Check out the box in the sidebar… to the right and down a bit. The gray box that says “chat with me.” YES, that one!

Well, what are you waiting for? If it says I’m online, then SAY HELLO!!!

If you could see my to do list… we’ll you would likely cry with sympathy.

Saturday morning, I made three lists: mine, ~T~’s and ours. T even added a few things to hers after I finished. It was a very aggressive collection of to do items, but I must say that T and I did some SERIOUS damage to those lists this weekend. I also did a few things that I’d forgotten to write down. What did not happen however was work for any paying clients. I had a bunch that coulda/shoulda been done too. <sigh> There just isn’t enough time in a weekend to do everything that needs to be done. Is that what weekends are supposed to be about?

I also haven’t had time to blog, but here are a few notes:

• ~T~ and I both got T-Mobile Sidekicks (Hiptops) this past Wednesday. We’re both quite enamoured of them. I’ll write about it later this week.
• Secret gets spayed tomorrow, so we’ll be setting a ship date for her soon!
• Benedict and Kaos have NOT left town. They were up in the Bronx for a bit, but I ran into him in the neighborhood a few days ago and several times since then. I met up with him today and gave him Kaos’s paperwork from the vet and got his signature on the city license app, which I’m mailing tomorrow. Plus, he has my phone number again, so he can stay in touch. Kaos looked GREAT, btw.
• I finally admitted to myself that I’m not young anymore… I used moisturizer before bed last night! Since when did I become my mother?
• My list of draft posts keeps growing and they’re so much better than the stuff I actually post. No time. No time. Does that happen to you guys?

That’s it. Got a little more work to do and then I’m off to bed. G’night!

EDIT, EDIT! News Flash! (sort of)… 11:51 PM: I just checked Urban Hund’s website and the new pictures are up and (this is the news) I don’t hate the picture of me and Snick! LOL. Check it out. (From the home page, click into the fall collection and wait for the third slide.) Pretty cute.

• I’m porting the blog to WordPress and redesigning the templates sometime in the next couple months. Fun fun.
• I received some photos last week from a high school reunion that was held this summer. (I’ve never made it home for one.) I’m sad to say I only managed to recognize 4 people out of about 40.
• WATER, IT DOES THE BODY GOOD!
• Snickers is scheduled to take his AKC Canine Good Citizen test on October 24. We have some work to do between now and then.
• Did someone shorten the days to less than 1,440 minutes each and not tell me about it? Lately, I can’t seem to keep up with everything that has to get done in one day.
• A neighborhood friend gave Benedict some dog food for Kaos a couple days ago.
• Why do tourists insist on trying to flag down cabs that are occupied???
• ~T~ is getting a Sidekick. She’s paying for it herself from savings. WOW!

Back in September, I stumbled across a nifty way of tracking what you eat no matter what type of diet you follow - The LifeStyle Scanner. At the time, the service was “coming soon.” I checked again today and I see that it is up and running. I was thinking of trying it both for myself (low carb diet) and for my daughter (eats too many empty calories and no veggies), but their website doesn’t say how much the service COSTS. In their FAQ and on their pricing page it just says “The LifeStyle Management System^TM has a low monthly fee. With your subscription you will receive a LifeStyle Scanner^TM valued at over $100.00.” You have to SIGN UP (meaning give them your email address) before you can even find out the cost. Seeing as how I noticed a couple typos on their site, I don’t have enough confidence in them to sign up without knowing more. Hopefully, they’ll add the price and other info to their site eventually, because I think I’d like to give it a test run.

So, T-Mobile USA released the T809 that I was so excited about. I don’t need it. It is almost EXACTLY like my D500 feature-for-feature. The only differences are:

• the T809 is flatter, but it’s also WIDER (weight is the same) (draw)
• the D500 is tri-band, but the T809 is quad (T809 wins)
• the T809 has IM (but I don’t care cz I IM on my Palm, not my phone (draw)
• the D500 has WAY better battery life (D500 wins)

I’ll stick with the D500, thank you. Between talking and using the GPRS for the Palm, less battery would kill me.

lt is a beautiful morning here in NYC and I am combining several enjoyable activities, I am

1. sitting in the sunshine with Snickers,
2. enjoying my morning coffee, and
3. catching up on my email and my reading list.

This is all made possible by my Palm T|X, because now I can be online at the dog run! Yay!!!

And now, for one of Snick’s favorite weekend activities, we’re off to the local pet store!

I know, I know. I teased you by telling you I got a new toy and then I never posted about it! Sorry. I’ve been a WEE BIT BUSY this month (as in so busy I think my head may explode)!!! If I survive through mid-January, I’m going to need a vacation.

So. Anyway.

I bought a Palm TX. I considered the Life Drive, but settled on the TX because (1) it was cheaper and I’m poor, and (2) it is smaller and lighter.

I wanted something that would

• have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in,
• get email
• not be a phone
• not have a camera
• be small and light
• work with Life Balance
• sync my contacts from Thunderbird Address Book and my calendar for Sunbird
• have a nice size/resolution screen
• edit excel spreadsheets

Although, I’d like for the email to be always on, my other requirements eliminated blackberries (hate ‘em anyway) and Treos (which are way too bulky for my tastes). I decided I only needed email to be on-demand. I also - briefly - considered Windows-based handhelds but couldn’t stand the idea of all the unwanted applications that come bundled into them.

I’d had a Palm Vx years ago and loved it, but stopped carrying it when I got in the habit of taking my laptop almost everywhere. Ever since I got Snick though, I’ve been needing new one. (I don’t take my laptop when I walk the dog and sometimes he and I stay out and about for hours.) I decided on the TX and picked one up locally. So far, I’m really happy with it except (1) there’s no way to sync with Sunbird and Address Book - which I knew before I bought it - and (2) it has this annoying habit of rebooting itself when I switch networks and then open the email or browser.

Having email on demand is fabulous. When I’m near free wi-fi (which is about 80% of the time), I can email and surf really quickly. When I’m NOT near free wi-fi, it connects via Bluetooth to my GPRS enabled phone (Samsung D500). I’m a walking PAN*!!! Just waiting for a good utility to sync my Mozilla stuff and I’ll be all set.

So. I won’t be away from my email for a minute while I’m driving to my sister’s for Christmas this year AND I’ll be able to surf Google Maps if we get lost.

Oh, AND I can mo-blog now! (The note that I had a new toy was my first mobile blog entry.)

Life is good.

*personal area network

According to Gizmodo, this will be the phone of my dreams. Wheee!

http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/hands-on-the-samsung-sght809-verdict-hello-lover-134134.php

If this GPS dog collar were just a little smaller, I’d be all over it. Snick’s never run off, but I totally stress and worry about it all the time. If there were a way to have this on him without the collar, that would be even better, because the most likely scenario if he is running loose is that he slipped his collar when we were out walking.

[via Gizmodo]

I must have this phone when it comes out. According to MobileBurn, Samsung should be announcing the SGH-T809 in the next couple months. It looks a lot like my SGH-D500 only smaller. Whee!

…and I didn’t know it.

I have this nifty Samsung phone that has only been released in Europe. It’s the SGH-D500. I’ve loved it desperately from the moment I got it. It’s slick. It slides. It has bluetooth. It plays techno (with the built in MP3 player) when I get calls. It does POP email. It even has software to let me IR the info from my SIM to my laptop. It’s a Samsung. (My last four phones have all been Samsung. LOVE THEM.)

However, I think having a camera in a phone is kind of silly. Whose idea was this? I’d prefer a smaller, lighter phone thank you! So, why do I have a camera phone, you ask? Well, because I have bluetooth and there were only a couple phones I liked with bluetooth and email; they both had cameras. It also records video.

So, anyway, since I have it, I use it now and again. I’d use it more, but it takes terrible pictures in dim light. Now - 3 or 4 months after I got the thing - I realize it has a flash!

That’s all. I just felt like a dimwit is all.

Now that I’ve seen it, it’s amazing to me that no one thought of this a long time ago. I’m ordering one today - maybe two or three!

The Power Squid from Think Geek is a power strip, without the strip! Finally, a easy way to plug in all the adapters for my computer peripherals and mobile chargers.

[via Gizmodo]

Now HERE is a nifty use of existing technologies. They aren’t quite up and running yet, but when they are (depending on the cost, of course), I am all over the Lifestyle Scanner!

It’s a keyring barcode scanner. You scan everything you eat and their website compares it to the nutritional goals you’ve set (based on your particular diet). They even have a database of foods for the things you can’t scan.

Now, I wonder what it will cost…

My sister sent me an iPod shuffle! You rock Sis! Thanks!

I just hooked up THREE new goodies to my laptop. Count ‘em… not one, not two, but three!!! Ahhh… I’m so happy I can’t even write about it yet.

<time goes by. J goes to and returns from the dog run.>

I’m a little freaked out. I just looked at Life Balance on my new monitor and realized that little calendar in the bottom corner is actually USEFUL in the month view… it has DETAILS! I never knew! (That stuff doesn’t show up on my 12″ laptop screen.) How bizarre! I’ve been using my laptop without a monitor for so long that I’d forgotten I was missing stuff.

Ah. So, now you know what one of my new gadgets is. <g>

Now, I’ll tell my happy secret. I have a Samsung SyncMaster912n (good lord, it’s big), Das Keyboard (what? you don’t know Das Keyboard?), and a Kensington Orbit Optical Mouse (which fits my hand a lot better than the Logitech Marbleball I’ve been using).

<happy sigh>

Oh, and apparently, my brain types a LOT faster when I stop paying attention. Whee!

OK, I must admit, sometimes on a Saturday morning when I’ve left Snick to wait in the apt building lobby while I run to Starbucks for a frap, I get in the LLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG line and I think "I wish I could call Snick and tell him not to worry, that I’ll be back soon." Um, but… then I come to my senses!

1. He’s a dog.
2. He wouldn’t know what I was saying even if I could call him and he could somehow answer.
3. HE’S A DOG.

So, when I saw this cell phone collar for pets (which hasn’t actually been released, by the way), I couldn’t help but wonder… if I put one of these on Snick and then called him from Starbucks, wouldn’t he be just a bit confused when my voice suddenly came out of the side of his neck???

I’m all for applying existing technology in new ways, but this one doesn’t make sense to me.

[product discovery via techiedivas]

I am repeatedly flummoxed by the fact that I cannot wear my bluetooth earpiece and my sunglasses at the same time.