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Sunday, March 21, 2004

I got my new lenses on Thursday, so I had to put up or shut up on the camera bag problem. I spent Saturday morning at Austin Camera Co-op placing my various gear into various bags, trying to minmax volume and comfort. And then I took pictures of my old and new bags and wrote a little essay about it. Because I'm kind of an obsessive dork.

Read The Gadget Bag Problem (Camera Remix). 10:10:07 PM (comments [])

Current meatspace coordinates: Cupertino, CA. Will return to Austin Wednesday night.

Things I'm grateful for when I'm on a plane:

Noise-canceling in-ear headphones.
An iPod pre-loaded with my custom-built time-fastforwarding dance/trance playlist "Directed Autism"
DVDs. (Shockingly, I didn't watch any on this flight -- spent all my time editing the gadget bag post. But usually it's a staple.)

Things I miss:

Places to put my feet and elbows.
Places to put my laptop screen. Why is it always just guy in front of me who leans back? I'm happy to report the newer 15" PowerBook's slightly lower screen clearance just barely fits in the tray area even when reclined, and I can just barely type with it.
Google. What are we supposed to do up here? Live like SAVAGES?

Currently reading: Pattern Recognition, William Gibson. A book that starts out by describing jet lag as the time it takes for your soul to catch up with you seemed appropriate for my first flight in several months. 10:04:06 PM (comments [])

Another sign the apocalypse is coming (or possibly has come and is now available on DVD): credit cards are sending me checks so that I can have "fast, flexible financial solutions" "as the tax deadline approaches." AYIE!

I was actually all virtuous this year and filed my taxes last month. 10:09:35 AM (comments [])

By the way, the T68's master reset code is 0000, if you don't want to send your phone book and other data back in that mailer. 10:01:21 AM (comments [])

I got my T226 "upgrade" a few days ago, and finally tried it out. By comparison to the T68 it supposedly replaces, it's bulkier, has a shittier screen, and if possible takes even longer to start up. By comparison to the T616 I actually replaced my T68 with a month ago it feels like some fossil unearthed a dig that you weren't really that excited in excavating in the first place.

On the plus side, it does have the "old phone" ring. But damn, it just feels so cheap and plastic.

All other considerations aside, though, I'm addicted to synching my phone via bluetooth, so the T226 (which otherwise bears a reasonable resemblance to the T68's feature set and even menu layout, with the addition of polyphonic tones and downloadable games) would just never be an option.

I applaud AT&T for trying to be good about getting customers up to date as they upgrade their network, but their choice of upgrade phones -- and the lack of a "or pay $XX for a better option" path -- means that their implementation ultimately sucks.

(But, hey! How freakin' cool is it that I can just move my SIM card between phones to try different ones out? And, new fact learned today: apparently my last few calls are recorded on the SIM card, making the core of my address book and call log always accessible. Nice!) 9:57:34 AM (comments [])