Test

• I got home as fast as I could.
• I immediately went to get my bike, and blasted off all the dust.
• I FINALLY installed the front fender. I didn’t have the proper tools before, but my roommate has an awesome socket wrench set.
• I have a funky tire size apparently so I needed to manually set my tire size in my bike computer.
• Found out battery was dead in the transmitter for my bike computer that sends the fact that I’m moving to the little display.
• On my way out stopped at Safeway to get the funky little A23 battery.
• Rode around lake McIntosh, and returned home. 7.13 Miles
• Got home and installed the new battery, and yay, the trip computer works and actually reports the speed correctly.
• Now I need to eat something.

I seem to have frequent misadventures in technology. This week being no different. (more…)

Observations/discoveries/statements for the day:

• I discovered I have no idea where the hell the suction cup mount for my TomTom is.
• Target has universal replacement mounts for TomToms and other GPS receivers.
• The air vent mount looks damn good in my car and I like it.
• I only discovered that it was 9 PM just as I was going to take a shower.
• I am tired as hell but am positive I’m not going to sleep the whole damn night.

That is all.

So I went to California for about a week to visit friends. Had a ton of fun. Got to see people I hadn’t seen in almost a year, and a couple I hadn’t seen for over a year. I even drove on 101 during rush hour traffic and was unperturbed. Despite this, I’m suffering a deep bout of depression.

Now, I can’t be the only person in the world who gets mildly depressed after a vacation and leaving friends. In fact, I’m positive this happens about hourly at every airport worldwide. My issue other than that is why does visiting there make me feel like moving to Colorado was the worst thing I have ever done? Why did saying goodbye to my friends feel like my soul was being slowly fed feet first into a wood chipper?  I absolutely love Colorado. The weather changes with the seasons and we get snow/rain, the cost of living is super affordable, the population density is much less. All reasons I wanted to move away from California, but 1 week there and I want to go back.

The one thing that holds me back is what is tearing me apart: I love my job. Pretty much every second of it. It has traversed from being classified as “work” to “something to go do for 8 hours that you enjoy doing.” I turn 27 this year, and who can say they’ve reached this point in life that they can say that? Who can say they’ve ever reached this point? Its this one fact that is a giant brick wall falling across a 8 lane highway that all my thoughts crash into. Sure, I’d give up where I live, the climate, the cost of living and adjust to that, but this job is awesome. Unless I’m let go it would be retarded of me to leave unless offered the same position elsewhere, which does not exist.

Normally I’d think this statement sounds massively emo, but it seems to actually apply. I cannot be truly happy. There will always be something blocking me from this goal. There will always be some reason to make everything appear perfect on the outside, but a festering rotten shit heap in the middle. I’d come to terms with not ever being totally content with life, I know I’m not going to have everything I’ve ever wanted or do things I’ve always wanted a long time ago. Despite this epiphany a while ago, I’m horribly allergic to it.

Those of you who know me would not believe this statement, but I would wilingly sell off most of my posessions on Craigslist just to move back, but that would only get me there and might allow me to couch surf for maybe a few months, and I’d no longer have the job I’ve wanted forever, ever again. I’m kind of babbling at this point, though. There might be a job like this somewhere else at another company, but it will never be the exact same job.

Monday morning when I finally got back to work after the vacation, I was just totally numb. My delayed emotional response set in finally, and weighed in on the real feeling of depression. It didn’t help that I had a performance review for the year that basically consisted of 4 managers’ worth of feedback. One of them wasn’t with the company anymore. Another was against my constant questioning of the process and trying to streamline it and make it better, and wondered why I was so enraged when I was asked to repeat about 2 weeks of work after my checking with him and the team to ensure I was doing my given task correctly. Thankfully, the 2 managers that could give direct feedback both knew me and understood me enough to help my current manager have a better picture of the situation, and his experience with me being in my dream job has been sunshine and roses anyway. So as a result I got an average review, despite the fact that I was one of the 6 peope who picked up and moved my life over to establish the best support center globally in our company. None of that ever means shit apparently.

I think everyone on the road home that evening was going 10 under the limit, but snippets of this entry kept running through my mind, and I just didn’t care. Tuesday was just an overall numb feeling too. Not caring. Just sleepwalking through the day getting stuff done, but not really feeling it.I got really tired at 8 PM though, and went to bed. Woke back up at 3 AM, and felt I should type this up.

Well this is getting long. So I’m going to wrap it up as succinctly as I can. I love living in Colorado, and I love my job here, but I don’t think I can live away from all my friends for much longer. I might look at what I’d need to do to move back.

Sorry, I just love this image.

Like any normal geek, I prefer a darker environment to a brightly lit office environment. Anyone who has seen my office in my last apartment or my current room sees that I take great care in blocking the evil day moon’s eminations from entering my abode. Thankfully I’m of hispanic/asian descent, and not always so photophobic, so I am not deathly pale.

Despite having forced myself to touch type to a very high level, I still ocassionally look at the keyboard. In a darkened room, this is difficult as the keys are going to appear black, or just hard to see if the game I’m playing is not a brightly lit paradise. So, armed with Best Buy gift certificates, I bought the Logitech Illuminated Keyboard.

If any of you have used a really thin keyboard, such as the new Apple keyboards, or most laptop keyboards, the feel can be described as mostly similar. There isn’t a lot of travel in the keys but they took the effort to lengthen them so they do move more than a standard laptop keyboard. After a bit of adjustment, I was typing on it at my normal pace. The characters on the keys were lit up bright and crisp. I believe each key has an individual LED under it, and the characters are laser-cut.

I’m not using it right now because its going to go to HTPC use once I set that up, and I prefer the Logitech Cordless Wave keyboard I have for my desktop for everyday typing.

Overall, however, its a really nice keyboard, I’m just not the exact target audience I guess.

So, in an effort to possibly make this blog useful, I’m going to review some devices I’ve had and why I do not have them any more or why I have decided to hold on to them. The first in this series will be the HTC Touch Pro, on Sprint’s EVDO network.

This device, even before you turn it on, is pretty. HTC went a long way to make it very aesthetically pleasing, and feels solid. Comparing it to my iPhone 3G, it was about 1.5 iPhones thick (its a valid unit of measurement!), and about as heavy. Turning it on, you’re presented with the usual Windows Mobile startup screens and initial setup. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to see that screen.

Once you’re done and on the main screen of the phone, you’re presented with HTC’s TouchFLO UI, which sits on top of Windows Mobile and uses hardware graphic accelerators within the phone to make a flashy UI to hide Windows Mobile’s relative ugliness. Personally, I turned it off. Sprint went through the trouble of rebranding TouchFLO to be a Sprint TouchFLO and really ruined it for me. What I still look for in a phone is a decent data connection with instant messaging (AIM/Gtalk/MSN/Jabber, etc) and Exchange sync, good signal, and a battery life that I’m not searching frantically for a power outlet as soon as I unplug it.

Data Connection/Signal:

I work in the Denver area, specifically, Broomfield, CO. Its quite developed, and on other phones I’ve had no problems maintaining an excellent signal back to the towers. With the Touch Pro, this was no exception. Solid coverage for EVDO around work, with some dropout over the farmlands I basically drive through to get home, and then it picks back up just fine. No problems there. I was able to stream Digitally Imported at a high bitrate WMA with almost no dropout while walking around the office.

Instant Messaging:

Sprint/HTC’s bundled IM clients were rather lacking, and Agile Messenger still is a substandard application. However, Beejive, who makes, IMO, the best mobile IM client ever for the Blackberry and iPhone, had a beta of their app for Windows Mobile. This was where the Pro’s full keyboard both shone and dulled. I do understand its not a blackberry keyboard, but a single-membrane keyboard that has no tactile positioning is a bit hard to type on. I probably could have gotten used to it, but I wasn’t going to keep the phone for that long. I’m not going to go into Beejive in detail as that is not directly related to the phone.

Exchange Sync:

Its a Windows Mobile phone. My company has push sync properly set up. It works. Nuff said.

Battery Life:

Here’s where I get mega anal retentive, but I’m going to explain myself. If I’m going to pay $400 for a phone, I want it to do a crapload of stuff for that money. The HTC Touch Pro has A2DP, which allows for stereo Bluetooth audio to stream to a headset that will recieve it. My intent on buying this phone was to use either a Wifi connection or EVDO to stream music on the run. I love Digitally Imported and they’re single handedly making beatport.com get a good $50-60 in music to be bought monthly. My commute is approximately 40 minutes each way, so I will get tired of the music on my iPod if I’m not careful. That said, I did a test. I hooked up my Jabra headset, clipped the Touch Pro to my belt, and walked around the office for a good 30 minutes listening to some trance. The battery came out to about a quarter charge left. I was not satisfied.

Now before any of you scream that this is some amazing feat and I’m expecting way too much out of the device, this is my gripe: CDMA/EVDO 3G technology is much more battery/energy intensive than a GSM/UMTS 3G connection. If I were on the Touch Pro on AT&T (its the Fuze there) I would have roughly double the battery life left.  Granted, I’m not going to always be streaming music, but if I’m stranded somewhere without outside connectivity and want to keep myself from boredom, I will want that much battery available to me. So, back it went.

Overall, if you’re not me, and not that demanding of a battery in a phone, I think you’ll be very pleased with the HTC Touch Pro.

Of the like, 10 people who might read this, 5 might play WoW. What interface bundle do you use, if any? Cosmos is no longer being developed because the guy is whussing out.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/14/oblongs-g-speak-the-minority-report-os-brought-to-life/

FINALLY.