Category: Miscellaneous babble

Aside from the area code, still don’t remember the phone number.

Recently got a firmware update pushed down for the phone. Battery life is much, much improved. Now I can let it sit all day and it’s only down to 90-95% battery from a full charge.
Word is the Cliq will be getting Android 2.1 sometime after April, which should bring some cool new features and capabilities.

The vibrating alarm thingy isn’t very strong. Clipped to my pants, it’s faintly noticeable and easily ignored when I’m distracted by something. Clipped to a belt I can barely feel the Cliq when it starts buzzing.

Would still like a decent calendar app. I’ve been spoiled by using Datebk for the past 5 years or so. Doing everything with Google Calendar is ok, but is lacking in a few areas.
Started using it as an e-book reader with Aldiko. Lots of free e-books available to download, and plenty of O’Reilly titles to drain my bank account. Uses the ePub format, which is pretty standard.

For now, still a high end PDA. I may even put some effort into remembering what the phone number is sometime soon.

Yesterday I managed to catch the MSC Rita, the largest container ship to visit Charleston so far, as it was heading back out to sea.

It was definitely a large ship. Here it is passing under the bridge, looking through the salt marsh exhibit at the SC Aquarium and two layers of mesh screen.

Passing by the aquarium.

Not sure why the tug was spraying water, but it was doing it pretty much the entire way down the channel.

Around here, most people think of these when you mention hush puppies

(Photo credit: Lela’s Hush Puppies posted at myrecipes.com)

I’m not from around here, so I think of these

The shoes, not the dog. I just couldn’t get Nala to move out of the way.

I was in need of new shoes a few weeks ago and picked up a couple pairs of Hush Puppies on sale at Phillips Shoes. Once I got them broken in a little, they turned out to be pretty comfortable and living up to their reputation.

Saturday I wore them instead of my usual running shoes during my volunteer shift at the Aquarium and noticed something. I wasn’t moving around as fast as I normally do.
I was moseying. I was ambling.

Now, I’m not exactly the type of person that’s always rushing around from place to place like a mouse on speed. Far from it. As I was going about my routine Saturday, it occurred to me that I was just doing everything at a much slower, much more relaxed pace than usual.
Is it the shoes? Are they just that comfortable? Have I become ‘south-ified’ in my movements after being here for 10 years? Maybe I’m just getting fat and lazy in my old age?

The science geek in me has been thinking about how to go about quantifying the effect of the shoes on the way I do things and the pace I move. Maybe a more qualitative approach like a log or journal. The problem is that being aware of moving slower (or even just the perception of it) will introduce bias into any experiment I come up with.

I think I’ll just observe and make notes for now.

I still don’t remember what the phone number for this thing is. Have to look in my PDA for it still. If you ask me for my number and I say I can’t give it to you, it’s not that I don’t want to (well, actually I probably don’t want to) but because I can’t remember it to give to you.

Battery life seems better after a couple of deep discharge/charge cycles along with dumping a few apps that I decided I don’t need, and turning off notifications I can live without. I can leave it alone in stand-by mode all day and it’s only down to ~90% charge, rather than less than 50% charge. Actually using the phone still sucks down the battery pretty fast though, especially with wi-fi turned on.

Starting to get by with Google Calendar for keeping track of appointments and calendar-y stuff. It’s definitely no DateBk though.

Note Everything and Astrid are filling in nicely for Memo and ToDo.

Could really use a simple relational database app like SmartList To Go.

Starting to break out of the habit of trying to Grafitti text. At least the keyboard is pretty decent.

Getting used to it clipped to my waist and clanging against the pager, but I don’t always notice when it’s not there. That means I will happily not notice that I’ve forgotten the phone at home. That also probably means I will not notice if it gets bumped off or forgotten somewhere (which hopefully won’t happen).

Cliq is growing on me, but the T3 is still the first thing I reach for.

One of the co-organizers for the photo meetup group, Kevin, arranged to have photos taken by meetup members put up on exhibit at the West Ashley Barnes and Noble for the month of February. There’s a pretty amazing selection of photos that were submitted and the first set of photos went up on display last week. Stop in and check them out!

This is the photo I’ll have on display when the next set goes up

Aside from the photo gallery, it will be the first time I’ve had any of my photos out on display in public. How exciting!

I had a 16×20 printed out at Sam’s Club, which turned out really good. The large format print seems like it has a much bigger impact than the same photo on the computer. Must be the size.