One of the longest on going issues that people seem to e-mail me about is my experiences with the Samsung S105. Samsung, like most cellular handset manufacturers, offer most of their individual phone models in a number of different “flavors” – flavours, actually since the European arena is far more advanced in mobile services than we are – so they can offer their products to as many people as possible. Wait, wait, before I get into this, let me give you a crash course in cellular technology, as of this moment, world-wide.
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Monthly Archives: January 2003
The State of our Union
And so we’ve been given the state of our Union, as seen through the eyes of President Bush. What I’m most amused by this morning is the press and their reaction to the State of the Union address from last night. I purposely listened to the speech myself last night, tuning into Fox about 9:08pm EST. I noticed that for the most of the first half of the address, President Bush focused on internal and national based concerns, including healthcare and education and tax cuts. For the second half of the address, he described his thoughts on and alluded to the proof of Iraq defying the UN-based resolutions, with regards to the lack of weapons disarmament. He also points out that we used diplomacy throughout the 90’s with North Korea, who purposely stated that they abandoned their nuclear program only to discover eight years later that they lied and are now nuclear weapons capable. Judging by what I saw today on TV and heard on the radio, the press missed the first 40 minutes of the address last night.
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Made by a Mac …sorta
Had a bit of a change of plans over the weekend: I talked to CompUSA and Apple a number of times on Saturday and guess what? I now have a new 12″ PowerBook! Was not without it’s issues of course – I wouldn’t be me if I could simply buy a new notebook and have nothing go wrong.
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Windows 0 — Apple -1
I thought I should finally get around to sharing my impressions of the new 12.1″ PowerBook that I bought from Apple. Well, I sorta can’t do that yet – the freakin’ thing hasn’t shipped yet! Let met tell you this: this thing is starting out as a very, very negative beginning to my adventure with Apple. There’s been one problem after another with this notebook, and they haven’t even bothered to ship one to me yet – so much for the Switch being an easy thing to do.
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War and Peace
A number of people are convinced that the US is preparing for another war. I can’t deny that, as we’ve begun to mobilize troops all over the world, most of them pointed in the direction of Iraq. Recently, I’ve begun to notice some anti-war protests popping up all over the media; they typical “War kills” and “Peace not War” protests. People need to go get jobs and forget the 60’s, the stupid wannabe hippies.
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Twenty Minutes
I think it’s getting high time to just slap a mermaid logo on the freakin’ site. I mean, it’s not that I work for Starbucks, but every fourth post seems to have something to do with the place… either a new drink, or a customer service thing, or god knows what – it just seems to be the center point of my happenings lately. Today, being a weekend day, I purposely kept as empty as I could, so I could “detox”; it’s been a really long week. I picked up my Jeep from the body shop, since some random drivers have hit the thing twice – both times in my own parking space at home! – and I wanted to do some up keep around the house (didn’t succeed, at all,) entertain my rabbit (lasted a half hour,) and work on my book some (started another chapter!)
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Just What is Rude, Anyway?
I’ve often wondered what makes something rude and what makes something proper. It’s a pretty fine line, actually, as far as I can tell. I’m also pretty sure that the line between worlds is slightly askew between different cultures, which makes things far more complicated than it should be. Actually, it would be pretty complicated anyway – who makes these rules anyway? Is there a board that gets together quarterly to define “rude” behavior? They are pretty quiet about it, because I’ve never seen them listed anywhere. It’s not based on common sense; we wouldn’t have four forks whenever we sat down to a “proper” dinner, if common sense was involved. If there’s a committee deciding these things, it’s got to be a local thing and not an ISO (International Standards Organization) type thing, because of the regional differences.
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“Thank You, Drive Thru”
So the other day I popped in a chat room to an uncomfortable conversation that’s becoming a bit too common lately. See, for some unknown reason, the MSN Connecticut chat room is the most fertile breeding grounds in the world. Oh, I know the reason why women are getting pregnant – duh – but what is a great “rarity” is how many women actually get pregnant from the random acts of sex. Consequently, there’s a lot of single mothers and runaway fathers; the other day’s uncomfortable topic was the lack of child support that the deadbeat dads were giving.
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New PocketPC: HP 1910
New device alert! I’ve opted to sell my Toshiba e740 Pocket PC. No complaints with the device, but I had begun to feel like I’m trying to hit a fly with a building rather than a swatter. It’s got all sorts of stuff with it, like WiFi (802.11b) and CF/SD support, but I don’t use most of it. I used to use it for a MP3 Player, but the iPod has superceded that. I rarely play games on it or use the built in Wireless LAN. Never watched a movie on it. I used the CF slot for backups and the device for the Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks – maybe for solitaire.
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Outages of Two Kinds
So much for the “non-problem” that I was hoping for while switching host servers. Between a combination of not having my domain’s updates done in the promised 24-72 hour period and a couple of other snafus, the site was dark for most of the weekend. It should be better now, and for a while later, but I can guarantee that if the network continues to be a hassle, I’ll find another solution for the site… as always a work in progress.
Also, there would have been a much better Rant today, but the first train I got on broke down and never left the station, so I’m on a train that has twice as many people and we’re going to pick up more and I now have an oversized elder-yuppie reading the New York Times and crowding me in my seat, so in all honesty, I can’t type anymore. Maybe tomorrow!
A Week in Review
And now, a week in review…
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My Balance Gave Out!
Oops. More or less, anyway. I can’t think of any better way to say it, but I seem to have bought a new PowerBook. Yeah, you heard me. Even after yesterday’s revelations about how I wouldn’t be able to Switch fully, I ordered a new Apple notebook. What happened? Steve Jobs’ keynote address at Macworld Expo yesterday is what happened. I know it sounds odd – that a CEO’s speech could force a lone, mostly-pro Microsoft programmer to change his… um, well everything. I’ve been 99.44% pro Microsoft for at least a decade… It wasn’t Jobs’ words that have changed me – it was his products.
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Update: Mac Stuff
It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned my Apple on this site… that’s mostly because my G4 has been sitting mostly unused for a while. As you may remember, a few months ago I threw about $800 into a G4/450MHz tower, in an effort to see what all the hub-bub about OS X was. I’ve still got it running and I keep it up to date; it’s now running OS X 10.2.3 and even the recent updates to Office.X and the “I” line of Apple software. The problem is that I can’t seem to pull the “Switch” trigger.
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Home Improvements
Over the last week of my vacation, I decided that it was high time to start another home project. Over the past year I’ve done some very minor projects, like painting a wall with some of that suede paint from Ralph Lauren, building some bookcases for my second bedroom, and changing a bathroom faucet. You have to have known me for a while to see the humor in such things, I guess, but I can tell you this much: I’m useless for home improvements. I have some sort of mental deficiency when it comes to things of a biological nature (don’t even attempt to ask me what any of the medication I take is called or what it does; I just do what I’m told) and of a home improvement nature (I had to call my support group of friends to perform surgery on the bathroom faucet.) I can build you a computer in under an hour However, given that I own my place (or at least the first four payments of it after this round of refinancing) I do try to do what little things I can.
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