25CentLife.com

This afternoon, I was glued to Engadget’s live blogging of Palm’s announcement at CES 2009 in Las Vegas. I heard that Microsoft’s announcement was pretty anemic… and Apple had announced that 2009 would be their last appearance at MacWorld (and Steve Jobs didn’t even show up!). Palm had been building up a lot of intrigue into what would be announced today.

Turns out, all that curiosity was well satiated. I’ve been a fan of Palm products for a while. I never had a Palm Pilot, but the whole concept was pretty neat back in the day. I got a Treo 700p back in 2006, after I killed my flip phone. I flipped it one too many times, and one afternoon, the earpiece/display went flying 10 feet down the sidewalk after a stressful day and a particularly violent wrist flick. Oops. I was sold on the touchscreen and full keyboard. It was a lot heftier than any other phone I’d had previously, but come on — smartphone with a touchscreen? Awesome. And it was cheaper than purchasing Blackberry’s additional data plan. The 700p even had a memory card slot that just happened to be perfectly compatible with my camera’s memory card!

After that phone took a swim in the toliet on Valentine’s Day 2008, I replaced it with my current red Palm Centro. Definitely smaller and significantly lighter than my Treo brick. It had personality — it’s a bright happy RED! And a touchscreen. And everything else I’d been enamored of Palm recently. My only minor complaint was that the QWERTY keypad was more ‘gummy’ than the hard plastic buttons of the Treo. While it was definitely no Windows Mobile, I was pretty happy with the Palm OS…

But it was no iPhone. When Jeff got his with the full touchscreen, I was initally all oooooh and aaaaaah. But there were no BUTTONS. I LOVE my BUTTONS. My wonderful QWERTY BUTTONS. I got fairly used to being able to use my fingernail as a stylus on my Palm phones and being able to stab at buttons with my thumbnail. Meaning, the phone could still function as what it was, even if I wasn’t using my fingertips. I remember it took me nearly 15 min to type out a 5 sentence email one morning. Why? I tried using my fingernails on the touchscreen keyboard. No go. Apple’s nice for other things… but I needed BUTTONS.

And that’s why I was so freakin excited this afternoon when the awesome top people at Palm (I have all the articles open, but I can’t even find the name of the people who talked. Sheesh) announced the 1H 2009 arrival of the Palm Pre.

The specs without my further rambling:

• Curvy ergonomic handset
• 3.1 inch 320×480 touchscreen
• Full QWERTY keyboard that slides out portrait-style (like the orientation of keyboards on Treo and Centro)
• Accelerometer-sensed widescreen browsing enabled
• Runs Palm webOS (not just the old Palm OS)
• TI’s new OMAP CPU (claims to have laptop-like performance)
• ‘Deck of cards’ app-switching
• EV-DO Rev. A, 802.11b/g WiFi
• GPS (squee!)
• Integrated IM, SMS, MMS
• Bluetooth with A2DP
• 8GB of built-in flash storage
• 3mp camera with LED flash
• MicroUSB port with high-speed USB2.0
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• wireless charger (no more blindly trying to stick things in my phone’s bottom!!)
• Sprint exclusive

I’m going to say this will be my birthday/Christmas present for 2009. I got my Centro 6 months ago. I don’t think I’m eligible for an upgrade/replacement for quite a while. Doesn’t matter. I WANT. I’ve been in full-on fangirly geek out mode all day. I’m saving up!

More pictures from Engadget here
Official Palm Pre page

Let’s see. I feel like I haven’t posted in ages. My work days feel like work MONTHS. I’ve only been at the workday, where day=month thing for about a month and a half, which means I should be done with half a year right now.

So in those mental 6 months, I’ve sprained my ankle, fallen in the workplace, filed for workers comp (oh, wait, that’s all one thing), have logged in more overtime hours than I care to count — knowing that I don’t get paid overtime (I do know that for every normal 2 weeks of work I do, there’s at least a bit more than a week of overtime in there), been so swamped with work, that’s all I can see…

Um. All I can remember from the last 6 weeks is work stuff. And I can’t remember why I checked off ‘books’ in the Categories section.

I decided I’ll be taking the GREs in the next 12 months from now. No, I’m not solidly planning on attending grad school, I just think the test taking part of it will be fun.

Yes, I used ‘test-taking’ and ‘fun’ in the same sentence. I’m such a nerd. Sue me. I’ve always been the kid that everyone hated in grade school through high school. I’d barely make an effort in lecture, but come test taking time — I’d breeze through with extra time to spare. It’s an art, I’m telling all of you. It took time to be perfected. New grade, new obstacles to overcome.

It’s like I told my interviewer from a long past interview: I love the idea of a great challenge. And I hate being bored. Taking the GREs later serves both those statements. The GRE seems to cripple most people’s lives. I’d like to give it a go. If I get an awesome score — that’s really great, then I could possibly look at grad school, just for the hell of it — I have no such need of things yet. And prepping for the tests will give me something else to fill up my non-work minutes. Should be interesting.

Along with possibly taking the GREs in my future (without the certainty of attending grad school after that), I’ve also picked up a book on HTML/CSS/beginners SSI and one on “Tagalog for non-native speakers”. Of those two, the latter is posing far greater a challenge. I’m fine with pronunciation, having grown up with it all my life. I know a great deal of the words, again, having grown up in such an environment. I’m completely baffled as to sentence structure and basic grammar. Nearly 26, and the Tagalog comprehension of a 2 year old (possibly less).

I make such an awesome Filipino.

I got it! I played it! I loved it! My right thumb (aka the acceleration button) is now totally spazzing and shaking. I still love it! So, I’m totally going to play more tomorrow. (duh)

My favorite character has to be Baby Peach.

My new machine is here! I feel like I’m geeking out. It’s nothing too special… I mean, nothing like a gaming machine (although, I will eventually own one of those). But it’s definitely miles above what I am working with currently and what I used to have (you poor virus ridden HD you).

Dell Vostro 200
Intel DualCore 2GHz
Vista Home Basic (well, I know it’s a pain, but if the OS is unavoidable, I might as well practice at home)
160G HD (which isn’t a huge issue. I have externals)
22 inch widescreen LCD (omg squee)
black (practically a necessity)

Geeking out may turn to freaking out in the near future though. The space where my other machine sits… has been overrun with my clutter. And clothes. I will eventually get into how cramped my available closet space is. But it scarcely rivals how cramped my ‘tech space’ aka my desk is. No, there will be no pictures.

I’ve got iPod speaker (Bose, of course), other iPods, cable box, old desktop (HP), TV (32 inch Bravia), decrepit printer (hasn’t had an ink refill in YEARS (minimum 6), various chargers, camera, other phone. Inevitably other bits of tech that aren’t mine also end up here. Like our GPS. Don’t know how that managed to travel from the garage up here.

At any rate. I’ll wait till my inner geek child has calmed, and then we can commence the setup.