Month: April 2008

Time for a household giveaway

Jeromey Balderrama

Countdown is winding down – moving day is less than 2 weeks from now!  As we’re in the midst of packing, we have a few household items that we don’t have room for.  These include furniture, appliances and posters.  Before we hit up Craigslist, we wanted to see if any of our family and friends had a need for any of these things.

Here’s the deal, if you’re interested in any of these items, shoot off an email to me at romeyinfc [at] gmail [dot] com.  All items are first come, first serve.   These items are free, but if you live outside of Northern Colorado we would ask that you pay shipping for these (i.e. posters) – otherwise we simply ask that you can pick the items up before Saturday, April 19. Please let us know by Wednesday, April 9, as we’ll put all remaining items on Craiglist.

Without further ado, here are our household items. I’ll cross out items that have already been given away (full images available on Flickr):

Dining room storage cabinet – 4 shelves

5 -disk CD changer stereo

Single-cup coffee maker with coffee

“Video gaming” chair (2 available)

 
Black TV stand, capable of holding up to 32″ TV, shelves for DVD’s on the side.

Recliner chair, comfortable & good condition


15 Posters to give away.  Check out the posters on Flickr. I’ll remove them as they’re claimed.

Update: As of Monday evening no one has claimed any posters yet!  Pick one out!

Oh and I got a new phone

Jeromey Balderrama

Note: I meant to write this post a day or two after our engagement, but time has gotten the better of me. Better late than never.

The other less exciting event on the 19th was the day that I got my new phone. I finally ended up settling on the HTC Mogul XV6800. It was actually a comment from my earlier post that pushed me over the fence to choose it over the Samsung SCH-i760, as it would be nice to have the ability to upgrade to EV-DO Rev A when Verizon gets it, plus the extra storage memory makes a big difference.

htc-mogul

I am now almost 20 days into owning the phone, and it’s an exponential improvement over the Treo 700w.  The fold-out keyboard takes a bit of adjustment, but I’ve grown to appreciate the larger screen.  I love the scroll wheel on the side (which I know is common for many smart phones these days).  The extra memory is wonderful, and I’ve never had to worry about running programs degrading phone performance (which I obsessed about over the Treo).  It’s a breeze to switch between the Wi-Fi and EV-DO service, as well as the camera is a good quality for camera-phone.

There aren’t many things that trouble me over the phone, although I did struggle with the battery life initially.  I solved that by simply turning Bluetooth off when I wasn’t using it (I previously left it on all the time on my Treo), it hasn’t been a show-stopper.  Also, I was excited to see that the Mogul received an announcement that it was going to be upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.1 that was announced earlier this week… for Sprint customers. I hope that Verizon makes a similar announcement soon.

I’m nearing the end of the 30 day return period, but I’m going to stick with this phone.  It’s not perfect, but I still think it’s the best one that Verizon offers.

And my Treo…  still not destroyed.  I hung onto it to make sure all the data I needed was off. It’s on my desk at work, but it’ll probably be meeting a hammer pretty soon.

Expression show-stopper… bummer

Jeromey Balderrama

I’ve always been extremely interested in what goes on in the Web Design tools space.  I remember when Adobe came out with PageMill back in the mid-90’s, making great waves in that direction.  I then became a fan of FrontPage when they released their ’97 and ’98 versions.  However, FrontPage fell out of favor rather quickly when it became a crutch for people who had no business designing web sites, as well as generating it’s Extension-needed, non-standard, we’ll-wipe-out-your-code behavior.  I quickly switched over to Dreamweaver and didn’t look back… until a few months ago.

I became intrigued with the work Microsoft has been doing in the Expression Web space, and was delighted when they made it part of their MSDN Subscription tools.  It’s not that I’ve grown tired of Dreamweaver, but more of that “grass is greener” interest.  However, my interest abruptly halted when I realized that Expression – for all of it’s touting of standards and non-mucking of code (being the anti-Frontpage) –  still doesn’t support one of the most basic features: specifying a virtual path to root in links & references (like a stylesheet or menu).  Basically this removes any of the WYSIWYG and interactive functionality, which leads to the question: why would I want to be using this program again?

I can appreciate not trying to duplicate every competitor function, but when other market leaders like DreamWeaver & GoLive both support this function, how have you been ignoring this for so long?  This is the second-highest rated bug in their “Connect” feedback site, used to log bugs.  What’s disappointing is that MS came out with the beta of Expression 2, but that feature is still nowhere to be found.  Moreover, there’s an acknowledgement that it’s not really on their roadmap just being “considered” for a “future version”.

It’s unfortunate to see an application with so much potential be plagued by their inability to incorporate the most essential features to be competitive.  It’s too bad, designers may have liked this tool.

Another countdown is on (BSG)

Jeromey Balderrama

It’s been an amazingly long time in the waiting, but finally Battlestar Galactica returns for it’s 4th and final season.  This is definitely one of the best shows on TV, and after the writers strike, it’s awesome to look forward to TV that’s not a reality show.

If you’ve never seen BSG before, or if you need a refresh on what’s been going on, they have an amazing 8-minute recap called “What the frak is going on with BSG?”.  It’s hilariously awesome!

Friday night can’t get here soon enough!

Back from Vegas!

Jeromey Balderrama

I’ve (obviously) been away from my Ramblings for a while.  We ended up taking a quick 4-day trip over to Las Vegas with the family.  I’d been looking forward to this trip for a long time, as this was my sister’s first trip out there since she was 21, my mom’s first time out there since we were little kids, and my uncle’s first time out there – period.

The trip was fast, I got a bit sick (from a cold – not from drinking), but I still had a blast!  I’m ready to hit the ground and get things together for the house – closing day is less than 2 weeks away!

Check out the rest of the Vegas pictures