Two and a half years ago, I switched from a long line of Treos (180, 270, 600, 650, over 5 years) to a Blackberry Pearl. When I first got it, I loved it. I did for about a year and a half, and then things started to go downhill. An operating system memory leak would cause it to slow down to almost unusable speed. T-Mobile’s coverage in my area seemingly got worse, somehow (all my Treos were also on T-Mobile). An OS update temporarily fixed the memory problem and made it usable again for a while, but then it came back. It would sit there for several minutes at a time with just a spinning hourglass, accepting no user input.

Finally, on Saturday, I made the switch back to Palm, though it’s a brand new operating system. I got to the Sprint store at 6am, and was second in line. The store opened at 8, and by 8:30 I was all set up with my number ported to Sprint. I now own a Palm Pre. At the moment, I’m thrilled with it. Let’s see if I still feel that way in a year and a half…

There are only a few applications available for it at the moment, and I’m still waiting on the SDK, but it can do most of what I want. The web browser is phenomenal. Far better than Safari on my iPod touch. The Touchstone inductive charger is neat. The battery life is crap, but that was to be expected. At least I can carry around a second battery with me if I need to, because it’s user replaceable.

With Classic, I am able to finally use Frames on my phone again, and don’t need to keep an extra Palm (Z22, which I will probably sell) at the bowling alley. My iPod touch (or an iPhone) is capable of doing this, but Apple won’t allow the software to be released. Just another reason I was convinced not to get an iPhone.

It’s better than the iPod touch as a photo viewer, because it gives me more control over the size and display of the images. If only it had more storage space, I might be able to replace my iPod touch as well. I might anyway, thanks to Pandora. I might just listen to that most of the time now, anyway. I’ll probably go through my music library and put a bunch of stuff on the Pre, though.

The Sporting News Pro Baseball app added all the Mets games to my Pre calendar. Supposedly, it will give me in game notifications during the games. I’ll find out tomorrow how well that works. The application does make it easy to check scores and see current game situations without notifications, as well.

The device also comes with Sprint Navigation, which gives me full turn by turn voice navigation. I’ve already used it once (though I knew where I was going) to try it, and it works very well.

Oh yeah, it works pretty well as a phone, too. Overall, very happy with my decision to switch back to Palm, even after today’s announcements from Apple about new iPhone features.

I’ve been seriously slacking on the posting here. No excuses.

Baseball season has started! The Mets are off to a mediocre 4-4 start, including a loss in their home opener in their new park, Citi Field. The offense has been pretty good. They struggle with runners in scoring position, but have still been scoring a lot of runs. Pitching and defense, on the other hand, have not been good.

I went to the home opener with my mom, brother, and nephew. It was a lot of fun, even with the loss. David Wright’s game tying two out 3 run homer was incredible. Ryan Church’s dropped flyball the next inning, not so much. A lot of planning went into getting specific tickets for this game. I’ve posted my pics of Dodger Stadium and PETCO here before, and I wanted to get a similar shot at the first game at the Mets new stadium. Getting tickets in the front row of the upper deck was a must, and it worked out beautifully. I’m not sure how I managed to do it, but this is an even better picture than the one of Dodger Stadium.

I have more pictures from the game, and they’ll all eventually be in the Citi Field Opening Day flickr set, but I’m not sure when I’ll get to those.

I still want to post fairly regularly, even though I’m not posting a picture of my t-shirt every day anymore. That will make it a little bit harder to figure out what to write about. A little while ago I finally sold my first breakout board. I also just sold my first photograph, after someone contacted me on flickr asking to buy a print. I probably should have charged more. Also, I should set up a store to sell my pictures online, I think. Anyway, now to the real subject of this post…

A little over a week ago, the Tour of California went through Solvang, which isn’t far from me, so I went up there to shoot it. This stage was a time trial, so there unfortunately wasn’t a chance to get a shot of a large group of riders together. Instead, I got shots of each rider shortly after they crossed the finish line. I don’t know who most of them are, because I don’t really follow the sport, but there were a couple I was able to figure out.

Lance Armstrong

Levi Leipheimer started the day in the lead. He won the time trial, and would go on to win the tour.

I don’t know who this is, but he looked right at me and stuck his tongue out, so he gets his picture up here, too.

All of the pictures can be seen in the Tour of California flickr set.

This will be the last shirt in the T-Shirt a Day Challenge. I have a handful more that I could wear, but not nearly enough to make it through another month, so I’m going to end it here.

Yes, that’s a Gameboy playing a DS Lite.

Purchase location: shirt.woot
Purchase date: October 24, 2008.

Purchase location: Threadless
Purchase date: July 28, 2008.

The last of the random shirts from woot.

Purchase location: shirt.woot
Purchase date: January 21, 2008.

Today’s shirt is meant to be a product logo, pre-pixelated for use on TV. Just so they don’t have to blur it out in editing later.

I don’t remember where or when I bought this shirt, but I think it came from Cafepress.

Purchase location: shirt.woot
Purchase date: February 15, 2008.

I’m getting bored of taking these pictures now. I think I’m going to go through the end of February and stop. Facebook only lets you puts 60 images into one album, so the album there is full now. Not sure what I’m going to do about that.

Don’t know exactly when I got this one.

No time today for a good picture, not that the t-shirt pictures from my SLR have been coming out very good lately.

Purchase location: shirt.woot
Purchase date: June 20, 2008.