Perfect for when your password is QWERTY

Two weeks ago I finally finished my sentence with the Samsung Sway.  While it looked great, had a very slim size, and cost little, the call quality was pretty terrible.  Call quality is not easy to test at kiosks, and I just assumed all cell phones nowadays had great audio quality.  Oops.  Anyway, I opted this time to get a phone with a nice display, good call quality, and a QWERTY keyboard.

I had planned to get a Samsung Rogue, but just 8 months after release the Rogue was discontinued.  WTF?!  I heard it had freezing problems and that the AMOLED screens were hard to come by, but this was still surprising.  Although I could get a Rogue at a store, I decided instead to get the replacement Reality.

Red-headed stepchild

The Reality is smaller, but other than that, it seems to be inferior to the Rogue in many ways.  The screen is good, but nowhere near as good as the Rogue’s, and the data transfer is slower.  I still think it’s a pretty good phone, though.  I chose the dark City Red color for that business outside, party inside look.

Wetsuit material, I think

I also outfitted my Reality with a plastic cover and a Body Glove.  With Kiwi around, the phone needs all the armor it can get.  I am very picky about electronic coverings, and I always put the screen protectors on before I use the device (yeah, I am that guy).  I even fogged up the bathroom with steam from the shower first to ensure a tight seal.  Unfortunately, the Screenguardz I bought were just terrible.  The hard cover seemed like a good idea, but it would not seal properly around the edges.  I ended up scrapping the Screenguardz and just buying some cheap protectors from Verizon, and these protectors went on perfectly.  You’d think with a name like Screenguardz the protector would be just good but this was not the case at all.

Ninjas need directions to find Velius

With the move rapidly approaching, I decided to upgrade from my Nuvi 350 to a Nuvi 765t.  I also got a friction mount.  The 350 was a little small and sometimes took a long time to acquire a satellite signal when it first started.  Plus, I didn’t want to buy lifetime map updates for a 2-year old device.  I had put some ghetto Dual Lock fasteners on the back of the 350 and the dashboard of the Scion xA, but I wanted something a little nicer for the Santa Fe.  The friction mount is excellent, and does not slide at all.  I also like to stow away, so that thieves aren’t tempted to smash my window to steal my GPS.

Getting back to the 765t, it has a number of new features, although many of them are somewhat useless.  I have no need of Bluetooth (my car has it), or MP3 playing, etc.  However, the large screen is very nice, and the maps look better.  The lane assist is very nice, especially since I live in a fair-sized city, although sometimes the assist is not completely accurate.  The GPS also has ad-driven FM traffic alerts, although I have found them to be inaccurate.  The ads are very small and easy to ignore, so I don’t plan to follow the traffic alerts unless it shows a massive delay.

The 3D maps in cities are useful, although the direction algorithm in cities leaves much to be desired.  The directions are near useless downtown, although I’ve heard that this is a common problem with many GPS units.  The satellite reception is also spotty in “city canyons” but this is to be expected with the line-of-sight nature of the signal.  Still, the maps are pretty helpful, so that you can see what streets are coming up and have an idea of where you are.

I bought a bundle that included the GPS and lifetime (of the unit) map updates, so hopefully this GPS will last longer than the last one.  Since the new house is farther out into the suburbs, I’m optimistic that this GPS will keep me from being horribly lost in my new hood.  In my recon missions thus far, the 765t has been outstanding in the suburbs.

Throw some D's on it

With the birth of Kiwi, it was time to get a little more serious, and so I replaced my Canon S5 with a Nikon D5000.  Although I was always a Canon guy before, the camera is excellent.

The S5 was a great training tool, but even the first few pictures on the new DSLR immediately showed a tremendous improvement in image quality.  The body was not quite as large as I was expecting, although it certainly is heavier and clunkier than any point & shoot, even before you screw a lens on.  As kind of an upper-entry-level offering the D5000 uses more on-screen menus to select settings; this isn’t too bad (I got used to it with the S5), but sometimes changing the ISO on the menu is slower than I’d like.  Also there is no in-body autofocus motor, and so I’m mostly limited to AF-S lenses.  Also, I have to mention that having a side door dedicated to the flash card is so much better than the S5′s questionable decision to have the flash card go into the battery compartment.  That was a terrible idea…

Not as bad as you'd think

One of the main features of the D5000 that set it apart is the swiveling LCD screen.  At first I was concerned about the bottom hinge design, since it obviously is much less useful than a side hinge.  You have to adjust it prior to putting the camera on a tripod, and even then the tripod blocks most of the screen.  I thought this would bother me a lot, but actually it doesn’t.  The reason?  Well, Live View on DSLRs sucks.  It’s sooooooo slow to autofocus that it’s pretty much useless.  So really the only disadvantage of the bottom swivel is that it is useless for self-portraits using a tripod.  I can see why some consumers prefer to have a better/larger LCD rather than the swivel.

Kit lens

The bundle I got came with a couple lenses and a camera bag.  The kit lens is a Nikon Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 DX G AF-S.  It’s a pretty good lens for the most part, though it didn’t come with a hood (and cannot use the hood that came with the 55-200mm).  On the plus side, at least it has VR to reduce shake, and it’s the standard 52mm thread size so that I only need to buy one set of filters.

Be nice if I could get out of the house to use this

The other lens that came in the bundle is the Nikon Nikkor 55-200 mm f/4-5.6 DX ED AF-S.  This lens also has VR and by all accounts is an excellent lens.  Unfortunately, I have yet to go out with this lens, because my picture-taking is confined to my apartment, thanks to newborn Kiwi.

Which button activates the laser beams?

Now that I eat a variety of odd whole grains just about every day, I’ve found that my Panasonic automatic rice cooker (5.5 cups and with the typical blase flower design) just wasn’t getting the job done.  Plus, despite what these ignorant rice n00bs say, cooking rice in a pot sucks.  I picked up a Zojirushi Micom 3-Cup Rice Cooker and it has been awesome.  It’s handled a variety of rice types with ease, and I don’t have to constantly watch the rice to ensure it isn’t burnt or mushy.  I know everyone always gets the 5.5 cup size, but we don’t consume that much rice, and so I got the smaller size instead.  It fits perfectly in our small kitchen.  Also, it plays a few tunes.

A question as old as time

I’ve been very happy my Zune, but one thing has been bothering me since my purchase.  The battery indicator pretty much always showed that the battery was full, but after about a week (and sometimes less) I would try to turn on my Zune and it wouldn’t turn on.  I would get really pissed off whenever I tried to listen to some jamz while waiting for a bus, only to find that my “fully charged” Zune was already out of batteries.  WTF?!

Eventually I got so mad that I actually looked up the problem online.  The explanation has 3 parts:

1. Although the Zune manual says holding down the play/pause button turns the Zune off, it actually only puts the Zune to sleep.  In other words, your Zune is still using battery power.
2. The battery indicator merely calculates how much power you are using when the Zune is on.  So when the Zune is asleep, it is using power, but the battery indicator isn’t taking this into account.
3. The correct way to turn your Zune off is by holding the back button (not left on the Zune squircle) and the down button (on the squircle) at the same time.  You can turn your Zune on by pressing the play/pause button.  The main difference is that your Zune won’t remember what song you were listening to and it will take maybe 1 second longer to boot up.  Also, it takes two hands to turn your Zune off this way.

There are actually many different button combinations for the Zune.  Surprisingly, QCF+P does not do anything.  Since looking up these haxxor codes, my Zune has been correctly displaying the battery power, and after nearly a month the battery is at around 30%.  I haven’t had to charge it at all, but it’s getting to the point where I have to plug the Zune in (or use Wireless sync!) or my Zune will think that my Zune Pass has expired.

However, I heard that Verizon is introducing three new phones this summer. I will be checking out the Dare and the Chocolate 3. The Dare looks especially cool, but I heard that it is the same dimensions as the iPhone, which may be a bit bigger than what I am looking for (OTOH, the LG Prada that the Dare is based off of is slightly smaller than the RAZR). My RAZR is 2.1 x 3.9 x 0.54 inches, and I would like something smaller. Taller is ok, but narrower and slimmer would be nice. Additionally, I am not sure I need extra texting and data features yet, especially if they cost extra.

I’m willing to wait a little while, since my phone still works. Several of the shiny pieces and rubber things have fallen off, but it’s still in pretty good shape.