Right now, they’re having a 50-70% off anniversary sale on dedicated servers. It was too good to pass up. The sale goes through December 15, and then you keep that price as long as you have your server.

Superb Internet

I spent the rest of the day at the pool or on the beach. I walked from the hotel about two miles down the beach to South Beach, and then part of the way back before deciding just to grab a bus the rest of the way. In case you missed the picture in the last post, here’s a reminder of how it looked.

Santa Barbara’s beaches are nice, but they’re really just not the same. I will have to start going to the beach at home more often, though.

Finally, on Saturday, I made the switch back to Palm, though it’s a brand new operating system. I got to the Sprint store at 6am, and was second in line. The store opened at 8, and by 8:30 I was all set up with my number ported to Sprint. I now own a Palm Pre. At the moment, I’m thrilled with it. Let’s see if I still feel that way in a year and a half…

There are only a few applications available for it at the moment, and I’m still waiting on the SDK, but it can do most of what I want. The web browser is phenomenal. Far better than Safari on my iPod touch. The Touchstone inductive charger is neat. The battery life is crap, but that was to be expected. At least I can carry around a second battery with me if I need to, because it’s user replaceable.

With Classic, I am able to finally use Frames on my phone again, and don’t need to keep an extra Palm (Z22, which I will probably sell) at the bowling alley. My iPod touch (or an iPhone) is capable of doing this, but Apple won’t allow the software to be released. Just another reason I was convinced not to get an iPhone.

It’s better than the iPod touch as a photo viewer, because it gives me more control over the size and display of the images. If only it had more storage space, I might be able to replace my iPod touch as well. I might anyway, thanks to Pandora. I might just listen to that most of the time now, anyway. I’ll probably go through my music library and put a bunch of stuff on the Pre, though.

The Sporting News Pro Baseball app added all the Mets games to my Pre calendar. Supposedly, it will give me in game notifications during the games. I’ll find out tomorrow how well that works. The application does make it easy to check scores and see current game situations without notifications, as well.

The device also comes with Sprint Navigation, which gives me full turn by turn voice navigation. I’ve already used it once (though I knew where I was going) to try it, and it works very well.

Oh yeah, it works pretty well as a phone, too. Overall, very happy with my decision to switch back to Palm, even after today’s announcements from Apple about new iPhone features.

Today’s picture comes from the webcam on my laptop, which I’ve never used before. My alarm clock didn’t go off this morning, probably because I hit the wrong button to turn it on last night. I was in hurry to get out of the house, and this was the quickest way to take the picture.

Purchase location: Jinx
Purchase date: Jan 25, 2008.

xkcd is an awesome web comic. If you’re not reading it, you should be. Its tagline is “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” How can it not be good?

My favorite xkcd: (maybe. so many of them are so good.)

Don’t forget to mouseover the comic image for the additional text. Also, do that on every xkcd comic you ever read.

Purchased from: xkcd store
Purchase date: Jan 2, 2008.

Finally got my order from Futurlec. Got a large assortment of things from their Value Packs page, including 300 LEDs.

Four little stick on flashlights. One of them is small enough to fit in my wallet, so I will always have a flashlight on me now. Not something I’d have gone out and bought, but not useless.

I can always use an extra iPod charger. Nice.

You’d think I’d be able to use a camera bag, but this one is too big for my point and shoot, and too small for my DSLR. Don’t know what I’m going to do with it, but I’ll figure something out.

I can always use extra outlets, too. These things seem decent enough.

Overall, a pretty damn good bag of crap. Definitely worth the $8.

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metsfan,

Thank you for your purchase.

Your order number [removed] for 1 Random Crap has been received by Woot on 12/11/2008 and your credit card has been charged $8.00.
Your order will typically ship within 5 business days. To check your order status, go to the Your Account tab at www.woot.com, log in and check your order history.

Please review the information above and report any discrepancy immediately to service@woot.com. Make sure your user name and order number are included in all correspondence related to this order.

Here is a link to the discussion of this product on the Woot Community Forums:

http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=2855075

Thanks again for shopping at Woot. Please visit us again at www.woot.com.

I’ve been playing with EAGLE PCB Cad software, to create the schematic and printed circuit board to finish off my timer project. There’s a bit of a learning curve to it, but I think I’m starting to get it figured out. It’s pretty cool. Below is an unfinished schematic. I haven’t yet figured out how to tell it to connect pins to power and ground, and I haven’t put in a bunch of other stuff that will be necessary to finish. I’ll get there.