Pharos 137 phone

This phone is OK, but when you take it out of the box be prepared to apply updates to its operating system. If you are not familiar with Windows Mobile you may have a bad experience.

Once the current suite of updates are applied the phone is pretty tolerable to use.

* The motion sensor support is flaky. It will work when it decides to.

* Do NOT hard reset this phone from the control panel unless the memory card and your SIM have been removed. I haven't experienced this but there are numerous warnings that on hard reset this phone will wipe both the memory card and your SIM (not sure if that's just contacts or the bits that identify your service!)

* Updates to the phone software may corrupt the SD card. Take it out to be safe. They've also had mis-cues with the updates not working in Windows Vista.

* If you're accustomed to GSM voice and EDGE data in marginal signal locations (i.e. on your previous phone that worked just fine at a particular spot) - you are giving that up by buying this phone.

Pharos seems to be quite responsive to user feedback. So far issues are being fixed.

Pharos 137 Phone

I got another new toy I don't really need this week. Of course, I couldn't live without it now.

The specs for the Pharos 137 are widely available, just google 'em. I could write it all down but it would look like an eye chart. In short its the first Windows Mobile phone that supports T-Mobile USA's odd choice of frequency for a 3g mobile network.

The phone has some very appealing features. A GPS that gets its position fix pretty quickly (outdoors, naturally) and navigation software included. A VERY high resolution screen as well.

In a 3g coverage area the phone is a great little media toy. Slingplayer Mobile works flawlessly to bring in TV from home - say, to the office :) The streaming audio options that can be made to work on Windows Mobile work quite well - this may provoke me to finally ditch XM/Sirius, which I've been contemplating since their recent price increase. Viewing as well as upload to YouTube are supported. Xtube does not seem to be supported though I didn't try very hard. (It might work with that Skyfire browser)

The phone has one feature that may never work - the built in phone application supports "video calling." This is the reason for the phone's two cameras - one is front-facing. T-Mobile would have to implement support for it and even then a video call would only be successful to another 3g phone supporting video calls. Given that their own models don't support it nor does anything upcoming, don't hold your breath. But it's a button you can push all the same.

Awesome phone really! And yes, it works all over the world for low-speed data and voice calls.

I got a google voice phone number...

I finally got an "invite" for a Google voice account. Unfortunately the only numbers available in the Phoenix metro area are area code 623. I don't live anywhere near there and I don't WANT a 623 phone number, thanks...

But I got a neat number that spells something and is in a somewhat meaningful geographic area (to me at least). No, I'm not going to post what it is.

The service looks to be very useful for getting around international text message charges to Canada :) T-Mobile charges like 15c per international message and this is free. Haven't tried to use it through the Windows mobile internet browser yet but that will come.

Shit economy + airport = :)

Ok, I suppose its a bad thing that the airport is utterly uncrowded on the evening before a holiday weekend. But it is! It's kinda nice.

still around :) ... in... ARIZONA!!!

Damn, it's been awhile. Obama was my last post - and he's been in office long enough that I dislike him already. But that's another topic.

I lost my friggin' mind this afternoon and bought a pair of rollerblades. I'm traveling up to nor-Cal soon and my friend up text-messaged me a week ago as a followup to the voicemail he just left -"Oh, and bring your rollerblades!"

WHAT rollerblades, I was thinking... they got left in Uruguay with a whole hell of a lot of stuff when I moved out of there. Besides, the last pair was THOROUGHLY worn out - I think I'd been through five or six bearing replacements and at least three stoppers. I know for sure that along with the rollerblades I left behind a new-in-package stopper designed for those 'blades - I bought 'em in 1993.

Damn, I wrote several paragraphs about WHY I bought them in 1993. That's off topic ;)

Anyway, its been five years since I've been up on ANY kind of wheeled footwear. HOLY CRAP! I thought it would be very simple but um, not quite. First of all I had the dog with me. I had this idiot idea Shaggy would pull me and it would be sort of chill.

NO. First of all descending the stairs was not as easy as I'd remembered it being. I live on the second floor so I had no choice.

Shaggy didn't quite know what to make of me being four inches taller OR moving quite so randomly. Suddenly I was able to move MUCH faster or slower than normal. As such she held way back and it was more ME pulling HER. Note to self: do not try to walk dog and rollerblade at the same time. I walked her long enough that she did what every good dog should do THE HELL OUTSIDE :) and then cleaned it up.

I climbed the stairs again to let her back into the house and then it was ON - there had been little glimpses of the previous skill I'd had years ago but the dog was slowing me down.

Perhaps that was a good thing. (The slowdown)

I went around the block as fast as - indeed, faster - than I dared ;) "Faster" is relative, I suppose - but I didn't KNOW I was going faster than I wanted to be until I'd gotten there. I kept thinking, "OK, it's June 30th... you have two hours until you have full health coverage again - WHY DIDN'T YOU WAIT?!" But that thought only crossed my mind when I damn near fell.

(Yes, in 1 hour and 14 minutes from now I have what passes for healthcare coverage in this country. But that too is the topic of another post...)

Ah well, I can go out and practice one more time tomorrow night before the weekend. :)

Inauguration day

I got up at 5:30 mountain time to start watching coverage of the inauguration. The crowd is unbelievable considering that it's 19 degrees (f). Watching it in high-definition really adds a LOT to this type of programming.

The presidential car looks like a monster in terms of security. All of the windows are quite visibly bullet-proof glass. It appears there is a visible gun-port on either side of the car.

There have to be more than a MILLION people there. I've been to DC a couple of times and the mall is FULL!

But the best part of all of it - eight years of Bush/Cheney are OVER at noon today. I tagged the post as "You can't fix stupid" but today is an exception. The fix is in at noon.

techno-shy Americans venting about the coming analog TV switchoff...

You'd think the world was ending to read all the whining in the newspapers.

Complaint: "We got the coupon and installed the box and now we don't get nearly as many channels! We 'had to' subscribe to cable or satellite."

Response: The manuals for the converter box make it clear that you might need to change your outdoor antenna. Furthermore those who 'had to' subscribe to a pay service could have uninstalled the converter box until the 18th.

The US government and TV broadcasters did sort of a bad job explaining an important point - but the average person whose eyes glazed over at the word 'antenna' probably would not have followed this at all: the digital signal on the air in most markets is decidedly weaker right now than it will be on the 18th. Broadcasters don't have the resources to transmit two equally strong signals. Those who 'had to' subscribe to cable or satellite - were they to hook their converter box up to a proper antenna - might well discover all the channels they had plus more. Their 'having to' switch to cable or satellite was in all likelihood unnecessary. They should not have listened to the employees at big box stores who got slightly better performance reviews for that month or quarter for signing up those cable or satellite subscribers.

Complaint: What do you mean we have to re-scan from time to time to update the on-screen guide? How can we possibly be expected to remember to do this?

Response: The newspaper reporter either wasn't quite detailed enough OR the reader didn't process that the only reason you'd re-scan was to look for new channels. The guide updates itself. The "How can we possibly be expected..." bit - whining. Putting it another way: "Waaaaaah, it's change. We can't possibly change."

Complaint: We didn't know about the coupons for the converter boxes! Once we got them we had a hard time finding them in stores! And worse yet - people bought them who don't really need them!

Response: You had to be blind or deaf not to see the public service announcements about the converter boxes. The PSA's explained how to get the coupons. Once you got your coupon you had six months to use it.

If you waited until the last minute you probably DID have a hard time finding them in stores. If you wait until February you probably WILL have a hard time finding them in stores.

It's also true: plenty of coupon-receivers and buyers didn't really need the boxes. They've had no problem selling those boxes at full price on eBay.

I have two that I probably will never need. I had just as much right as any other American to take advantage of that subsidy - that's capitalism! :)

The morning of the 18th I'll put the boxes up for sale on the bulletin boards in the laundry room where I live, or at the supermarket.

Some say a solution is to put off the switch. In my opinion the switch should have been moved forward to one week before the superbowl. It would have given the US population a whole lot more incentive to read and understand the instructions.