So, as I mentioned before. I ended up ordering the Samsung Vibrant Android phone for T-Mobile.  Just a few short days later, I’m sorry to say that I’ve ended up sending it back.

On its surface the phone is pretty good.  The display is crisp and amazing.  The form factor is nice and relatively compact.  It’s got an expandable micro SD slot and I generally got pretty good reception with it.

There were a number of smaller issues though that kept annoying me.  The biggest one had to be the battery life.  The phone would be almost dead after 12 hours of standby and mild use.  Worse, there would always be a bunch of random pre-installed apps that would start in the background and were probably killing the battery.

I had to download this program to kill the apps since it wasn’t always obvious what was running.  And even then there was no clear explanation of what had been started and why.

Besides the poor battery life (which I probably could have addressed in a month or two by buying a larger battery), the GPS functionality didn’t work.  It was unable to ever determine my position with the GPS.  A quick search online revealed it as a widespread problem that would supposedly get fixed in an update that was coming out soon but given that the GPS was one thing that I really wanted to get from the phone, I’m not willing to hang onto it and hope for the best.

And finally we get to the Android OS.  I generally like the OS but it suffers from the same thing that Windows always has, when the OS itself wasn’t designed for specific hardware, it just doesn’t feel seamless.  The way the Samsung vs. T-Mobile vs. Google apps worked was just too inconsistent.  I was never confident of where to look or how to use something.  As someone who has gone to school for interface design, it was just inconsistent enough to be frustrating.  And I don’t want my phone to be something I have to sit there and tinker with.

There were a number of other nitpicky things that annoyed me as well: lack of an integrated music library manager, no integrated video store, the location of the power button, the poor integration of my work/GMail/phone contacts, the use of a separate GMail client vs. work email, no Skype app, and more I’m sure.

I guess at the end of the day, there were too many little details that I was unhappy with to commit to using the phone for the next 2 years.

My plan now is to wait a few months and see what happens and if anyone is going to come out with a phone that addresses my issues (Microsoft, Palm/HP, Google, or even Apple).  If not, I guess I’ll just have to suck it up and deal with what I can get but until I’ve reached that point I’m going to go back to using my ol’ Sony Ericsson  phone.

Ah well, it’s way cheaper anyway.

I signed up for Google Voice the other day when I checked out their international calling rates.  They had calls to Jakarta for 3 cents a minute or calls to Indonesian cell phones for 11 cents a minute.  Cheaper than Skype and about on par with calling cards.

I tried to make my first calls today though and I am a little disappointed.  First I tried to call my girlfriend’s cell phone and would get 1 ring and a dead tone.  This happened on 3 separate occasions.

After giving up on her cell, I tried to call her hotel room.  While the call went through this time the quality was pretty horrible.  There was way too much compression that made it quite difficult to understand the other person and way too much lag introduced.  It made having a conversation pretty hard … heck, it made getting the front desk person to understand who I was calling for pretty hard.

Besides internationally, I also used Google Voice to try to get a callback from waiting on hold today.  While I eventually received the call, it too had some compression (not as obvious but still something I noticed).  It was generally ok but not as good quality as other VoIP services I’ve used (like Skype, Vonage, cable phones).

Since I’m already paying for other phone services, I don’t know why I’d want to use Google Voice at all.  I guess I’ll try it for a while longer but as the title said, this is my first impression.

Just a quick post, recently there’s been a new pizza place that opened up in Falls Church that finally has some really great wood-fired brick-oven pizza.  It’s called Pizzeria Orso and is near downtown Falls Church (actual address: 400 S. Maple Ave., Falls Church, VA  2204).

Probably not worth the trip for those in DC (you’ve got Matchbox, Pizzeria Paradiso, and 2Amy’s) but if you’re in the Tyson’s Corner area it’s the best pizza place I’ve been to in the area.  I haven’t had a bad pizza there.  Definitely better than Pie-tanza (which I thought would be good but ended up not) and a notch (or several) above places like zpizza or Flippin Pizza Those places definitely have their value though 2 slices and a drink for $5 lunch at Flippin for example.

Succinct review: Almost as good as Madison’s Pizza Brutta but twice as as expensive. Atmosphere inside not quite as nice as it should be but not bad.

I’ve talked about my cell phone lust on this blog a number of times and by my count it’s about time to go back to that well.

I think I’m in the same place that many people are now: iPhone or Android?

They both have their pluses and minuses:

iPhone

• a stabler more robust platform
• has only one form factor per year making the software specifically tailored for the device
• I already have a bunch of iTunes movies/music
• will be guaranteed at least 1 significant OS update per year
• stuck with AT&T and no unlimited data
• not great multitasking

Android

• the new kid on the block, seems to be hungrier and more innovative than Apple … also buggier
• So many different hardware types, not all software in the app store works on each device
• no guarantee that the device software will be updated by the manufacturer
• Can stick with T-Mobile
• Can develop software for it without having to buy a Mac or use Objective C
• Includes a pretty good (and free GPS software)
• Removable battery/expandable memory

Those are just off the top of my head.  Of course, at this point I’m strongly leaning towards an Android phone (specifically the new Samsung Vibrant on T-Mobile).  The only reason I’d stick with Apple would be that I’ve got an old iPod Touch G1 that I really like and I’ve got some copy protected media that I wouldn’t mind being able to keep on it.

I’m afraid that trying to port my number might be a hassle since I’m no longer in the same city that I was when I got my cell phone (they seem to not let you port numbers for different area codes for some reason).  So that’d be another reason to stick with T-Mobile–who I’ve always been generally satisfied with.

Anyway, I guess I’ll update this when I make up my mind.

Even before my girlfriend left town, I’ve been trying to find ways to entertain myself while she’s gone.  Obvious on the list are working more, playing video games, going to the gym, etc.  But I was also looking for something that might be a bit better defined.

That’s when it occurred to me that I own quite a few DVDs.  Not quite as many as I used to (last year I went through my collection and gave away all of the ones I thought that I wouldn’t want to watch again … and it was a reasonably long list) but still a fair number.

Some of theses DVDs are ones I haven’t watched in years or in some cases since I bought them.  It seemed like a good opportunity to take advantage of a bunch of stuff I’d already owned and have a definitive starting and ending point.

Really, the only thing left for me to do now is to a) decide what order to view them in and b) actually start watching them–oh and c) then write blog entries about them.

So, starting next week I’m going to try to do a weekly recap of the movies I’ve watched and how I feel about them and some various other commentary on the process.  I don’t want it to be a daily thing but I think it’s reasonable that I’ll be able to watch at least a few of them a week and get an entry sorted out.

I’m hoping I can keep a total for running time and movies and keep it lively.  The only real trouble I see down the line is that if I enjoy it I might start buying more movies again.  Oh, and I guess I’ll save the Blu-rays for last (no matter how much I want to watch Inglorious Basterds again).

Anyway, hoping I can come up with a clever title/logo this weekend and get the ball rolling.  Any ideas on a name or viewing order would be appreciated.

First, let me apologize for this post. I’m writing it in probably not the best mental state right now.

Let me also say that it’s pretty weird watching your best friend and girlfriend of the last many years walk past a TSA agent and some seat-belt stanchions (trying to figure out the right term for those things was a good 5 minutes of typing random things into Google) and knowing that for the next year she will be ten thousand miles away. How are you supposed to deal with something that has been looming since the relationship started but is now finally a reality?

After what felt like the longest 20 minute drive home ever, I knew that the only answer was to go on a raging bender. Which, for me at least, means a large pizza, a few beers, and plenty of bad movies.

Of course after 5 movies, 3 beers, nearly 4000 calories  and an ill-advised shopping spree on quasi-depressing indie music off Amazon later, I’m left wondering, what do I do next? Follow-up question: should I sign up for Amazon Prime so I can get my quasi-depressing indie music delivered faster?

Well, step one (after pizza/beer/movie bender) is to zap this dead blog back to life. What that means yet, I’m not sure.  Just rest assured it will be inane and full of crap that I probably would have just talked about with my GF were she around.

So, to anyone who reads this, all I can say is: Welcome back to the WRN adventure.

BTW, I haven’t forgotten about the blog. Just been really busy trying to get everything ready for my GF to head out into the field.

Once that’s all sorted in a few weeks, I’m going to try to start getting back into things here. I hope.

Wow, Chuckles wasn’t lying. Air Guitar competitions (at least in the DC area) are good fun. Some good, bad, hilarious air guitar performances made for great entertainment.

Bjorn Turoque is a pretty great MC and the competition format is good to.

Each competition consists of about 20-25 competitors who will each perform a 60 second sample of their choosing. After their performance judges will each score them and give some feedback (often pretty hilariously) while the crowd boos or cheers both the contestants and the judges evaluations.

After all contestants have performed, the scores are tabulated and the top 5 move on to the compulsory round where they will listen to a previously unheard clip. Then from lowest to highest (giving the contestant with the highest rating the most opportunities to hear the song) the contestants perform the clip.

In the event of a tie at the end of the compulsory round, there is some kind of ‘air off.’ It apparently happened at the DC regionals last year but this year there was no such drama so I can’t really comment.

Still, even at $20 a ticket it was a good time and certainly something worth doing at least once. If the the tour’s coming near you I really encourage you guys to check it out.

The question about how many hits we get a day caused me to look at our stats on StatCounter (something Fulsome setup way back in the day).  I have to say that it wasn’t as low as I feared.  Well, besides that this past Sunday we had absolutely zero hits.  But why should people visit a blog that hasn’t really been updated in a year.

Anyway traffic from the last month is below:

Obviously our page loads are way high for the past day or two (again probably mostly from me visiting the page a few times and clearing out spam comments) but the unique visitors statistics don’t really seem above average.

I started to wonder though, is this the worst traffic we’ve ever gotten?

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