Are you sure its not my birthday yet?

Most of you know of my gadget reliance. I have been using a PDA for about5 years and have frequently complained about the amount of space it occupies in my pockets. This was almost remedied by the PDA I bought off of Tom because it was thin enough that it wouldn't be a hindrance to movement in my pocket if I left the protective nylon case at home. Unfortunately, the thing occupied the whole pocket meaning my phone and keys had to go in the other pants pocket (which may explain why my phone is so scratched up).
Speaking of my phone I am pretty sure it is dying. It will randomly drop calls even with 4 bars, I get very spotty service sitting in my cube (as in 3 bars one second, no bars the next, drops a call while it is ringing, or won't even get the call but will get the voicemail notification). Generally it is becoming a pain in the ass.

I am currently on the second battery cover for my PDA, and the battery itself is getting a dangerous bulge, and just like my last PDA I have managed to wear out the "down" button and am getting dangerously close to wearing out the "right" button. I think I may have gotten my moneys worth out of this one.

On the subject of phones and PDAs you all probably know by now they my wife recently upgraded her 4 year old Samsung i500 to a Treo 755p ... for free. Its amazing what good timing, full phone replacement plans, and a too much cuteness for you own good will get you these days. This of course has caused me no small amount of gadget envy since over half of my friends are now operating PDA phones, and the one person out of all of them who has been reliant on a PDA for the longest still fills his pockets with 2 devices.

You may wonder why a post titled "Are you sure its not my birthday yet?" talks so much about the sad state of my gadget empire. Well, those of you who are very astute will probably figure it out.
On Tuesday my battery cover popped loose again (ok, I was replacing the tape that holds it on) and the little piece of paper I had wedged into the battery cover switch came out. This little switch tells the PDA that the cover is open or off and switches it over to the backup battery so that you don't lose all your data. In my attempt to re-seat the little piece of paper I managed to trick the PDA into going back to main battery mode without a main battery attached. This means the device lost total power and reset to the factory default. In other words I lost everything on the device.
(sarcasm =>) Lucky for me this has happened before.
This is actually an almost bi-monthly occurance. As such i set my PDA up to do a weekly backup to it's memory card. I restored from my backup, which recovered every file except the ones I had added on Monday (lots of first day of school stuff) and the executables. I have since determined that those are only included in manual backups, not the automatic ones.
Not a huge loss here, I would just have to wait until I got home to reinstall some of the extra applications I use, but none of them are vital. I can get through my day without my ebook reader or my xvid video player. Oh, and all those notes from school? I am sure I can remember what room my second class was moved to, or what my teacher's completely cryptic web address was.

After cleaning up this little mess I decide I shouldn't quite get back to work (since I am at work) and instead reply to one of my wife's emails adding to it the woes of my morning.
The day goes by quickly because I am pretty swamped at work. I take my lunch at 12:30 at my desk (so I can keep working) when I get a call on my work phone. Its my wife. She says my phone sucks. I say "I know, I told you I don't get reception in my cube". She says "Well why don't you come out to the parking lot so we can fix that."

At this point I my mind kicks into high gear, but I fail to come to the conclusion that I am sure all of you faithful readers have. It takes me a good 5 seconds to realize what is going on and this is mostly because we [my wife and I] have been discussing it for the last few weeks.
When we were at the sprint store getting her new phone I finally had the chance to play with the Sprint Mogul. I decided that the world had finally produced a PDA/phone that met all of my desires. Full screen touchpad, compact size, Windows Mobile (NOT smartphone), and as a bonus the device has twice the memory of my current PDA and a slide out full QWERTY keyboard. Oh the joy. The thing was small, light, and retained all the functionality I have grown accustomed to. Unfortunately it was pretty expensive. I couldn't justify spending half this semesters book fees on the device when my current PDA and phone still work.
Luckily for me my beautiful, smart, charismatic, beautiful, loving, beautiful wife does not share the same reservations.

Kristina took a long lunch, went the Sprint store, bought me the Mogul, activated it, then drove to my work to surprise me with it. I guess that explains why she didn't try to call me on my cell phone.
Happy early birthday to me.
Thank you Kristina, you know me entirely too well.

"Flacid with rage"

Stephen Colbert understands:



It seems that there was some confusion as to what I was angry about with the iPhone. Most of my rage was pointed at the media and the fanboys who where so wrapped up in the fact that there was an actual iPhone in existence they seemed incapable of forming coherent sentence. Instead of extolling the virtues of the revolutionary interface all they could say was "look at the pretty touchscreen!"

In other phone related news.. I will probably be spending a large chunk of change on my wife. Sprint announced the Motorola Q is now available for their network. I would get one for myself but I do not like the non-touchpad interface used for Windows Mobile 5.0 for Smartphones or the mini-QWERTY that has become so popular. I love my iPAQ and its tapable surface. I can't imagine playing bejewled without it plus all that screen real estate makes watching movies on it very nice.

Pockets of Doom

Well.. I should be blogging about my trip to Colorado for Christmas but I really don't feel like it right now. I am feeling very lazy and long winded. I warn you not to read this post unless you are looking to be bored.
Instead of the vacation I will talk about pockets. I love pockets. Pockets are great. They hold things that I need so I don't have to carry them. This frees my hands to do important things like open doors, drive cars, stop the ground from hitting my face when I fall, etc. etc.
Like most men I have a system when it comes to my pockets. Keys go in the right, phone in the left, wallet in the back right. When I have my PDA on me, as I often do, the PDA goes in the left, phone and keys in the right, and wallet in the back right.
This system works very well for me as my keys and wallet are always in my right pockets. Whenever I leave a place like my house, or my friends house, or I arrive at a destination I do the man pat. You know what I'm talking about. The quick tap of my thighs and ass to ensure my pockets have the appropriate bulge. I personally do 5-6 taps, checking my front pockets twice. This usually takes less than 3 seconds and I often don't even realize I do it. When all the pockets check O.K. a lower level of consciousness sits quietly by waiting to perform the next trivial task so my higher levels of consciousness are free to continue the conversation I am having, contemplating the Universe, or doing calculus.
When my pocket check reveals a deficiency a whole different process takes place. That little background task manager of my mind elevates its priority level to a higher consciousness. If the deficiency is a critical one, like my keys or my wallet the thought gets the highest priority and my mind sees if fit to elevate my bodies readiness levels. My heart rate quickens, my breathing deepens and I could swear a very minuscule amount of adrenaline is released.
Once my awareness is sufficiently heightened my mind begins the process of trying to locate the missing item. This usually takes only a second or two of tracing my last steps from memory and is often accompanied by a more frenzied pat down of all my pockets, including those not usually in the line up.
At this point I am sure you are wondering how the hell I could have gone on so long about pockets and still had nothing of interest to say. Well, its a gift, but now we get to the whole point of the matter and you get to use your mind's eye to laugh at me.
Imagine me standing outside a store randomly slapping my body while I gaze absently at the sky. When I say slapping my body I mean all over my body. When I am in panicked pocket check mode I check everywhere I have had pockets, and that is alot of places. I slap both breasts, my upper thighs, both butt cheeks, grab my pant legs (looking for cargo pockets) and will lastly slap the center of my chest. Thats right the center of my chest. When I was in the Marine Corps I didn't put my pen in my pocket, I clipped it between the first and second button on my blouse, and I find I still do that occasionally when I am wearing a polo or buttoned shirt. I got used to checking my breastbone for the item I am looking for.

I came to be completely aware of my odd behavior yesterday while standing in front of Target randomly slapping myself and receiving odd looks from passing shoppers. The whole process usually doesn't last long enough for other people to notice, but my keys where missing and I was panicked thinking I had locked them in the car.. but I couldn't have because i locked the car using the remote.. but I don't have the keys so they must be locked in the car.. maybe the fell out of your pocket.. but I never took anything out of my pocket while I was in the store, I only returned a gift and that was in a bag so they must be locked in the car... As you can see my mind was stuck in a loop.. then my autopilot pocket search realized I was wearing a jacket.
The keys where in my jacket pocket. For some reason I find it completely natural to stick stuff in my jacket pocket. I do it without thinking and without realizing something is in there. I don't usually wear a jacket, it hasn't been part of my daily wardrobe since high school so why am I so eager to use my jacket pockets?
Its a frustrating place to be in because every time I get out of the car I put my keys in my jacket pocket and when I go to find them later I panic because I can't find my keys. This is not something I am used to. I am not a panic prone guy so having these daily alarms is getting really annoying plus I look like an idiot every time it happens.
I think I will stop wearing a jacket and just catch a cold.