New Treo, Showcase and an Anniversary

I was planning to spend the majority of this post whining about the quality of the lens on my new Treo 700p cell phone. Unfortunately, I am going to have to find something else to write about. I just transferred the photos to my laptop and even the ones that I thought were just horribly dark don't look nearly as bad after running them through Picasa's "I'm Feeling Lucky" filter. I had even been wondering if I needed to carry around my old Treo 650, just to use the camera, which I absolutely did not want to do. I don't think that will be necessary.

Over all, I am very pleased with the new phone. Since it's on Verizon's network, I get a better signal at home and can actually use it at the office. That is marvelous. I have missed so many calls because people assumed that I had some way of finding out that I had a message. It's also just nice to be able to make calls wherever I am, particularly in an emergency. I usually couldn't even get a signal outside in the parking lot most of the time.

Thanks to Verizon's EV-DO broadbandesque network, I can use my the browser on the phone much more easily. It is extremely fast and makes everything much more practical. It's particularly impressive when using the Google Maps client on the phone. Recently, the mobile version of Google Reader has been my favorite app. I've been using TreoTwit in order to avoid per message SMS charges.

Thursday was CIT's 7th Annual Instructional Technology Showcase and it was definitely a success. I worked at the registration desk early in the morning. I got to attend Malcolm Brown's keynote, the lunch and the poster-session. Lunch was catered by the Refectory and I must say that their hummus wraps are great. All of the door prizes that I gathered from our sponsors now have happy homes. I also got to see RN and KD, which was cool.

We had worried about Dr. Brown's arrival, because his original plane had engine trouble, as was depicted in a dramatic collaborative 2D reenactment by HC and SM, drawn on the glass in between their cubes.

After the Showcase, we had out traditional drinking party. This year we went to Satisfaction's and I tried their selection of virgin daiquiris. First, I had a lime one, which was very sour and good and was served in a wine glass. Various other people recommended their strawberry daiquiris, so I tried a virgin strawberry one. That was served an overflowing 16 oz. cup! By that time I'd also eaten several onion rings, cheese sticks, chips, wings and one jalapeno popper, so that was a little much.

Yesterday, at lunch time, a bunch of us went to the Duke Farmer's Market. We ate leftover Showcase wraps while listening to HC play Old Time music with his buddies. The weather was perfect for it. LA and I bought things for our mothers' birthdays.

Today, my mom and I went to the Flying Fish for lunch and we stopped by Callaway Jewelry afterwards. I visited FIFO in the afternoon and followed him around, taking pictures with the Treo 700p. We celebrated her birthday at ACME Food & Beverage Co., of course. What we should have also been celebrating is the fact that today is the first anniversary of the appearance of my doofus woodpecker who has been slamming his head into my windows for the past year. He was at it bright and early this morning. It's so nice to be loved.

The Price of Free Speech

I do have good news. I figured out why my Treo 650 was bombarding me with messages whenever I turned off bluetooth. Apparently the keyboard application (or any third party connecting application) will keep trying to access bluetooth unless that is also disconnected. So, once I made sure the keyboard application was turned off, it stopped asking me if I wanted to turn bluetooth back on. As it may now be obvious, I hadn't tried out bluetooth at all until I got the keyboard.

On Tuesday I went to a Durham FM Association meeting and we had an excellent speaker, Carlo Tomasi, who talked about his work with Canesta on the laser virtual projection keyboards and 3D sensors. I'd been admiring the keyboards on ThinkGeek for some time, so it was neat to see one in person and learn more about the technology.

Last night, I went to the Duke Symphony Orchestra concert, which was great. I didn't think my dad was going to be able to go with me, but he decided he would rather do that than grade midterms. We went to Taverna Nikos beforehand and I seem to be in another trout rut. My last one lasted over a year, but we were eating there a lot more often at that point.

Today, AE had the day off, so she came over to campus and we ate at the Refectory for lunch. It was such a beautiful day and it was delightful to eat outside. We had "Sopa du Soya", which is the faux chicken version of my favorite Mexican casserole dish. I like the chicken better, but whatever soy product they were using was quite good.

I'm going to do something unusual for this blog and weigh in on the Don Imus debate. I had actually didn't even know who he was until this controversy arose, so obviously this was a good publicity move. I've read various articles that say that it was his first amendment right to say what he did and therefore he shouldn't have been fired. That just doesn't follow at all. The constitutional right only applies to the legality of what he said, which I don't believe is being disputed. Don Imus, as an employee of a business, represented that business. If a business believes that it is not profitable to have him represent them, then it is that business's right to fire him. I am almost positive that if it had been financially advantageous to keep him, then they would have. Then that would suggest that advertisers thought that the majority of their consumers felt that this was acceptable behavior. If that were the case, then we would have a much larger problem on our hands than just one announcer.

Misbehaving Mobile Device

My beloved Treo 650 has been frustrating me. Yesterday afternoon, while I was watching a movie, Immortal Beloved, it beeped, indicating that its battery was low and needed charging. I dashed off to my bedroom and plugged it in. This morning, before I got up, it beeped again, so I charged it while I was in the shower. Note that it never did this before yesterday.

I decided to try turning off bluetooth, since I enabled it a few weeks ago for my bluetooth keyboard. Well, apparently if bluetooth has been on, then it doesn't like being turned off. There could be a way to turn it off for longer periods of time, but it kept popping up messages saying, "Do you know bluetooth is turned off? Do you? Do you? Feed me."

I eventually just ignored it. Well, eventually it got to the point that I could neither cancel the message nor re-enable bluetooth. It just kept flashing the message over and over. This afternoon I just decided to take out the battery. Then it started rebooting itself, over and over. It just wasn't my day.

I ended up having to do a hard reset and now I think it's fine. Fortunately, I sync it with my laptop fairly often, to get all those food pics off of there, so I have the meeting minutes that I took last Wednesday. I don't think I lost much, really. I guess I just lost yet another picture of an ACME lemon pudding cake from last night and some really nice Shade Tree Coffee latte art from Saturday. I think I'll live.

I think my phone has been listening to my talking about ditching Sprint and upgrading to a newer model on Verizon.

Gadget Joy

Today I went to my weekly meeting at the American Tobacco Campus, but I came back to West Campus for lunch. AE wanted to show her friend, DS (many name collisions on these intials lately- I leave distinguishing them as a hopeless exercise for the reader) around Duke. As I mentioned previously, there isn't a lot on campus that is open this week, so we met at Twinnie's. We then carried our stuff back up the hill and ate on the library patio. The weather was perfect.

My parents and I ate at Thai Cafe tonight. It's the time of year when I need to convince restaurants that donating gift certificates to be used as door prizes for the CIT Showcase is good advertising. It is!

When I got home, my Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard was waiting for me. That was very exciting. So far, I am extremely pleased with it. It's lightweight and compact. I downloaded the Treo 650 driver and then I was ready to go. Configuring the secure connection was a little tricky, because I was finally watching the second half of West Side Story and not paying attention to the instructions closely enough. It's a little tricky anyway, because you have to keep putting the keyboard in discovery mode while configuring the passkeys. It is very cool, though. I like the idea of having something that should also work with whatever tablet or phone I get in the future, too, since it uses bluetooth.

A New Year

I have discovered that the ultimate way to wake up in the morning on the first day of the year is to the sound of hammering. It can't be just any hammering, but hammering on a house that is destined to be one's very own home. Noting that it is hammering that is being done on New Year's Day, which by most people's accounts is a holiday produces an added dose of joy. Every day that they work is one day closer to the day that I will be able to move in.

New Year's Day means resolutions, right? Considering the profound success of last year's resolution (I can't remember what it was.), I have decided upon not one, but three, this year.

#1 Lift weights on a regular basis. (This might have been last year's.) If the frequency is once a month, I'm all set.

#2 Try to avoid overeating such that I burst. Or even feel like it.

#3 Do not succumb to impulse purchases. Do not buy a Handspring Treo 600.


Actually, I thought of a couple of other good ones, but I've forgotten what they were already.

Last night I went to a New Year's Eve party. That was great! For the first time in forever, I didn't glumly sit around thinking about how everyone in my time zone was having fun except for me and my immediate family. Before I was even sure that my brother was having more fun than I was. This year, however, I enjoyed scrumptious food, such as baked Brie and homemade creme brulee while being entertained by three toddlers running around like wild and crazy monkeys. I also narrowly escaped being forced to sing karaoke one more time. This was the first time I'd actually ever seen a karaoke machine, so the risk was higher than ever before.

I went over to the house this afternoon. It is really looking fantastic. The braces are in place in the vaulted ceiling in the great room, so I finally have a good idea of how high the ceiling will be. I've always known it would be 16', but seeing really is believing. Now that the windows are framed I know that the view will, indeed, be spectacular. Well, maybe it won't be spectacular, but at least very awesome.

Cell phone Confusion

The main event of today was going to the AT&T wireless store to return Siemens car charger that arrived with my parents' Sony Ericsson phones. Lots of irate people were in line to be helped, so my dad and I waited for a while. I perused the model selection and quickly determined that they did not have a Handspring Treo 600. Well, quickly is probably an exaggeration, because there were lots of people standing in the way. As we had assumed, but wanted to confirm, Cingular does have a roaming agreement with AT&T, so there shouldn't be any roaming charges within the Carolinas. I like the advantage of being able to make calls practically anywhere with Sprint, but AT&T has cooler phones. We hope that the plan also includes nationwide long distance. According to the AT&T wireless website, it should be included, but the slick brochures that we picked up at the store said that it was not included. Hopefully the website was just updated more recently. It would be so nice if this were stated in the account information, rather than our having to guess.

I'm still feeling like I should consider looking into getting a new cell phone eventually. I must resist!

Lots of progress has been made on the house in the last couple of days. It's really looking good. It turns out that I'm going to have "regular"/"French" doors in the great room, as opposed to sliding ones. The low profile sliding doors weren't available. I think they will be easier to use, so this may not be a bad thing.

Christmas Day

Today's Christmas day lived up to our family tradition as a somewhat anticlimactic day to enjoy our presents and company. Unlike most American families, the anticipation of how people will react to their gifts and of what one might receive is already gone. Needless to say, it is not necessary to wake up early! It's perfect for night owls, like me, who like to sleep late. The day does call for a splendid meal, so my mother made her fantastic fried chicken, biscuits, asparagus and mashed potatoes.

Other than that, I completely revamped my website. It still looks the same. It says almost the same stuff. ..but now most of the links should actually work and the text is a lot more accurate. There are a couple of new links here and there. What would a personal website really be without a link to one's favorite comic strip?

My brother, Karl, and I gave our parents cell phones for Christmas. My phone is starting to seem ancient, but I'm really not in the mood to spend a lot of money right now, because I've been saving up for things for my new house. Granted, a lot of the cool new phones are free, but that still involves making a decision. Would I want a Handspring Treo 600 or something nice and tiny? If I change carriers, I want one that will work everywhere, of course. I'll probably just keep my phone, for now...