Category: Uncategorized

Via Consumerist, here’s a Saturday Night Live skit that a lot of people really need to watch:

Snl_dontbuystuff
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Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

So long, and thanks for all the wonderful reading. (And yes, even Galapagos. I thought it was all right.)

I had no idea that another movie version of Get Smart was in the works, with Steve Carell playing Maxwell Smart and Anne Hathaway as Agent 99.

The casting gives me hope that it’ll be at least a half-decent movie. Someone observed that had this movie been made five years ago, they probably would’ve cast Jim Carrey as Maxwell Smart, and it would’ve stunk to high heaven.

I’ve always been a “simple phone” guy: every mobile phone I’ve ever owned has had no bells or whistles. Even my latest phone — bought about two years ago — is the bottom-of-the-line Samsung that was available at the time. No photo or video capability, no MP3 player, not even polyphonic ringtones!

I’ve become curious about how you folks with the fancy mobile phones live, so when the call went out for bloggers who wanted to try out the Motorola KRZR (pronounced “Crazer”) phone for free, I answered on a lark. The phone arrived about an hour ago, and I present a couple of pictures of the unboxing below.

Not content to send the phone in a regular box, the KRZR came in this secret-agent-worthy aluminum mini-briefcase:

Bond. James Bond.

And here’s what I saw when I first cracked it open. I half-expected “Q” from the James Bond movies to start lecturing me about the phone’s features (“Pay attention, double-0-accordion…”). I hope it comes with a grappling hook or a flamethrower!

I’m feeling major techno-lust just looking at this thing.

My gentlemen’s agreement lets me keep the phone and doesn’t even require me to blog about it. However, the unboxing experience was just too cool for me not to post any pictures.

More reports later, once I get this baby charged up and activated!

While doing some spring cleaning last night, I found my notes from my Networking class, which I took at Crazy Go Nuts University, waaaay back in the fall of 1992.

Remember, kids: if you want someone to take notes at an event or lecture, you want me to do it.

I never use the mobile data features (web browsing and such) on my cell phone because the rates seemed ridiculously high. However, I had no idea how ridiculous it was until local tech guy and fellow Crazy Go Nuts University alumnus Tom Purves plotted mobile data rates for various countries in the graph shown below. Even in Rwanda, you can get a better deal.

Click here to see the spreadsheet for this graph.

These rates are just insult added to the injury of Canada’s terrible mobile phone offerings. They’re a joke next to America’s, which in turn are a joke next to the mobile phone options available in Europe and Asia. And don’t get me started on the “roaming” rates that Bell Mobility charges me when I’m down in Boston visiting family.

Feel free to pass this graph and its information around. I think it’s high time that we mobile phone users and people reliant on mobile data had a little chat with our mobile phone providers.