Thursday, December 18, 2008

My BlackBerry Just Got Cooler

I tried out Google's Sync for my BlackBerry, and it was horrible.  I never kept up with my Google contacts, only my Outlook/BBerry contacts, and Google overwrote all my data with it's old data, and then when I would fix it, it would just reinstate it's bad data.  Thankfully I was able to preserve my Outlook data by not syncing.

Removing Google Sync turned out to be quite a pain, and I wound up having to wipe my BBerry, and clear all the software, and reinstall from scratch.  In doing so, I also updated my device software, and now it's looking better than before.

One of my few complaints about the AT&T Curve (8310) was that I couldn't download AIM or Yahoo! Messenger.  I could only by third party software that was always slower.  That is fixed, and now I can log in to all my IM accounts.  One of my other complaints - no HTML emails.  Now I have HTML emails.  Also, if I have a picture saved in someone's contact, that picture shows up in the header for emails from them - just like in Outlook.

There's also multi-folder support.  If you have two calendar folders, you can sync both, but new entries you make in your BBerry will only go on the default folder.  But you could always make a note to yourself to transfer that entry over.

I haven't been able to play with it much yet, so there are probably other new things I have yet to discover.  But I'm excited all over again.

Bobby's HTC died a couple weeks ago.  A friend got the BlackBerry Storm, and after playing with it a bit we were both quite envious.  Bobby has been telling me he needs a new phone, and I was telling him that no, he needs to wait - he can't just get a new phone because he wants one.  But then, it proved to be insane.  The phone.  He turned it on, and it just started beeping, as if someone were pressing buttons, but no one was touching it.  He set it on the counter, and it dialed a number on it's own.

If we had Verizon, or our AT&T contracts were up anytime soon, we probably would have switched to Verizon for the Storm, and so the contract could be in the company's name instead of ours, but we already have contracts with AT&T on two of our three phones - one with a year left, one with almost 2 years left.

I was pushing him to get a BlackBerry, just because I love mine so much, but he wound up choosing an iPhone instead.  So far he likes it.  He's got another 2 weeks before he has to commit, so we'll see.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

The Rain

Boy did it pour here today.

I am fully aware that I live in Southern California, and that "it rained a lot here" doesn't compare to a great many other places, but for SoCal, it rained A LOT!

Emma is learning the clarinet, and she had her first show today.  The school had planed 2 assemblies in the morning, and a show for the parents in the evening, but Bobby had his last final that night so we planned to make it to the 9:20 assembly.  I took the day off, and planned to take advantage of the free time and get a haircut as well.  We were, as usual, running a bit later than preferred, and Bobby was driving a little faster than I would like, but we made it there safely, and just at 9:20.

But as we were walking up - there were parents walking away, saying that the second assembly had been cancelled due to the rain.  You see, the kids were to be sitting on the floor of the cafeteria, and with the rain they would be tracking in water and mud that the faculty didn't want them to wind up sitting in.  They'd already sent all the kids back to class, so we asked if they could get Emma out of class so we could at least say hello and tell her how bummed we were that we couldn't see her play.  She was obviously super excited to see us, but didn't seem upset that we missed the show.

So we hopped on the freeway to travel the one exit from near Emma's school to near Bobby's sister-in-law's mom's salon where I was going to get my haircut.  It took 40 minutes.

A smaller semi had rammed into the back of a FedEx semi, and the FedEx semi had wound up jacknifed across all the lanes of the freeway.  After my haircut, we got onto the freeway to head back home so Bobby could get to a job inspection he had scheduled.  On the way, we saw two more jacknifed semis.  The cabs of both had clearly swung all the way around on the driver's side to ram up against their trailers, because the driver's side doors of each were well dented.  There were also two autos that had spun out, and traffic overall was quite bad.  I was glad I would be staying home the rest of the day.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Interesting Article

My blog reading led me to this article today about perceived healthfulness of a food hiding the actual healthfulness of that food.  I'll admit it, I don't eat at Subway but I do view deli sandwiches as healthier than McDonald's, but I also would never eat a 12" sandwich.  I'm a sucker for the chips though.

In fact, I refuse to eat at McDonald's, and avoid all those burger chains as much as I can.  I make a better burger anyway.  ;)

I find that if I go out for lunch I'm tempted to eat a larger portion, feel overly full, and then experience a sort of food-coma.  But when I make my own lunch, I eat a smaller portion, don't feel weighed down, and remain productive.  I wonder how many calories my homemade, no mayo, toasted roast beef & muenster sandwich with olive oil-sauteed mushrooms and onions with marinated spinach and tomato has.