Tag phone (12)
house-ing
Mood: irritated
Posted on 2008-02-10 14:36:00
Tags: phone pictures camerapics house politics
Words: 447
Yesterday djedi's parents were around and we got a lot of stuff taken care of with the house. One of the more annoying things was countertops. Long story short: I don't recommend buying countertops from Home Depot.
Well, they charge by the square foot, but what they don't say is that they charge for the waste material too - so we get charged for all the extra runoff in the crazy corners and stuff, and you pay for the space the sink takes up even though no countertops go there. That alone increased the cost around 50%. Then, you get charged for them to take away the existing countertops, which is I guess reasonable but they didn't say anything when we were there the first time so we had no idea. Also, we're leaving the nice tile backsplash in but I guess it's more work for the installers to work around it, so that's an extra $150. And the guy said that sometimes they have problems and it may be unavoidable that they damage it, so I thought that $150 covered the "expected cost" of fixing it. As it turns out, no, if they mess it up they don't fix it at all. Lovely.
On top of that, it's our responsibility to disconnect and remove the sink before installation and put it back and replace and reconnect it afterwards. And, as if spending $4K on countertops wasn't enough, they charged us $1 per "rounded corner" for a total of $7. Seriously.
Compared with this, buying carpet from Lowe's was easy easy easy and I would totally recommend that over Home Depot. Blargh.
Since countertops were way more expensive than we thought we're going to pack our stuff ourselves. We'll set a date when we hear about carpet but if you have boxes and/or a free evening to help us pack, we would be very grateful!
I'm liking having a cameraphone, although the quality of the pictures isn't great: a sign seen at closing (I guess the point is they don't get paid if you don't close so they make you comfortable - we were repeatedly offered drinks, they had plenty of pens, etc.), a sign in the wire aisle of Home Depot.
Tomorrow I leave for Houston for work. Whee!
Obama cleaned up yesterday, winning with 68% in Washington and Nebraska and 57% in Louisiana. Woohoo!
weird phone thing
Mood: confused
Posted on 2008-01-25 16:04:00
Tags: phone programming
Words: 124
I was beginning to get a little worried about the new phone, since I charged it night before last and it ran out of power before bedtime. So I charged it last night and now it's still showing full power. Hopefully it's just a weird battery quirk, or maybe I had one of the side buttons pressed in my pocket? Either way, weird.
Also, I hate PHP. Any language where the expression "id" + 1 evaluates to 1 instead of (best case) "id1" or (not as good but still acceptable case) erroring should die. It doesn't help that I have no way of debugging it, just running the Greasemonkey script and inferring from the fact that the database is empty that something went wrong. Sheesh.
puzzle pictures
Mood: excited
Posted on 2008-01-23 14:55:00
Tags: phone pictures projects work
Words: 266
I took pictures of the latest puzzles we've completed, whereby "we" I mean "David, Miriam, and sometimes me". The last two were taken with my new phone, which is why the color is pretty messed up. (I tried to fix it in iPhoto but I may have just made things worse) So: having a camera with me at all times: pretty neat, but I'll stick to the real camera when it's available.
Speaking of the new phone, it's pretty neat! The screen is much nicer than my old one, and it's my first clamshell phone, which I think I like. It has pretty good web access, although my one big complaint is that it doesn't let apps access the network, which means that I have to use the kinda crappy web version of Google Maps instead of the super awesome one(*) that runs on the phone.
I got my car's oil changed today, which revealed that the rat that used to live(**) in our garage was gnawing on my air filter. Luckily it didn't gnaw all the way through; I don't know what implications that would have, but I can't imagine they're good.
Work is going really well today - between that and a new project at home(***), I am really peppy!
(*) - I've never seen or used said version so it may not be super awesome.
(**) - "used to" because we haven't seen any signs of it in a while, so it seems likely it's gone. We're moving out soon anyway. Whee!
(***) - which I will post of the results of hopefully tomorrow. Thanks to destroyerj for the idea...
the previous two weeks
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2008-01-14 09:02:00
Tags: phone house
Words: 147
So the two weeks of craziness ended successfully. djedi's brother's wedding went fine, albeit a little hectically and involving more than 150 miles of driving inside Houston. (I was planning on doing a bunch of maps and showing how far apart things are in Houston, but it's not that interesting) Also a reminder to myself that, while I like people being married and all that, I don't like weddings. (the last few I've been to have been awkward, and the emphasis on the whole "man and wife" thing gets old) Which is a little sad but knowing is half the battle.
So! Going forward, this week is "we better make sure everything's OK with the new house because if we back out after this week it costs us a lot of money", meaning home inspection tomorrow and answering more tedious mortgage questions. Also, hopefully a new phone!
The next two weeks
Mood: stressed
Posted on 2007-12-30 10:00:00
Tags: phone work mortgage house
Words: 230
Here's what has to happen in the next two weeks:
- New year's party (fun!)
- Shuffling money around in anticipation of making a down payment
- Picking a mortgage broker/company and finishing that paperwork
- Next weekend: Drive to Houston for djedi's brother's bachelor party.
- Next weekend: Probably with djedi's parents, looking at the house we're interested in again (and talking to neighbors about mosquitos?), as well as looking at a house we probably aren't interested in
- Figuring out whether a drainage ditch behind a house is bad or not
- Maaaaaybe, if all our ducks are lined up, making an offer on said drainage ditch house
- Holding the big proposal meeting for my big big feature at work (probably the most important meeting in my professional career thus far), attended by my former boss, boss, and boss's boss (and other people) which I stupidly scheduled for the day before...
- djedi's brother's wedding in Houston, for which I will have to drive down right after said meeting unless I can reschedule, which is unlikely given the number of people attending
After all that I'm gonna get me a new phone, the idea of which will hopefully get me through all of the above. I'm thinking either a Nokia 6133 or a Nokia 6263.
I'm declaring it's OK for myself to get very little else done as long as the bullet points above are hit.
whoops, false alarm
Mood: tired
Posted on 2007-12-16 17:58:00
Tags: phone
Words: 178
Apparently all is well between T-Mobile and Twitter (again, confirmed with my phone). Sorry about the earlier bit. Kinda wish I hadn't sent a slightly angry email to T-Mobile and a tip to the Consumerist, but I guess this will teach me not to do crap like that when I'm in a hurry somewhere. Also (as I quickly investigated), AT&T will give me the RAZR for free if I sign up with them, but to get the equivalent plan would cost more per month. So there's that.
Also, T-Mobile finally got back to me and the nice representative pointed out that I had in fact gotten a free phone in March 2006 which I had forgotten about. So, I'll get a new phone on January 13. Fine enough I guess.
Revels was good - the most dramatic part was hearing a loud noise and my mom fall a bit...turns out she was standing on a barrel and fell in the barrel. She was fine, no clothes were ruined, but I believe she will never hear the end of it :-)
T-Mobile blocking Twitter. Egads!
Mood: angry
Posted on 2007-12-15 12:42:00
Tags: phone
Words: 100
So, apparently T-Mobile is blocking Twitter. Confirmed from my phone (I get a "Service is temporarily down. Please, try again later." response) and sent in a customer service request. If this in fact the case, then I'll just switch to AT&T, since they're the other major carrier that uses GSM so my SIM card will work in their phone. Also, it looks like I can get a free RAZR when I sign a contract with them.
Grr. Argh.
Edit: Or maybe Twitter has scheduled downtime now. Or maybe this was happening earlier too.
Edit again: false alarm, sorry sorry sorry
the saga of the phone!
Mood: hopeful
Posted on 2007-12-13 15:03:00
Tags: phone
Words: 378
(this is what passes for a saga these days)
So after yesterday's post, I decided to go with the RAZR (especially after seeing you can transfer stuff from it to your computer without paying $50 for Motorola's kit, which means I can back up phone numbers and stuff which is wicked cool!), and while I was out running errands I stopped by a T-Mobile store.
The online price was $70, which seemed a little high since I bought my last phone in May of 2005, but I figured if that's the price, that's the price. I got to the store, told the guy I wanted to upgrade my phone, etc. He looked me up in the magic computer and said that it would be $87 after fees and taxes or whatnot (so I'm guessing it's actually the same price as online), but if I waited another month it would only be $20. Said I, "buh?". Turns out I've only had this phone for 21 months, whereas to get the full discount one needs to wait 22 months. I pressed him a little, but he said he couldn't get any more info and to call Customer Care, they may be able to help me out.
Back home, I gave them a call and talked with an enthusiastic-sounding young woman. We went through the song and dance and again she told me that it was $70. I asked about the extra month and said that I had bought my phone in May 2005 and so it had been more than 22 months, but she said that she couldn't tell how long it would be until I got the full discount. She sounded like she couldn't get at that information either - maybe I should have asked to speak to her manager or something? I wasn't feeling very bold at the time.
Honestly, the lack of a working alarm on the phone is pretty bad, but even I can't justify spending an extra $60-70 to get a new phone a month early. I did send an email explaining my situation, saying when I bought the phone and asking whether I could get the discount. The automated email promised a response within 24 hours, so I should hear soon!
The Google 2007 Zeitgest
of phones and data
Mood: happy
Posted on 2007-12-12 13:26:00
Tags: phone projects
Words: 136
Phones: Like before, my cell phone's alarm isn't going on again, except this time I can't figure out how to fix it. I was planning on getting a new phone pretty soon anyway, but this may expedite the plans. My current top choices are the Samsung t439, Motorola RAZR V3, and maybe the Nokia 6133 - anyone have any opinions on these?
I found this awesome script to get your Netflix ratings last night and it's pretty cool. I may improve it some, throw in some analysis and make it my next project.
Speaking of backing up your personal data stored at an online site, LiveJournal was bought by SUP. It sounds like nothing big's going to change, but it might be a good chance to backup your LiveJournal with LJBackup. Shameless plug transmission over and out!
fun with cell phones
Mood: confused
Posted on 2007-11-12 14:19:00
Tags: phone
Words: 201
The last few days my cell phone alarm hasn't been going off in the morning. At first I thought we were sleeping through them with no memory of the alarm, but three days of that seems pretty improbable. Luckily we use djedi's cell phone as a backup, so all was OK. This morning I decided to "reboot" my phone (a Nokia 6010), after which my new message icon started blinking. It normally just show up un-blinky-like when I have a new message, but I checked the text messages and couldn't figure out how to make it go away. Finally I figured out that that meant it was full of text messages (why this didn't show up before I rebooted I have no idea) and deleted a bunch.
The fun part - the alarms I set for the past few days went off today (one at 9:30, one at 11:30). I guess it kinda makes sense that if the internal memory was full, it couldn't store the alarm (although wouldn't it just set aside a memory location for an alarm?), but clearly it remembered at least two of them. So the internal memory being full => can't fire an alarm? I have no idea...
urgh
Mood: angry
Posted on 2006-03-17 08:59:00
Tags: phone music computer links
Words: 238
So originally this post was going to be about how angry I am that my new hard drive is dying, which I am. Although the upside is that I can return the new hard drive I got because presumably the old one will still work with a new motherboard, which is almost certainly the culprit. But, upon further reflection, meh. I'll fix it, it'll keep working eventually, and all that jazz.
Things that cheered me up:
- My new phone is out for delivery and should be arriving any minute now!
- Wednesday morning, as I drove to destroyerj's house to let him in, I was listening to KUT. Since this week is SXSW, they have lots of good live music on, and I listened to Sonya Kitchell, whose new CD I will be buying when it comes out (maybe I'll buy it at Starbucks just for fun!). I've been listening to the two songs from it that are available from the website quite a few times.
- This article "Who Can Name the Bigger Number" is interesting.
- The wikipedia article on recurring parts in the Colbert Report gave me a laugh. I should watch more of it!
- This site (NSFW, although it's not dirty, and only the sound is important) that destroyerj pointed me to is hilarious! -50 DKP for my motherboard.
- This SNL segment about a pirate convention is good stuff, although I may have linked to it before....
stop breaking, things!
Mood: grumpy
Posted on 2006-03-13 09:16:00
Tags: phone computer
Words: 116
The hard drive on my computer died (the one I bought in January), so I have to deal with that. Urrggggh. I'm probably gonna end up buying a whole new hard drive. March sucks.
My phone, whose screen has been cracked for a while, finally gave out yesterday - it still turns on, but there are funky psychedelic colors making it impossible to see. Luckily I could order a new one online, and I was at the end of my contract anyway so it's free. But if you're trying to get in touch with me over the next week or so, don't rely on the cell phone too much...
I'll post for real (and less grumpy?) later.
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