Brian's World

Phone Time

I’ve been busy lately getting my Mac Mini up and running. I found great software (EyeTV) to let me watch TV like Beyond TV enabled me to do in Windows. I can’t think of too many more applications that I need to find equivalents for, but I’m sure more will come up. I’m not sure if I reported this already, but I was sucessfully able to save all my data! My external hard drives were encrypted in Windows XP, and when my shoebox crashed I feared that without the private key the data would be gone forever! I had tried several times in the past to share the key so my laptop could access the data over my network but nothing worked. Luckily when I connected the drives locally I was able to decrypt at will. I’m going to consider some type of NAS system to handle everything. If I had a junk computer OpenFiler would be nice to try out, but I’ll have to see what I can do.

Katie upgraded the her phone today to the iPhone, and I’m under increasing pressure to do the same. I’m interested in an iPhone as well, primarily because its the closest thing to an Android phone that I can get right now. I presented my dad with a document comparing the options, but he is completely confused when it comes to data plans. His thinking is that data plans are for Blackberries. Blackberries are for business people who require immediate access to their email and stuff. Since my dad can wait until he gets to the office to get his email, I can wait as well. Oh yes, and I am always on the computer anyways so I probably don’t need a data plan anyways. Well at least that is his thoughts. I would argue some of the email is moderately important. He was going to take some time to think about it, so we’ll see what happens.

To start this shopping adventure, my brother and I quested to the mall to check out the phones ATT and Verizon had to offer. The ATT store was packed, but had lots of phones to look at. The Verizon booth on the other hand had like 4 phones to look at, and they were all just different colored razrs or something like that. I really don’t like the razr, and seeing it in pink isn’t going to change my perception of it.