Thanksgiving Day has always been my favorite holiday. Even as a child, while I loved the sweets of Halloween and Easter, and the gifts of Christmas, Thanksgiving was the holiday that resonated more deeply with me.

Some of that appeal was fairly straight-forward: a four-day weekend focused on relaxation and good food, without the stress and hassle of gift-giving, and usually with fairly decent weather to enjoy. It was a final blanket of comfort to be enjoyed before the harshness and bleakness of winter truly set in. In that regard, there was also a bit of melancholy about Thanksgiving: living in the Northeastern US it would not get better than this for quite a while – it would be almost six more months before the weather truly improved. Even Spring, when it first arrives, is poor, damp, and unpleasant in comparison, far more promise than reality; the appeal of Spring is how it will be after rather than during. Thanksgiving was the opposite: it was a celebration of the goodness of the present time, and of the success of the past, with a temporary blindness towards the future.

In more modern times, of course, that focus has shifted: Thanksgiving Day isn’t even over before many of us are rushing off to a future of crowds, chaos, and consumption. Black Friday is a boon for the economy but it’s equally a blight on everything that Thanksgiving should represent: enjoying what we have and being thankful for our good fortune in having it.

It’s sad on many levels: we are so oblivious to what we have and so focused on what we want next that we need to set aside a day to be reminded of how lucky we are, rather than having a constant awareness of it. And we only want to set aside just one day – we’re all busy people, and it doesn’t pay to be too grateful, after all. Then we even eat into that tiny sliver of time (one-quarter of one percent of the year) with an immediate and vicious return to the pursuit of the next thing.

In an effort to be more mindful of my good fortune, I want to publicly express my gratitude for so many things in my life (in no particular order):

I’m grateful for my health. It’s usually the part of our lives we most take for granted right up until it’s gone, and then it’s the part that we most desperately miss. I’ve seen, particularly of late, how quickly and surprisingly someone’s health can change, and how little control they may have over it. Good health is a blessing, and not something to be taken for granted.

I’m grateful for my home. I know how it is to not like where you’re living, and I know how it is lose your home. I like where I’m living now better than anywhere I’ve ever lived, and even more than I thought I would before we moved here. Our new house is better and nicer than any we’ve had before, and just feels right. This isn’t somewhere I’m just living – this is my home.

I’m grateful for my career. I fell into the IT/computing industry after having no initial interest or background, and it turned into a life far better than I had imagined. In IT I found something I truly enjoyed, that I’m good at, and at which I’ve been very successful. In a different part of the world, a different time, or a slightly different set of circumstances, my life would have been a completely different, and poorer, experience.

I’m grateful for my family and friends. When bad things have happened over the years, it’s been overwhelming to see the support they’ve provided, often without even being asked. They say that reality is that which doesn’t go away even when you stop believing in it, but in many ways I think that’s just as apropos of family – and friends are just a subset of family.

I’m grateful for my wife. Despite the statistics, we’ve been together through thick and thin, for better and for worse, for over twenty years, and are happier together now than we were at the beginning. She’s supported me always and without hesitation, and most importantly has pushed me whenever I needed it – even, especially, when I didn’t want it – and she’s always been right to do so. Anything I’ve accomplished in my life is a direct result of her unwavering support and persistence.

So to my wife, my friends, my family, and to my colleagues both past and present – thank you.

I’ve been a smartphone user for over 8 years using a small variety of phones:

• Various Blackberries over a period of 3 years
  • 8700c
  • Pearl 8100
  • Curve 8300
  • Storm 9500
• Various Android phones over a period of 3 years
  • HTC Hero
  • Samsung Moment
  • HTC EVO
  • Samsung Galaxy SII
• An iPhone 4s for just under 2 years
• A Samsung Galaxy S4 for about 1 year

The Blackberries were all through my employer from that period, and as an IT admin I also had a fair amount of hands-on access with several other models. For me, Blackberry was the ultimate messaging and communications device: excellent keyboard, granular control of alerting, very good navigation (particularly with the wheel), and long battery life (never less than 3 full days of use and most typically around 5 days, and I would get a lot of messages per days. Thousands). What ultimately pushed me away from Blackberry was the poor web browsing experience and, most critically, the poor integration with Exchange if you weren’t using a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES): I switched to Android shortly after leaving my IT position to go work at a VAR who had no BES in their environment.

My first few Android phones were ok, but ultimately disappointing: poor keyboards (whether virtual or physical) and bad battery life (less than a business day of usage w/o recharging, with a fairly small volume of messages) spoiled an otherwise powerful experience. By the time I got my EVO, though, Android had improved significantly & the user experience was very good – except, still, for the battery life which I overcame with an extended battery. After killing my EVO accidentally, I got the Galaxy SII which worked even more smoothly, and with more than 24hrs of battery life per charge.

I probably would have kept the SII until it died, but I changed jobs and my new employer provided me with an iPhone 4s. Having heard so many good things about the iPhone, and always interested in playing with new toys, I went ahead & began using it as my primary phone.  That….was a bad decision. While the battery life was better than my SII (averaging about 36hrs between required charges), the user experience was not: the screen felt tiny, the UI seemed constricted and claustrophobic, and the OS and apps seemed more unstable than Android and Android apps. Even worse from an application perspective: every app I liked under Android was difficult to replace under iOS – either the app didn’t appear to exist at all, the app didn’t work as well or as completely as under Android, or the app for iOS cost significantly more (usually while still being of lower quality). For me, every day with iOS was pure frustration.

So even before leaving that employer I wound up switching back to running Android for myself while keeping the iPhone around just for work. Since I had had such a good experience with the SII, I decided to go with the S4 this time around, and it was a good decision. Everything I remembered liking about Android had gotten better, the camera was the best I’d had, and the battery life, formerly the biggest weakness for Android, was now on par with the iPhone or better. Life was good.

Except for my carrier. About 6 months after relocating down to RTP, our mobile carrier went through an “upgrade” process on the local towers. For us, this entailed unannounced downtime (about 24-36hrs of zero service at home when the nearest tower got upgraded) and significant amounts of new dead zones throughout the area. Everywhere we went we would have apparently strong signal, but would still suddenly lose any voice or data access for up to a mile at a stretch. On a normal 25 minute commute I went from near-perfect reception to at least 3 dead zones per trip. Not good.

So we needed to switch carriers, and if we’re doing that we might as well get new phones. (Yes, I like my toys.) I was seriously considering holding out for the upcoming Nexus 6, but then began hearing people talk about the OnePlus One. The specs, especially for the price, were simply amazing: 64G of storage, 3G of RAM, quad-core CPU, 1920×1080 LCD, Gorilla Glass 3, etc. All for $349 completely unlocked, and running Cyanogen rather than a more proprietary version of Android?  Sold!

I won’t bore you with all of the unboxing and setup trivia, but I will include a gallery so that you can see how it arrived, the quality of even the packaging, and the attention to some of the smallest details. I’ll even give the packaging the “Apple-quality” designation (regardless of the ultimate quality of an Apple product, the packaging is almost always flawless).

I’ve been using it now for a little more than 2 months and I’ve been very, very happy with it. No, it’s not perfect but it’s quite good.

• The battery life is the best I’ve had for a smartphone since Blackberry. I still get a *lot* of messages, and use the phone a lot more in general than I used to, but 24hrs is the minimum the phone will last, with an average of probably 36hrs (I have had the charge last for over 48hrs on several occasions) . If I’m not actively using it, the battery lasts even longer: overnight it’s used as little as 1% of battery (though typically it’s a bit higher than that). Standby time used to be the biggest thing in iOS’ favor for battery life, but the One holds up really well.

• It’s been very fast and responsive, even with a fair number of running applications.

• The screen is gorgeous, and big enough at 6″ to be a mini-tablet (I hate the term “phablet”). It’s been a big contributor to my increased daily interaction with my phone.

• Updates to the phone have come out fairly quickly and consistently (currently running Android 4.4.4 and have been a for a couple weeks).

• The camera is very good. I don’t think it’s quite as good as the camera on my S4, but it’s in my top 2.

• The build quality is really quite nice. It feels solid and substantial without being too heavy. My S4 (and S2) felt light & thin, but somewhat cheap given their plastic feel. The One feels and looks like much higher quality.

•  The accessories are also top-notch. I added the Flip Cover and it was very easy to put on, looks & feels good, and offers great protection. Shortly after getting it I managed to drop my phone – hard – on concrete and it survived fine with just some minor scuff marks on the case.

The only quibble I can really find with the One is that the size is a little large to feel perfect to me. I’ve got fairly large hands, and I can use the One comfortably, but I have to admit that my wife’s Nexus 5 just feels better in my hand. I find myself using the One with about one-and-a-half hands rather than just a single hand – more like a tablet than a phone. Even so, I’m glad I went with the One and would still pick it if I had it to do over.

It’s my favorite phone to date while having also been the cheapest (not counting carrier subsidies) to acquire. That’s a damn good combination. Highly recommended.