Veteran Insomniac

It’s been awhile since I updated here, and I guess it’s really because I don’t have much new to say. Everything seems a little status quo around here lately. My 50/50 sick/sad spring has manifested this year as an ear infection & general sicky-ness. After a week it seems to be getting a little better, having a plugged ear is just annoying now more than it is painful. Blech.

Emerald city comicon was a blast, except for my camera batteries running out during Shatner’s panel. I picked up some awesome new stuff in the dealer area that I’m going to say I’ll talk about later, but probably won’t, given my track record.  My collection of Civil War is almost complete, I’m only missing two TPBs that I can see. I picked up the first two collections of “Preacher” and it’s amazing, I have up through 8 in just a couple months. I think I’m going to pick up Secret Invasion before I finish up House of M and World War Hulk.

The thing I want to talk about the most I guess is a slew of new gadgets. I finally abandoned the Blackberry platform & switched to Android. My new telecommunications device is a Motorola Droid X, running Android 2.2 & rooted. I initially didn’t see a need to root, but after some research I realized I didn’t really have a good reason to install a new ROM, but I had quite a few to root the thing, which was remarkably easy. It seems that as devices become more and more complex and powerful, the easier they are for those technically inclined to bend them beyond their initial operating capacity. I love the versatility and variety of the apps available for the Android platform, and I could easily see it beating Apple’s for smartphone dominance. Which is good, because all the time I’ve spent with the iPhone has been poo.  Like I do with my other phones, the first thing I picked up for it was an extended battery, giving me around 500 additional mAh with negligible thickness increase. The size difference is so small that even cases designed for the stock version will still fit with the extended battery backplane. Anyhow, the thing is incredibly cool, and I feel now like I did the first time I started using a smartphone; it is that much of a generational gap above my Blackberry Storm. The Storm did prepare me for an all-touch device, and I shed the clicky screen uneasily, like training wheels falling away. Now such a thing seems a novelty.

I’ve also happened upon a Playstation 3, so the realm of high-definition movies on my TV is now open to me, and after a short time of elation, I am now despondent over my pitiful built-in speakers and yearn for a home theater audio system that does these other two media behemoths justice. Indeed, even my book reading has entered the “digital age”, as it were, since I picked up an Amazon Kindle. I love this device and the company that makes it. For me, it is amazingly easy to read a book on, and to organize my collection of eBooks and PDFs. I opted for the WiFi only version instead of the 3g enabled one, which I realized is kind of unnecessary when I can just tether the thing through my Droid & gain access to all three of the “g”s available there. Considering I do most of my reading (and everything else) at home, I saved that fifty dollars there.  There’s nothing I can really say about this e-reader that hasn’t been toted by Amazon itself on their site & through their testimonials, except maybe how easy it is to put your own spiffy screen-saver images onto it.

Let me now back up and talk about the company that provided me this amazing slice of the future. There’s only a handful of places in the ENTIRE WORLD that I’d consider living over Seatte, and Amazon is the one thing none of those places could match.  First, Amazon Fresh. Groceries online seems like a pretty logical thing, given the era, but Amazon fulfilling orders next-day for free, with re-usable packaging that they will come and get from you if you don’t have a place to store it is just stellar. Oh, and you can just toss a bunch of Amazon.com items in there as well? I think this might edge out Netflix as my favorite delivered service. Plus, I don’t end up with a bunch of random snack food from going to the store hungry. Amazon Fresh, you sustain me.

If Fresh weren’t enough to just get you by, Amazon has stepped up their game for a few major metro areas (currently Seattle, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, New York City/New Jersey, Philadelphia, Phoenix, & Washington, D.C.) by offering “Local Express Delivery” where orders early enough in the day can be delivered SAME DAY for just 8.99 (or 3.99 if you have prime). My Kindle was delivered so fast, the automated job that provisions it for registration hadn’t had time to run yet. Amazon’s shipping won a race vs it’s electronic backend. Seems like a John Henry moment to me.

Amazon (among other things) is truly making my favorite city a veritable paradise for those savvy enough to use all the features offered.

That’s all for now, perhaps there won’t be another four month gap in posts. Probably not.

As the name may indicate, I started this blog to deal with the free time on nights that I had difficulty sleeping. At the time, they were common, almost half the week. Since then, I’ve changed almost everything in my life except my job, and as a whole, I’ve been sleeping better. Because of my job, I’ve sort of grown tired of sitting at my PC and typing, or even sitting at my PC in general. The end product of all these factors is that I’ve gone two months without updating my blog.

Perhaps when Becky is overseas I’ll post more to keep a lifeline to home open, and to stave off my loneliness. I guess Robert can help with that too, probably. Until now I’ve believed that my ability to write was the creative outlet that I had the most talent in, but I’ve been the most interested in attempting to convey the visual aspect. To that end, I have acquired a DSLR camera & a couple lenses to compose with. Expect to see photos posted here & on my flickr as I learn to use this powerful new tool.

I’m growing tired, and I could say that I’m going to update more frequently, but I can’t really promise that. It may be another two months, but hopefully not.

So this is a first, this entire post will have been composed ane edited on my Blackberry. I searched my office for a notepad, but failed to find anything larger than 3×5, so I activated the full docs to go suite on my mobile, since I’ve been meaning to blog, but wouldn’t be at my desk much today.

Its been a hectic month, Nate moved in till his room at the U opens, and its been really neat having him around. The house has gotten a bit messy after a couple back to back parties, we really need to take a Saturday to deep clean it. Once Nate gets into his dorm it’ll be simpler.

New roommates! Hopefully everything goes smoothly with the screener and they get to move in as planned. At the very least, my wallet won’t be as anorexically thin as it is now. It’ll be weird to be in a full house again, but definitely welcome to have some ladies around.

I had totally forgotten that TV series begin to pick up in the fall, I’ve been trying to catch up on House before I start the new season. Dexter starts this sunday, and this season looks pretty promising, Keith Carradine returns and John Lithgow joins the cast as well, and it’s always nice to see more of Julie Benz.

I think that the format on my phone is making me think this is longer than it is, and not just a series of random twitter-length posts. Not that it really matters, but I’d get more of a sense of accomplishment from typing MORE in the BlackBerry than less. I don’t think I’m using the full potential of the device, and I’d like to change that, but I wish there were more free apps, the app store seems a little bare. I also wish there was a way to browse it from my pc.

So I just checked by loading this doc into full word 2003 at work, and its actually the same length as it appears in word to go. I’ve been incredibly impressed with the whole dataviz suite, I’ll probably pick it up once my trial is over. I don’t know how useful powerpoint to go will be though, I have yet to require a presentation be prepared sans computer.

I’m also fairly impressed at the speee at which I can continue typing on the storm screen. So far I’ve been relatively error free, and can do about three sentences a minute, which isn’t bad since I’m composing and not transcribing something.

Post lunch I’ve been hit with a wave of lethargy, walking around the office in a semi-daze, waiting to be snapped back to reality by a coworker. These chairs are terrible. The lights hurt my eyes. I need some water. Might take a nap when I get home. Blargh.

I think this may turn out to be one of my longest blogs, which mostly validates using word to go on the BB and proves it as a viable platform for such things

Well, this was going to be a full post, but then I saw there’s a wordpress update. Updating now, along with my forum software and probably eyeos too.

I’ve stopped counting the number of times I’ve created a new blog. This probably won’t be the last.