Posts from — July 2003

This week’s TV Guide: “Forget Trek! Stargate is sci-fi’s biggest hit!” I’ve been saying that for years. The storylines, the superb special effects and the characters I’ve known for years make this my favorite show on TV.

Pam and I give to charities all the time. We have several favorite ones that seem to do a good job of helping others. With Charity Navigator, you can see if your favorite charity is doing the best job it can do. After looking up one of our regulars, we discovered they weren’t all that good. It’s time to pull our funding for these losers. The chairman of the charity makes over $500,000 per year and only 28% actually goes toward the cause.

Last Thursday we attended the Jeep-sponsored premiere of Tomb Raider The Cradle of Life. It was like a Hollywood showing with food, gifts and a great time.

Crap. I forgot my Palm at work. I use that thing constantly and I’m missing it this evening. Fortunately I have it locked in my desk so I don’t have to worry about someone walking off with it.

One of my favorite apps on my Palm is TV Listings. It automatically downloads the entire TV schedule for a week and makes it extremely easy to look up shows. You can search by keyword or look on the movie list to see if something good it coming on. Then click a button and the show is added to your Palm calendar.

Another cool app I use (for fun) is Netchaser. It’s a wireless access point sniffer that tells me when the Palm is getting a signal. I check all sorts of public places and find a Wi-Fi access point every now and then. It’s fun to drive around in the car and see all the unsecured wireless networks out there. If you buy a wireless router, what’s the first thing you should do? That’s right. CHANGE THE USERNAME AND PASSWORD. It’s amazing how many Linksys routers my Palm will find just driving up to the store.

Hi Bonnie. Love your page.

It’s no surprise to me. Detroit is the 61st most literate city in America. There were only 64 cities on the list. Maybe this explains why people don’t use their blinkers. They are functionally unable to multitask while driving, all their attention needs to be directed toward steering.

Error 404. Unable to locate.

My Atom Rearranger broke the other day. Thankfully I found another one here.

The Verizon phones are working out nicely. Glad you asked.

How fast do you type? Take this test and find out. I scored in the pretty well, let’s see how you do.

People that are stressed and then lash out when I try to help them annoy me. And I shall avoid them as they are a waste of my time. And if I’m avoiding them, I guess their problem will NEVER get fixed.

Go dunk some penguins instead.

So we both have Samsung a310 cellphones using Verizon. The phones and the service are working out well for us. Thank goodness that mess is over.

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. I don’t know what it does, but it sounds official. Actually I do know what it does but I was told not to say anything.

“Hey Mike, my password doesn’t work. It’s the same one I always use.” Whatever.

Shizolate something, it’s fun.

The cell phone swap is in progress. Last week we decided to drop Nextel and go with another provider. So after a ton of research, we signed up with Sprint. On the way to work the next day, our calls were garbled and terrible. So we took the phones back. I should have known better than to go with Sprint. My customer service experiences with them in the past are what caused us to drop them years ago. I was hoping things with them improved. It didn’t.

Next I interviewed lots of people at work and 90% of them said to get Verizon. So we did. I got a nice Motorola T70 phone and Pam got a Samsung model. After using my phone for a day, I’m finding the phone isn’t all that great. Pam’s much cheaper phone works way better. Tomorrow I’ll take back the Motorola, get the cheaper phone and we’ll hopefully be all done with the Phone Swap Project.

Central Kia of Irving Texas screwed my brother. Don’t buy a car from them. Jeffery says: “…instead, I was treated to lies, evasions, broken
promises, and un-returned phone calls. When I started getting upset and
pointed out the gross lack of respect with which I was being treated, he
insinuated that I was not worth the trouble.”

Apparently he wasn’t the only one.

Pam and I are getting new cell phones. We have Nextel models that have worked well for us for a long time. I upgraded mine sometime last year but Pam has the original phone she got when we signed up about 3 years ago.

Lately, Pam’s phone has been acting up so I thought we would just upgrade it to another model. I went to Nextel’s web site and discovered they charge a bunch of money (over $200) just to get a new phone. They offer little incentive for people to purchase a new phone and stay with their service. We stayed with Nextel for this long because of the 2-way radio. It’s very cool and I’ll miss it. But you pay for it in higher monthly payments and a crappy selection of bulky and heavy phones.

With all the cool, new phones and great service plans we decided to switch to either T-Mobile or Sprint. They both offer unlimited mobile to mobile calling, shared minutes, free roaming and long distance. We’re getting a bluetooth model for Pam to use with her Palm Tungsten|T. I just want a basic model that can easily fit in my pocket. The smaller the better.

We ordered carpeting for the basement. Installation takes about 3 weeks, then we’ll finally be done with The Basement Project. I’m holding off taking pictures until the carpeting is in.

Last night, I hooked up the big TV and surround sound in the new media room and we watched a movie. I threw an old rug on the floor, got out some lawn chairs and we had a great time watching a DVD in our unfinished room. The sound is way better than I could have imagined and the atmosphere down there is great. As Pam said: “it’s like a whole different house down here.”