So i said I’d never do it. I said i hated Blackberry’s and would rather use two tin-cans tied together with a string. I ranted and raved about how terrible Blackberry’s were and how they were trash. Well i guess i changed my mind. I am now the proud owner of the new Blackberry Curve 8900. My previous phone, the AT&T Tilt, has been by my side for about a year and a half. It was a great phone to begin with. It was my first smart phone. It was the phone that showed me how much i rely on email and how great an actual qwerty keyboard is. Sadly though, the phone was not that great. It was slow as hell, had a tiny screen, and was the size of a portable ham radio. And although it had a 3MP camera in it, it took terrible pictures. I never was able to get a good picture out of that thing.  And so it was time to replace the ageing beast and replace it with a newer shinier phone.

When i started looking at my options,  i realized i had only about three or four phones to choose from. I’m on AT&T (so is my company) and that means i had to get a phone compatible with AT&T’s network. That left me with the following phones to choose from: The new version of my old phone called the HTC Touch Pro 2, the iPhone 3GS, the Blackberry Bold, and the Blackberry Curve 8900. Now at first i convinced myself that i wanted an iPhone. Then i realized that it was a touchscreen and that i hated my Tilt’s touch screen. I realized that the functions i use the most are done easier on other phones. While the iPhone is great, its not built around email. And it also didn’t help that my company does not pay for iPhones on their plan. So that ruled the iPhone out. The second choice was the HTC Touch Pro 2. And well, it was basically just a shinier version of my old phone with a better screen and body. While the inside of the phone changed a lot, the OS has not. And i really got tired of WinMo. The size of the phone was still a concern as was the touch screen. And to top that off the phone is not even available to the public yet. AT&T hasn’t even set a release date. So that ruled the Touch Pro 2 out.

That left me with only two of my options. The Blackberry Bold and the Blackberry Curve 8900. When i looked further into the phones i found that the two phones were very similar in their functions with a few but important differences. The 8900 was smaller but lacked 3G connectivity. The Bold had 3G but lacked a good camera. The Bold was also a bit larger and had a keyboard that didn’t much appeal to me. So in the end, after a long mental debate, i decided on the Blackberry Curve 8900. As for the whole hating Blackberry thing goes, i think the fact that RIM finally released a few phones that have nice screens brought me over to the dark side. The main thing that really bugged me about Blackberry’s was the terrible ugly interface and the terrible screens. The 8900 and Bold really improved the screen and the interface (or theme w/e). Another reason i decided to get a Blackberry was that i manage our company’s BES server and anytime i make changes or update it I have to call someone who actually has a blackberry and have them test everything. I was also clueless on how to actually operate a Blackberry. Hopefully this new phone will give me a better understanding of Blackberry’s and the BES in general.

Please note that i still think the BES is quite possibly the most idiotic waste of money I’ve ever laid eyes on. That’s not to say it doesn’t do exactly what it is supposed to do. I’m just saying that its a huge waste of money and quite frankly a huge design flaw. I see no reason what-so-ever why RIM can’t just design a phone that can connect directly to a mail server or exchange server like every other phone in the world. The whole BES solution seems like a huge rip off to me. But who am i to say that RIM is ripping us off.

Lastly, because i can, i took a few comparison pictures and videos of the Blackberry Curve 8900 against an Apple iPhone 3GS. (The 3GS is not mine) Obviously the video is going to be way better on the 3GS. But take a look at the 8900′s pics. I think you’ll be surprised. Btw, don’t ask about the items in the picture. I kind of just grabbed anything that was bright and colorful. And yes that is a purple stuffed dragon. His name is Emp…

Below is a video comparison. As i said before, the 8900 is no match for the iPhone 3GS. But i figured i’d do one anyway for those interested.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I have a rant about the Sony Playstation 3. Don’t get me wrong I love my PS3. I bought it as a present to myself for Christmas. I just think that Sony is moving so slowly with its development trying to milk every penny they can before the market forces them to improve their product. I bought my PS3 because of its multimedia functionality and Blue-Ray player rather than the gaming console. I have a few games for it that i play on random occasions. But i don’t use that function nearly as much as i use the multimedia functions. Now that I’ve had the Playstation for a while I’ve truly been able to see its ups and downs. And that is what i want to share.

Good this first. I was able to replace my bulky E-Machine PC with the clean slick PS3. It looks very nice under my TV. The PS3 has HDMI support. This was huge. The quality difference was amazing.  The PS3 also offers a “store” where you can buy/rent games and videos as well as a Hard Drive to store them on. In theory you can store all your videos and music on the local hard drive.  I don’t use it as i probably should but i can see how it could benefit some.

Now for the Con’s. My biggest problem with the PS3 is that it doesn’t support 3rd party applications or addons such as codec packs. Because of this, the damned thing can’t play half of the videos i have. Sony suggests i convert all my files to MP4 or some other bulky format. This not only costs me time but also costs me a lot of disk space. This also means that support for 3rd party services such as Netflix or Hulu are next to impossible to add. Because of this mess, those of us who want these features and conveniences have to go out and create workarounds and Mcgiver-ish solutions so that we can easily access ALL of our content on the PS3.

And thus the Media Server applications were born. The catch? This solution requires a PC to be on that has all your file stored on it. Thus defeating the purpose of the PS3 hard drive.(Not that 160GB can hold much…)  There are several out there. I use PS3 Media Server. I’ve also used TVersity & PlayOn. All of these have similar functionality and they all provide the same basic thing. They offer a way to let you play ALL of your videos and music on (or rather through) the PS3 regardless of what type of file it is. This is HUGE. This means that no matter what kind of file it is, the Media Server application can take that file and “transcode” it into a compatible PS3 file. Don’t get me wrong on this. I love these types of software and am thankful they exist. The problem i have is that Sony refuses to add native support for this type of thing ON THE PS3. If they only allowed 3rd party codec packs none of us would have to mess around with these Media Servers. We would be able to store all our files ON the PS3 and truly use it as a Multimedia Center. It would benefit both Sony AND the developers. Just like Apple, the Sony App store could carry these codec packs from various developers allowing the developers to charge a fee for them. Sony would get a cut and the developer would get paid for his time and effort.

Until then, all of us in the real world are stuck downloading various software to our PCs in hopes that it will be able to stream our videos to the PS3 so that we can watch them when and how we want.

So today I went to Guthrie to go to my Grandpa’s old house that has now been turned into a storage unit. (Its a very old house that isn’t livable anymore) I’ve been trying to get my Icom 2720 ham radio hooked back up and i needed to get my antennas and power supply unit i left up there. After we got the equipment i decided to drive out to see the new edition my brother and his wife were building in. I called my mother and she directed me to get on I-35 and drive to Seward road. She said to get on I35 and go north. The only problem with these directions is that Seward road is South of Guthrie and not North. Seeing as I’m not to familiar with Guthrie and the surrounding area i decided to take my mothers directions and get on the I-35 and follow it north. About 3 miles into my journey North i remembered that Seward road is South of Guthrie. At this point i knew i was going the wrong way. I figured “That’s okay I’ll just get off on the next exit and turn around.”

HAH! Nope. Not in Oklahoma. I had to drive 20 miles North to get the next exit off of the highway. I ended up in Maulhall. That’s in Payne County. I had to drive through the entirety of Logan County to find a place to turn around. How ridiculous is that? Every 2 blocks i would see a N0 U Turn sign in the median. Obviously they have a problem with people needing to turn around that they felt it necessary to put up signs. Why not just build a few legal turn arounds? I guess that would be to convenient. Hah.

Anyways, that’s the end of that little rant. Don’t have much else to talk about at the moment. I’ll post more laterz

I got to see Star Trek the movie on Thursday. It was awesome. Even if you aren’t a Star Trek fan I believe you will enjoy this movie. JJ took a lot of the nerdiness out of the show and put a lot more action in. It felt like watching Transformers or the Matrix. It was a good balance I think. A lot of people were expecting him to screw it up by either being to nerdy or not being nerdy enough. I think he found a good balance that will satisfy all the long time Star Trek fans such as myself as well as a lot of the newer non-trekkies who are more interested in actions films in general. I would highly recommend it. I’m hoping to go see it again in sometime soon in one of the larger theaters such as the Cine Capri at Harkins.

In other news, I’ve been wanting to get back into ham radio, scanners, and war driving. I unboxed some of my old radios and re-programmed them with a few frequencies i still remember. I would like to get my main ham radio (the radio on the far left of the pic) and my portable (the Kenwood in the middle) programed with the new updated ham frequencies. My scanners (the two radios on the right) have a few channels in them. I haven’t touched police frequencies in a long long time. The handheld scanner has Edmond in it only. I actually keep this scanner at my desk so i can find out whats going on when i hear sirens around my apartment. Once i get a list of all the frequencies i need to input I’ll publish the list on here. Probably in a new tab at the top. It should be interesting.

Another thing i wanted to talk about was Champions Online. I’ve been reading a lot about this game and it looks amazing. I’ve watched a few videosof the game play and it looks like a lot of fun. The main thing I’m looking forward to in this game is the character customizations. Cryptic is the same company that did City of Heroes/Villains. And if you remember anything about that game, its probably the character customization process. From what I’ve read, the character creations process is City of Heroes on steroids. I can’t wait. Jon and his friend are both doing elemental animals as their first characters. His friend is calling his character Fire Mare and Jon is doing Static Panda. I need to come up with a catchy character to play soon.

Time for something new. I couldn’t think of a catchy title… so its just Random Links for Clicking. Basically, if you’re bored here are some interesting finds for for the week:

• Uncrate – Interesting blog with random products you might want to buy
• GeekPad – Very funny and interesting tech blog
• Cyber Warfare and the Army
• The 10 Most PUzzling Ancient Artifacts
• StarCraft 2 Beta opened on Wednesday
• Cute Overload – Very cute animals that will make you smile
• Learn Morse Code- I still need to do this. Though the General and Extra licenses no longer require CW to pass
• WoW Player gets power, gets corrupted, gets banned – Interesting read about a player who obtained Martin Fury
• Stupid girl run over by her own SUV during “Ghost ride” stunt – Natural Selection at its finest
• $330,000 photo of Air Force one – Honestly, i think a monkey with a disposable camera could have taken a better photo…
• The Hunt for Gollum- Still haven’t watched this in its entirety yet. Looks amazing though. Fan created prequel to the films. (Fan fiction, not cannon)

In other news, I finally transferred my 55 priest from my recruit a friend classic wow only account to my main WotLK account. At the beginning of the year Jon and I established a friend link from his account to a new classic wow account i bought. (Classic wow is like $20 bucks at Walmart) This allowed us triple xp when playing together. Lucky for me, Jon was bored enough to dual-box my priest and his hunter from 0 – 55 in like two weeks. After that he leveled up like 5 or 6 more characters from 0 – 60 for me. The link finally broke about 2 months ago and i just never had the time or need to transfer the priest to my regular WoW account to finish leveling him from 60 – 80. I still don’t know when I’ll have time to do it  but I’ve always wanted an Undead Priest. I’m going to try and level him on the weekends and on boring week nights when I have nothing to do.

That’s all for now.

Btw, i’ve been giving thought to exploring my job in more detail on this blog. I’ll have to find out if posting pics and details about the NBAs equipment and setup is legal or not. (I doubt its illegal. Its there for all to see on TV anyways.. lol) I’ll have more info later.

I have no idea what to put on this thing. I find reading blogs fun. Especially the ones where people have all sorts of random shit from tech, geeky, music, movies, politics, religion etc. I actually wrote two or three political and religious based posts but removed them due to the fact that i don’t like talking about controversial topics on public blogs that have my name attached to them. I don’t mind making random comments here and there, but detailed rants and posts dealing with controversial topics tend to cause problems. Especially at the work place.

In other news, I randomly just found a bag of Penera potato chips that expire in exactly 25 days. Yay me! And here i thought i had nothing edible in the house. Since I have no other way of ending posts… i guess i’ll leave you with this:

Thus I’ve been home shopping. I’m looking for homes in the price range of 130 – 150k. I’m hoping to get something in the 135 – 140 range so i can use a few extra bucks to upgrade my furniture and appliances. Looking in Edmond and NW OKC, i see all kinds of houses for sale. New ones and Old ones. My mother says i should look at semi-new (less than 10 years old) homes that were well kept and upgraded. I’m leaning more towards the brand new never owned option. So far 3 bedroom 2 bath seems like the best investment. (Even though i doubt I’d use the third bedroom for anything) I really want hard wood floors and a nice kitchen. Everything else is pretty much negotiable.

That said, i think i need so professional help. I’ve been looking online all week and I’m pretty over whelmed by all the options. I’ve been looking at website after website and everything is starting to run together in my head. I also don’t know specifically where in Edmond or NW OKC i want to live. Right now i’m happy with my location. I don’t know if I’m ready to move out to west Edmond in the newer developing neighborhoods. I like the looks, its just a bit of a drive to central Edmond where i do most/all of my shopping. I’m hoping to find a good realtor that will show me around and give me some good options. Suggestions are welcome!