Oh, and...

I can't forget the biggest news from yesterday - I got my driver's license in the mail, less than week after I went down and paid the ridiculous $26 for it. Something must have improved from last time, because it took 3-4 weeks (they say allow 6-8 weeks, which is dumb since this is all electronic now).

My picture actually looks good too for once!

Odds and Ends

Despite the clouds and sprinkles, I am really liking the cooler weather. The whole week is supposed to be in the 70s and I get Friday off!

Of all the Caribou trivia questions every morning ($.10 off if you get it right, or if you get the right cashier, even if you just attempt it), I like the pop culture ones the best. Two recent interesting ones - Saturday the question was "Which MJ album had five #1 songs, the only album in history to do so?" Not only did I know which one ("Bad" - and I'm sure "Thriller" was the popular choice, but it actually only had 3), I knew the 5 songs - "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "Bad", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Man In The Mirror", and "Dirty Diana". And hitting #1 back then wasn't as easy as it is now. Today's question, "Besides jeans, what else did the Gap originally sell when it opened?" The answer? Records. OK people under 30 probably don't even remember what a record is (I do but by about 5th grade no one was buying them anymore and by 8th grade I was already into CDs).

Fun evening last night having dinner with high school friend Joe and his wife Keri, in town for the week from Nebraska.

Family

A big thanks to my friend and fellow blogger Shelley for finding this article:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/06/28/gayby/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

As always, the very most important thing to remember about this or any social issue is that there are REAL PEOPLE involved - it's all too easy for people to just think of these things as faceless, personality-less topics until they actually know someone who is affected by them.

South Carolina Governor

I'm hesitant to include this link, except that I think everyone's already heard or read the story.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/24/south.carolina.governor/index.html

I generally think people's private lives are their own business - including celebrities and politicians, even though they're in the public spotlight. However, when it comes to politicians, I think it's NOT ok for them to be advocating something at the top of their lungs that they're secretly doing the opposite of behind everyone's back, because it's what voters or their party want to hear.

While doing something like cheating on your wife does have a direct bad impact on your family and the people in your life, in the grand scheme it does not necessarily make you a bad person, and does not mean you're a bad governor, senator, etc - i.e. it isn't directly impacting the parameters of your job. The fact that Bill Clinton was about to be impeached for what he did seems silly compared to some of the things other presidents have probably done that had huge impacts on our country and the world.

This is not a problem unique to republicans, it happens on both sides of the aisle. I guess for me though, I get particularly upset when I see politicians who scream about the "traditional family values" while getting elected, and then cheat on their wives, or politicians who vote against simple anti-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians (even against laws to protect children who are being bullied for real or perceived sexual orientation - see recent North Carolina legislature activity) and are secretly closeted gays themselves.

Single Sort

I am probably WAY too excited about this, but I've been jealous of the other trash company for some time, and have even considered switching except the price I have on service is good...and now the company I have has switched to the giant single-sort recycling bin! I didn't mind sorting, what I more minded was having those little square tubs where we'd have to carry two or 3 of them out every Friday, and sometimes getting everything in them was difficult (and occasionally the wind would blow stuff out since they're just open on top). But no more!

It's the little things...

Supreme Court

Over lunch today I read a series of Time magazine articles on the supreme court justice nomination Sonia Sotomayor, and about the court in general. The Supreme Court and the nomination process are fascinating to me - it's one of those very rare things in our country where once you're in, you're in for life - no re-elections, no term limits. So the process is HUGELY political until a nominee is confirmed, and then never political again. Anyone nominated has to expect their entire life to be scrutinized down to every last detail. And justices are on average there for 20+ years (one of the current ones is 89 and was nominated by President Ford).

I think that doing a fictional TV show about the Supreme Court would be a neat idea - we have tons of wildly popular law shows already, and the shows about the president are always popular too ("West Wing" of course, and "Commander-In-Chief", which was a great show but apparently too expensive to make to continue). Hollywood, are you listening?

Commodore 64 vs. iPhone 3GS

I don't know why I find this article so amusing, except that I was around in 1982 and it's the first real memory I have of a computer - and was so jealous of my friend Kirk who had a Commodore 64 and some neat games, including the version of Donkey Kong with the special pie factory board!

http://technologizer.com/2009/06/21/commodore-vs-iphone/

Driver's licenses

I have to say that besides the fact that the drivers license office doesn't take cash, it also seems really silly that we have to do this every 4 years. While I'm glad some people have to come in every 4 years and take an eye test, I think Arizona has a good model - it's something like you get a license at 16 which expires at 18, and then expires again at 21...and after that, it doesn't expire until you're 65, then you have to renew every 4 years (that might not be quite right but it's the basic idea). Paying $26 every 4 years and having to take half an hour or longer to stand in line, just to get a new card, just seems like a waste of time and resources for everyone.

End of rant.

Checks

I just have to rant a bit - the government really needs to get with the times and take credit cards, or at least debit cards, for services like license and tab renewals. The odds of me having enough cash on me to pay for something like that is very small, and forget me having my check book on me - I'm not even sure where it is at the moment!

Even the hole-in-the-wall Chinese takeout places I go to take credit cards now. I know they have to pay fees, but that's just the cost of doing business now. Get over it.

Friends, Grandmas, Birthdays, Fathers

I had been looking forward to this weekend for quite some time because I had so many fun things planned. The weekend kicked off Friday evening with a nice evening for a 6:15 softball game - we won 10-0 by 10-run, which is always nice! After a little bit of hanging out and enjoying the weather and playing pretend baseball with Declan (he always scores a run, sometime multiple runs on one hit), it was over to friends Ryan & Shelley for some grilled dinner and catching up with the gang. Then I stopped back to Brothers to catch up with the softball team (Brothers is our sponsor, and many of them had stayed at the field for another hour to watch a 7:15 game so they were just in the middle of the festivities). Around 10:30 we all decided to call it good and I headed home to enjoy a FULL night's sleep (the past few days I didn't get one!)

Saturday morning I was up and at 'em at 7am, planning to leave by 8:30 (I almost did!) so I could meet up with my friend Raquel in St. Paul at 10 for coffee. I haven't seen here for awhile, and we went to a neat little coffee shop called "Nina's" in St. Paul.

I have to give a shout out to my cousin Chad for yesterday, as he completed his second Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, and beat his previous time. I ran Grandma's with Chad in 2006. I wasn't there yesterday but was there in spirit!

On to my sister's house where everyone was gathered for Keagann's 5-year-old birthday party. Keagann's birthdays are always a very lively affair, and this year was no exception. Food, sprinklers, water balloons, a Dora the Explorer pinata (I'm still wondering if it was "ok" for 5-year-olds to be bashing Dora with a baseball bat), Care Bear cake, lots of presents, and just lots of fun. I got to spend a lot of time with the girls afterwards too, and that's when Laynie isn't so shy - when there's only a few people in the house.

I stayed at mom's, and finally got her DTV converter box hooked up - the switchover date was June 12th so it really hadn't been that long. She was surprised that she now gets 10 channels over the air, all in crystal-clear digital quality, instead of the 3-5 fuzzy analog ones she used to get. I know she doesn't watch much TV but this might make it more enjoyable.

Sunday morning, Erin, mom, and I played some of the special music at mom's church for her pastor's last Sunday there. We have our "regular" trio song we have played forever and ever, and Erin and mom played another nice song. As we all had things to do that day, I stopped off at the Northern Lights coffee shop in North Branch, picked up some "Grogg" (their special house blend of coffee that's really good) and headed home. My loop-driving disease is reaching new heights - instead of taking 35E like I would normally do (which is the shortest and most obvious route) I took 35W, knowing it was longer, and there was construction going on, just to see the progress. I get this explorer-driving thing from my dad - the main difference is that I only do it by myself :) (just kidding dad!)

And last but not least, speaking of dads, a happy Father's Day to my dad and to all the dads out there! I was blessed with a great dad and two terrific grandpas (rest in peace). Sister Erin also decided that uncles should be included on Father's Day since there's no uncle's day, and gave Erin and I a nifty little card from the girls.

Honkers Lose

but it was a half day off work! While we didn't get a free ticket package this year like most years, we did get a half day off if we chose to go to the afternoon Rochester Honkers game on Thursday. My department had a very good showing, and the beer batter struck out in the 3rd, prompting us all to stock up on $1.50 draws for the rest of the game. A few of us stopped over to Chester's after the game to grab some "real" food (vs. ballpark food).

My Thursday started very early in the morning, as I dropped Erin off at the airport for a 12-day trip to help his grandma move in Florida. :( I'm filling up my schedule with lots of friend activities while he's gone.

Saturday I get to see my nieces and attend Keagann's 5-year birthday party. Hard to believe it's already been 5 years! Her birthday parties are always fun - being the social little person she is, there are lots of people, lots of presents, and lots of food! Sunday mom, sister, and I are playing a couple songs for their church service.

Next week - my calendar is actually WIDE OPEN! That never happens...

Off to softball in a few hours after a 2-week layoff. Let's hope the weather is at least decent.

DOJ Briefing on Marriage

OK I was trying to stay off of the political postings, but...I do wonder what the Obama administration Department of Justice is doing...

http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid90676.asp

and the video itself:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

and BTW...Rachel Maddow is cool. Just sayin'...

Trivia of the day

The trivia question at Caribou this morning was "How much would could a woodchuck chuck?" - ok, so besides being the most vague and really non-answerable question they've ever had (the girl at the counter said she'd take anything because it was such a bad question, so I said 10 lbs), it reminded me of how my grandma and I used to do those saying and limericks when I was little. "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? A wood chuck would chuck all the wood if a woodchuck could chuck wood." Never mind that they don't make any sense.

Which then reminded me of 1st grade and this show the class put on for parents, where we each had to memorize one of those things and recite it to everyone. I don't even remember the one I did, because it was stupid (even in 1st grade I knew that), but I remember being jealous of Melissa Kastruski because she had the one I wanted..."A canner exceedingly canny, one morning remarked to his granny. A canner can can anything that he can but a canner can't can a can can he?"

Why I can remember that as clear as if it were yesterday, but I can't remember what I had for lunch is beyond me.

Weekend

I think the weather might actually align correctly this weekend, as it looks like we're going to have a beautiful Minnesota summer weather weekend!

Cousin Andy and friends Will & Amanda are in town visiting and staying at our house, all to converge on a wedding this evening. Good times!

Some additional Pre findings

This is probably more for people who have a Pre or are thinking about getting one, some issues I've found and how to fix them.

Yesterday I brought my phone in to work and set it on my desk like I have always done. While I don't get good signal in this metal-and-wire surrounded building, I've always been able to get "enough" for a minimal data connection, text messages, and at least knowing I got a phone call (talking didn't work so well until I got closer to a window). But it never ran the battery down. Yesterday, with a full charge at 9am, the battery started dropping drastically through the morning until 1pm when I saw a big dead battery graphic on the screen. Additionally, the phone itself was quite warm, almost hot to the touch.

Some online searching of forums found that MANY people were experiencing the same issue. Lots of speculation as to what the cause was - bad batches of batteries? Signal quality (several people were at work like me)? But the majority seemed to think it was related to all the onling syncing that the "Synergy" WebOS does. In addition, I saw several posts saying there was a 1.0.2 phone update that seemed to help (and indeed there was - 67MB and you had to force it to download). I took the phone home, plugged it in, forced the download, and after about 20 minutes it was all updated. In addition, several posts had warned of the email sync features causing problems, so I removed my Yahoo accounts (which are secondary for me), left on Gmail because it's my primary. Between those two things, the phone is now cool and the battery life is what I was expecting - this morning I've been at work 2 hours and it's still at 95%.

I think this update also had some stability fixes for the syncing applications - the calendar was being really flaky yesterday, and I read some posts saying that after the udpate people had removed their google calendar account and re-added it, and then things worked ok. I get really nervous when I start doing things like removing/adding because older sync applications sometimes handled that really badly, so I did a complete export of all my google calendars first (fortunately a very easy thing to do) before I started. Turns out it all worked fine - and quite fast - removing and re-adding took less than 7 minutes.

I also found out that exporting your contacts from Outlook first and importing into Google Contacts works MUCH better than importing into the phone first - I'm now not getting any duplicates. Sadly, I'm also not getting the "extras" fields like birthday, anniversary, spouse, and children to the phone - they are in google, just not in the phone. Hopefully Palm will fix that at some point.

I also discovered that you can group tasks and order them the way you want - so the tasks app is now looking a bit better :) Wish that would sync with Google Tasks - probably will eventually.

Finally, I discovered that not all of my memos actually transferred over from Outlook. I don't use memos all that much, but kind of annoying that they didn't get copied over. I'm looking into what "document" support is on this phone, because many of my memos are really more suited to documents.

Don't miss the nav key as much now, but I find I'm missing the stylus a lot - particularly for cutting and pasting - my big fingers can't pinpoint spots on the screen and I don't know how to select stuff.

To be continued I'm sure...

Bizarre

This sort of political thing happens a lot in other countries...but New York???

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/revolt-could-imperil-democratic-control-of-senate/?hp

Weekend

Despite the weather, a fun weekend! Friday night I went to a most excellent graduation party for one of our Fuego band members who is graduating - the party happened to be at the Plummer house...and had 3 kinds of Daube's cake including carrot cake with cream cheese frosting...the lower carb diet was out the window at that point :)

Saturday it was cold and rainy, but that didn't deter both Erin and myself from our standing-in-line tasks. We recently found out that the Olmsted Waste/Energy center was again selling very reduced cost compost bins, as well as rain barrels. Based on people who bought them last year, we know we had to be there early. It also happened that Saturday was the release of the Palm Pre phone, something I've been looking at upgrading to since it was released. The Sprint Store opened at 8am (early for the extra demand) and the compost bins/rain barrels were going on sale at the Apache Mall at 9. Erin graciously volunteered to go down to the mall by himself so that I could get to the Sprint Store early and get in line - I owe him one :) We were both successful in our missions - I got home around 10 with a new Palm Pre and he got home around 10:15 with an awesome compost bin and rain barrel - for less than $100 (normally they'd be at least twice that much!)

No rest for the weary, as it was off to Minneapolis to meet up with friends for a boys weekend out. Given the rain, we had to compe up wtih other things to do (had been planning on walking around downtown, possibly a Segue tour, Como Park Zoo) - we settled lunch at the Rock Bottom Brewery downtown and Rosdale Center for an afternoon movie. Everyone of course had the same idea, but we got in ok. We all had several complimentary drink coupons that came with the hotel stay, so we met up for happy hour down in the lounge. After a little more relax time, we headed to Brit's Pub (one of my very favorite places to eat downtown) for a great dinner. We were debating on whether to go out later or not, but with the still-rainy weather we opted for hanging out up in our rooms and relaxing and chatting (and even watching the end of "Titanic" :)

Sunday morning Bill and I got up early for coffee, while everyone else slept. After a leisurely two hour morning coffee downtown, everyone else started to get up and we headed down to the hotel restaurant for our complimentary breakfast - wonderful food - and a waiter who was completing with Erin on who could do the coolest napkin folding (I think it was a draw). With the still-rainy weather, we checked out and split up with the rest of the guys. We wandered around for a bit and finally found a nice Barnes & Noble in Roseville and did some browsing/reading while waiting to meet my family for lunch. Around 2 we met everyone at the Olive Garden in Maplewood to celebrate sister's birthday. Fun to see the nieces! Brother-in-law Chris had 2 things to return to the Maplewood mall so we took the girls and grandma over and wandered around the mall (and got Cinnabons for Erin). The carousel in the mall was even running and they were very excited about getting a ride on that. Finally, around 5, we headed for Rochester and a little relax time before Monday.

And it's still raining....not that I'm not thankful for the rain, but it's too bad it can't come in little doses :)

Palm Pre "Review"

Disclaimer: The following is my own biased opinion and I have no formal qualifications as a reviewer...then again, people who get paid to review things have no formal qualifications either, and they are probably on the take by companies making products, and I pay for these products...so maybe I'm more qualified :)

I arrived at the Sprint store in Rochester at 7:45am on a rainy Saturday morning, and there was about 15 people there - so no mad rush. Buddy and IBM colleague Karen was there too, and graciously shared her umbrella! Armed with a full tank of coffee, and given it was only 15 minutes until the store opened, a little rain wasn't so bad, and made us die-hards who were there feel like we were earning something.

(If you want to know about the phone itself, skip to the "The Phone" section - the first section is about my upgrade experience in general)

The Purchase

The sign-up experience was about as good as it could be - the store was well prepared for the number of people, had a full staff, and a person coordinating the line. She was telling us about the phone's features, which was nice, but all of us in line probably already knew all of this by heart and could have sold the phones ourselves. It took me about an hour total to get to a representative - 15 minutes before the store opened and another 45 in line waiting. So not too bad.

I commend Sprint and Palm for planning ahead on this one on setup - for geeks like me, we'll spend the hours and hours it takes to get everything perfectly anyway, but the setup wizard on this phone is fantastic. You create a Palm "profile", which is an automatic backup of everything on your phone "in the cloud" - so if you have to replace the phone, or (presumably) get a new phone later, returning to the state you were in is a few touches away. This is how it's SUPPOSED to be. Every new phone I've gotten has been like pulling teeth to get it all syncing and back to the way I had the old one (and this includes the seven Treo 600 replacements I went through because they kept going out). I know that we didn't have the internet connectivity horsepower to accomplish this before, but this is a major step forward.

The guy who was helping me was very friendly and knowledgeable, but again, probably all wasted on me given that I will figure out every detail myself anyway and read all sorts of online forums. He was helpful with choosing a new plan - and yes that is one gotcha on this, that you do have to be on a "everything" plan (iPhone users should be used to this one!) For me this wasn't a big leap because I was almost on one of those plans anyway, and for a few more dollars this just simplifies it and lets Erin now have full internet access. We have basically unlimited everything now, so the price is the price. Some people I talked to in line were on "granfathered" plans, and were upset to find out they had to switch. I think this is just reality now if you're going to be on the latest stuff - price of admission.

We got everything set up, I paid the bill - $329 after taxes, but there is a $100 rebate so it was only $229 and a new 2-year contact - given past expriences with new models, this was cheap/reasonable to me - and I get to keep or sell my "old" phone (which isn't very old!), so all in all this won't turn out to be too expensive. They tried to sell me a case and the Palm "touchstone" which is a magnetic charger that you just set the phone on and it charges. Admittedly it looks quite cool, but at $70 the cord also looks cool :) The two cases they had were not at all impressive to me - I'll probably get another InvisiShield coating like I did for the last phone, as it has worked wonderfuly.

The Setup

I will qualify all of this with saying that I haven't actually had a ton of time to try everything out yet - but I've done enough to give my inital take.

Again, the setup wizard is fantastic and seamless. After setting up your Palm profile, it asks you where you'd like to sync things to. I already knew I wanted to use Google as my primary synchronization agent, and from the looks of the phone and documentation, it was designed to work well with Google. I'm sure it also works well with Exchange, but I probably won't ever use that.

Right away, I found something I spent about 3 days looking for when I got my Treo 800w (Windows Mobile). Palm provides a free application which transfers everything from either Palm Desktop or Outlook to your new phone over USB. And not any flaky application either, this one actually works. (When I went from the Treo 650 to 800w, I suffered through 3 days of trying to get some flaky Outlook conduit thing to work before finally giving up and paying $25 for a third party program that did it, and even then I spent a lot of time cleaning stuff up afterwards. So kudos to Palm on this one - the program just works.

After the program is done (< style="font-weight: bold;">The Phone

People coming from an iPhone or another similar point/swipe based operating system will probably have no problem getting used to this one. Me coming from a long proud line of Treo phones, well, the touch screen is different, there is no stylus, there's these things called "motions", and most of all, no 4-direction nav key. I was missing this terribly at the beginning - I kept trying to move the center button by reflex, and of course it did nothing. But, I decided this is the future and I wanted to really give it a try different is not always bad!

The most impressive thing right off the bat is the screen. WOW - the clarity and resolution is just amazing. Probably better than my first LCD monitor. The second most impressive thing has got to be the size - this makes me feel like I'm actually in the world of cell phones and not undersized PCs like the Treos were (they got much better over the years - I laugh at the size of the first Treo 300 I had! Where the 800w was actually pretty slim).

The slide-out keyboard - I was a little worried about the keyboard, because the reviews were mixed on this one. This makes or breaks a Palm phone for me - and when I first tried out the Centro, the keyboard was square and the keys were tiny, and I chose not to get one. The slightly curved keyboard layout they've evolved to over the years is good too. I'm glad to say this one is pretty good - the keys are slightly "sticky" which actually makes them easier to find/push, they are big enough, and curved. Down sides for me - I wish the keyboard slid out just a little bit further because the top row is a little hard to get to with my big thumbs, and they moved three "key" keys around (pardon the pun!) - the period, the comma, and the "at" @ symbol. Now they did these moves for the greater good, because before the comma and @ sign were shifted keys, and now they're not - so in the long run I'll be glad they did this - but just takes a bit of getting used to.

Button-wise, they've gone to the "minimalist" approach Apple seems to take with buttons. This is fine with me, because they kept the one that I think is the absolute most important - the one that switches between vibrate and ring modes. I NEVER want to have to dig through 3 menus to turn off the ringer. I don't know why every phone in existence doesn't have one of these switches! They have the standard two side volume buttons, power button of course, and the new "center" navigation button, which really doesn't do much but lights up and is pretty. Absent is the 4-way nav key which I'm admittedly still missing, but not as much as I was 2 days ago (more on that in a minute).

One other small external annoyance is that the charger/USB port is covered by one of those pull-out plastic covers, and it's impossible to get off easily. OK, so maybe covering the port helps to protect it, but I personally think this was done to make us buy the $70 touchstone charger. The little plastic cover may end up "falling off" accidentally by me :) Good news is that they're sticking with micro USB like all new phones are moving to - hooray for a real standard finally!

Oh...almost forgot one of the best external features - a real, live quarter-inch headphone jack! Not one of those goofy cell phone sized ones or some USB plug with a headphone converter. WHY it has taken this long to get these into smart phones (and car stereos for that matter) is beyond me - it probably costs next to nothing to put them in, they're compatible with everything...but I digress.

The OS/Apps/Software

I'm not totally sure they should really be calling this "Palm", and I'm glad they didn't call it a "Treo" because it is nothing like anything Palm has ever done before. This is a real smart phone internet-based operating system - not something adapted and evolved from electronic organizers, and not a stripped down version of Windows with a few extra phone features. This looks to be designed from the ground up to be made for smart phones.

The first "newest thing" on this phone is what they call "Universal Search". This means that on the main screen, you just start typing something and it will look for it in all your application data. If it doesn't find anything (or even if it does), you're given the option to go do a web search. So, really you can get away with just typing stuff for a lot of things without going to a specific application.

Besides the basics that any smart phone comes with (contacts, tasks, memos, calendar, messaging, and of course the phone app), it also comes pre-packaged with a google maps made for WebOS, and a web browser also custom made for this OS from the looks of it. There are some other pre-packaged apps, mostly on there to try and sell you things, and there are more apps you can download and try/buy if you want. I'm not big on apps, more on data management and communcation, so didn't dig much into those.

The customizable "settings" are actually quite minimal as well - something I haven't decided yet whether I like or not. Windows Mobile had a setting for EVERYTHING (and *gasp* even a registry). This is just the basics. Each app also has a small set of customizable settings, specific to the app. So far I haven't hit anything major that I couldn't change or do, but haven't dug in yet.

Contacts - nothing too exciting here, although it will let you "link" a contact to multiple places - so, for example, if you have John Doe in your address book, you can link that entry to your contacts on Google, Facebook, an Exchange Server account, and probably others. I really have no idea what that means though, because things like Facebook are more/less read only when it comes to address book I think. Maybe not..who knows. A couple of things I didn't see - my WinMo contacts had fields for kids and anniversaries, doesn't look like this one does. Still looking at how the linking works though.

Calendar - well, this might be the biggest advance. None of the previous Palm phones or organizers supported multiple calendars. This one not only does, it supports multiple calendars from multiple different places. So, you can have all your Google account calendars (multiple of your own, plus any others in your "subscribed" list), Exchange calendars for work, etc. all in one view - and then only view the ones you want. All in different colors. For me, I love this because I have two of my own Google calendars (one "public" and one "private" which is more of a journal/log for myself), Erin has a Google calendar, and I'm subscribed to some other calendars like one for US Holidays. Now I sync them all at once and can see them all layered together. No idea if I can do this with my work calendar yet, but if I could it would be cool.

Tasks - actually this looks to be a bit of a step back, although I don't use this a lot. On WinMo you could have the "state" of your tasks show on the Today screen so you'd know how many you have, overdue ones, high priority, etc. On here, nothing - the tasks app isn't even one of the default 4, so to get there you'd have go to the apps screen and select it. I'm really hoping they'll get a little more creative on this one and add a few features, or someone will write a nice app to front it.

Memos - oddly, it seems like every phone I've had has gotten WORSE on memos. Palm OS had a very nicely organized memos app - sorted and by category - making it easy to get to anything. WinMo just had them all listed as files, and if you wanted to organize them you had to create folders in the OS (which wasn't totally bad but still kinda dumb when Outlook DID categorize them nicely). This app doesn't even sort them. - it literally looks like a bulletin board with thumb backs and notes scattered all over it. Once I understood how it ties into universal search though (see above) it looked a little better - if I want to get to the memo that has all my account userids in it, I just start typing "userid" and it brings up anything on the phone with that in it. So, you might need to do some judicious naming (don't name a memo with "lunch" in it and search on that because you'll get a gazillion matching calendar entries too) but overall it will probably work just fine - I may not ever even go into the memo app itself.

Pictures - the first phone camera I've ever seen with a flash and it does seem to work well - I was in dim lounge lighting at happy hour on our trip to the cities and the pictures turned out pretty good. Not as good as my real camera yet, but better than my last phone. Nothing that can take video though, which my last 2 phones had. Honestly never really used that much, but still surprising since it probably isn't any special hardware anymore. Easy to send the pictures via SMS or e-mail, and also equally easy to get them off of the camera back into Picasa on my computer, when you plug in the phone to the USB connection it just looks like a USB storage device, and Picasa instantly sees that and finds the pictures - that's quite an advance from the other phones I've had - on the Palm OS, you had to use their special sync program add-on which was horrible, and WinMo wasn't much better (although it did at least just copy the pictures to a folder). This is seamless.

Music/Video - I haven't tried the music yet but with a regular quarter-inch headphone jack it will probably work well for this. I DID notice (and also read about) the rogue code in there that makes it look like an iPhone - something Apple is apparently VERY upset about. I don't know why Apple would care - sure, it might detract from iPod sales, and possibly iPhone sales (although with two separate carriers the odds are less likely) but it keeps people buying stuff from the iTunes store, which is their ultimate goal, right???? Video is fantastic - you could really watch stuff on here. There's a YouTube app built in, but even watching from a web page looks and sounds great. The built-in speaker is even very good! Turning to landscape mode is almost instantaneous too - I probably won't use that a ton but for video it works quite well.

Battery Life - this may be one of the things that gets it - each phone I had got progressively better on this, and although I'm still experimenting with turning on/off settings, so far it has not been great. I think turning off GPS completely might help, and don't even bother turning on Wi-Fi unless absolutely necessary (and why would you with a 3G connection?) I doubt I'll use Bluetooth either except with my headset, since syncing is all over the air now, but Bluetooth never really was a power hog to begin with. The jury's still out. It does seem to charge fairly fast, and all my previous chargers work since it's all micro USB now.

Overall - I think the jury is still out for me. So far I've liked it more every day, and the more I learn, the more it seems I'll end up liking it as much or more as the Treo line. I also know this is the bleeding edge here, and there will be some bugs. But I also think this is the direction things are going on - iPhone, Palm Pre, and all the other smaller variants that are out there.

Fun weekend coming up

This has been a great week - for the first time in a long time I had NO nighttime schedule activities, and have been able to enjoy the string of (IMHO) perfect Minnesota weather. I've even gotten back into some running! Tonight I get to go to a fun graduation party, and will be spending the weekend in the Twin Cities with friends, and visiting friends and family.

Tomorrow is also the long-awaited (by me) release of the Palm Pre phone - if it is anything like it's being billed to be, it's the one I've been waiting for all these years of smart phones.

Move along...

I woke up this morning to a hilarious picture my friend Chris sent me that I really have to share - even if you're not a Star Wars buff you'll probably get this one!

http://www.paulspoerry.com/wp-content/uploads/farm4.static.flickr.com/3217/2762458387_48576d339c_o.jpg

Class Action Lawsuits

I am faced with a small moral dilemma this morning - yesterday I got an e-mail saying I was part of a class action lawsuit against Palm and Sprint concerning the Treo 600 phone - apparently there is some dispute that there were statements made by Palm and Sprint that there were to be Bluetooth and Wi-Fi cards made that were compatible for the Treo 600, and in fact there never were. The result of the lawsuit is that anyone who wants to file a claim will get a $20 credit on their Sprint bill (or if you're not still a Sprint customer, you will get $27.50 towards anything at the Sprint online store).

Now...in case I've never mentioned my Treo 600 story...I have been an early adopter of the "smart phone" ever since they started coming out - the big Treo 300 originally. When the 600 came out, I got it very soon after. Unfortunately the Treo 600 had many bugs - two of the biggest being the screen would start to have all sorts of dead pixels after awhile, and the phone receiver would evetually die. Under warranty and the service plan, I went through 7 Treo 600's before they finally upgraded me to the 650 (which never had a problem).

The moral dilemma I face here is that the thing the lawsuit is about really had no bearing on me - I never wanted or needed a wi-fi or bluetooth card for my Treo 600. I'm sure I spent at least $20 in time, gas, and energy getting 7 replacement Treo 600s. But...if I file a claim, am I contributing to the bloated legal system we have (that I think needs reform at some point)?

Maybe $20 isn't worth my conscience....