the same power as a 8 year old IBM ThinkPad A21p laptop. Wow.

When I played a very CPU intensive game called TapDefence (a tower defence game), when I had all of the spots filled with arrow towers, the game was still very responsive. The GPS is another great feature of the 3Gs and 3G that the original iPhone didn’t have. Paired with the compass, it made a perfect pair. The compass isn’t actually an compass, but a magnometer, a digital compass. In maps, it can show you what direction you are facing and in the compass app it can give you your direction in degrees in true north and magnetic north.

The camera is an upgraded feature that was in both the original iPhone and the 3G but the 3Gs’s is a 3.0 Mpx autofocus camera that records 640×480 video at 30 fps. It also geotags your photos and video so you can remember where you took them. Here are a few example photos:

A lot of people dislike AT&T for what they say is crappy service, but I think otherwise. I get 5 bars 3G at my house which is outside of the city limits, it is a suburb with a lot of trees, and the city isn’t really that decent of a size. Also I’ve never had a dropped call anywhere and they have the most advanced GSM network in the US. They aren’t based on the outdated CDMA network that Verizon and Sprint run on.

Over all I’d give the iPhone 3Gs, the most advanced smartphone, an eleven apples out of ten; 11/10.

Oh and I wrote this entire reveiw on the iPhone 3Gs.

Tyler Home, Tech 3gs, iPhone