The iPhone came in handy to roll some cartoons for Cici off YouTube while we were waiting for Thai takeout. Her mom has ripped a bunch of Cici's favorite kid flix to mp4 and Ilve got to load a few of those. Cici will never know about Saturday morning cartoons or prime time because most anything she wants to see can be brought via the web or DVDs. She does like to go see movies at the theater tho.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

It's 9:27pm saturday and I'm saying right now that Tim the Maniac and Rich Ace Franklin are both gonna win their UFC fights tonight in big upsets.

Mark my words (so you can make fun of me when I'm proven wrong tommorow :P )

--Chris Falco

For the three of you in the D.C. area not at the Maryland Renaissance Festival this weekend, here's what the rest of us look like.

Wayne N6KR pointing out the variable filter feature of their new Elecraft K3 at Pacificon in San Ramon, CA.

-- Sent from my T-Mobile Sidekick®

Happy Friday, thank god~

Had my first Philosophy exam, which I'm confident I aced. Also, after returning to my regular schedule after my recovery I had an exam in Psych over 5 gigantic chapters, which I read during my 5 hour gap before the test. How the hell did I score an 85% when I've been bagging 77% on easier tests?! Oh well, no complaints!

I made plans with Eirik after class to celebrate my well deserved weekend. After we finished dinner Casey called and asked us to eat the dinner -he- made. Off to UCI after picking up casey a butane refill for his lighter. The clerk was adament that we purchased it to huff, is huffing butane possible?! So we had a very 2nd dinner of catfish + pasta once we got to Casey's. The end.

-- Teehee

Required feline.

New people in cafeteria today, Indian food. Spicy pickles too.

Jenn drove me up to see one of our printers today. So amazingly cool. We love them, and they love us. It's all good.

Well I had hoped to blog here with some thoughts on my 5th anniversary on Hiptop Nation, but instead I was in phone carrier call center hell trying to restore my Sidekick service after trying to drop it down to the data-only plan and moving my phone number to AT&T on the iPhone. It took seven phone calls over many days to cluesless reps who made false promises each time just to get me off the phone. Despite repeating over and over that I wanted to continue doing business with them on the $29/mo plan, they still tried to sign me back up for the $59 voice plan without telling me. They claim I'm back on month-to-month without a new cancellation penalty, but I can't even be sure of that until the next bill.

I has been great being a part of this little Hiptop Nation community, and I enjoyed for a long while the new freedoms that the Hiptop/Sidekick gave me. But after five years, T-mobile is still raping customers, and quite frankly, Danger's pace of innovation isn't compelling to me anymore. It's inexcusable that there's still no e-mail spam filtering. The web browsing on the Sidekick is as slow or slower than it was five years ago. I am completely mystified as to why the camera sensor didn't get significantly better on the Sidekick 3. The Sidekick photo gallery limps along when I have more than 50 photos in it, while my iPhone glides effortlessly through 900 photos. I wish Danger luck as it now has to face Apple's formidable entry into their turf.

I'm a faceless amoeba to the mega call center-equipped T-mobile, but it gives me comfort that the giant lobby I work for is setting its sights on the scamming ways of the cell phone carriers. I hope we're able to divert some attention from the wars on Shiites and Spinach to a new war on the cell phone industry.

I'm going to keep blogging here until the iPhone gets instant messaging and hopefully a better solution for text entry will come by the first quarter of 2008. But I've decided not to go after the new LX and be locked in for another two years.

- mike lee - in cambridge, ma again doing business at the mit media lab . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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