So I've been continuing to look for my next cell phone with my desired features and at a reasonable price (on the condition that I renew my contract for 2 years). Well, I finally found the phone of my dreams.

The Samsung t609: has bluetooth, the headset jack is separate from the charging port, and may be the only Samsung phone that CAN access the calendar while talking without interrupting the conversation.

And well, T-Mobile took it off the upgrade program 2 days ago. Curses ...

Just one of the many letdowns these past few days.

Update: Thank you, tmobile.com, for having all the user manuals in one place (under "Support"), and thus being even more complete than that stinky samsung.com website. Thank you for having user manuals with an "Options During a Call" section. Now, thanks to you, I now know that among your current selection of Bluetooth phones, the Samsung t519, t609, t629, and t719 can all access the calendar during a phone call without interrupting the call.

And the search continues ...

Today I learned WAYYY more about RAM than I ever cared to.

A friend in town wanted to upgrade her laptop's RAM. I'd never done it, but my dad's done it, so how hard could it be? Her laptop is a hand-me-down from a relative. We decided we'd take out the existing RAM, bring it to the store, and get help finding the right match.

Time spent trying to find a small screwdriver to unscrew the RAM compartment: > 30 mins
Time spent opening RAM compartment and taking RAM out: < 1 min
Time spent finding a local store with a good deal on RAM: > 15 mins
Time spent driving to stores: > 20 mins
Time spent on phone consulting computer friends about the RAM (thanks EnVaDoR!): > 30 mins
Time spent asking knowledgeable-looking reps what the heck we needed and getting no concrete response: > 1.5 hrs

Final answer: must find a stick of DDR2 PC2-3200 (400MHz) RAM for notebooks, which is not commonly available at most stores, and must be ordered online. Damn those things are expensive.

... because I like to mess with him when his mommy's not around. :)

I saw Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna ("Never Say Goodbye") this weekend with my Indian connection. (No, I won't even pretend to know how to pronounce that; I purchased tickets by pointing at the poster and asking, "Is that the latest Shahrukh Khan movie about the extramarital affair? Three please!")

It's 3.5 hours long, including a short 5-minute intermission. But man, I loved it. I am totally taken by the Bollywood song-and-dance thing. So far there has only been one Bollywood movie that I didn't like.

All the actors and actresses in the movie are hella fine. Shahrukh Khan is the classic hottie; Preity Zinta is, well, really pretty (SRK and PZ are in the pic to the right); as is Rani Mukherji (girl at left). Twists in the plot all the way until the end. Made me sad and pensive afterwards because it made me think about love, even though the movie's thesis seems to be that true love conquers all. Argh ...

Oh, and if you plan on seeing it, don't read the Wikipedia entry for the movie - it gives it all away. (Does writing this make you want to read the Wikipedia entry? Heh)

Side note: I forgot to say how I usually resist going to movies with friends, since with what precious time we have, no actual bonding / catching up occurs. (On the other hand, watching rented movies at home is awesome since you can be as loud as you want, eat whatever, etc.) But I'll make an exception for Bollywood movies. Not only did I enjoy the movie immensely, especially bonding was our unanimous hissing at the kids to hush up. Not that I needed to hear the movie (I was reading the subtitles) but c'mon - the dude and the chick are about to kiss and make sweet passionate love - and there are kids running around and screaming their heads off. Parents, either get yourselves a babysitter, or get your kids to shut the bleep up!

Hey Samsung! Get a real website and get some real customer service, will ya?

Sigh. In my continuing search for my next cell phone (and I'm willing to be patient), I was hoping to get some info on a particular Samsung phone. So, I headed over to samsung.com, navigated to the phone page, and tried to download the user guide. No such luck, just kept getting an error. I wanted to see the exact layout of the phone (see my requirements here) and so far, only user guides have been able to give me that answer.

My dissatisfaction from the Samsung website stems from:
- navigation in drop-down menus does not contain all phones
- user guide was not available for the phone I was interested in
- was difficult to find an e-mail link to report the problem
- when I finally found some sort of e-mail form, the "submit" button was off the page and the window did not allow for scrolling(!)

Frustrated, I actually picked up the phone and dialed their 1-800 number to try to report these issues. There was no phone menu option to speak about web issues, so I went to "phone sales". A young 20-something dude picked up, and I swear, he might as well have added "you idiot" to the end of each sentence he muttered.

Ah yes. With each brush with sh!tty customer service reps, I do learn a lot, and can try to apply it to my own practice. So I guess I should thank them for these free lessons.

Last but not least, the Engrish is another reason why it's hard to take Samsung's website seriously:

In this set:

• Hangin' with Thi and cute schnauzer friends
• Hangin' with Tiana when she came to town
• The Aquarium Downtown and the fishies living there
• Snippets from my junior high school friend's wedding up in Canada
• Hangin' out with friends and fam in Canada
  
• the usual random stuff I just *have* to take pictures of.
• BONUS: some Photoshop fun with pics of Chef Hugh's pool party. I saw Superman, dude!
  

My mom has a cell phone just for emergencies. She doesn't use it much, so she has trouble remembering how to do stuff with it. Today, she asked me yet again how to check her voicemail. Later in the day, I thought I'd check up on her:

Me: Mom, I just wanna make sure that you remember how to check your voicemail.
Mom: Oh okay, when you see the little glasses sign on the screen, you push and hold down the one key, where there's another little glasses sign.
Me [brief pause where I'm figuring out what she's talking about]: ... Oh ... uh ... right! OK, very good!

Some of you may know that I am currently temporarily "the boss of" a cute little ball of fur named Happy (again, also starring in my Really Important News parts one and two). Well, I've been trying to play the good dogsitter and taking Happy out to do stuff other than just taking him on his pee and poo walks. These extra outings get him really excited and extra happy, which makes for cute pictures. :) So last weekend, I crashed Hugh's place with Happy to watch the UT vs. OSU football game there (man, the Longhorns were disappointing!). Then, I called Hugh and Carrie up to go for a walk at Arthur Storey Park, and tired little Happy out there.

Well, today's adventure was to get the kid a bath. (I call him a kid, but he's really kind of an old man - he's 8 years old, which is 56 in human years.) That boy done stank up my car, gettin' all sweaty and excited and droolin' all over the place. So I headed over the nearest PetsMart to git'im a bath.

I'd never done this before so I called ahead of time to inquire. Turns out you need an appointment, AND it takes THREE HOURS! Wow. Well, I was in for a little surprise when I went to pick him up about 6 hours later (other than him smelling so lovely from his raspberry oatmeal shampoo ... I kid you not) - I guess he'd held his little bladder the whole time in his kennel there, so when we exited the grooming area, the old man couldn't hold it any longer, lifted his leg on a select bin, and promptly proceeded to TAKE A LEAK RIGHT THERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STORE. Passersby commiserated: "My dog did the exact same thing," and "Dogs will be dogs". Luckily, Happy is a little dog with a little bladder, which means cleanup was not too terribly bad. Notice the guilty look on his face. Hahaha. Pets sure have it better than humans sometimes ... I mean dang, if *I'd* peed in the middle of a store, I'd have gotten my arse whooped to next Tuesday by one or both of my parental units! And a few employees would probably jump in too!

[ on to pictures of cuteness, food, and pee! ]

note: The pics link won't work as of 2:10a - smugmug has decided to do some maintenance. They won't be up 'n runnin' until 4am. Yargh! Imma goin' to bed. Will put the link on in da mornin'. G'nite!

My short temper has always been one of my trademark qualities. I'm not proud of it, and have been working on it for the last 14 years, so it's still a work in progress.

Well, today it nearly snapped. I could feel the anger bubbling up within me like a volcano on the verge of eruption. Why? Here's the phone conversation (reminiscent of other marketing calls I got in the past) where I nearly bit someone's head off: