윤

Probably ought to choose my words carefully this time, lest I eat my hat again and upgrade, but as much as the new design harks back to my T610, I’ve learned my lesson about two-year contracts amidst product cycles half that (and how they’re even worse if you sign up like I did, six months into one). Plus, jailbreaking has brought new purpose back to my antiquated 3G—to squeeze as much tethering bandwidth out of AT&T before I ditch them come January. In this sense at least, the phone’s only as good as the carrier, and their new plan, which actually lowers the monthly cap while adding an extra $20 to the bill, sounds to me like a step or two backwards. Gimme another Pearl.

I moved the number a Chinese restaurant once offered me a thousand dollars for when I called in an order and got the owner to that Pink 8110 (seriously, no one seems able to do the Henna print justice) for 老婆 to use, but she doesn’t have the sentimental attachment to the Pearl I do …only the majority of the thousand e-mails I sent to you during our courtship came from one! Well, I’ve offered her the “GY” iPhone instead—though I’m so totally reneging if I find this case:

Only me. My hoodie’s pockets aren’t very deep, and can’t be relied upon for the securest support of their contents, but as it’s become my trademark garment lately (much as my surplus store pea coat was in my senior year of high school), I’ve taken to removing it only in the two places you’d expect a cartoon character to divest—the shower and the marriage bed, as the zipper might disfigure 老婆—and the tight office bathroom stalls are certainly no exception. The likely result of the combination of these factors is, of course, an aquatic disaster the kind which struck me this afternoon and may have been worse if not for the intervention of two more coincidences: that I had just finished reading up on the latest in Apps on the iPhone and returned it, instinctively with firmer placement, into the opposite side, loosening the BlackBerry’s position; and my meal-and-a-half at Chipotle had produced such a stink that I re-flushed to respect the afternoon traffic and the water was fresh. Not that it even crossed my mind as I plunged my hand in for the rescue and rested the wet case on my lap as I swabbed off every accessible surface with all the paper off the roll. There wasn’t any power loss, at least until I pulled the battery, and although the red X’s on its moisture-indicating sticker do seem to have bled slightly, thank goodness for the excuse that rainy season makes. And an abundant supply of extras from downsizing.

—The third I is for iPhone. Yes, your humble narrator demonstrates his propensity for metanoia and caves to Jesus. In all honesty I can’t bear the thought of talking into a piece of glass (perhaps it reminds me too much of those formative years spent trying to cool the fever in my heart with my forehead against the window looking outside), and I was astounded how good the keypad on the $299 Bold felt just days ago when I first went into AT&T to discuss porting my number, but the apps won me over. 50,000,000 Elvis fans may so be wrong, but surely that raises the likelihood of something worthwhile being developed for it.

Though it ain’t the WordPress app, which I’ve given up on, and just as well, because I doubt I’d be satisfied blogging without being able to hyperlink across tabs and prove that I’m only repeating myself. It’s ironic how BlackBerry fanbois remind us to test the Storm fairly by clearing everything running in the background, but Gmail and AIM are crippled here without being able to. I do like Crazy Mouth, is it any surprise, yet how much better would it be were the animations voice-activated, so you could fake your way through the gamut of human emotions without lifting the phone except to eat.

Storm. “Shockingly bad” is right. Might as well have added a buzzer-type shock to each press of the screen. Incidentally I had a dream last night of watching an old Brit comedy show with Hugh Laurie spoofing 60’s spy shows, including the Prisoner.

Cameo. I sent an image attachment via e-mail to the display model in a 3-1 employee-to-customer ratio T-Mobile store and waited for as long as I could before the sad state of tech got to me (approximately 15 minutes), and it never showed. Neither did the picture message one of their guys tested.

Animal Crossing for Wii. Another chance for Nintendo to leapfrog Sony and Microsoft with an online world for their brand, wasted.

My thumb, after dusting off the Super Famicom with the Fighting Commander, having confirmed that the PS3 supports it through the SmartJoy. I pushed the new blister through the 8-star Super Battle, but it broke at Sagat, oozing fluid onto the pad—a new, slippery sensation, to be sure, at least for someone once protected so ably by a callous there. Like a champ who completes that last mile with a torn ACL, I kept up the fireball/dragon-punch combo against M.Bison and reached those ending credits where I used to swear to my friends I saw a beer can in T.Hawk’s hand. Didn’t you get a shot of the whole cast if you completed it without a defeat?

I’ve yet to try it myself, but with even House’s best buddy blasting the Storm, I’m at a loss what to do with my T-Mobile account. Even if I could get an unlocked iPhone to work on their 3G, I hate how it’s come, at least for me, hearing from Henry how he ran into that fucking loser Ron shopping for one, to define classlessness (and that’s -less as in “spineless” and “penniless”, not “timeless”). And after the Curve’s keypad, I’m not about to subject my fingers to the same frustrating collision detection on a Bold. Why can’t they make an interface with big honkin’ buttons that are clear so there’s no loss of precious space for the screen?

I took to the back streets this morning, instead of running up to the park, and tallied 3-to-1 McCain signs, and gave up counting all the ones for Prop 8. (I don’t even know what a No-on-8 looks like.) Sorry, 老婆, but I’d rather not have a single-tract suburban home if it’s surrounded by assholes like these. So fucking what if kids are told that men can marry men and women women, it’s not like the subject of interracial marriage ever came up while I was in school in the decade following Loving. I will admit to freaking out, though in a good way, when I first saw that Japanese King Kong movie where the non-Nick Adams guy from Monster Zero ends up holding the luscious blonde. Amazon Wish List, there you go!

But honestly, folks, if I’m not going to let my age be any measure of the seriousness with which I should be taking things, then I ought at least to learn by example from the self-made millionaire who resoles his shoes, rather than all those fools out there who are gonna bee-line to the nearest AT&T store for a $299 Bold instead of voting.

[Update: Relieved from my neighborlessness somewhat by logging into MSN and seeing that one of our clients had changed his screenname to “NO on 8” and reading Larry David.]

Flickr’s full and Picasa doesn’t work. Let’s use this opportunity to compare cellphone photos from what’s become a yearly tradition out to Indian casinos for the mother-in-law:

They finally replaced my POS (ah, new Category) Pocket PC with one, which doesn’t impress me a whole lot more than my 2-year-old Pearl, other than by having a bigger screen; body’s also wider overall, in order to accommodate it and the “full” keyboard—sure, they’re not shared anymore, but the buttons are half the size and harder to distinguish! Seems to me the trade-off favors the former for twitch-typists. The smaller form factor stays in my pocket until I can decide what to do with the T-Mobile account at the end of its contract this December. The G1 ain’t keeping me with them.

I did wake up this morning with the idea of using the theme song from Buck Rogers as a ringtone, and you know how much faith I put in the way my mind works overnight. And have a listen to what I found looking for it.