1 I got my wife a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 for Christmas.  She loves it.

2 Kid Ballet is more like it.

3 Had to turn on the heat last night.
Did I mention that our pool opens in three weeks.
Hope the polar bears are happy, cause it's too cold for me.

4 I got the S3 but essentially use it just for phone, texting and the occasional snapshot. The rest is just befuddling. Meh. To me, high tech is the "Operation" board game.

5 Temps here have been running 10° below normal.

6 60-somthing in Palm Beach last night. 

Algore must have been in town

7 I still have an old Nokia phone.  Salesman tried to sell me a new a while back.  I asked him if he had one that did nothing but send and receive calls.  He said no.

8 Its 45.9° here right now.

9 >> 5 Temps here have been running 10° below normal. same in Europe, and Russia. and Japan. But remember *local* weather being cool does not mean the *globe* isn't getting warmer. In fact, i think the current AGW theory will blame a fucking ice age on global warming.

10 news up

11 I'm still on an old blackberry.

It's embarrassing when I have to use it in public. You can say that about a lot of things, I suppose.

12 I am tempted to shoot a nail through it. But explaining this to the boss could be interesting. Dropping it it the toilet or running over it in the driveway might seem more like believable mishaps.

13 The problem isn't Samsung, but Android. Google sucks.

14 I have a Galaxy SII now and if T-mobile is like AT&T they probably start trying to get me to commit to a newer unit pretty soon. A two year contract but really 1.5 years if you stick with them.

T-mobile US seems to be the last carrier on the planet to deploy Jelly Bean (current Android version) to this model. But a search indicate the update may be live now, so I'm firing up Kies (Samsung PC software for updating and backing up your phone) to see. And of course Kies itself needs an update.

15 When the antique Nokia was dying, I drooled after the S3, but ended up with this refurbished iClone. Glad I didn't get the S3 because now I'd want the S4! Let's pretend Gave didn't step on this post. Boycott!

16 If I didn't have the two tablets I recently acquired I'd probably feel more compelled to get a newer phone. I picked up an ASUS TF201 on a refurb deal that got it down a bit under $200.

Then Barnes and Noble ran a deal on the Nook HD and HD+ that threw in a Nook Simple Touch if you got the tablet. I had some BandN gift cards piled up, so this was a pretty good deal. Best Buy then had a good Deal of the Day on a SanDisk 64 GB microSD card, which I used to boot Cyanogen 10.1 on the Nook HD +. This overcomes the biggest drawback of the unit, that its software was designed to make you do everything through BandN.

But last week BandN made a big policy change. The latest firmware made Google Chrome the default web browser and added the Google Play store to the tablet. Which meant you could now add any apps you'd bought for other Android devices to the Nook at no additional cost. A few items were incompatible, and others didn't make sense to install, such as camera oriented apps. Also, stuff bought from BandN's limited selection is more likely to be optimized for the HD+ screen.

But now the Nook tablet has gained a huge amount of value without dealing with third party hack OS versions. The screen is a bit smaller than the ASUS but the resolution much higher. 1920x1200 on a 9" screen vs. 1280x800 on a 10.1" screen.)

This change may indicate BandN intends to soon detach the hardware line form the book stores.

17 All that glitters is not cell phones.  I agree with the Unabomber on just that one point.

18

Windows Phone!

Android and iOS, with their grid icons and especially Android's Carrier/Manufacturer crippled firmware DO make me nostalgic for the old Windows Mobile 6.1 phones.

(Granted I would crack and flash everyone I got with cooked WM ROMs to make them work at full capabilities)

19 So, the Jelly Bean update for the S2 is here at last. I haven't had time to look very closely at it but several of the changes are immediately apparent. The new renderer smooths out movement and animation considerably. The icon set looks much better as the previous set was really intended for models with lesser screens.

This will probably be the last big firmware update for the S2 but it looks good enough to hold me for at least a year. When the time comes for a new phone, I want the difference to be really major, like when I shifted from my old Blackberry (which was low-end when new) to this unit. So I'll wait and see what the S5 or S6 generations offer.

20 I'd done with Samsung cheap ass plastic phones and the crappy Touch Wiz UI. Pre order a GS4 and you're an early adopter. Per-Order an iPhone and your a sheeple. HTC One FTW!

21 Pre-order anything and you're a fool.  This is the kinda shit you want to demo before forking over the jack.