Sunday Morning Frustration

My morning got off to a little bit of a frustrating start because it’s hard to “Sprint Ahead” when you don’t have any network service.

Apparently here in the Cleveland area, it’s been a problem to connect to someone and keep connected. I’ve called two people already this morning and our conversations are cut short by a disconnect. It’s not just my phone because the two other people I’m calling also have Sprint. My mother doesn’t have any problem connecting but she lives south of Cleveland and she’s dialing out like she has the Verizon network of 8 billion people behind her. Me, on the other hand, I have Sprint network of zilch. (I don’t know if I’ve ever used that word in a post before.)

While I’m on the topic of phones, I’d like to talk about my dying satisfaction with the Samsung Instinct. Sprint has been promising upgrades to the phone but they don’t roll out when they’re promised. They also have done nothing but make my phone more buggy. I’m not happy with the fact my phone locks up more (after the alleged updates) than when I first pulled it out of the box. If I’m on a three way call and someone text messages me, forget it. I’m wading through screen after screen of different notifications just to get back to my information about the current call.

Samsung and Sprint still have to do something about the virtual keyboard. So many people have a problem with it and how it’s arranged. I can’t type a text message without bobbling a letter and resulting in a misspelled word to save my rear.

Instead of recommending the phone to people, I’m telling them to get an iPhone if that’s really what they want. I’m playing with my iPod Touch more and more and finding out that Apple really gets it. They seem to design products that people enjoy. I’m thinking about pitching a real complaint to Sprint and maybe even trying to get off their network. I’ve recently been nothing but unhappy with the phone they marketed and sold to me. The service, with the exception of this morning is acceptable.

Hope this problem with the service is temporary. I also wish there was a place on the Internet that they’d post information about outages so everyone could go to that page to find out what was wrong and when the problem would be fixed.

For now, I’m sitting and using the Internet for my only form of connection to the outside world. I’m just jogging instead of “Sprinting” ahead.

Rebuilding A Friend

I know I’ve gotten sort of “Dear Abby” in a couple of posts, that’s at least what my friend, Jennie, had to say.

So, time for a little Tim “Tool Time” Taylor entry. The computer I’ve had the longest took a poop, at least the power supply did. I want more power (electricity and speed) on the computer so my next door neighbor is trying to convince me to take a trip to Micro Center to get a new motherboard, processor and power supply. He guarantees I can build it better and faster for about $300.

The old HP at least needs a new power supply. It’s a Hewlett Packard Media Center 864n and it’s been a workhorse for me over the years. It’s still looks slick and new. I bought it, believe it or not, about five years ago as a refurbished unit.

It’s been able to keep up with my needs since then and allow me to do some video editing, photo fixing and just every day surfing the Internet. I feel like I do need a desktop in my place. Sometimes you just want to sit down in front of a computer at a desk, don’t get me wrong, wireless is great but you can’t rival the desktop sometimes for productive projects. Buying a new desktop isn’t in the cards for me right now, I can use the money to do other things that I want to accomplish this year.

A strong thunderstorm is moving through the area right now and I’m just sitting on the floor looking out my window watching it rain, wondering if Chicago will get to take the stage tonight at the Plain Dealer Pavilion. I don’t really want to drive over to Mayfield during rush hour in the rain. Maybe the old friend will have to wait a couple of hours before emerging with new power and speed.