Palm Pro

I went to the Sprint store today to find out which phone I could buy without switching away from my awesome SERO plan... The Palm Pre was ruled out because it required upgrading to an Everything pack from Sprint. I also found out that if I upgraded to a Blackberry, I'd have to add on some sort of Blackberry data plan, so that quickly ruled out a Blackberry.

I knew I wanted to get a SmartPhone/PDA type with a full QWERTY keyboard. That left a couple HTC models and the Palm 755, Centro and Pro. The guy at the Sprint store said that the HTC models freeze up frequently, so I ruled those out. The Palm 755 was too close to my 650 and the Centro was fine. The Palm Pro had different features because it had a major difference from my Treo 650: it runs on the Windows OS.

Long story short - I bought the Palm Pro mainly because it had OneNote Mobile and it can sync up with Outlook 2007, which my Treo 650 could not do. I love having my calendar with me at ALL times. It's SO awesome!! Now that I've been using it for the evening, I have to say I'm also very pleased with how easy it was to set it up so that it pulls down my Yahoo and Gmail emails! The camera is decent, a 2 megapixels one, but no flash.

Overall, so far, I'm pretty happy with it. The new OS will just take some adjustment. I'm really bummed I had to give up on the Palm Pre, but oh well. Maybe in a couple years... I have 30 days to return it in case I decide I don't want it or like it. I'll try to post another update to see if I'm still liking it in a couple weeks.

Palm Pre

Sprint has a new phone coming out on June 6, 2009. It's the Palm Pre and it's supposed to be some crazy awesome phone. I've been thinking I might buy one because my Treo has been quite temperamental lately and I'm worried it's going to just up and die on me. It's been randomly restarting when it gets overloaded and just hasn't been very cooperative lately. But then I read this on Engadget that says I won't be able to just add this phone to my existing SERO plan.

Sprint is taking a play out of the AT&T book and making its subscribers sign up for one of their "everything" plans. The cheapest plan they offer is $70/month for 400 minutes plus messaging and data, when I'm paying $30/month for 500 minutes plus messaging and data. Having a much higher monthly bill is completely not worth the super-cool new phone. I guess I'll have to start investigating other phones they have available. I really hope that all the phones I'm interested in don't have the Everything plan requirement because I won't buy that. I just don't need it. But I do need a new phone. Maybe it'll be back to eBay for me. That's where I bought the phone I had before the Treo 650 I currently have.

Gamex 2009

I'm at Gamex, one of the local game conventions and I'm sad to report that I am in my hotel room, posting a blog post about how lame and old I am. But really, I don't think it's so much that as all my fellow crazy-late-nighters aren't here. Edward & Seth didn't make it and I think those two are the two that manage to talk me into staying up late to play games.

I'm also contemplating checking out a day early. There really isn't much happening on Monday and I could save $100+ if I just go home to sleep late Sunday night. I'm seriously considering doing that. I usually have a roommate to split the cost of a room, but this time I'm flying solo. Too bad I don't have a roommate because they upgraded me when I got in and I have a bigger room with a sleeper couch and it would've been perfect to share with a roommate. Oh well, next time.

I'm running the Charades tournament tomorrow night. I'm not doing standard Charades-style, I'm doing a "fortune cookie" charades tournament. All the clues will be fortunes. I'm not sure how it will go over, but considering it was the first way I ever played charades, it's near and dear to my heart.

I brought shoes/clothes to exercise while I'm here. Let's see if that actually happens. It could. I haven't decided if I want to subject myself to a Power Grid tournament at 10 AM tomorrow morning. It will just depend on how I feel when I wake up.

I must be tired because I'm rambling about nothing! Oh, but I did win one first place ribbon for Ticket to Ride: The Card Game. I really love this game. It's my favorite out of all the TtRs!

25 Random Things About Me

OMG - could this meme be any more pervasive? And could I be any more behind the curve? Hi, here I am, four months after it was popular, filling out the 25 random things list. I'm never the early adopter on these, mainly because I kept getting 25 random things mixed up with 25 interesting things about me. So, once I gave up on trying to make them interesting, I was fine... And now, in no particular order, just the order I thought of them in... Dave - this is for you!!!! (I threw in a few more exclamation points just for you...)

1. I'm a huge game show fan. I remember spending summers watching nothing but game shows from 9 AM - noon every morning! Oh, how I used to love Bob Barker and The Price is Right! And then I got older and had a mad crush on Alex Trebek. How could I not? He was soooooo smart! Now, I just think he's smug and want to strangle him every time he pronounces something with the correct accent. Although Jeopardy! is still one of my favorite game shows.
   
2. Speaking of game shows... I've been on two since 2005. My sister and I went on Lingo (a Game Show Network show) in 2005 and proceeded to wipe up the competition. The stars were definitely aligned that day. In addition, I got to meet Chuck Woolery, Game Show Icon!! It was thrilling. If you ever want to see the episode, it's permanently on my TiVo and I also have DVDs made. Oh, and I was on the first episode ever of 1 vs. 100. It was such a terrible experience. Although, I did get to meet Ken Jennings (of Jeopardy! fame), so all was not lost.
   
3. I was married for 11 years. We met at my favorite dive bar in Burbank and eloped two months later. On my 21st birthday. We're still friends and hopefully always will be. He's known me for the most important third of my life to this point.
4. I went to a college prep magnet school for 7th - 11th grades . I didn't technically graduate from there, but the only friends I have from high school are from that school. As a nerd, I was on the Brain Brawl team and regularly traveled out of town for math competitions!
5. I've pretty much had a job ever since I could legally work at age 15 1/2. My first W-2 job was at a movie theater in El Toro, CA. By the time I was 20, I had worked the following jobs (roughly in this order): concession girl for two movie theaters (CA & FL), hostess for a seafood restaurant, greeter/cashier at Jiffy Lube, driver/counter girl at a dry cleaners, a shuttle driver for my college, a back office phone person at a doctor's office, a waitress at several restaurants, a concession girl at a country club, an auditor for an inventory company and a receptionist at an aerospace company. I then stayed at the aerospace company for 13 years. I think I held three jobs at once, but that was temporary. Now I'm a CFO at an awesome computer consulting firm and work from home.
   
6. I've been a B-52s fan since I was in the third grade and lived with my dad & his second wife and her family for a year. My super-cool 16 year old step-sister Danielle said they were cool and I believed her and have loved them ever since.
   
7. I own a Ruger .357 Magnum revolver that has a six-inch barrel. I'd like to buy another gun, probably something in the automatic family. I know all of you who live in the South think, only one gun? But in California, I'm the right-wing gun nut!
   
8. I can write with both hands. Backwards and forwards. Backwards as in, if you hold up the paper to a mirror, you can make out what it says. Oh, and in cursive. (I was bored in high school...)
   
9. My favorite number is 9. Like seriously. It's the only thing I'm slightly OCD about. Whenever I set my alarm or set the microwave, I make it so that the numbers add up to 9 or a number divisible by 9. I never put anything in for 30 seconds... it's either 27 or 36. See how that works? (OK, moving on...) [Wait, I'm going to make this the #9 thing on the list. There, that's better.]
   
10. I own 70 pairs of panties. I was having a conversation with a couple I know, during which he showed concern that if she didn't do her laundry, she might run out of underwear. I started laughing, then asked him how many pairs he owned. He guesstimated that he owned eight pairs(!). Wow. So, the next time I did laundry, I counted because I was curious to know how many I had. I can go two months baby!
    
11. I took piano lessons for seven years. I was in second grade and remember watching our new next door neighbor move in and seeing the piano roll down the ramp of the moving truck! I had always wanted to take piano lessons. I started taking lessons and we promptly adopted her as our "granny" for many years.
    
12. I have 364 items on my Netflix list. Probably not totally unreasonable, until I tell you that I'm on the "one disc at a time, maximum two discs per month" plan. And I've had Borat at home since September 2008. I probably should just return it so I can get the next disc on my list. But I'm a HUGE fan of the instant streaming through my 360.
    
13. I'm a list maker! I love making to-do lists and one of my favorite blogs is http://todolist.blogspot.com/. Most of the posts are photos of people's to-do lists. They're fun to read.
    
14. I'm a huge board game fan! I own 165 games and travel around the country to hang out with friends and play games. Along with #13, I track all my game plays on www.boardgamegeek.com. Since I started tracking in 2006, I've recorded 1,888 plays of about 500 unique games. In 2007, I traveled to Germany for gaming trade show. It was really fun.
15. My favorite food is fried chicken and I try it anywhere I can. My favorite fried chicken place is Mrs. White's Golden Rule Cafe in Phoenix, AZ. If Mrs. White's isn't open, Lo-Lo's is almost as good. My non-Phoenix favorite is in Nashville: Monahan's, a great family-style sit-down buffet place. My favorite place in Los Angeles is Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles.
16. I'm half Korean and 1/8+ Cherokee. What I find amusing is that some people think I look obviously Asian, while other people have no clue I am. I can't figure that part out.
17. The first time I ever played Charades was actually Fortune Cookie Charades while on break at a gaming convention in 2007. My first official game of "normal" charades was 2/15/09. It was a lot of fun...
18. I have an uncanny ability to guess what size pants guys wear. I don't know why I like doing it, but I do. I also am decent at guessing weight too. Maybe I should take a job at the fair...
19. I just started exercising and actually am kinda diggin' it. I haven't been doing anything that crazy, just walking with a bit of jogging. I've been using Podrunner Interval and it's awe-some! My love handles are already getting smaller.
20. I had a cookie-of-the-month club, where I made cookies for certain members "every month". That turned out to be just a wee bit overly ambitious. It has since turned into the cookie-of-the-quarter club, which means, I think they're due for some! It's the perfect Christmas gift for some of my guy friends who are real-life cookie monsters!
21. My favorite city in the whole world is Paris. I've thought about moving there temporarily. I'd love to go there with a boyfriend or husband one day.
    
22. I hate flossing. I try to make myself do it when I think about it, but I just hate doing it. I recently heard that flossing can help your breath smell better and this has actually helped me get started with flossing more regularly. Ah, vanity... Who wants bad breath??
    
23. When I was a junior in high school, I went on a date with a guy who took me and a couple of his friends on a plane trip across the state of Florida to Cedar Key. We landed on a little, teeny, tiny airstrip. We walked to town after being offered a ride in the local "cab," a station wagon driven by this older woman. We ate a hole-in-the-wall walk-up counter. I don't think I ever saw him after that. And to think I was interested in going out with him because he was a tall, dorky white guy that had higher a math SAT score than me!
    
24. I've been bitten by the poker bug. I think the gambling gene comes with being half-Asian. Craps used to be my game when I went to Vegas, but now it's all poker! I just went to Vegas for my birthday and we managed to spend 19 hours playing poker in a trip that was less than 48 hours. And most of it was on Sunday.
25. My favorite weird food combos are peanut butter & kimchi sandwiches, kimchi on my hot dogs, peanut butter on pickles and pickles with spaghetti.