January 11, 2003
Free WiFi at the Dana Street Roasting Company
This is too cool. One of the nearby links in my GeoURL neighborhood is for the free WiFi at the Dana Street Roasting Company.
If I was a coffee drinker, I'd be all over that. As a blogger, I think that's great. What a neat application.
GeoURL codes
I've added a GeoURL meta tag to my blog's main index page and added it to their database. You can click the little green image to see who else is geographically near me.
What a fascinating way to literally find my blog neighbors.
Update: Coo! There is even an RSS feed for blogs near me.
Blogspace never ceases to amaze me.
Wine and ... a burger?
I've decided to finally take advantage of the fact that I live near wine country. I got a bottle of Merlot from St. Supery (one of my favorite vineyards to visit in Napa) at the store a week or so ago. I've been having a glass with dinner at night. It's pretty good. They make a truely excellent desert wine too.
Yesterday I picked up a Cabernet Sauvingnon from Hess Vineyards. Amusingly, I drank a glass with a hamburger tonight. I don't know if that makes me a bad person, but I'm enjoying tasting a variety of wines. I like this one too.
Spend 15 minutes, save $150/year
It just occurred to me that the cell phone plan I've had for the last 2 years from Sprint is complete overkill for me. I've been paying roughly $35/month for way more minutes than I'd ever use. So I headed over to their web site to see what I could do about changing it. I was looking for a plan that gave me just a few minutes per month and charged me a lot more per minute for going over--figuring that I won't go over very often.
The selections on their web site were't impressive. The cheapest plan available was $30/month for way less stuff that I have now. So I called them up. And wouldn't ya know it. When you get them on the phone, there are several other unadvertised and much cheaper options available.
My new plan is $20/month and provides about 180 minutes per month. That's still more than I need, but at almost half the price it's much better. I almost went with the $10/month "vacation plan" they offer. It comes with 50 minutes per month and you pay $1/minute when you go over. That'd be perfect for me except that I cannot add on the paging service. And since I need some form of paging for work, it was best to just go with the $20 plan. I still get all the services their other plans have (loarge local calling area, voicemail, caller id, etc).
The best part is that there's no committment. Since I've been a Sprint customer for a while now (2 years or so), I can switch plans without any strings attached. If this one turns out to be too much, I could just ask work to get me a pager and pay $10/month for my cell. But I don't want to carry Yet Another Device.
That was time well spent.
Palm Desktop vs. iSync/iCal and Address Book
As part of my personal switch and a desire to get a bit more organized (utilizing my Palm m105), I've been messing with Palm Desktop on the TiBook. It's actually a very nice piece of software, but I've been having sync problems. I'll update my TODO items on the Palm and then sync. None of the changes make it to the computer. So I add some calendar items on the TiBook and sync. None of them make it to the Palm.
Grr.
So I downloaded iSync and iCal from Apple and installed the iSync Palm conduit. Synced my iApps with the Palm. It worked on the first try. Changes seem to flow in both directions, as they should. This is most excellent. Not only do I have the ability to sync easily, I've added my iPod to the mix. This way I've covered if the Palm dies or the Mac dies or both. I'd just need to find another Mac somewhere.
Go Apple!
I stil need to keep the Palm Desktop around, of course. It knows how to completely backup the Palm.
Now, if only I can find a way to sync the phone book on my Motorol Timeport cell phone.