Sad, though not exactly unexpected, news this morning as Senator Robert Byrd – who, for my entire life, has always been the Senator from West Virginia – has passed away. People will remember him for lots of things – being the longest-serving Senator, being a former Klansman, being a passionate, outspoken, and prescient opponent of the Iraq invasion, and no doubt for a whole lot of other things in his home state of WVa. Me, I’ll always remember his personal response to my mom, asking if they were related (family legend has it that my mother was in some way or another related to the explorer Admiral Byrd, and she wondered if they had that in common). As I recall, Senator Byrd’s response was, “could be.” It was very kind of him to reply (I only wish his letter was still around). RIP, Senator. And say hello to my mom if you run into her.

Better news for iPhone users, however, as it appears there really isn’t any problem with reception on the iPhone 4 (to quote Steve Jobs: “There is no reception issue. Stay tuned“). The unofficial official word now is that it’s a software issue with iOS 4, and a fix may be released as early as today.

The fix is expected to address a issue in iOS 4 related to radio frequency calibration of the baseband. Readers who saw the original forum discussions say that the issue is believed to occur when switching frequencies; because the lag is allegedly not calibrated correctly, it results in the device reporting “no service” rather than switching to the frequency with the best signal to noise ratio.

As an IT person, my first inclination is – like Steve Jobs, apparently – to blame the user. But maybe iPhone users aren’t “holding it wrong” after all. And, really, if you designed a phone that was so touchy it didn’t work when you held it in your hand, that would be a pretty poor design (Daniel Eran Dilger’s snotty tweet notwithstanding) . Nobody’s saying it ought to work if you’re sitting on it or using it inside a refrigerator or something, but, damn, you ought to be able to hold a phone in your hand pretty much any way you want.

Of course, the three stages of dealing with a flawed product/software release are somewhat similar to the five stages of grief. Denial (problem? what problem?), Anger (at the user; you’re not using it right, you idiot!), and Acceptance (oh, shit, I guess there is something wrong), followed by the release of a patch.

Hopefully iOS 4.0.1 will do the trick for anybody having a problem. It’s great that they appear to be about to release a fix so soon, though it kind of makes you wonder if they didn’t know there was a problem, and were kind of hoping they could get a patch out before anybody noticed (it’s a lot easier when the fan boys think you can do no wrong, but, in this case, it was the fan boys themselves that were complaining – though very gently, so as not to incur the wrath of Jobs).

Oh well, back to work again today. And, after a fairly sleepless night thanks to the combination of thunderstorms and scared doggies, it’s gonna be a long one.