Greg In The Desert

Santa Fe is the capital city of New Mexico but it’s not nearly as populated as Albuquerque and is known for being artsy and for electromagentic sensitive people.

A Santa Fe man who says he suffers from electromagnetic sensitivity is suing his next-door neighbor for refusing to turn off her cell phone and other electronic devices.

Arthur Firstenberg, who has actively opposed the proliferation of wireless systems in public buildings, claims he has been made homeless by Raphaela Monribot’s rejection of his requests.

New Mexico is the right place to live to get away from all electromagntic signals. The Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico is in a signal free zone. One does not have to go far into the desert to get away signals but living anywhere near or in a city is a bad idea.

After writing my post on the “How To Eat Chicken Wings Video”, I got a craving for some chicken wings. I called-in an order at the nearest Wing Basket and drove down to Albuquerque to get them.

When I pulled up to the place I could see a car sitting in front with it’s lights on and people inside. It took me a few minutes to get parked and out of the car. As I got out, the passenger of the other car got out and hurried to the door. We both seemed to race to the door but I did stop to open the door for the other person. She ignored me as I opened the door, not even a thank you, probably because she was too busy talking on her cell phone.

She was now first in line and both the cashier and myself were getting annoyed as she kept asking the same questions since she didn’t pay attention to the answers the first time because she was too busy talking on her phone. Since I was the only other person in the place it because pretty clear their one call-in order was for me. They only had one cashier so they could only do one order at a time.

Eventually she made her order. It was the smallest least complicated thing on the menu and it only took her 10 minutes. I’m not sure if she was consulting with the person on her cell phone or made this choice all on her own. Once she got out of line, she seemed oblivious that there was someone waiting in line behind her.

My Wings were delicious once I got home to eat them. The point of this story is to explain why I hate people and try to order everything on the internet.

Someone called the Albuquerque Journal to report George Bush being escorted by the APD (with blurry cell phone picture) at the Sunport.

We contacted Police Chief Ray Schultz who acted suprised that we knew. He kept saying it was a matter of national security and he couldn’t talk about it. Well, after some hard questioning that would make Katie Couric proud, Schultz admitted that his officers did escort someone who looked like George W. Bush through the sunport.

Natonal Security? You would think the Secret Service would be involved and not the local police.

Amazon has introduced the Kindle e-book reader which has been getting a lot of hype in the tech world. The purpose of the Kindle is to do one thing and do it well, replace your stack of paper back books with a single light weight, long life, simple device for reading books. Why does the Kindle have a keyboard and cell phone connection?

The Kindle can do more than read books, it uses Sprint’s EVDO data network to connect tot he internet. There is no subscription sign up or fees required to access this network. Think this sounds like a good deal? Think again, Amazon is going to nickel and dime you to death on content. After you paid $399.00 for the device, you will pay for every book through Amazon. Best Sellers run about $10 each, public domain books costs $1.99. You can subscribe to RSS feeds, but you will pay $1.00 a month for each feed. These are the same feeds that are available on your computer for free. You can also get newspapers, but again you will pay. There doesn’t seem to be anyway to get content onto the Kindle for free, you will pay Amazon for everything.

I don’t have a problem with Amazon charging for content, or even all the content, but only if the hardware is free or cheap.

I didn’t even write about the hardware, the screen or it’s very 1990’s look. I will leave it to people who have one to talk about those things. Most of the reviews I’ve read have been in the “meh” or negative category with a small number that really like it. I’ve been using Palm devices for reading books and RSS feeds. I expect my future iPhone to have this same capability. This one isn’t for me and I doubt any device which is designed around business model instead of the users will ever be.

[Update 12/02/07 12:41 PM] I should note, I also don’t like the Sony PRS-500 e-book reader. It has it’s own list of issues, some of them similar to the Kindle. At least it’s not as ugly.

Well, I’m close to being in a black hole. I checked out AT&T’s coverage map for my house (which I blurred to protect my privacy) and you can see that just around my house, the signal strength is “moderate”. Which to me means almost none since moderate is the highest level just above No Coverage. I can’t even get my K750i to roam on Cingular/AT&T’s network.

Even T-Mobile’s coverage map shows less than optimal coverage at my house.

Boo Who. No iPhone for me till this is better. At least I have Transformers to look forward to.

Ive been watching the iphone rumors since I started this blog. There’s no one that’s a bigger fan of an Apple cell phone than I. But my excitement has waivered and I wont be buying one.

1. Nothing to do with technical issues, but I simply cannot afford a large purchase at this time.
2. How much are they going to over charge for a voice and data plan. Why won’t they say before June 29th? Because it’s going to cost a freaking arm and a leg.
3. It has to replace my Sony Ericsson K750i on T-Mobil. It appears that it can replace all the applications on the SE and will sync with my address book. But will it be able to work with Salling Clicker? Will it take the beating that my SE does (I drop it all the time and it works as good as if it was new). Seems unlikely.
4. T-Mobil sucks at my house. I barely get a signal. Will AT&T be any better? I doubt it. I can’t roam onto AT&T or Cingular because I can’t get their signal at home either.
5. It has to replace my Palm TX. Since real applications cannot be written for the iPhone, i would still have to carry around my Palm, web based apps wont cut it.
6. I sync my Palm with Outlook using PocketMirror and sync between my Palm and Mac using Missing Sync. It works pretty flawlessly. Not sure that will work with the iPhone.
7. It has to replace my 60GB iPod Photo. I could cut out some of my playlists, but i’m not sure 8GB is enough room for music and photos.

People at work know what a Apple fan boy I am. I constantly get asked if I have pre ordered my iPhone. Uh no, bitches, YOU CAN’T PRE ORDER A IPHONE. Then I try to explain to them why I’m not buying one, but I usually just get blank stares.

Maybe 2.0 will be better

The Rio Rancho City Council unanimously voted no confidence in Mayor Kevin Jackson. The Mayor position is apparently more of a figure head and the council cannot force him out. They would have to take him to court to get him out, which doesn’t seem likely.

He wasn’t in town for the vote, he was in Taos for a conference and lost his cell phone. How convenient. Every one seems to think he has no choice but to resign.

I’m considering getting a Skype phone just as Garth is. I choose to not get wired phone service at my house, I’m not paying $20 min for a phone I would barely use. I went cell phone only, unfortunately I get a crappy signal from T-Mobile at my house.

I’m looking at Skype, they have phone to skype service for $30 a year and you get your own phone number. As long as I get a internet connection I can get phone service. Plus it can do fancy things like transfer calls to my cell. I’d like to get a dedicated phone, not one I hook up to the computer. The Netgear SPH101 or the Belkin Wi-Fi Phone don’t require computers using a wifi connection instead. The Belkin isn’t yet available but is $50 cheaper.

Get amber alerts via text messaging on your cell phone or pager.

AMBER Alerts come to SMS – Engadget – www.engadget.com: “Starting today, AMBER Alerts, the service for bringing attention to missing children, will be available on cellphones via SMS. Cellphone users simply have to sign up on the Wireless AMBER Alerts website and enter the areas they would like to receive alerts for. Apparently, 90% of US cellphone subscribers are currently covered by the service, with most of the rest receiving coverage in the next two months. There%u2019s no charge for the service other than the usual carrier imposed SMS fees.”