Category: Miscellaneous babble

It snowed yesterday in Charleston. Snowmageddon 2.0. It was quite the news making event. Not what I would consider significant, but a few people posted photos of some pretty good snowfalls in other parts of SC. In Charleston, it was light flurries that just melted once they hit the ground. Not a whole lot at the house, but by the time I got to the airport in the afternoon, it was becoming a pretty good snow. Still light by my standards though.
Flight out of Charleston was a little delayed because of de-icing (who knew CHS had a deicing unit!) but the pilot was able to make up most of the time so we only got to Houston (IAH) a little bit late. No snow there. The 4 hour flight from IAH to YEG was mostly uneventful. Got into a good chunk of the 12th book in the Wheel of Time series. Flying is always a good opportunity for me to catch up on my reading.
Arrived in Edmonton to more snow, which I was mostly expecting. Heavier flurries than what was coming down in Charleston. A good deal more accumulation too, which was nice. As I recall from the last time I was here in winter, there was no snow on the ground. Will have to get lots of pictures to show people in Charleston what a real snow is like.
Ended up getting a little bit lost coming in from the airport. Wound up on Anthony Henday Drive instead of Gateway (what I used to know as Calgary Trail) so I took a bit of a detour around the east side of the city. I know my way around this city on a bike (used to anyway) but in a car, that’s a totally different story.
Didn’t have any problems finding the house Sandi rented. It’s only a block away from Kildare Elementary. With last night’s snow, I’ll have to wander over there tomorrow and play the intrepid explorer like I used to when I was a kid. That should be fun.
The house my sister rented for the week is pretty nice. She said the people that live here rent it out as a vacation home to others, and stay in a condo they own in Clareview. A pretty neat idea. It’s a pretty comfy place.
At $10/MB for data roaming, my phone is going to be off line for pretty much the entire vacation. Definitely won’t be doing much with the phone. I suppose I could have unlocked it and found one of those pay-as-you-go SIM cards, but I figured for a week it was more trouble than it was worth. I figure I should be able to find some accessible wifi around during my travels. If not, oh well.

I think I’ve found a solution to the performance problem with Contacts I’ve been having.
After doing some research and seeing some posts from Droid users complaining about similar issues, I removed Facebook and Twitter accounts in MotoBlur. Once they were gone, Contacts was fast and usable again!
Added my Twitter account back, and Contacts slowed down a little bit, but still functional.
Now to watch and see if it stays like this.
On another note, the much awaited Pimlical for Android is out! Sadly it requires Android 2.2 (Froyo) and I only have 2.1 on my Cliq. Signs are that the Cliq is going to be stuck there, so I’ll either have to get a new phone or root mine (although Froyo on the Cliq still appears to be up in the air).

Heading into the end of the first year of cell phone ownership. Finally starting to remember the phone number for it, mostly from asking other people what it is.
Android 2.1 has been running on the phone for just over a month now. I’ve done three factory resets on the phone since the upgrade trying to get it to work properly. Contemplating a fourth. Android 2.1 is a pig on the Cliq. Slow, laggy and sucks battery like you wouldn’t believe.
There are a few other things that I’m finding particularly annoying.
Bringing up the contact list can take up to a minute. It takes 2-3 minutes to bring up a contact once I tap on it from the contact list. I know, I timed it.
If I want to edit the contact, it takes another 2-3 minutes to open up the edit screen. Timed that too.
W.T.H.?
When people call me, the only way they can hear me is if I use the speaker phone. This could actually be a hardware issue, because I was having the same problem with Android 1.5. Since I don’t get many calls or make many calls anyway, this has only been a minor annoyance.
I’m halfway tempted to give up on the Cliq and go for another phone, even though I did pay the full price on it.
The irony is that I actually think it’s a reasonably decent device as long as I don’t use it as a cell phone.

Got my flight and car rental booked for my trip home for the holidays. It will be my first trip back home since my high school reunion trip a few years ago.
It will be good to get back home. Hopefully nothing messes up my flights this time.