nifty guy

I am a nifty guy. The kind of nifty guy who demands a superb handheld communication device.

Yep, I must admit, those shiny treos and blackberries have been catching my eye for quite some time. Now they are nifty. They don't just make calls, they have calendars, they have sotware, they've got a whole bunch of stuff. Some of it, I don't even care about -- like maybe I can do without sending emails. I need a calendar, though. Carrying around a thick dateminder is fine, but why have both a phone and a calendar? Why not be nifty?

I'm not one to be caught paying too much for something like that, though. I prefer to spot a value. I found just such a value, on a blackberry 6710, on ebay. I think I paid $19.

Now, unfortunately, it is hard to set up a blackberry. You have to attach your serial port connector to the scsi device, and then attach a series of chargers, before establishing your pop3 connection. Ugh, I hate it. So when my blackberry came, i let it sit there.

I am going on a trip tomorrow, though, so I need my phone. I had to get down to business. I open up the box. Its been up in my office/smelly workout clothes room for quite some time. Its in a box, next to my We are the World Live Aid album. (You have one, too, right? With Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers?) I open it, and immediately I see that this is going to be harder than I wanted. It has battery chargers for the handheld port and for travel, and the chargers have four different outlet choices -- US, UK, European, and, I don't know. The only one I can figure out is the handheld port charger. I install it in my computer. It has to go through the serial port connector, pretty fancy.

It powers up. There's a little lcd picture of an hourglass. That's a good sign. My blackberry is that it has an amazing keyborad. It has the entire qwerty set up. Deluxe. Funny, I bet there is going to have to be some strange method for dialing numbers. Or that I have to enter the numbers and then save them as names. That is going to be a real hassle with no numbers. Back to the manual.

Whoever wrote this manual, they deserve to read their own dreck. Yech. "A wireless email solution", what is that? Right, I know its got email, that's nice, but it does a hundred other things. Like make phone calls. Where is that section? I page through. Gee you can send emails or recieve them or set up forwarding. Great, but I want to make phone calls. Oh here it is--list of applications, page 21.

The blackberry 6710 provides a variety of email choices.

Er, no phone.

If you ever find a value like this, with your own nifty guy instincts, tell me.

what a son

John punches in the numbers on the phone. He's calling a cousin -- not only dialing himself but pretty much handling the conversation.

"Blake -- This is John Rust. Maybe I can come over to your house, or we could go to the beach. No, not today. Maybe this summer."

---

At dinner lately, we've been praying for a few people. Emma is one of them. Tonight John led the prayer:

Thank you God, for good things, for all you do.
And for good food.
I love what you do.

Thank you for the buildings, and the telephone wires, and the choirs.
Thank you for the parking lots, and astronauts, and the car.

Help me to be a good boy.

I've been misquoted

"Help me. Anyone will do," says the reporter. He is definitely desperate: "You'll do fine. I just need a comment about this proposal from the banking commissioner."

Its 4:10 pm on a Friday. I can believe that anyone will do.

"Its a guideline, not a law. Do you think this will stop a predatory broker?"

Hmmm...I guess I can answer that.

"Well, I suppose its not going to stop brokers so much as other people, who are less incentived by volume. Right, it might influence investors holding the mortgages long-term, it might influence perception of these products. Definitely, it makes sense for the commissioner to be worried about this, because there's a safety and soundness issue."

So in the paper, it runs:

A critic at the Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina says, "Its not going to stop brokers."

---

I was upset. I found myself seeking empathy from some prisoners during a conversation at Orange County Prison later that night.

I asked Alvin and Alexander if they ever got made to look bad for something that they really didn't mean.

"Nope, not me," says Alexander. "Just got to keep your head down," added Alvin.

Great. Not even prisoners are willing to think that they ever get a bad rap.