Support your Local Indie

The following is an open letter to Patrick Burleson regarding QueueUp, a wonderful app he recently released. This originally started as an email. Instead, I thought I would share with the class.

If you’ve been married for longer than an hour, you’ll probably recognize this scenario.

The Architect is watching the telly. Passing by, I casually enquire as to what she’s watching. Normally this creates an intellectual, but brief, discussion about something that typically involves: (a) fixing-up the house, (b) witty crime dramas or (c) dresses. However, today is not typical.

Today we’re crammed into a beach cottage with her in-laws. My father is browsing Facebook out loud, while my mother is discussing something with the boy at a volume several of our neighbors could complain about. Add to the mix a television with poor built-in speakers and suddenly my attempt at being an interested husband becomes an intrusion.

Annoyed, she says “I can’t tell you the name, because I can barely hear what is going on. I think that Adrian guy from Entourage made a documentary about the paparazzi. I really wish I could hear what’s going on…”

At this point, my options were clear:

1. I see if one can survive a dive from the 3rd floor balcony into the swimming pool below.
2. I threaten to put my parents in a retirement home if they don’t quiet down.
3. I save the day.

While #1 could be fun—if I survive—#2 would be a disaster since neither of my parents are near retirement age and we were staying at their cottage. So…

Save the Day

For a brief moment, I forgot that we lived in the future. A quick pull from my pocket and I found a PBS opinion piece discussing several female celebrity’s perspective of Adrian Grenier’s documentary. I softly stroke my iPhone as I fire off a quick email to my bride. Case closed.

But before I took my victory lap, I remembered QueueUp—an app that I beta tested—which was recently released. A quick tap on the red & white icon revealed an expired provisioning profile. No worries, after a quick purchase¹ I was back in business. Once the app was running, it was mere micro-seconds before the movie was the newest addition to my Netflix queue.

“Dear, the name of the movie is ‘Teenage Paparazzo’ and it’ll be at the house on Monday”, I replied.

Smiling, she switched the channel. Checkmate.