A "Well then," and then a saga

It's times like these when I feel my salary is actually justified. I've probably done more work in the past 2 weeks than I've done in the entire first 6 months of 2007. I finally hit a lull, though, so now it's back to blog action.

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Last Friday, the battery in my piece of ass phone died. This is the phone that I bought in January, after I drop kicked my old one in Maine in a drunken rage (I think two months later Frankie called me and told me he found half of it behind the couch).

So anyway, my battery's dead, but I've only had this thing for five months. I go to the Verizon store, tell them my story, and inform them that the battery needs to be replaced. The kind woman in turn informs me that she can sell me a new battery at a 50% discount. I tell her to shove it up her ass, and we reach stalemate.

Eventually, I get around to letting her know that I was planning on upgrading next month, when I will be eligible, so spending any more money on this piece of shit phone would be essentially flushing it down the toilet. She conveniently remembers now that it's now 20 months instead of 22 before you're eligible for an upgrade - "Mr. Blackwood, you've actually been eligible since last month!" (suuuuuuuure).

So it all worked out, because I really was going to upgrade next month, but instead of having to wait until then, I have a new phone now. I'd been doing some minor research and I knew I either wanted a Treo 700p or a Blackberry 8800 (Verizon doesn't offer the Curve). After checking both of them out in the store, I was leaning toward the 8800 (Treo looked and felt too clunky), when out of nowhere the 8830 caught my eye. Why hello, there... Your silver.. it's soooo much sleeker than the black... plus you come with a SIM card... Hmmm...

I sped home, and immediately checked Cnet's editorial and user reviews for the 8830. I was sold. While I raced back to the store, I tried to do some math. The advertised price was $299 with contract extension, but then you got a $100 mail-in rebate with that. Feasible. When I got back to the store and started through the checkout process, I made sure to tell the guy who I worked for, because I know that we get a corporate discount.

When it was all said and done, I had charged $219 to my credit card, and still ended up with a $100 mail-in rebate form. Huh? Confused, but obviously not upset, I grabbed my shit and hauled ass. I'm pretty sure I somehow ripped off Verizon. Those bastards deserve it.

Anyway, how's the device, you ask? I'm loving it. This is my first taste of Crackberry, and I'm just about an addict already - the OS is as slick as a 12 year old's taint. Obviously, the first thing I did was sync my email addresses, which worked like a charm. The beauty of having my work email synced is that I also get my Outlook calendar constantly synced on my device. Possible upgrade in overall self-organization? Check.

The device has decent enough multimedia playback capabilities, but in all honesty, whether or not I can watch a movie or view photo albums on anything portable is never a factor in my decision to purchase. [Aside: I'm just not a big fan of the portable, all in one device, in general. Maybe it's because I'm already a Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none myself, and so I demand that any technology I implement be an actual upgrade to my way of life, i.e. be highly specialized. Even the Iphone, with all its aesthetic appeal, looks uber-gimmicky to me.]

What I was really looking for was a device with superior email functionality, and there's just no arguing that RIM has that corner of the market absolutely owned. The push connectivity is really. freaking. awesome. Also, I'm sorry, but QWERTY keyboard is the way to go. Sure, like any unfamiliar terrain, the keyboard on the 8830 takes some getting used to (there's no space at all between keys), but after minimal practice, I'm probably typing somewhere around 300 words per minutes now - maybe even 400. And lest we forget, as in the 8800, the 8830 has a freaking clickwheel for menu nevigation.

Holler back at ya fuckin' boi.

Third party software I've downloaded so far includes the Opera Minibrowser (internet), Google Maps Mobile, and Beyond411 (an amazingly versatile 411-ish search tool). I've also installed PocketMac on the Powerbook, which is sync software that came bundled with the device. It's two way, and fairly straightforward and obvious. I'm thinking about trying out Missing Sync, though.

I only have a couple gripes so far, but they're both faults of Verizon. First is the company's decision to DISABLE THE FUCKING GPS. Yes, there is a GPS receiver built into the device, yet I can't use it. At all. I've read things about it being enabled in the future (for use with Verizon's own navigation software, of course), but I'm not holding my breath until then. How the hell do you disable a killer feature like this???

The other thing that is pretty lame is that Verizon won't let me send or receice MMS texts. I bought the phone knowing that it didn't have a camera (again, I could really care less about having a camera phone), but fully aware that it could still at least send/receive picture and other multimedia texts. Apparently I was mistaken - Verizon has also disabled the 8830's MMS capability. Assholes. The workaround is to have people text pictures to my email, but that's an inconvenience. Sigh...

Like I said, two gripes, but against the carrier, not the hardware itself. The device is freaking awesome. I will most definitely NOT be dropkicking this one in drunken stupors, or throwing it against the wall after the Longhorns lose.

Long story short, the moral is this: if you are going to text me porn, text it to my email, so I can actually receive it: punkrockervince at gmail dot com.

Kthxbye.