The time is ticking between now and the end of my cell phone contract and I still can't decide on a replacement for the sidekick. The sidekick was a nice phone but it is history now. I had it for two years and I am ready for something else. I was hoping something else with a stylus like the treo 650 but when I went to go test it out at the store, I couldn't type on because my fingers were to big for the stupid litlle keys. I hated it.

Seeing as I am determined to have a phone with a nice web browser, instant messenging, bluetooth, GPRS (with edge capabilty) a camera, and a non windows OS, I am down to two choices both from nokia. I also like nokia because they are real up front about development on the phone unlinke stupid danger which thwarted my every move.



The nokia 7710 is so cute. It is a totaly touchscreen stylus driven operating system. The problem is that it has no keyboard. It does have an onscreen keyboard and can do handwriting recognition. That could work out for me. The camera is 1.3mp which is awesome and it can record video. It also comes complete with flash player 6 and a 640 x 300 screen. Unfortunately, it does not have wifi.



Which leads me to the Nokia 9500 Communicator.

This baby has bluetooth, 802.11b wifi, and a keyboard. The camera is only 640 x 480px. It does do video and it runs an older operating system symbian 80 which is actually probably better because it means there is more stuff developed for it. The phone is heavier and seeing as I am not using the phone part I find that whole part unnecessary. I really like the idea of having 802.11b because there are so many times I am on the go and there are 802.11b networks. It would almost make having edge not very important, although having edge might make the 802.11b very unimportant. At least the wifi is free!



What the hell am I gonna do. I have like 20 days to decide on a new phone and maybe even a new carrier although I don't know how anyone could turn down t-mobiles $29.00 all you can eat internet plan even if it is slower than cingulare's edge plan.

Hey I am testing the site on a local server and want to get an idea bout the speed. If any of you online could visit this addr tonight and leave me a comment about the pseed I would greatly appreciate it. i am most concerned if it is faster, slower or the same as elmwood.

It's running off the home supercomp.

(e:ladycroft) brought us the biggest zuchinis.I wonder what kind of gentech factory she has going on, lol. I am finally getting a chance to cook one up. This one is being paired with red onions. I wish I could make those yummy squares that she made for the party!

So I admit I am still not done converting every thing to linux, although I no longer have windows. I can't believe how exciting to get everything working even if it is time consuming. This morning the ipod shuffle began to work. It is nice because it doesn't control or lock your ipod to the computer. You can take it anywhere and take the data off of it or put data on it. I like it that way. You can also listen to the songs while it is plugged in.

Just now I got the wacom tablet to work, which was just short of a miracle.

Although, this looks like crap, it is a testement to my effort trying out all the settings on it with the gimp.

We went camping at Brushwood folklore center with our friends Dave, Pat, and Terry this weekend. It turned out to be a pagan woman's retreat weekend which was really strange but interesting. The camp is laid out in sections by the elements. Our camp was near the air shrine. At night they had a gigantic bonfire and lots of large gaia worhshipping ladies danced topless around it. I think one woman had breasts as large as my entire body.

I kind of felt really out of place but they didn't seem to care that we were there. It was cool to see woman who's body image concept was so different than that of most of our friends. They seemed so content with themselves. Our friend terry (female) and (e:terry) got really into the dance. (e:terry) was mad I wouldn't dance but I felt werid being the only other man dancing.



Apparently, there are some really big crazy festivals there during the summer, but we missed both of them. I think that we will try to hit a festival next year. Here is a for their x-day festival which looks crazy. I think (e:hodown) and I went one time when we were like 17 but left when we got there because we were weirded out and it was expensive for our high school budgets.

We were supposed to leave for camping early this morning. We forgot about the way we had left stuff off after the last adventure where we we uncovered the new breed of plastic mites that ate my phone. I swear they are a sign of the apocolypse.

I found more of them in an old plastic camping backpack in our closet. Once again, they were only on plastic stuff. A polyester hoody, a plastic suitcase and the plastic backpack. Do they eat plastic? They look just like dust mites and don't bite. I am going to get a usb microscope this week and then I will figure it all out, if they don't eat the mircroscope.

I need to cut my beard again, it looks so mscruffy right now.

(e:lilho), (e:terry), (e:alison) and I headed out to ambrosia for dinner. It was tasty as always. I decided to spare everyone the additonal calamari pic but nonetheless it was tasty. If you like calamri you definately need to try it out.

So I spent the last week tricking out my computers hardware and software. I think I am just one step short of getting it a new paintjob, a window and some neon. Maybe even hydraulics for my chair and some big speakers. Okay I am not that into it but it's probably close. It is really time for me to return to production mode. I miss (e:twisted) and (e:shawnr) and everyone I haven't talked to in like 5 days during my hermitage. Congratulations on Gamesfirst (e:shawnr) [inlink]shawnr,145[/inlink]. You did an excellent job.



I hate to admit this in public but in the end I really have to say linux is not for everyone, or maybe it is but not when you have tricked out hardward and lots of it. I mean walmart sells computers running it, and I guess if all you want is a web browser and a word processor then you are set to go. Istill think that mac OS X is by far the easiest OS for anyone with no computer skills.

Unfortunately/fortunately, I also have about a hundred different proprietary hardware parts including a dual xeon tower, a highly proprietary sony laptop, a terabyte of different file types, a web server, a graphics tablet, an ipod shuffle, a external firewire drive hooked up through a pcmcia card and a slew of design programs I had to replace.

I finally got my php ide all set up. And yes I realize there is a chat bug that prints the number of epeeps, they are sharing a variable and that the profiles are all funky looking when you update them. I expect to get to that this week.

I am also thinking of going in the direction of OS software although maybe it isn't necessary now that the web is everywhere and always online.

(e:lilho) and I are going to eat some more squid. Oh and (e:pageseven) is (e:hodown).

I finished getting everything to work on linux accept the printer. Maya, zend studio, wireless, apache, php5, pspell and a gigantic assortment of free apps. Now I just need to have time to use the computer instead of just setting it up.

We went to the fair to see all the tasty animals. What is up with this lamb? All the lambs are covered like this. Is it to protect their coat for the show? It kind of reminds me of those italians that cover their couches in vinyl.



Check out the face on that chicken-like thing below. It was on sale for $20. I wish I had more land or that winter wasn't coming. I saw a chicken lay an egg for the first time. It is pretty gross.



Food. Like every Buffalo metropolitan area event, food was the main attraction. I ate italian sausage, fried ice cream, birch beer, fries, and the best thing I ever had in my life. Basically, it combines my two favorite foods - maybe syrup and cotton candy. There is a picture of (e:matthew) holding it below but I ate the whole bag myself.



Then we went to the animal freak show. It was disgusting. I feel bad for giving them money. The animals were in such bad conditions. There were two five legged cows. They had this tiny box with a big snake in it. On the box it said,"ancient belief - touching silver coins to a snake brings good luck" The cage was all full of dirty money. Some of it was even in the food bowl.

(e:ladycroft), they had the biggest zuzchini contest and it wasn't nearly as big as yours. Yous should enter next year.

Everything is finally set up in linux land, accept I can't find a good gui FTP manager. Both kbear and kftpgrabber have problems for me. I drew this evil baby that wants to take over the world in inkwell. The vector drawing capabilities are really excellent.