Samsung A900 (Blade)

It is long past time to get a new cell phone and plan. My contract with Sprint has long since expired so I’ve been researching the options. I have several criteria I consider essential for my cell phone service:

  • National Coverage – It must work while traveling
  • Home Coverage – Good reception at my house (duh)
  • Bluetooth/USB sync – Import/Sync address book from PC to phone
  • Modem/Data – tether to laptop for everywhere internet access

The national coverage and data access are mandatory for me because of my consulting business. I offer a service to my clients and guarantee them a 1 hour response. Thus, my phone must provide me with the ability to get internet access from nearly anywhere. That narrows down my list of potential service providers to Sprint, Cingular, and Verizon.

Beyond the choice of providers is the matter of phones. I had been using a Sanyo 8100 for years. I am able to tether to it using a USB cable and sync my address book to it via BitPim. It is not pretty or elegant, but it works. I have two problems with that solution. The phone is HUGE in my pocket so I hate carrying it, and it drops calls with great regularity. It needs to be replaced.

Last year I tried out a PM-325, also from Sprint. It was a slick little phone but Sprint crippled the Bluetooth support so that it only worked with headsets. USB tethering was also borked (I can’t remember why) so I returned it a week later and have been waiting for a better phone to appear since. (Note: Sprint later released a firmware update that enabled Bluetooth tethering)

Last month I wandered into a Cingular store and bought a Motorola Razr v3. I used it for a few days. The phone has a great feature list. I immediately synced my address book to it (yay) and tethered my laptop to it via Bluetooth. Yay again. However, after I started making phone calls with it, I noticed that the voice clarity and coverage at my house stank. I frequently had to ask the other person to repeat what they said. The clarity of calls on Sprint really has spoiled me.

The other problem with the Razr is speed. The net access is really, really slow compared to Sprint’s Vision. The lag is so high that interactive connections (ie, SSH which I absolutely must have) are painful to use. I thought perhaps it was simply a network issue but I was in Wal-Mart one day. I needed to look up something on the web so I pulled up the browser and spent 10 minutes trying to get to the page I wanted to see. I realized that I could have driven home, looked it up on my computer and driven back before I found what I needed using the phones (wap) browser.

I concluded that the Razr was not really an upgrade from my aged 8100 so I returned it. Since then I’ve gotten two incorrect (way overbilled) invoices from Cingular. I called them and the kind customer service lady promised to correct the bill. It’s been almost two months and I still haven’t gotten a correct invoice from them. That’s not exactly a great enticement for me to ever try them again.

Finally, on Dec 30th, I called Sprint again and they made me a sweet deal to renew my contract. I got a Samsung A900 phone for $100 shipped. It has gotten excellent reviews from all over and it supports ED-VO, Sprint’s new high speed mobile access, which includes support for streaming TV to your phone. The promise of high speed on my phone and the ultra-thin profile were nice additions to the other requirements of mine that this phone met.

When we got home from Michigan, it was waiting for me. I activated it and have been happily playing with it ever since. Bluetooth tethering to my laptop works great. I was able to import most of my address book entries (it only supports 500). Network access is really, really quick. In fact, unlike the Razr, everything about this phone is quick. Menus come up pretty quickly, the web browser launches quickly, Google maps load quickly, and movies download quickly.

The camera phone is good, nearly as good as phone sized cameras get. It plays MP3’s just fine but only holds a few of them. I haven’t figured out how to get GPS data from it to my laptop yet. I did install Google’s Local for mobile phones. It is way cool. In all, I’m extremely pleased and this phone was well worth the wait. It’s highly recommended.

I can see your phone records

Do you want to find out if your spouse is making secret phone calls from their work or mobile phone? Are you concerned that your senator is making a few too many phone calls to certain law enformant agent(s)? Do you think your telephone records are secure from prying eyes? Think again. Yours, mine, and practically anyone elses phone information is easily available to anyone with a few dollars to spare. Are you freaked out yet? Good.

CBS 3 in Philadelphia and the Sun Times in Chicago have both reported on a web site (http://www.locatecell.com/) that will allow you to retrieve any persons phone records for a modest fee. Consider yourself warned about the privacy implications of this, they are mind boggling.

Even if a law is passed that makes this illegal, the fact that it is possible will only deter those who actively sell this info. It will still be readily available in black hat circles. Consider that if you wanted to call someone anonymously, you could no longer use any telephone associated with your identity. If you used a pay phone and someone spotted you, they could easily determine the number you called by querying the logs of that pay phone.

Christmas Road Trippin’

I turned in the my last final, yay! After a false start (I forget our 2nd iPod), we’re on our way to Michigan. We’re taking I-30E through Texas, Arkansas, and then turning North at Memphis. From there I-55 N to I-70 through Indianapolis and finally Lansing. We’ll probably be in Michigan tomorrow afternoon morning.

7:58PM – Lat 95,30,08 Long 33,08,47.
9:09PM – Lat 94,02,33 Long 33,27,59. Texarkana
4:13AM – Lat 90,08,00 Long 37,56,32. Near St. Louis
4:56AM – Lat 90,13,33 Long 38,35,13. St. Louis (downtown)
9:56AM – Lat 86,07,18 Long 39,47,39 Indianapolis
2:00PM – Marshall, MI

Whole wheat is icky, right?

Nutrition experts claim that whole wheat is very good for me. Experience tells me that whole wheat products taste nasty. My prior experience using whole wheat flour to make bread resulted in bricks. Great for building a fireplace or a pyramid, but not suitable for eating. Nothing good ever resulted from my early forays with whole wheat flour. I solved the problem the same way other bakers do, ignore the nutrition experts and use white flour.

A couple months ago, I learned something that intrigued me. Whole wheat flour is something of a misnomer. You can’t even buy whole wheat flour at the supermarket. The reason is quite simple, the bran and the germ of the wheat go rancid within hours unless the flour is kept from oxidizing. Since storing bulk flour in a fridge/freezer is impractical at the store and your home, both must be removed. You’ve heard of wheat germ right? It’s got a nice nutty flavor and it’s full of vitamins and nutrients. It comes in sealed containers that must be stored in the fridge. Well, that is what is missing from your flour, as well as the bran. It gets replaced by synthentic nutrients.

None of that is newsworthy. However, a bunch of different sources led me to believe that whole wheat flavor is a function of freshness. What you can buy at the supermarket isn’t very fresh and the additives and preservatives are why it has poor flavor. There are only a couple ways to get fresh whole wheat flour. One can buy it direct from a mill or co-op, where they vacuum pack it with nitrogen so it doesn’t oxidize. Once opened it must be refrigerated or frozen to keep it fresh. Shipping is expensive.

The other option is to mill it yourself. The advantage to milling is that your flour is always fresh (grind it as necessary). Wheat berries are purchased in bulk and they last for decades. We buy wheat berries for $0.59/lb at Whole Foods. The disadvantage is that we had to buy a mill. I did a bunch of research on mills and bought a Nutrimill.

The results have been quite surprising, living up to all the claims. I started out by making a loaf of whole wheat bread. The flavor was actually quite good, but too dense for sandwiches. We finished it up as a batch of superb french toast. My next batch of bread was wonderful. I shared a loaf with our human neighbors who claim to like it as well. Whole wheat that isn’t icky! Pleased with the results, I tried it next in pancakes, again with superb results. I have since taken loaves to numerous social events and everyone likes my bread. Even the kids come back for seconds!

We had bought a few different kinds of wheat so Jen used some of the soft wheat (lower gluten) for flour in her chocolate chip cookies. They too were excellent! She baked up a couple dozen extras and we shared them with our neighbors. Nathan and Vicki weren’t home so we left a dozen cookies with their two teenage sons. Twenty minutes later Nathan returned from dropping Vicki off at work and all the cookies were gone.

Excepting my experiments such as the Thanksgiving loaves where I used soft wheat instead of hard wheat to see what difference it made, I have had consistently good results. When I do experiment, such as my first attempt at sourdough, our furry neighbors find it quite acceptable. They stop by our back porch each night to see if I’ve made anything new that fails to meet human consumption standards.

“All I want for Christmas…”

I’m six and a half months old and all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. Yesterday I touched and discovered mommy’s teeth and now I want my own. I thought about it sooo much that I think it’s happening. This morning mommy and daddy got excited and kept trying to stick a finger in my mouth to touch my gums. I didn’t like that and kept pushing it out. Anyway I do, I do, I do have one or two lower front teeth coming in for Christmas.

Here’s a picture of me practicing poses for the Christmas family photo.

Great Headphones

Here’s a useful tidbit that I haven’t published yet. A couple years ago I was working on the sound board for our church and the headphones at the board were crap. So, I went shopping and bought a few pair locally (Wal-Mart & ABC Warehouse) and none of those were very good either. So, I hopped online and did a bunch of research. The result of that research was the Sony MDR-V600.

After buying a pair for the church, I found I liked them so much I bought myself a pair and have never given them much thought since. I believe that to be the hallmark of great headphones. Turn on the music, drop them on your head, and enjoy the music so much you forget the headphones are on. Until today, I took them completely for granted. Ricardo, my father-in-law is here visiting Kayla and we just got back from a concert performed by the Vocal Majority. He bought a few of their CDs and after the rest of us tired of hearing them, we suggested earphones.

I grabbed mine, dropped them on his head and plugged him in. While the rest of us enjoyed the silence, he was transported back to his days of singing in men’s choirs. Before long, he went and pulled out his $150 Bose headphones and plugged them in. My headphones sounded considerably cleaner. He had me compare the two and I agreed, mine certainly sounded much better. This isn’t the first time this has happened, my main man, Michael also bought the same headphones after listening to mine. So, if you’re in the market, spend $70 at Amazon.com and you’ll have a set of headphones that are truly wonderful.

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving we drove down to Melissa and Ruben’s home in Houston. Also at the Colunga’s was Mary and Grandma Whaley and we had a great time with them. As you would expect on Thanksgiving, the food was plentiful and tasty and there was far more than could be eaten. You can click the photo below to see a photo album from the trip.


As we left Dallas, Jen drove while I used DallasGasPrices.com to find the cheapest price on diesel fuel along our route. We filled the Jetta and drove to Houston, and then to Galveston (Moody Gardens), and all the way back, filling up at the same station. The trip meter read 610 miles and we could have gone another 60 miles or so. It’s hard not to love the Jetta’s frugality.