Sorry about that last entry, it was long and I haven't felt up to rewriting it. But I have been practicing with the fire staff and I will talk more about it soon...

I've been playing with the IPAQ a lot recently. I just got a little transmitter to let it play on preset stations on the car radio, which makes me happy. ($20 at Target, yo--works with anything that has an earphone jack...) I also splurged and bought Pocket Quicken. I don't bounce checks, I don't think I overspend, but I have never kept a good record of my finances (I never balance a check-book unless the bank totals look wrong), and I think I should. Also I hope actually seeing my financial state more often will help encourage me to pay down the credit card faster. I bought a little case to carry the IPAQ with me too, so hopefully I'll actually use it more. (Many attachments to belt = geek chic, right?)

I got a new phone (same number) -- the microphone was dying in my old one. I wound up with a two phone plan at Cellular One, which is nice because it was surprisingly inexpensive to have the second phone share all the minutes and whatnot of the first one. (I cancelled the Sprint phone just after I got these two, the price was so much better and, unlike Sprint, Cell One officially allows the use of the phone as a modem for other devices.) And now both Sean and I have phones with lots of minutes, data service, and cameras.

The phone also has bluetooth (yay!), so I had to work hard for a couple of days to get it paired with the IPAQ in such a way that the IPAQ could get online through it. (Pairing with the IPAQ was easy, but actually getting the data stuff going was difficult.) I seem to have it working now. Customer service on that was useless--and I even got directed to the tech department who was supposed to deal with this sort of thing. I asked for the information I needed, what number to have the Pocket PC dial, was there a username and pass, what info do I need, etc. and I swear I was speaking alien. The guy actually told me there was no way to do what I was trying to do. Grrr. I get really tired of "tech guys" telling me that. I knew there was a way to do it, but didn't know exactly what to ask to get the info I needed, so internet searching and trial and error were the way to go. (Tech told me I could not connect with the Pocket PC, and only connect with the computer if I bought QuickLink software and a cable, all of which is inaccurate--heck, QuickLink even makes a Pocket PC version if it really were the only way to connect...)

Don't misunderstand, I've dealt with CellOne customer service before, and as a rule they are helpful, but data seems to be a peculiar blind-spot for most cellphone providers. It's a shame, with the focus on connectivity these days there's a great market there (hell, remember my excitement trying to make this work last year?) and it would boom if there were help for people who don't want to spend days (er, months, years) figuring out how to make the cellphone and pda work together effectively...

Now if only someone will make thumb keyboard hardware for my IPAQ I'll be sated for a while... (Until I decide I have to have the bluetooth earpiece, anyway...)