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.

Its February

Its February. The month that got screwed. Wikipedia has a nice entry on the month, including this ever so important segment on the the pronunciation:]

Many people pronounce "February" with a round 'u' instead of an open 'u' vowel, which forces the first 'r' to be eclipsed, viz. 'FEB-yoo-air-ee' instead of 'FEB-roo-air-ee.' That is, it elides into first half of the trailing diphthong. Otherwise, the flanking mid vowel ('e') and back vowel ('u'), combined with the final -ry syllable (front vowel 'ee') make the 'br' difficult for Anglophones to pronounce in the first place. The problem does not usually arise for Scotiaphones, however. The Scottish names for the month are "Feberwary" and "Februar," the latter usually pronounced with a long "ay" vowel in the first syllable.

February brings us great holidays. Holidays like Ground Hog Day (TODAY!), Presidents Day, and Valentine's Day, a holiday created almost solely by the greeting card, candy, and flower cartels that are the true power behind the shadow government that runs the world.

As a rule my wife and I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. I don't mean we ignore it, but we try hard not to buy "Valentines Day" branded products (which is pretty much limited to cards, candy, or stuffed animals we don't need). Jewelry, flowers, and nice meals have been excluded from the "ban" list (mostly by my wife) and we try to focus on the meaning of Valentine's Day instead of its commercial components.

In other news my wife made cookies Sunday and I can't stop eating them. She also made blueberry muffins. I am eating one right now with a cup of french roast. It is delicious. I can actually relax and enjoy my morning (yes, I enjoy mornings) today because its the only day I don't have morning classes. I still wake up at 6:00 and spend half an hour coaxing my wife awake but it's nice to know I don't actually have to get up (until she asks me to go make coffee while she showers). I'm such a sucker for her. She could ask for a 5 course breakfast and I would probably get up and do it.
..mmm.. that bite had a big blueberry in it.

I almost forgot. I found the owner of the iPod. I decided that 2 weeks of no one asking lost and found for it meant they weren't really looking so I bought the dock/craddle for $30. I plug it in and find out the person used there full name to name the ipod. I searched ASU directory and pulled up a student with the name and emailed her. That was on Monday. I haven't heard anything back. I think 3 weeks of due diligence is enough and I am now claiming it as my own.

Time to get back to "work"

Well, that was a lovely two weeks. I had a great time going on vacation to Denver and San Diego. I spent way way more money than I should have but it was worth every penny. Why? I will tell you why. The other morning I woke up, rolled over and started rubbing my wife's back in an attempt to wake her up in the only way that doesn't make her mad at me for waking her up. I started with a soft stroke or three then moved in to focus on rubbing the usual problem areas of knots and tension. Thats when I ran into a problem. They where not there. I'll let that sink in for a moment.
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Now that you have contemplated the gravity of that statement I feel no need to elaborate so I will move on. I too have some New Years resolutions. Ok, its a couple (NOT a few). My first is to maintain my GPA. That is to say that come this time next year I still want a B average. My second resolution isn't to lose weight or get in shape, its something much more reasonable. Portion control. I have decided to go back to my old eating habits of only eating when I am hungry and then stop eating when I am no longer hunger. The system worked well for me for 25 years and now that I have finally gained enough weight that I no longer look like a stick pretending to be a tree I can need to cut back on my mass intake. I would also like to see an increase in vegetable intake but that isn't a new years resolution, its more like a craving. (Shhh.. just between you and me, I don't like all meat all the time, just mostly meat most of the time.)

I'm kind of tired for playing Wii all afternoon with one of my friends so I think I will stop hear and go to bed at a reasonable time.