No, really.

Butterfly and I have worked all day long moving appliances around. I rented an open trailer from U-Haul; we got a new washer, dryer, refrigerator, and big-screen TV–all from Butterfly’s ex’s house.

What the heck; he won’t be needing them for about 10 to 15 years…

I have two “What was I thinking!?” entries to report.

I’m covering KJ German’s Wednesday night show for a few weeks while he’s off in Germany. Normally I like his Wednesday night show; it’s at one of those very nicely-appointed, hip, trendy, alcoholic Slurpee™ bars; y’know the ones, with the good food, great drinks, and typically a pleasant atmosphere. But I swear there must’ve been a full moon out last night: every lunatic, ass-hole, and crazy was out en masse and they all came to my show.

It makes me question why on Earth I was so eager to get back into the Karaoke business, especially considering that I have a full-time job besides. After last night, I’m totally sick of Karaoke and I fucking hate people–and if I ever see another microphone again, I’m going to throw up.

I want to be alone for a week.

I upgraded my BlackBerry Storm (1) from OS 4.7.whatever to 5.0.0.230, the latest “leaked” OS from RIM, and re-activated it on my account in place of my Curve.

There are not enough developers in all of Christendom that can turn that phone into anything more than a shiny toy. If the Storm 2 uses the same OS–and by all accounts, it will–then it will be no better.

OS 5.0.0.230 updates the User Experience with such baubles as flick-scrolling (a la the iPhone), the text input is faster and more precise, and predictive input gets kicked up a notch. They say they’ve improved the browser too, but I sure can’t tell.

And sadly, RIM will never, ever, ever make voice-assisted dialing not totally suck, and the OS–being a pre-release and all–is still fraught with annoying and aggravating bugs.

In this case, I did know what I was thinking: I was so caught up in Storm 2 fever that I wanted to preview the OS on my Storm 1. But, unfortunately, it was kind of a let-down.

I await the arrival of the Pre and the Droid on Verizon with heightened interest, because the Storm 2 has been completely eliminated from the running. My next “last-phone-I’ll-ever-own” is going to have a real fucking keyboard. Period.

When I got home very early this morning, I learned some highly unpleasant things about a typical door on a typical two-car garage:

1. There is a very large spring that keeps it balanced such that a relatively low horsepower electric motor can raise and lower it
2. When that spring breaks, the door weighs eight hundred million pounds.
3. A 1/3 horsepower electric motor cannot raise, unassisted, an eight hundred million pound door.
4. A typical male of average strength can only just barely raise, unassisted, an un-sprung  two-car garage door to free his wife’s car–without passing out.
5. I think I seriously injured myself getting the garage door open.

I’m actually glad I discovered this at 2:00am and not Butterfly at 700 am, as she would be late taking T-Rex to school and getting to work.

I’m going to go medicate myself and lie down now.

I can’t sleep. Again.

Normally when I can’t sleep, I pull Lorelei out of the garage and take her for a lap around Palm Beach County. Only this time, I wandered a bit farther south: I ended up on Ft. Lauderdale Beach, a place where I used to frequent all the time–of course, I lived down there at the time, and didn’t have to drive a motorcycle 50 miles to get there.

Somehow, though, I always end up there when I’m feeling blue and need a bit of “me” time. Tonight definitely qualified as one of those nights.

I ended up at a hole-in-the-wall dive bar just off Sunrise and A-1-A called The Famous Parrot. It didn’t look particularly famous, but I was thirsty, and so I had a Jack & Coke and, less blue, I was on my way.

I figured that as long as I’m not sleeping, and I’m in the neighborhood, I ought to stop by the office and check on a 40gb file file transfer from Denver (where my company’s parent company is) that I kicked off over the weekend(!). To my great surprise, it still hasn’t completed yet–some 72 hours after I started it–but at least it hasn’t stopped.

Knock wood. It still has 56 minutes to go…

I reckon I could’ve just as easily checked on it from home. But I was already here, and figured I’d stop on by for a couple of Pita chips and a Coke before I headed for home.

One of these two phones is going to become the latest “last phone I’ll ever own:”

I bought a Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Storm (original) about two months ago. Needless to say, I’m back using my BlackBerry Curve; I just couldn’t get used to the typing delay on the Storm. Its operating system is slow and buggy, written for the likes of the Curve and the 83xx rather than the Storm; consequently, because of the higher demands of the Storm, it crashed a lot.

The Storm 2 promises to be an all-new experience, with BlackBery OS 5.0, and the hit-and-miss SurePress “button” under the floating glass screen has been replaced with a slick piezoelectric sensor arrangement, promising multi-touch capability a-la the iPhone (a phone which everyone but iPhone users love to hate).

The Storm 2 has WiFi capability–long clamored-for by Verizon subscribers, but something I really don’t care much about, as Verizon’s 3G EV-DO data network is so fast that I don’t wont for it on the devices I already have. However, Engadget has rumored that the Storm 2 will have MiFi capability–which means that the Storm 2 is, essentially, a mobile wireless access point, with which I share the staggeringly-fast 3G EV-DO Internet connection with up to five laptops, which would connect to my Storm using their 802.11 WiFi:

So I would be a walking WiFi hotspot. That is freaking cool.

If this is actually true, then this device is chock-full of win and it will be my next “last phone I will ever own.”

But there’s also a new contender on the block: The Droid, by Motorola, is coming exclusively to Verizon. Its claim to fame? It’s not the fact that it has a a fold-away keyboard–like a number of smartphones these days–but rather, it boasts version 2.0 of the Google Android operating system. While BlackBerry has an App store, Android is completely open-source and I can finally have a phone I can develop my very own apps for. (and don’t none of you WinMo users tout the ability to write apps for your phones–WinMo is buggier than a bait store and I’d sooner own an iPhone before I owned a WinMo phone.)

I’ll wait until Christmas. Then I’ll take the plunge with one of these two phones. But either way, I will have a new phone come New Years.

Oh happy day! It’s 75, sunny, and the bright azure sky has not a single cloud!

It was almost worth slogging through yet another South Florida sumer just to get to this beautiful day.

And here I am stuck in my office without a window.

Bleargh.

I think I’m gonna move into the lab.

Hey kids, remember a few posts back when I referenced that snazzy Intel commercial starring Ajay Bhatt, co-inventor of the Universal Serial Bus (USB)? Guess what: We’ve all been duped! That wasn’t the real Ajay–it was an actor!

Here’s Conan O’Brian talking interviewing Mr. Bhatt:

Not even Conan O’Brien can craft this into an interesting interview.

I again reassert my opinion that the techies of the world make our world better, faster, and way cooler–but when interviewed make their miraculous inventions sound about as exciting as a colonosopy.

I’m doing my Thursday night show again at my favorite Thursday night venue…

A few of the later-night folks have figured out that they can make the show run longer by ensuring that the host can’t legally drive home. I hope they continue that trend tonight; I could sure use a drink or two…

Alright, I know. I’m a techie. I work in the IT industry and have a great deal of experience, and I’m immodest enough to say that I’m damn good at what I do. I’m even somewhat personable, to boot (although you may not come away from reading this entry thinking so). So because I’m somewhat personable, I don’t mind answering the odd legitimate question every now and again. I even like it sometimes; it gives my mind a bit of a workout.

I’ll tell you what I’m not: I am definitely not Google.

I don’t want to be Google. I don’t even have all the answers Google does. And few things piss me off more than someone asking me a really simple tech question that the first one or two Google hits–had they been not-lazy enough to consult Google before asking me–would have easily answered for them.

I know full well how doctors and lawyers feel at social gatherings: “Oh, you’re a doctor? I have a pain in my foot, what is that?” I get the same damn thing, all the freaking time: “Oh, you’re a highly-placed IT professional? My Internet at home is slow, what is that?”

I work for my company. I don’t work for you. And I am absolutely 100% done doing freebies for all but my family (the ones I like, anyway, and that list is subject to change without notice) and my very closest friends. If you want me to help you, 1) search Google for your answer first, before you call/talk to/e-mail me, and/or 2) make an appointment. I charge $90 an hour with one hour minimum.

As it happens, my LiveJounral account was unvalidated–which is why I wasn’t getting cross-posts to LJ. But I validated my e-mail address, and now all is well.

Edit: I see that the WordPress plugin LJ-crosspost automatically posted all my entries in LJ since I had the original problem. Wow! That’s pretty slick!