Snow Day!
Finally finally, winter has arrived. Sure, we’ve had cold weather, but without snow, it just ain’t the same. Then, in the last 24 hours, we get something like 10 to 14 centimeters!
Of course, that much snow certainly screws up the city infrastructure for a while, and so, given that the buses were running around 30 minutes late, Lenore and I decided to declare and Snow Day and “work” from home. :) ‘course, we did this with the expectation that many of our other co-workers would forgo the commute and do the same.
Well, we were wrong. Apparently we work with people who are far more dedicated to their jobs than I realized. Or they love sitting in traffic for hours just to say they did. Regardless, Team TK ended up being the only ones absent from work. Thanks a lot, guys!
Enough About The Palm, Already!
So I returned my Palm and got my cash back. I was planning to get it replaced at the store, but unfortunately they didn’t have any in stock, which is, apparently, the normal state of things (I’ve returned to FS and BB, since, and still no TXs in stock). Given all this trouble, part of me is wondering if I should bother replacing it…
Unfortunately, just the day before my Palm died, I bought myself a car charge for the thing… a frickin’ $50 car charger (I coulda swore the tag on the shelf said $29.99). Moreover, like an ass, I threw out the packaging and receipt, meaning I can’t return it. So, I figure, trying another TX is probably worth $50. OTOH, if I have trouble again, well… Palm can just kiss my lily white
. On a completely unrelated note, as I sit here typing away, Seventh Heaven is on TV. Now, those who know me have heard this, but I really think it needs to be in writing: I firmly believe that Seventh Heaven is, hands down, the worst television ever made, in the entire history of civilization. I challenge anyone, anyone at all, to come up with a counter example. Good luck! You’ll need it.
Dead, Dead Palm
So, I finally get my pictures up, and not even a week later, my Palm dies. Yes, dies. After attempting to power the damn thing on, it spontaneously reset. Now, I’ll admit, this isn’t the first time this has happened (stability has been… okay. Not what I expected, but I’m guessing about average), so I took it in stride and waited for it to boot back up. But, instead of booting… it just hung at the Palm Powered logo. :/
Well, the next natural step was to perform a hard reset, which should reformat the NVFS memory and restore it to it’s factory defaults (I’ve done this once already, for other reasons, so it wasn’t an unusual procedure to me). Things seemed to work… it asked me to confirm the hard reset, to which I said ‘yes’, and then… it hung at the Palm logo again. Piece of shit.
Of course, my next move was to search Google and see if there was a solution. Thus, I ran across this forum discussion where a person described the exact same symptoms. The consensus? Get the unit returned. ASAP. And don’t return it to Palm, if possible, lest you be stuck with a refurbished unit.
So there you have it, my first Palm adventure. It was going so well. I’m just glad I didn’t become deeply reliant on it before this all happened.
Anyway, the next step is to head to Future Shop and see if I can get this damned thing replaced with a new unit (shouldn’t be a problem, but we’ll see). OTOH, if they attempt to get me to return it to Palm, I may just tell ‘em to fuck off and give me my money back.
The Trip - Day 4
Ugh, finally home. It was a good trip, I have to say… nice and relaxed for a change, rather than heavily regimented. And I got to spend money. Too much money. :)
And speaking of spending money, I’ve finally got some shots of my new toys. First off, I have a couple pics of my Palm:
Left-to-right, there’s a shot of it off. Second, an image of Blazer (the packaged web browsr) rendering this website. Lastly, we have ScummVM playing The Secret of Monkey Island. Pretty neat, eh? :)
Next, I have a pic of my newest toy, my snazzy earphones:
After using them for the drive back, I gotta say: awesome purchase! The noise isolation alone makes them worth every penny. Heck, for a while I just used them as standard earplugs. With the foam inserts, they drop high- and mid-range frequency noise dramatically (Shure’s claims are around 15db noise reduction), while still making it possible to listen to conversations when the music is off.
With the music on, the sound is excellent. High- and mid-range frequencies are really nicely articulated, and, with the plugs properly installed, the bass is surprisingly good. And I’m still amazed at how little power I need to drive these things. They literally require half the volume, as compared to my cheap Sony buds. This is, I suspect, a combination of noise isolation, relatively low impedence, and significantly reduced leakage (due to the plugs and the fact that the drivers are completely enclosed).
The gist: these are, hands down, the best pair of buds I’ve ever used. Very sweet.
