Archive for the year 2010
Our New Cellphones Arrived on Friday
Posted on August 26, 2010 by Ching under Toys, Wishlist.
I won’t blog about the whole cellphone saga because it’s a long story and Brian told me that he would blog about it. After all, he is the one who worked super hard to get us our new Samsung Galaxy S/Vibrant phones. T-Mobile wouldn’t give them to us for less than $150 each at first. Even after multiple phone calls and multiple cancellation threats, they wouldn’t do it. We almost switched to Verizon to get HTC Incredibles. Luckily, they ran a special where everyone could get it for $99 so we were able to get in on that deal.
I’m glad we stayed with T-Mobile because our rate plan is unbeatable. We got to keep our grandfathered calling and messaging plans, and simply added unlimited data for $20 per month on each line. Also, I really, really like the Vibrant because I can control our TV with it. I can show pictures and videos stored in my phone on the TV wirelessly through the AllShare app. It is soo neat!
Check out what the phone can do below…
P.S. If you can’t see the video, you need to get out of Facebook for a second and visit my actual blog.
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Reorganizing My Closet
Posted on August 22, 2010 by Ching under Life, Things to Do.
Brian and I missed seeing Virginia Williams perform at The Shamrock on Thursday night because we were stuck at home reorganizing my closet. It had gotten to the point where I could not find anything, so it was in dire need of sorting. These are the fruits of our labor.
It doesn’t look like much, but this is a huge improvement from the condition that the closet was in prior to the reorganization. Trust me.
Brian, who is quite anal, helped me group the clothes into specific sections for dresses (separating dressy from casual), suits, pants, capris, shirts, work blouses (separating long-sleeved ones from short-sleeved ones), everyday casual tops, camisoles, jackets and blazers, polo shirts, work logo shirts etc. He even grouped similarly-colored articles of clothing in each section. This made me realize that I have over a dozen black work blouses. That’s not counting the long-sleeved ones!
I’m actually rather boring and wear mostly whites and blacks and browns. I really need to inject more color into my wardrobe not be so conservative in my clothing choices. Brian says I dress like I’m 50. (I don’t think I really started dressing this way until about four or five years ago when I started getting fat.) Hopefully, I can lose some more weight. Maybe we can change that as I start to feel better about myself and my personal appearance.
P.S. Since we missed Virginia Williams last Thursday at The Shamrock, we are going to try to catch her on Tuesday at Kelly’s Irish Pub. We’re going to be out and about anyway (we have a late night mystery shop that evening) and figured we could hit Kelly’s before heading home. I believe there isn’t a cover charge on this night. The music starts at 9 PM. See you all there!
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Another Busy Week
Posted on August 19, 2010 by Ching under Health, Life.
It’s been another busy week, which means I missed going to the gym again. On Monday night we were invited to dinner at Brian’s parents’ house. They gave us our anniversary gift. They are always so generous to us. This year tops all other years, though. Their gift went towards getting us our new Samsung Vibrant Galaxy S phones! I think we are also going to use it towards new stainless steel cookware and then maybe some new window treatments and a 16G microSD card for Brian.
Tuesday night was spent at the Phelpi. It was Tekken and WSOP night. I went undefeated at Tekken for most of the night until the very last game that Jay and I played. I think seven consecutive wins is pretty good, though. I don’t know that anyone else in our crew has achieved the same feat. We left our Tekken game over there because Cory was whining that he’d only played the game twice. I figured he could use some practice. =P Just kidding, Cory!
Mr. Miyagi
Brian and Miyagi
Ching and Miyagi
Jay and Becca
On Wednesday, Misty and I had our first laser hair removal appointments at the Kellogg Clinic. We went in together. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, but it was pretty painful. The nurse practitioner, Steve, said that he will numb me next time, though, since I am such a wuss.
Misty could handle a much higher laser setting because she’s fair-skinned and fair-haired. It’s more painful for me because of my dark skin color. That is what Steve says, anyhow.
Misty got to wear the cool shades.
Misty and I agreed that we like going together because we’re chatting while we’re getting treated and so it keeps our mind off it. Although, there was no getting around the pain that I felt. It burned! Also, burnt hair smells bad. FYI.
After our appointment, we treated ourselves to “Bang Wednesday” at Bonefish Grill. Mom, Dad, Jenni, JenTevs, her husband Armand, Mikki, Mikki’s sister, Misty, Brian and I all met up there. I think the Bonefish folks were starting to get annoyed at us because we started out with a reservation for four, that turned into six, that turned into nine, that turned into ten. We just kept calling back to add more people to the reservation. I can’t blame them for being irritated. We were a bit of a pain.
Tonight was supposed to be Shamrock night, but I got home too late last night to organize my closet so that ended up having to be done today. We didn’t finish early enough to make it to The Shamrock. I really wanted to see Virginia Williams, too! The last time I’d heard her perform was last year before Highlands closed. 🙁
Tomorrow night is Rush night. Looking forward to that. Brian’s isn’t too excited about it, though. He hates Rush. Mostly he’s just going for me.
So yeah.. Here’s to another busy week, which means no workout. Ugh. I will be hitting it hard this weekend, though, to make up for slacking during the week.
Until next time.
xoxo,
Ching
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Ching’s Red Eye
Posted on August 19, 2010 by Ching under Health.
I busted a blood vessel in my eye somehow. I still haven’t figured out how, though. I didn’t even know there was something wrong until Monday when Jan noticed my eye had a red spot. It didn’t hurt so I wasn’t worried about it at first. Then on Tuesday morning, the redness had spread. It made my eye look really funky. At that point I was worried so Brian and I agreed I should have the doctor check it out.
Luckily for me, the eye doctor was available that afternoon. We go to College Hill Eye Care, which is located just South of Central on Hillside so I was gone from work only 30 minutes or so. Their office was slow so I didn’t even have to wait. I got in really quickly and they had me read some letters on the wall and then he looked in my eye and in about two seconds decided I was fine.
I can’t believe I paid copay for that. LOL. I should have listened to Isaac who told me earlier that day that I was going to be fine. I told him that I trusted him and all, but I wanted a professional opinion. =P
The optometrist, who isn’t my regular optometrist (Dr. Goertz wasn’t in that day), told me that he did not find any foreign objects and as long as my eye doesn’t hurt then it should be fine. I wore my glasses on Tuesday because I was afraid that I would further irritate my eye and he reassured me that it would be fine to resume wearing my contact lenses. He did say that my eye will probably look worse before it gets better, but that it should be back to normal in about a week or two.
Apparently, these things are pretty common. If you cough or sneeze or puke or are constipated or strain in any way then you could bust a blood vessel in your eye and your eye will look just like mine does. I’d never had this happen before, though, so it made me panic. Everything is fine, however. As a matter of fact, I think the redness is starting to dissipate.
P.S. I have a theory about what caused the blood vessel to pop, but I’ll keep it to myself in the interest of keeping this blog PG. LOL!
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Provider Wars: Part 2
Posted on August 18, 2010 by Brian under Reviews.
As promised, I am back to discuss the rate plans that are being provided by the big 4. That would be T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.
I did extensive research and compared the family plans from all carriers, using my current plan as the base for comparison. To give you a little back ground. I have been with T-Mobile for over 10 years. I started out on just a simple single person rate plan and then about 6 years ago upgraded to the Family Plan and brought my wife’s phone into the mix. The plan we have right now is a 500 min (shared) family plan for $49.99, they don’t offer this any more and we have been very careful to not loose it. We don’t use that many minutes as everyone we know is on T-Mobile and we use Mobile-to-Mobile minutes more than anything. We added a Family Unlimited Text plan a few months after that for $9.99, this is also no longer available and we have been careful to keep this feature. If they were to ever discontinue this feature and force us to change, we would have to pay $9.99 per line instead of the current overall coverage for text messaging. The plan works for us and we have never gone over our minutes. We had data on our lines but only for 30 days as neither of our phones were really data friendly.
Since I had been having trouble getting what I wanted out of T-Mobile I decided to look elsewhere, in case I needed to change providers. I really didn’t want to change providers, like I said; everyone we know is on T-Mobile service. The Mobile-to-Mobile is a real benefit to us.
I started with Verizon. I get a 12% discount through my company on any Verizon account, so this was a perk. The family plan that I looked at was $99.99 for 700 Talk and (unlimited) Text minutes. I would then have to add unlimited data to the account for an additional $30.00 per line. In total with my discount my plan would have been around $150.00 before taxes. This was the lowest plan that they offered in the Family category. I was disappointed that they did not offer a Talk, Text and Data plan in the Family Plans. But looking at all the others this was shaping up to be the best.
Verizon also has the best coverage out of all of the carriers. Their data service is ranked highest amongst JD Power and Associates and due to the purchase of Alltel; they edged out AT&T for the top seat in the customer service category.
With the popularity of the Android market rising almost daily, Verizon offered a very large selection of these phones. The most popular being the HTC Incredible and the Motorola Droid X. Both were not available for purchase when we visited the store and we were told that it would be 24 to 48 hours before any would be in. However, we still felt that if we had to change providers this would be the smart option. As my wife told my friends “I will be a shame if we have to change providers because it means we will have to find new friends on the Verizon network so we can use the Mobile-to-Mobile again”.
The next carrier is AT&T. I am not fond of them ans the only thing they really have going for them is the iPhone. Without that, they would not be in the ranks at all. They were rated third in customer service by JD Power and they slipped in the ranks of customers thanks to Verizon’s acquisition of Alltel. Their coverage is only good in major cities and along major highways. Their data coverage is worse than their cell coverage and with the amount of people that use iPhones in any given city, the network is prone to frequent outages. The kicker though, the thing that I think will come back and bight AT&T in the ass is that they did away with their unlimited data plans. They now only offer 2Gig plans for customers that use data. This is not wise for smart phones that are perpetually connected to the internet like the iPhone. someone like my wife would go thorugh 2Gigs in a little over 2 weeks. You would not be able to stream things like Pandora or Slacker all the time because you would burn through your data too quickly. It’s no wonder that it was recently reported that the sales of the iPhone had recently dropped. Their 700 min Talk only plan was 69.99, I would have to add Unlimited Text for an additional $15.00 per line and then the 2Gig data plan for an additional $30.00 per line. In total it would be $150.00 for the service as well. But the coverage and the lack of anything other than an iPhone was very discouraging.
(Update: AT&T just released the Galaxy S to their line up. This adds another non iPhone option that is in my opinion much better. But with a lack of Unlimited Data, I don’t see this being a popular choice).
Last we have Sprint. Sprint’s appeal is their Unlimited Everything plan. This is unlimited calling to any phone, anywhere in the United States. Also unlimited Text and picture messaging and Unlimited Data. The family plan was $129.99 before taxes. This was very appealing. We would not have to worry about going over our min, we would still be able to keep our friends even though they were on a different carrier and we would not have to worry about data limitations. All in all this was looking to be the economical pick. However, we had the Sprint coverage issues and the fact that they have been in last place among the big 4 in customer service ratings for the last 5 years running. I have a few friends that are on Sprint and they have no problems, as long as they stay in Wichita. They leave the major city and it’s outsville for the coverage. Looking over the review on the web this seems to be the running story.
So looking over everything, I decided that Verizon would be the best choice. They had the best coverage, the best data, the best customer service. Simply the best all around. And with the discount it made it quite enticing.
Update: Since I started this post T-Mobile has finally offered me what I wanted. So we are staying with them for at least another 2 years. By then the iPhone will have been outof exclusivity, all the carries will have a version and with luck everyone will still have the unlimited data plans. If not then I will stay with T-Mo until the end of the world.
Which according to the Mayans, should happen about the time my contract ends.
(no really, that’s what the tablets say…”Flip’s contract ends and the world ends”)
Go figure.
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