Random Thoughts

I've documented my trials with mobile technology in my past few posts and the story hasn't been great. I was really hoping to move to a new BlackBerry this autumn when a) the BB 10 device would be released and b) my wretched contract with my provider would expire.  I have one more month to go for my contract to expire. After that, I fully intend to move away from my mobile provider because they cost far too much. However, I have no phone to move to. I looked at the Galaxy S III and it seems like an excellent phone apart from the giant size it comes in.  Research In Motion seems to have delayed release of their product until sometime in 2013. While I understand that moving to a new platform, re-creating everything and getting it right can be quite a painful process, I didn't expect this. Now, as most Canadians, I have a vested interest in this company's viability. Lots and lots of our financial instruments invest in RIMM heavily. Why? It is one of Canada's m

I ran a relay race today. It was no ordinary race, you run uphill for 10km, then you do the grouse grind, then at the top of the grind, you run up the ski hill portion of the mountain, and run back down. The race is called the Seek the Peak and it is a challenging race indeed. My co-workers and I formed two teams and finished the race in a little over 2 hours and change . I did the grind portion of the race, which is the usual trail I hike most weekends.  I had to get up rather early (for a Sunday) to make the race but my team mates were there earlier (I was doing leg 3 of a 4 leg relay). Now, the race is open to solo participants as well and the majority seemed to be solo athletes. The first person to finish the race did so in under an hour and a half . Now, to give some perspective, here's what they accomplished: they ran a little over 3k on fairly flat terrain (an elevation change of 90m), then they ran 6km with an elevation change of over 500m and then hiked a mountain an

Due to an unfortunate incident with some snow and a bout of silliness, my dear beloved BlackBerry's keyboard decided to give up on me. And along the way, after trying many older telephones and buying a new one even , one of my co-workers dropped off his Google (well, HTC) Nexus One. Life hasn't quite been the same since. On the one hand, this device is leaps and bounds better than my berry. It has a nice touch screen, and most of google's apps are front and centre. More importantly, it has a great browser and enough apps to satisfy anyone who has an app fetish. Incidentally, it doesn't have flash installed (I didn't install it on purpose), and that actually stops a great deal of terrible pop-up advertisements (one of the banes of the PlayBook). I installed Swype on it to type and am impressed by it. It seems to learn well enough and is quite forgiving with my fat fingers swiping over the wrong words. Prior to Swype, I was using the stock Android keyboard, a