A few things worth saying yay about!

+ I replaced my Palm Z22 with a Palm T|X that was on sale at a closing compusa. Got 30% off on it. It's everything I wish my previous palm based PDAs were, and more. awesome.

+ In the last year, I've raised my net worth by $20,000. It's still negative mind you, but a lot less negative.

+ I no longer owe the IRS any money. In fact, they owe me $75 because I overpaid them. At one time, closer to 2002 or so, I owed them as much as $7,000. This has been a source of continuous drama for the better part of this decade. And it's finally fucking done.

+ Things are going quite excellently at work.

+ Things are going excellently in the 1+1=2 relationship scenario, even though 1+1=3 didn't pan out. We get to try again for 1+1=3 in a couple of months when the high risk specialist gives us the thumbs up. Until then, we shall practice diligently so we do it right. πŸ˜‰

21 thoughts on “A few things worth saying yay about!”

  1. sounds like things are going well… good to hear. πŸ™‚
    especially on the financial front.. that is a big weight lifted off your shoulders for sure.

  2. I've been looking at the Z22 vs the T|X and trying to decide if the T|X is worth the cost difference.

    Anything good/bad you can tell me about both of them before I buy one? Perhaps sway me to the T|X? πŸ˜‰

      1. Windows mobile: When you want to pay $40 for a program that does ping and traceroute, go right ahead. When downloading though, please make sure to note which flavor of the week WM version your device's manufacturer decided to put on, because there's 5 different versions of the program depending on your CPU and version.

          1. For years, there was no free ping utility that google was aware of.

            During my brief flirtation with WM, everything that it lacked was available, usually for a sum of money between $20-$45. I'm sure their support of third party applications is much better now, but it doesn't change the fact that on the palm, freeware written in 1998 still works just fine a majority of the time, even on the newer unit I have.

            And when I was at compusa, the comparable WM unit next to this palm was $200 more.

          2. To paraphrase what you've repeatedly told me about Linux (and it's true), perhaps it's not a limitation of the hardware or software, but rather a limitation of your knowledge and familiarity of the system?

          3. That doesn't address the difference in price that the windows mobile brings to the table implicitly. And it doesn't compensate for the … diversity … of the previous models that creates and breeds confusion and contempt.

            As I point out elsewhere, I can run programs from my old palm pilot professional without modification on the T|X. That means freeware written nearly a decade ago still works generally. There's absolutely no analog when it comes to Windows Mobile. They've spent their entire time trying to make baby PCs that are almost as useful as a computer but lack useful features like a bigger screen and keyboard, and oh wait, I'm just reinventing the libretto. It's like laptopus interruptus. πŸ™‚

            Palms are great because of their backward compatibility, their incredible depth of software archives, and simplicity. I don't have to concern myself with how much memory I have dedicated for program storage versus memory, and whether I'm running too many things at once (these have likely improved significantly in recent years), and I don't have to navigate to my organizer, I hit the calendar hard key and I'm there. I can hit the email softkey if I really want to view email. This is of course implementation dependent on WM.

            But WM has always seemed like too much UI for too little input device. I always want to reach for a 4 way key or mouse when messing with WM, especially on non touchscreen devices.

          4. Jornada 680, 690, 720, 728. MobilePro 770, 780, 800, 880, 900. IBM Z50. Sigmarion II and III. All have larger screens and keyboards built in. The iPAQ hx4700/4705 and Dell Axim x50v and x51v both have larger, VGA screens. These things are quite useful with 640×480 resolution (now if only they'd make a phone version with the VGA screen).

            The 4700/4705 (one of which I own), has 5 buttons typically mapped to Contacts, Email, Calendar, Recorder and Quick Launch, can all be remapped to something else. It also has a built in touch pad with 4 more buttons that I never use (as I find it silly to use a touch pad when I have a touch screen). This is totally dependent on the hardware vendor, not just WM.

            I haven't had to concern myself about memory either, for quite some time. Before the MicroDrive took a dump, I had 12GB of storage capacity in my hx4700 (8GB MicroDrive+4GB SD). I install nearly all the programs on the flash, and leave all the RAM for running programs. It's quite peppy with a 627MHz proc and 64MB of RAM.

            I can also plug a mouse or external HDD right into a MobilePro 900c, and instantly have an insane amount of storage capacity. What Palm can I do that with?

          5. I can also plug a mouse or external HDD right into a MobilePro 900c, and instantly have an insane amount of storage capacity. What Palm can I do that with?

            What Palm would you want to do that with? Once you get up to that level of crap, why wouldn't you just go with a Libretto and run a real OS? Sony also had a line of really neat subnotebooks that were of comparable size and ran a full operating system.

            It all comes down to the ultimate purpose – as a general organizer OS, it's not great – it's got too many bells and whistles. As a bells and whistles OS, it's limited by the hardware. Once you take away the hardware limitation, you've got something you could just be running real windows on (or other operating systems) and have no limitations whatsoever. The things you like about windows mobile devices end up not being what the OS is generally used for (my CFO uses a Motorola Q. He likes it because it can activesync. So can a Treo 700p, as can a blackberry with BES, but this is what he bought. It's got a full UI that they expect you to control with a joystick based mouse sort of thing. It's like shoehorning windows into a hockey puck. Half of the features are too cumbersome to get any real use out of in my limited time I've spent setting it up for him and patching it for DST, etc, and in my talkings with him. πŸ™‚ But it lets him read his email which is good enough. If it had a touch screen and stylus, it could actually be a useful phone, but nobody runs WM with touchscreen in phones these days except the Treo windows crap it seems, and bizarre niche computers like the ones you end up finding.

          6. First you say that the OS sucks because it tries to be too many things at once, and now you're saying it sucks because it DOESN'T run as both a phone OS AND organizer OS. What's it supposed to be, a versatile OS or a "do one thing and do it well" OS? If the Palm is such a great general OS organizer, why are you concerned with running network tools on it?

            And now, because one manufacturer of one device dropped the ball bigtime on hardware implementation, it also sucks as an OS? What kind of bullshit is that? IBM didn't include Windows keys on their Thinkpads, obviously that makes XP or Vista the worst OSes of all time.

            No phones with a touchscreen? Bullshit. I'm using one right now – my iPAQ 6315. There's also the PPC-6600, iPAQ 6515 and 6915, MDA/MDA-II, and the Motorola MPx (which is pretty close to a "normal" phone), just to name a few.

            If you want to try to keep feeding me ignorant crap by trying to claim that poor hardware implementation = poor OS, then go for it. But it still remains ignorant crap.

            Why don't I want to run a Libretto? Because I can't shove a Libretto in my pocket, it doesn't have the instant on/off of CE/WM, and it doesn't lack anywhere near as long on a battery charge. Both my iPAQs will run several days between charges. What laptop with a "real OS" am I going to pull that off on without carrying a stack of extra batteries?

    1. Z22 has been castrated. They literally ripped the IP stack out. Much to my amusement as I tried to use the IR port to connect over PPP, and it failed with random errors. OH THAT IS WHY IT WONT NEGOTIATE FOR AN IP. WHY THOUGH?!?!! OH NO IP STACK. NEAT. Ruined an evening overcoming that by hacking in libraries from what I think was a similar unit. Worked after that. It does, however, have a pretty screen and runs OS 5.x. No expansion or connectivity options exist for it. It does, however, charge off USB mini. No special dongles needed.

      T|X has bluetooth, 802.11b, and can even play MP3s in the background. I have no idea why that was cool until I had missing sync put my favorites on the unused space of the 1GB SD card I thew in it. Then I realized while I was playing on the web with it, I could listen to random favorite musics. Why the hell not. I was just showing becky that I can run our entire network at work from it if I felt so inclined. I have SSH, a web browser, and an IRC client. What more could I need? It can rotate the screen into landscape mode so you can use 80×25 modes in the ssh client. Hot. It even will play video (with audio!) recorded by my camera onto SD card. I was shocked to see that.

      Versamail is okay, and can sync up to 6 email accounts on itself. Since the unit has 128MB of ram, and comes with an office document viewer, that's a lot of fucking email. πŸ™‚ Evidently it can handle streaming video with windows media player and realplayer for the palm, though I haven't cared enough to try.

      It does have special dongles though for USB (that come with it!). But if you sync over bluetooth (or network sync using wifi) and use any cheap adapter for it you can find (palm doesn't put any handshake protocols on their adapters so clones are plentiful), you're good to go even if you don't have it on hand.

      1. Hrm….

        Currently I'm still using a Handspring Visor Platinum that I bought used off a friend. I've never had network on a handheld so I'm not sure if I really *need* it (part of why I looked at the Z22). The idea of having SSH would be kickass, but right now I don't have any bluetooth devices nor ability to use it, so that'd mean shelling out a few more bucks for a usb bluetooth adapter probably.

        Also, there's no wifi at work, so that kinda kills that usefulness…dunno.

          1. I know, that's why I said "a few more bucks". At this point it comes
            down to whether I neeeeeeeed the latest and greatest with all the bells
            and whistles, or if I just need to replace what I have now, which is
            something much less powerful than even the Z22.

      2. Sounds like a pretty neat unit. Once I finally get my 700p (whenever that is πŸ˜‰ we need to have a Palm hack night or something.

        BTW, congratulations on getting the tax-man off your back. Bet that feels really, really good.

        1. Definitely. I used my skills cracking palm software written for the dragonball to make friends in High School, and early on in my professional career when Palm was the *only* option.

          Is it sick that I still remember the hexidecimal opcodes for jump if not equal, et al? πŸ™‚

          Even now, the first things I load on is a resource editor, a hex editor, and a filesystem manager. I haven't cracked in years and don't even know the strongarm opcodes, but I still facinate myself with the idea that I might use it someday (and a lot of software uses the dragonball emulator in later OS versions so it will run on anything, so my skills are still valid).

          And oh yea, it feels reaaaaallly good to tell the IRS to cram it.

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