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New Phone!
Okay, so a few weeks ago my Sidekick started breaking down -- just rebooting for no reason, though it seemed to be some memory issue. It couldn't run AIM and it couldn't load really big web pages.
A few days ago the screen started being weird. Two days ago a BIG SPLOTCH appeared in the middle of it and today it was pretty much illegible.
So tonight, after grabbing dinner quickly at Blue C (seems like an oxymoron, but on Monday night getting seated quickly is no problem if you're alone. Also, they were showing Kiki's Delivery Service), I ran up to Northgate mall since I figured malls have T-Mobile stores. I found one of the wireless places that carried T-Mobile stuff and asked about getting the Sidekick 2 fixed and they were like "Hahaha, you must be joking. We stopped carrying them a year ago, and getting one fixed if you're not under warranty will cost you like $150-$200. Why not just upgrade to a Sidekick 3?"
I didn't like the offer they had, though, so I went to the other T-Mobile store in another kiosk in the mall, and while I didn't like the *people* there, they were an actual official T-Mobile kiosk as opposed to just a place that carried their phones. So, I got to try out a T-Mobile MDA, which is the T-Mobile Windows Phone or whatever. And it seemed pretty cool, and cost about the same as a Sidekick, so I went for it.
I then came home and spent like 3-4 hours playing with it. It's a little hard to figure out. I had to install special software to sync it with my computer and all, but since it runs Windows I could just upload a background picture and soundfiles and things like that, which is neat. It charges over USB, too, which is awesome for if I ever go on a trip and forget my charger again.
What SUCKED is that I can't transfer anything off my Sidekick to it -- and worse, since I switched plans to the MDA, I can't even access my old Sidekick stuff off the server over the web, since T-mobile now has me marked as "cancelled Sidekick plan". I was able to save my contacts to my SIM card and load them into the new phone, but I pretty much lost all of the pictures that were on the old phone.
So I'm dumb.
On the other hand... this new phone actually does video and sound, including Windows Media Player, AND it does normal wi-fi, so right now I have it playing the 100k feed of the Hawks-Marines baseball game going on in Japan. THAT IS SO COOL! I have it feeding over our house wi-fi right now, but I wonder if it'd be possible for it to actually play videofeeds of normal baseball games? it'd be hilarious if I could be like, riding the bus home from work and watching a baseball game over my phone :)
I could also try to find out a way to get more memory for it and load videos and music onto it. That'd be funky.
I'm sure that the whole touch-screen thing is going to annoy me after a while -- it seems dumb that the phone is designed so that you have the screen up against your face while talking on it, but you want to keep the screen clean for the stylus and touch-thingy to work? Eh.
OH, the one major problem right now is that it doesn't actually do Japanese text support -- I tried looking at the Yahoo Japan box scores and it all came out with jibberish, untranslated unicode. So I'll have to figure out how to load CJK support onto it... or that'll probably be a major problem.
Anyway, I still have the same phone number, and in theory I still have all of your phone numbers (if I had them in the first place), though I need to still play around with the imported contact list a bit. Wheeeeee.
A few days ago the screen started being weird. Two days ago a BIG SPLOTCH appeared in the middle of it and today it was pretty much illegible.
So tonight, after grabbing dinner quickly at Blue C (seems like an oxymoron, but on Monday night getting seated quickly is no problem if you're alone. Also, they were showing Kiki's Delivery Service), I ran up to Northgate mall since I figured malls have T-Mobile stores. I found one of the wireless places that carried T-Mobile stuff and asked about getting the Sidekick 2 fixed and they were like "Hahaha, you must be joking. We stopped carrying them a year ago, and getting one fixed if you're not under warranty will cost you like $150-$200. Why not just upgrade to a Sidekick 3?"
I didn't like the offer they had, though, so I went to the other T-Mobile store in another kiosk in the mall, and while I didn't like the *people* there, they were an actual official T-Mobile kiosk as opposed to just a place that carried their phones. So, I got to try out a T-Mobile MDA, which is the T-Mobile Windows Phone or whatever. And it seemed pretty cool, and cost about the same as a Sidekick, so I went for it.
I then came home and spent like 3-4 hours playing with it. It's a little hard to figure out. I had to install special software to sync it with my computer and all, but since it runs Windows I could just upload a background picture and soundfiles and things like that, which is neat. It charges over USB, too, which is awesome for if I ever go on a trip and forget my charger again.
What SUCKED is that I can't transfer anything off my Sidekick to it -- and worse, since I switched plans to the MDA, I can't even access my old Sidekick stuff off the server over the web, since T-mobile now has me marked as "cancelled Sidekick plan". I was able to save my contacts to my SIM card and load them into the new phone, but I pretty much lost all of the pictures that were on the old phone.
So I'm dumb.
On the other hand... this new phone actually does video and sound, including Windows Media Player, AND it does normal wi-fi, so right now I have it playing the 100k feed of the Hawks-Marines baseball game going on in Japan. THAT IS SO COOL! I have it feeding over our house wi-fi right now, but I wonder if it'd be possible for it to actually play videofeeds of normal baseball games? it'd be hilarious if I could be like, riding the bus home from work and watching a baseball game over my phone :)
I could also try to find out a way to get more memory for it and load videos and music onto it. That'd be funky.
I'm sure that the whole touch-screen thing is going to annoy me after a while -- it seems dumb that the phone is designed so that you have the screen up against your face while talking on it, but you want to keep the screen clean for the stylus and touch-thingy to work? Eh.
OH, the one major problem right now is that it doesn't actually do Japanese text support -- I tried looking at the Yahoo Japan box scores and it all came out with jibberish, untranslated unicode. So I'll have to figure out how to load CJK support onto it... or that'll probably be a major problem.
Anyway, I still have the same phone number, and in theory I still have all of your phone numbers (if I had them in the first place), though I need to still play around with the imported contact list a bit. Wheeeeee.
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P.S. We did the unthinkable, and made Esteban Yan look good. xP
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And I hope the new phone works out for you, too. :-)
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i burn u.
Oren forwarded me a thing for Japanese support, but now I have kanji showing up in other places where it probably shouldn't, heh.
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It is sort of fun to have the opportunity to try this new phone out though. It's almost like having a mini-laptop.
Also it appears that I can actually move my fantasy baseball roster AND update my blog from this phone, which I couldn't do from the Sidekick :) I know, I know, priorities.
What's dumb is that I pretty much decided that I don't think I'll go to San Francisco for my birthday after all because the phone cost about the same as the plane ticket would have... though I was already vaguely deciding against the SF trip just because of timing. (Stupid Phillies play a Saturday afternoon game and then a Sunday night game, which is the worst for planning a weekend trip.)
PS, one of these days when you come to Market Fresh you should let me know, I go there 4 out of 5 days every week, I swear.
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The SF-Philly sked makes no sense... don't you usually play a Sunday daytime game because you have to travel?