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My Jonas Brothers

Just the other day Manuel and I were laughing at how his daughter knows every little bit of pointless info about the Jonas Brothers and watches every TV appearance of these dudes. We laughed... I laughed. and then Palladia had the 2004 Duran Duran concert at Wembley in High Definition. I sang, I danced, I remembered every little bit of pointless info about Simon, Nick, Andy, Roger, and John. I was a teenager again. Scary, isn't it?

Two trips to Target

I really had to experience it. I had never been involved in the early morning shopping craze of black Friday, so last night after dinner at Manuel and Olga's I decided to do it. I planned my trip to Target at 5:30 am and I had a very short list of items I saw on their catalog: new sheets for my bed, a set of suitcases for the trip to Mexico, some t-shirts, and the Guitar Hero for Wii that Manuel and Olga wanted. I arrived at 5:45 and there was a line of like 250-300 shoppers outside of Target. Once the doors opened at 6 am, it was a messy disaster as apparently everyone was after the Guitar Hero deal (down from $100 to $60). I saw a guy almost get in fight with a poor kid when he tried to grab the "last" Guitar Hero box. I gave up on that and proceeded to get the sheets, and suitcases. Just as I was leaving, and before waiting 20 minutes on the checkout line, a Target dude came out with a new box full of Guitar Hero packages. I got one and then I paid and came home. Sure, after that I went to Roanoke with my neighbors, but I will write about that later, when I am in the mood to give details about returning the horrible and sucky Storm. Then, Marcela decided she needed to do some shopping, so I went back to Target at 7 pm. Oh well... the Guitar Hero was there. Still $60 and no one was fighting over it. There were two boxes that the 7pm shoppers completely ignored. The sheets and suitcases were also there... same prices. Going to Target at 5:30am was totally pointless, but at least I got to experience early morning black Fridays. If this time next year I tell you I am going shopping before 10 am, you are all authorized to kick me.

Back to the KRZR

So, my pains with the Storm were getting worse. I really got to hate the little thing. The touch-click screen activates functions all the time and it's really annoying. I teach my students that technology should not make you feel stupid. If it does, then it's bad technology. I am taking it back to the Verizon store tomorrow. Today I switched my service back to the Motorola KRZR, which has very nice sound quality and doesn't activate voice calling or the camera whenever I touch it.

As honest as I can be about my Blackberry Storm

So the Storm arrived on Monday morning, and I was very excited while opening the box and getting ready to play with it. I promise you I will try to minimize the times I mention the words "iPhone" and "iPod Touch" in this post, because if we take them away I can make a truly honest review of the Storm. With them, things are just not fair. Anyway, I was expecting a lot... kinda like that "wow wow" moment when I first saw an iPod in Texas or when I bought my iPod touch last year. As a result, when I finally had the Storm in my hands the first thing I could say was "it looks... so.. fragile." The screen is one big button, and in order to click it has to be separated by a few millimeters from the body of the phone, and then on the back we have the battery cover, which is actually removable. It felt shaky and wobbly, and not a solid one piece device like the you know whats. When I turned it on, after reading the brief and not very detailed manual that comes with it, something very strange happened. I was feeling like an idiot. I was frustrated because Verizon/the Storm were not doing what I expected. First, I tried to transfer my contacts from the backup assistant online tool, since I have been paying for this service. No such luck, as Verizon Blackberrys are not compatible with it. Well, I had to re-enter my contacts manually one by one (I know some magicians at Verizon stores do this with other software, but I see no reason for going to the store when you buy the phone online. That defeats the purpose). The clicking was complicated, and some of the links are too small. I kept clicking in the wrong place and fighting with the text-entering modes. Once my contacts were in, I called someone and the sound quality was worse than what I had with my Motorola KRZR. Plus, those hard to click icons are suddenly super easy to click with your cheek when you are on a call, and that activated my speakerphone over and over again.
Ok, time to play with some media. Let's add some music and songs. First try: bluetooth. No such luck. The phone didn't let my Mac send files to it. Second try, connect it to the computer. No such luck. It only plays with Windows. Ok, let's go to Windows then. Wait here 20 minutes as Vista starts up and updates all the things it needs to update. I installed the Blackberry desktop software and then... for the first time I said "wow." I could just drag and drop mp3s from my computer to the Storm's memory card. No need for iTunes or other middleman software.
That's when it clicked: the Storm is a nice little Smartphone. Emphasis on phone. It is not a portable mini Macintosh like the iWhatevers. If I expected it to behave like a portable computer, then it would never make me go "wow." As a phone, the Storm has a lot of cool features, but it also has a strange interface of clicks and touches. The video and audio quality in media is very good, and once I spent a few hours customizing many features, I am finally happy with it. Anyone who comes to the Storm looking for an iPhone under Verizon is a moron. And anyone who spends too much time in a love affair with a Mac and forgets that Windows, ugly slow and buggy as it is, can have good things, is also a moron.
So.. I guess I do like the Storm. Part of this feeling, of course, comes from the fact that I am stuck with it for two years, but I don't think it's a bad smartphone. If you ask for my advice on buying a Storm or an iPhone, I will send you to get the iPhone. Regardless of its performance as a telephone (or AT&T's service), the iPhone is truly a revolutionary device. The Storm is not. It is a nice and fancy phone with more emphasis in play than in actual call quality sound.

Stormy weather

Today, first day of the "break" with a) grading, b) meeting at 10 am, c) meeting at 2 pm, d) writing (or grading some more if needed), and then the world stops because my Blackberry Storm arrives and I will be playing with it. I find this auto-save blinking notification from TypePad very annoying, BTW. Can it just save on the background without moving my buttons every five seconds?

"break" plans

The turkeygiving break is here. I plan to spend it at a fancy spa and resort called Shanks Hall 439. I have two meetings on Monday, one on Tuesday, and two papers to revise/write. Fun times! Gobble gobble indeed.

2b2b

Worldwide Pants is gonna sue me

A few years ago, and I even think it was at a job interview, someone asked me who was my biggest influence in the classroom. I didn't think about it more than two seconds and replied "David Letterman." And it's true.. in my classroom I have more than one moment modeled after Dave (remember a student evaluation comment I got when I was a grad student at Texas Tech: "Mr. Evia uses the classroom as a comedy club... and the results are positive"). I wish I had a Paul who would laugh at my jokes... well, Tim Lockridge is doing that this semester. He seems to get all of my lame jokes, and the rest of the class gets about 80%... ha ha. The point is that it's not all about jokes (or is it?). Certain activities in my graduate class are named after segments from The Late Show. Thus, we had "Audience Show and Tell" when they presented their websites, and tomorrow we will have "Is this Anything?" when they give a five minute presentation of the argument and research plan for their final paper. Oh, teaching a graduate class never was this fun.

Bathroom workout

I went to bed really looking forward to my 6:30 am trip to the gym. Why? Well, because I was ready to try my new Monster iFreePlay headphones.

In theory, these babies can really improve my life, since every morning at the gym I spend 2 minutes untangling headphone cables... and those sucky Sony headphones I have been using lately have the longest cable ever (the Bose in-ear headphones turned out to be not so good for the gym, since the tips get slippery... yuck).
Oh well.. ready to go, I got up at 6 and just as I was about to get dressed up for the gym I noticed there was snow outside, and my car was pretty covered, and so was the road uphill coming out of my apartment. Balls in a jar. I was all ready to workout and couldn't go (which is very rare for me... ha ha). So, instead, In decided to clean the bathroom. Tuesday at 7 am I was cleaning my bathroom, and don't go thinking it was a half-assed Clorox wipe kind of thing. Nope, this was a full scrub and mop kind of event. 35 minutes. If that doesn't count as a workout, then I am out of here.

You are Chiquita, you used to be big

I am done reading "Chiquita." It was a sad moment last night when I read the final page... 518, that's before the appendixes of pictures and notes. I really liked the book... the mix of biography with relevant events of the era and fantasy is really effective. It makes you doubt and go "oh please," but then you realize that it only happens in the chapters that supposedly Chiquita is dictating (in third person) to Candido, so it makes sense that she is trying to create something supernatural. The voices of Chiquita, Candido, and the author/journalist as narrators tend to blend, but keeping them separated gives the book a new perspective of intertextuality. With her Candido as a clueless and unimpressed Joe Gillis, Chiquita is a Norma Desmond making her own legend. Rustica doesn't help her in the way Max helped Norma... so Chiquita is alone in confectioning her own legend, and we don't have to buy all the things she sells. I didn't want the book to end, but it did. Now I am tackling an ever bigger book, Paco Ignacio Taibo II's biography of Pancho Villa. This book has been in my car since last May! I started reading it, but one day it disappeared, and then it showed up again a few weeks ago (like a turtle we had when we were kids, which would get lots in the backyard for months and then come back). Someone kicked the book under the passenger's seat of the Civic, and it was hiding there all through the summer and part of the fall.