Mobile

A few months ago I bowed to peer pressure and purchased a new phone. Prior to that, my antenna had been held on with hot melt glue for several months. So I read the internets, picked out a phone, found an unlocked version (I’m not going to be a serf to the mobile companies!) and plonked down the requisite credit card number into the order form. When it arrived a few days later, my co-workers were mystified. “That’s not a RAZR,” they said, incredulously. “Why get a dumpy looking Nokia [6230 for those who care]? Paris Hilton wouldn’t touch that.”) Well, a few reasons: I get craptastic reception at the house, and Nokias are legendary for good reception. On that front, I’ve been very pleased; no dropouts anywhere in my house whereas I had to stand on the porch with my old phone. Also, it has a decent MP3 player built in with expandable flash memory. I have a real MP3 player already but it never hurts to have a few tunes with you for bumpy places such as the gym where the hard drive is unwelcome. Reason the third: EDGE.

I spend at least two hours every day on a bus getting to work, and it sure would be nice to use the net some during that block of time. So effective today I’m on T-Mobile’s Total Internet thingy. With that, I can connect my phone via a USB cable to the laptop and use it as a modem to connect at a decent speed from anywhere. It works pretty well — better than dialup, worse than anything else. I posted this from the bus.

Speaking of internet, my mom & dad have just joined the 18th century by getting on the DSL bandwagon… sort of: they got the 256k ADSL. Hey, but remember when people were paying $100/mo for ISDN? You know you wanted it. Anyway, I give my parents -5 seconds until their Windows 95 machine is rooted.