Showing posts with label iphones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iphones. Show all posts

Monday, January 24, 2011

the toilet phone works.

so after about 40 hours of rice-bag-rehab, i turned my phone on last night to find that it works!  hal-le-freaking-lu-jah.  i mean, i had spent those 40 hours convincing myself i could totally live without my iPhone... but the truth is:  i can't.  ok well maybe i could, but life just wouldn't be the same.  so yeah.  it works & i'm pretty happy about it.

experience recap:  rice bags & blow dryers do wonders for toilet-water-soaked-phones, but it's best not to drop them in said toilet in the first place.  now we know.


today is travel day for us.  we have six hours on an airplane until we arrive in maui & i'm praying that parker decides his morning nap should coincidentally be six hours. however, i'm afraid the chances of that are slim so we're armed with books, toys, snacks, sippy cups, & movies.  that ought to get us through the first hour.

despite the nagging feeling like i'm forgetting something {i know i am, it's inevitable}  i think we're ready to do this.  i'm excited.


and if p-ray does decide to be a fuss-bucket on the plane, i'm pretty sure we'll all be fine.  i mean, who could stay mad at this face?

wish us luck.  next time ya hear from me, we'll be coming at ya from maui.  aloha!!

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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

late night randoms

so i'm blogging at midnight the night before my one-day-a-week-in-the-office workday. why is it that i always get a rush of urgent to-dos late at night before a work day? yes, blogging falls under the "urgent to-do" category. life is hard.

the items discussed in this post are truly random... so, first things first:

better late than never

our nursery was featured on spearmint baby!
{waits for applause & cheering to die down}

way back in july. oops. ah well. you can check us out here:


that'll take you to someone else's blog who posted the exact pictures i already posted on my blog. but hey, it's my stuff on someone else's stuff. so therefore, i'm proud.

today's discovery


so remember how i waited in line for the new iphone 4 for 12 hours? well today i made a discovery that made it all worth it. it has voice controls. through the headphones. yup. now, everyone run out and buy one.

you see, i was out running with my new running partner... {insert token cute baby picture here}


...and had my iphone in a carrying case on my arm. i had already discovered the volume controls on the headphones, but i then noticed a strange mystery button in between them. i held it down and heard a little "duh duh" sound. i went out on a limb and said, "play playlist 'workout music'". my phone repeated back to me, "playing playlist 'workout music'". it then proceeded to do exactly that.

and then i fell in love. again.

you see, when i went down to working my day job as an ecologist part time, i knew there would have to be some monetarily/lifestyle cutbacks. i told sam i will be barefoot & starving before i give up my iphone. i meant it.

and lastly

you may have noticed my new "top baby blogs" badge on the top right of my sidebar. i joined this blog directory today but have to get continued "votes" to be ranked where anyone will ever see me. after reading my posts, if you wouldn't mind clicking the little badge, and then hitting that top link i would be much obliged.

oh, & you can vote daily. just sayin'.

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gracias.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

2 months, iPhones, & a festival of hoops

i've been a bad blogger. the thing about blogging, is that once you get a little behind, the more stuff you have to blog about, the longer it's gonna take you to do a post, the longer you put it off because of how long it's gonna take.

it's a vicious, vicious cycle.

but i have a good reason i haven't been blogging. i've been too busy doing this:


And this:


And finally, this:


this little guy is way too distracting. when you have chubby cheeks like those, just asking to be smooched, how could one ever find time for blogging?

enough with the excuses.

parker is two months old.

another month has gone by and the little man continues to grow. he now weighs 13 pounds 7 ounces and for those who like statistics, that's the 80th percentile. he's a happy big boy.

he's found his hands, and they now enjoy being made into fists which get shoved in his mouth. he talks. a lot. he coos and squeals and smiles and makes little shrieking laughs that melt your heart. his new favorite trick is blowing bubbles by spitting with his lips together. he sticks out his tongue when you stick out yours. he is still such a good baby. he's super mellow and enjoys car rides where he can watch the trees go by out the window. the only time he cries is when he's hungry, or if he's trying to tell you it's time for a nap. he now goes to sleep every night by being swaddled, rocked until drowsy, then put in his crib awake. he babbles to himself for 5-10 minutes while watching his projector's images on the ceiling, and then falls to sleep. he sleeps every night from about 10:00pm - 4:30am and then goes back to sleep from 5:00am - 8:00am.

and he is still so dang cute.


now if anyone is still reading this, on to other non-mommy-hood related topics.

the iPhone that took 12 hours to purchase

sam and i have been anxiously awaiting the release of this year's iPhone. we decided not to upgrade last spring and wait for this year's model. so glad we did! this year's iPhone has video conferencing, a pretty decent hd video camera, a much faster operating system, and a much clearer screen. it's pretty freakin sweet.
so, when it was announced that they could be pre-ordered on June 15, sam and i were all over that. too bad we weren't the only ones. it was impossible to get through and ordering one to be shipped to your house or reserving one to pick up at the store was impossible. the website was crashing and nothing was working. but there was still hope! iPhones were gonna be made available to walk-in buyers at the apple store on their release date starting at 7:00am.
we thought we'd take our chances and showed up at the mall at 5:30am. plenty early, right? wrong. we found ourselves in a line that wrapped around the mall parking lot and down the road. sam thought it was gonna be a waste of our time and wanted to go home. i didn't want to have gotten out of my warm cozy bed and driven 45 minutes to an apple store for nothing, so i convinced him to just give it a couple hours and see what happens.
the store opened at 7 and the line didn't move. another hour went by, still no movement. sam was realizing this could really cut into his work day, and again, wanted to bail. i felt invested at this point and told him to leave parker and me there, and come get us on his lunch. i mean, if we had to waste a couple hours eating soft pretzels and playing with our cool new phones in the mall, no big deal. his lunch hour came and i had moved about 10 feet.
you see, all those people who had gotten through apple's website and were able to reserve phones had their own line. and the apple store was taking 10 people from that line, to every 1 person in my walk-in line. yeah... s-l-o-w going for my line.

luckily, i got to know the other crazies in line around me and they had no problem with me stepping out of line from time to time to go nurse parker, or head to the food court for provisions. it was kinda an adventure, really!
long story short, the line finally sped up. after the reserved line went down, anyways. at about 4:00 pm. sam ended up coming after his work day (5:00pm) and met us just as we were walking in the store. twelve. hours. later.
was it worth it you ask? i'm not sure anything is worth waiting in line for 12 hours. would i do it again? well, if i knew it was gonna be 12 hours going into it, definitely not. but with every hour that went by i felt more and more invested and was determined to not leave empty handed.
parker was awesome. he slept most the time as i held him in a cozy wrap and for the 2-3 hours he was awake, he was totally happy. i think he was just as determined to get through this as me.

the festival of hoops
we headed east of the mountains this last weekend so sam could play in his 3rd hoopfest. it's always so much fun! some of our bestest friends live over there and it's usually pretty jam-packed good times.
too bad i really stunk at taking pictures this weekend and only have a few to show for our trip. and i didn't get a single one of sam playing basketball, our friends ryan and christie that we stayed with, our friends ben and kim who always recruit us to play every year, or sam's team. oops.
here's the few i did take.
clockwise from top left: sam and parker power-napping back at the apartment between games. our little family hanging out at center court. our friends ben & tracy w. & their super cute little boy named Wade. (ben was on sam's team). a shot of a fraction of the hundreds of bball courts that take up the entire downtown spokane... blocks and blocks and streets and streets of downtown are taken over for basketball for two days. it's awesome. sam and parker watching more games.
every year sam says he's not playing next year. this year he said "we'll see." i think that's a good sign that more good times are in store for 2011! woohoo!
the end.
welp, there you have it. this really should have been 3 posts, but instead, it's one ginormous one! i tell ya what, just give me the special key word of "p-ray" and i'll send you a treat. promise.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Saga of the Cell Phones...

This week has been absolutely ridiculous. Many of you received a text from me on Sunday (or Monday?) with a new cell phone number. That number is no longer accurate and the service has been canceled! Why you ask? Well, thus begins the subject of today's post...

Cell Phone Service #1 - SPRINT

Sam and I have never been entirely happy with Sprint. The phones stink, customer service is subpar, and well, we were just ready for a change. Our 2 year contract expires next week so we began exploring our options. We did some pretty serious comparison shopping and were bound and determined to get the best deal. On Saturday we thought we had done just that.

Cell Phone Service #2 - T-Mobile

We signed up with T-Mobile through Costco and got the smallest shared plan we could find (we used to have 300 shared mins, and never went over that) so we thought "Hey, let's go with the smallest and cheapest plan we could find." Plus, Bonus! Free Blackberries! Sam got a very cool black one, and I got a matching red one and we set off with what we thought were the best phones, best rate plan, and a pretty cool internet package. We went home and spent the weekend updating our address books, chatting with friends on the Yahoo! IM feature, surfing the web, and feeling pretty dang cool. Then comes Monday and we go to work. I sit at my desk to start my day and think, wow, sure is cool to have a new phone. Maybe I'll send an email from my phone since I have all these new features. And what do I see, but a big red "X" where all my reception bars should be. No Service. Ah man, I was heartbroken. I jump up and start asking everyone around me what cell service they had. Verizon, verizon, verizon, and... T-Mobile! I asked this lady if she gets service and she says, nope, only outside and she's switching to Verizon next month. Ok... I guess Verizon must be the way to go then, right? I get a 17% discount for being a state employee and everyone in my office has it. How can we go wrong??

(*Side note: I forgot to mention that the geniuses at T-Mobile gave us long distance Bellingham numbers! I realized that when I tried to make a local call to Sam from home and it told me a "1" was required! So much for changing our eastern WA 509 numbers to 360's! Shoulda known it was doomed from the start.)

Cell Phone Service #3 - Verizon

We did our research and realized plans with Verizon were going to be the same price and the network was much better. We weren't going to get free phones, but they were still going to be the next generation Blackberries with a much faster internet connection and lots of other cool new features. Worth $50 each. We stop by Verizon on our way home from work on Tuesday, talk it over with the salesguy and feel like this is the way to go. We would cancel T-Mobile tomorrow (we got a 14 day trial period) and live happily ever after with our newer and cuter (note that mine was super cute pink!) Blackberries and put our T-Mobile days behind us. Good job to you Amy and Sam. We left Verizon feeling pretty dang good about our choice. Nevermind that we have THREE cell phones in our pockets from THREE DIFFERENT SERVICES!! Now, that wonderful feeling would have lasted a good long time if we had never had to go home. Oh yes. We get home and I notice that the phone is telling us we're not getting the best possible signal. In fact, we're not getting signal enough to pick up the internet. That's weird. We start making phone calls and they're not getting through! We call from our home phone and the phones don't ring. We finally get connected and start walking throughout the house saying, "Can you hear me now?" from various spots in the house. Long story short, it was impossible to talk to one another while both on our cell phones and the calls were dropped more than once. No service at our house. I call customer service and they confirm my fears... "You live in a known dead spot and we don't see any fix for it within the next 2 years." Great.

Flash forward to today. We are conceding to what our good friend Ryan has been trying to sell on us from the very start:

Cell Phone Service #4 - AT&T

Yes, this is it. The big Kahuna. We're doing it. The iPhone. It's a much larger up front cost and they don't exactly give these puppies away with new activation. But you know what? This is the pedicure after the end of a hard day. The hot bubble bath after a rough day of work. The ice cream at the end of my emotional break down. It's the same monthly price as what we would pay for T-Mobile and Verizon, and you get oh-so-much-more. We'll be able to surf the net and feel like we're actually surfing the net. In other words, we'll be getting what we pay for. As far as reception goes, I've called AT&T and they say there is a tower less than a mile from our house and service should be great. I'm crossing my fingers. I work with a lady that has AT&T and she loves it. But there is one hitch. I couldn't get reception with her phone at my desk, and you know what? I've given up! I don't care anymore!! Just give me a phone that will work other than the place where I really don't need to be using a cell phone (I am a state worker you know, and I need to be productive on taxpayer time, mind you!).

There is hope though. The new iPhones operate on a 3G network which is much stronger than the previous 2G networks. There is a chance that this phone will pick up reception where the ladies phone drops off... aka: my desk. She gets it everywhere else at Ecology, but all bars die when she steps into my section. More confirmation that I work in a black hole.

Long story short (too late), we're getting iPhones and it will be glorious. Don't tell me otherwise because I don't want to hear it. I've been sold, we've made up our minds and we're sticking to it. I just hope AT&T offers a 30 day trial period as well...

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