T-Mobile Shadow... Batteries... and back to imprisonment with a Windows Mobile smartphone and a contract...

My wife missed an important appointment the other day. Time for action. "You need a smartphone, I say" and suggest that I get her one. The Sidekick was too big and bulky, so I sold it on Craigslist.

I signed up for a 1-year contract with T-Mobile, since their rates are less killer, and used a special code I found on the Internet to get two T-Mobile Shadow phones on the cheap.

Of course, I just got through kicking the ball and chain of AT&T to the curb, but I really didn't want to pay $300 for another set of smartphones, so I signed up for a 1-year contract. I ported the numbers from our pre-paid phones to the new lines of service, and signed up for the slow EDGE-based Internet plan (to get the $50 rebate for each phone).

The phones have WiFi, so I might not need to keep the Internet service... however, the biggest reported problem with the phone seems to be battery life... but then there's this post on AllShadow.com: Get an Extended Battery from T-Mobile. I recieved the phones Friday, and didn't get the new batteries, so I guess I need to call customer service.

Then I have to figure out why I want to spend $30 each for a couple of car chargers at the corporate store. And get my wife a dedicated setup of Outlook to sync her phone with, and organize her address book, and all sorts of crap... Getting new phones is hard work!

World of Warcraft 2.4.3 (Mounts at Level 30?)

I might have to go back and start playing World of Warcraft. The recent update supposedly lets you get mounts at level 30. My Mac is pretty weak for playing it though, but my PC is plenty powerful enough. The real question is, am I willing to give up 50 cents a day? It has to come from somewhere... sigh.

I hate computer docks. Anyone recommend a bluetooth mouse?

This morning, the dock I was using with my laptop computer at work just "died". All of a sudden, I was disconnected from the network and my external keyboard and mouse stopped working. WTF?

I have work to do, so i just plugged everything straight into the laptop, and soldiered on. Maybe that's why should just get wireless "everything". The dock failing was just a symptom of the "real" problem. connecting stuff to a computer is prone to failure, stuff breaking is bound to happen. This laptop does have bluetooth, maybe I should just get a bluetooth mouse, and headphones, and a phone that can connect with bluetooth.

Oh well... back to work.

At the end of the day, I left 30 minutes early, stopped at Starbucks, to get the iTunes data for the CDs I ripped on my PowerBook, only to find that they don't have Internet... I drive down the road to another, and discover that they have that damned hook-up with AT&T wifi. Fortunately, I have AT&T DSL, but it is becoming apparent that I won't be able to leave so cheaply if I need wireless internet and Flickr Pro... Oh well, it is still cheaper than Comcast Cable, right?

Linux Haters Blog, Hackintosh

I read the linux haters blog. Seriously... I went and read every post. I've been a Linux fan for years, but not always a user. I had seriously hoped to move more toward being a user, but reading this made me rethink a lot.I had a recent frustration, which I have since resolved, but in the time that it took, I acquired an Apple PowerBook G4. I now remember every reason I used a Mac before. Stuff just works. Then I used it some more, and wanted to do some stuff, and remembered why I quit using Macs... Everything costs money.The question isn't really whether it is worth the money, but rather, whether I have it to spend. Linux has costs too, mostly time. I'm short on both money and time these days, so it can be hard to decide if I should let either dictate my OS of choice.I'm going to try building a hackintosh, Maybe then I can really evaluate whether I need that Mac Pro tower. Well, no... not really, I don't need it. But, I would like to experience some of the OS X goodness on some higher end hardware... and all my high-end hardware isn't Apple branded... so there. Worst case scenario, I lose some more time, and end up back on Linux, looking for marginal programs to do things that I could just pay money and get good applications for on Windows or OS X, right?

Crud, Drivel sucks too?

I think I know why the Fedora People use LiveJournal. There's no client for WordPress in the distribution that sucks less thanthat sucks less than that goat-whatever-program I used to use... (logjam).

Drivel doesn't even support Titles natively, with it's Atom 1.0/Blogger support. I'm writing this post in Drivel, but I think it will be my last one. Sigh... maybe I really should just go back to LiveJournal.

Ripping with Banshee, part 2 - FreeDB backup?

Okay, lots of the CDs I've tried don't have MusicBrainz entries... fine, I'll try them in SoundJuicer... oh, wait, it is doing some sort of fallback to FreeDB... well, why doesn't Banshee do that?

Oh, and the submission to MusicBrainz in SoundJuicer... that's too hard, I don't understand what to do. I don't really have anything to add, I just want my tags to show up. WTF?

Oh, and BloGTK... eh... it kind of sucks. I need something better.

And what the heck is with SoundJuicer just falling over? It is as if it just gets tired of being second to Banshee and quits in frustration. :(

Ripping it up with Banshee

I had a really good session with Banshee last night. I've been trying to rip CDs for this eventual portable media player I think I'm going to get. However, I've had a hard time coming to terms with a few things.

I have a machine with 4 cores and 4 optical drives, and I want all of them to work at the same time, so I can rip more discs faster.

I don't want to be tied to Windows or OS X. Actually, I don't mind being tied to OSX, but I can't really afford the hardware to rip the CDs efficiently under OS X. I like the iPod Touch. Rearlly, what I want is a player that will play .ogg files so I can be "free".

Just those two restrictions alone have been enough to make the decision hard. What software do I use? What device am I going to get? What format to I rip to? Being a Freedom Fighter is hard... every device uses .mp3, but the files are bigger, and there's the whold patent issue. Ripping to .mp3 on Linux involves "evil sorcery" that's easy enough, but not really what I want to do if I can avoid it. I thought about ripping to AAC/.m4a and using an iPod Touch, and my recent acquisition of a PowerBook makes this very attractive, but then there's the whole vendor lock-in issue.

I think I'm going to settle with Linux, and just try to find an MTP device I can live with, and I probably won't get an iPod just because of cost. Ripping to .mp3 is probably what I'll end up doing, I'd like to use Vorbis/.ogg, but I'm having a hard time finding a device that I really want that does it.

With all that decided, I had previously done some research on software on Linux for ripping CDs. Banshee recently went 1.0 and it's awesome. I put in 4 CDs and if there's information available, it rips the tracks and ejects the disc. If not, it just sits and waits. Unfortunately, it sat and waited on 2 out of the 10 discs I tried last night.

Sound Juicer works splendidly also, and picked up the discs that didn't automatically get track information in Banshee. Some sort of MusicBrainz interface... strange... since Banshee supposedly has MusicBrainz too... I'd just use SoundJuicer, but it wants me to actually select a single optical drive for ripping... no good for me.

I tried a few other apps, but Banshee was so easy and simple, I think I"m going to stick with it. Now I just need to find an media player that I can use with it. The Computer Geeks Discount Outlet had some old iRiver H10 devices for sale... maybe I can snag one of those. The iPod Touch lingers in my mind, but there's some "clones" that might work for me.