All of us got new phones a few days ago. Our plan was nearing its end and we figured this would be a good time to start looking for new cell phones as well.

We first got our daughter a very early birthday present. She was still using a very basic Nokia phone, not big but still a brick nonetheless. She got a pretty new Samsung G600, which is basically an upgraded version of my old U600, which features a media player, a whopping 5MP camera with many options such as panoramic shot, Bluetooth, and as always the easy to use Samsung interface.

While my old U600 has a few touch buttons she previously already expressed she didn’t like that one bit. She’ll tend to push it by accident too much. :P So we made sure this one didn’t have any. :) So we gave her the phone on thursday and she was very happy with it. She had no idea we bought her a new cell phone and was still trying to figure out ways to buy one herself.

My wife got herself a Samsung F480 TouchWiz after some deliberation. It’s compact and features a full 320×240 touchscreen with Bluetooth, 5MP camera, HSDPA, WAP browser, extensive media player and FM radio, and more. She likes it a lot :)

Me, I had a hard time deciding between the LG Renoir of which the TV ads have been continuously running, or the Samsung Omnia. The LG features an 8MP camera and the Omnia ‘only’ 5MP but it does have Windows Mobile 6.1 and the familiar (and pleasant) Samsung interface. So after much consideration I finally went for the Samsung Omnia and I’m not regretting that decision a single bit!

The Samsung i900 Omnia features are countless. RSS reader, podcast listener, 5MP camera, media player (it plays DivX!), Windows Mobile 6.1 with pre-installed Opera Mobile browser which is really fast (IE is on there too somewhere), 400×240 full touchscreen with handy pen, 8GB (!) internal memory, and even a tiny Bluetooth headset came with it.

It has WiFi so I’ve been using that around the house to use fast and free internet. I can chat in IRC, use MSN, and even twit from my phone. It’s awesome. It also has GPS and combined with Google Maps it’s damn near a TomTom. :D The organizer is great and I’ve been filling it up with upcoming appointments. You can also make the screen rotate if you hold it sideways.

It does *not* feature a slide-out keyboard like many HTC cell phones as that adds a lot of bulk to the phone which is exactly what I didn’t want. My hands are small and dexterous enough to use my pen with ease over the entire display on type on the mini keyboard on screen without too much trouble.

It’s very customizable, I’m still making wallpapers ‘n stuff for it too. As you can tell from the pic above my websites aren’t really optimized for the mobile web so I guess I have some work to do. :)

Best cell phone ever!

When we got up yesterday it was still very dark and dawn was nowhere in sight. My mom and Jan (The Handyman) picked us up at about 7am and we left for the hospital. The kid came too despite the fact the school didn’t really agree to her being out. We feel she would’ve been too nervous to do much in class anyway and she’d want to be at the hospital for this.

The appointment for surgery was at 8:15am but when we got there (early) and one of the nurses went over the pre-op procedure again that the surgery was not going to happen until 10:15am. Great, so now we have a 2 hour longer wait for things to even get going. Not like we all weren’t nervous enough.

She was then shown to her room she’d be staying in and told where she can put her belongings and to make sure to remove all jewelry. She had already done so, apart from her wedding ring which is on left hand right now.

So now we had to kill tie for another 2 hours.. No TV yet, though we applied for it they still didn’t turn it when I left at the end of the day. No Spongebob. Time passed and we were all very nervous. 10am… almost! 10:15am…. nothing… wait, what? 10.30am.. still nothing.. gah! Then at about 10:40am someone finally came to tell her it was gonna be a little later (well duh, we figured that out already).

Then like 3 minutes after that came another doctor to tell her she was gonna be taken to the pre-op room and be prepped for surgery. This was it, no turning back now. When it all still felt somewhat surreal at first, this is where the realization of the situation kicks in. It’s like standing in line for a rollercoaster and the closer you get the more nervous you get. Then the gate opens and it’s your turn to go… and you almost want to just turn around and run away.

So they took her away and then we were left with more time to kill.. They said this kind of surgery takes about 2-4 hours, so there was plenty of time that needed to be wasted. We went down to the restaurant for a bit and had something to eat and drink. Mom and Jan then left for a bit while the kid and I remained at the hospital.

First we went to the little gift shop and looked around a bit. The kid bought a Donald Duck pocket. Then we decided to explore a little, starting at the top floor and work our way down. We looked at the various paintings there are hanging around, mainly in the stairways. There isn’t much you can go to though, so we were done pretty quick with that. Eventually we winded up in the waiting room on our section.

They had a TV there, but there wasn’t a whole lot on. Watched part of Two and a Half Men (I think) and some other silly sitcom. The kid then found a ‘hidden’ stash of games ‘n stuff in a cupboard on the other side of the room. We looked to see what all was there. They had a ‘200 in 1′ game box of which was evident upon opening there was no way even one of those games was complete.

First we tried Mikado (pick up sticks) but they didn’t have a lot of sticks left and they came in two sizes. So we decided to play some Snakes ‘n Ladders instead and after losing to the kid a few times we looked around for something else to do.

There were some (mini) dominoes in there, but again in no way complete. We just recently watched Domino Day 2008 though so we figured we’d try out a few tricks. Not easy with only like a handful of dominoes but we got some basic stuff working. We even made a small tower and later on we used some knock-off Lego’s to build a ramp. Up and down was ok, but then I wanted to try a slide down using rooftop pieces. That worked a few times, just not the one time I recorded it on the phone, lol.

More and more time was killed, every so often checking back in Sha’s room to see if she was back yet. God, this was taking forever. Finally, just after 3pm Lynda saw she was back and we went in to see how she was doing.

She looked sore, but good. I talked to her or a bit but she was also very tired. She said she could not remember anything from the operation itself. Just the part where the nurse went “Slaap lekker” (Sleep tight) and where they woke her up post-op. She initially said she wasn’t in any pain, but about an hour or so later she started to feel something so the nurse gave her 1000mg of Paracetamol.

Mom was informed and after I talked to her a bit she said she’d go look around for a bit in the nearby shopping area and come back later. She and Jan both gave me cards to give to Sha and a a little flowery basket she got for me to give to her.

We went back to Sha’s room and I showed her the cards ‘n stuff. We talked a little more but we mainly just tried to let her sleep. We sat in the room with her and the kid read her Donald Duck pocket. We also watched an episode of South Park on my Zen. Every once in a while she’d wake up and we’d give her something to drink they had there for her, water and lemonade.

Mom and Jan came back later and we ate something again at the restaurant downstairs. Expensive place. I then went upstairs one more time to say goodbye before I leave for the day and told her I’d be back tomorrow. She has her cellphone so she can text me when she wants to. She told me today she was feeling good, though her head hurts a bit.

I’m still nervous, I want her home, but it may take another day. I read her chart thingee and saw that in normal cases they won’t release until day 2 after the operation.

– UPDATE

Just talked to her and she’s not doing so well. She’s bleeding from both sides and is feeling dizzy. They’re doing blood tests. She also threw up a bit. :(

I was gonna edit some more pictures that I took the other day but after a few Vista crashes I figured out the problem. One of my hard drives is kaput, broken, b0rked. :( It’s a relatively new Samsung 300GB drive tho I don’t think the warranty is still valid.

Every time I tried to open one of my recently taken photos for editing it was completely locked up my PC and I’d have no choice but to reboot. First I thought maybe Lightroom and/or Photoshop was being dumb, or that one of my drives they use for caching was just too full. But even after clearing several gigs of data the problem remained. I finally figured out it was an actual physical problem on the drive itself so it was time for a rescue mission.

The suckiest part about this is that the drive in question held all my pictures, all the family photos and everything from years ago up till now. The good news is that I managed to salvage most of them, the bad news is that I have lost a few when the drive was failing. When I was transferring files it was easy to see where it was having problems as it came to a complete dead stop for sometimes over a minute until it went further again.

I’m still looking for backups I’ve made in the past to recover the few files I’ve lost, luckily it wasn’t a lot. I’ll have to make backups more often tho, that’s for sure. I don’t wanna lose my pictures. :/

Schools have started again this week and so our kid is off to high school for the first time. From monday through wednesday they had their ‘fun days’. On monday it was brief, they just had to get their schedule and meet up with their class. Next day they were supposed to go ’stepping’ (scooters) in a nearby town but due to the very bad rain it was canceled and they did other stuff at the school instead.

Later that day, at like 7PM the school had the official yearly opening in their main building, which happens to be right next door so that was convenient. It was only supposed to last like an hour but you know how it goes. It consisted of teachers talking a little about the school, their no-bullying protocol that will have to be signed by every single student later this week.

A senior grade school band was there too. They were performing jazz, it was kinda weird. It wasn’t horrible but the singer definitely needs some practice. He was better when he used more volume in his voice. And in the end there’s was another guy that wanted the entire room to sing in canon. I passed on the opportunity to let everyone hear my beautiful singing voice. ;)

Wednesday she went swimming and today is her actual first day of school. She’ll have French! Oui oui madam! She’s gonna get her fair share of subjects this year, and they’re adding German after xmas. So she’ll be busy learning stuffs. I hope so anyway, she could use some proper education, her last school didn’t do much at all to be honest. (Stupid school for foreigners to learn Dutch).

Everyone knows the silly games that comes pre-installed with every Windows system, they’ve been around forever. In their latest version they added a few new games alongside their traditional cardgames. I especially love the fact they added a Mahjong to their collection as I have always been a big fan of the game. It is very enjoyable.

Other games I enjoy is Hearts and Solitaire, which is called Patience over here in the Netherlands. Now I think of myself of being at least slightly intelligent, and certainly smart enough to handle a cardgame. I know that when I used to play Solitaire in Windows XP I did pretty good and was winning about two thirds of the games. It’s mostly chance based, but there’s a small amount of skill involved as well.

Now, today, as I was idling a bit and chatting on IRC, I started up Solitaire and managed to lose not once, not twice, but thirty-three times in a row before finally winning one. That’s 33 times! That’s one big losing streak. I swear Vista is switching the underlying cards that are still faced down to make me lose. It almost feels statistically impossible to lose so many times in a row.

I’m still loving Vista, but I’m telling you they made that game a lot harder!

I think I have literally just a few days left on my warrenty for my Acer LCT TV, but after several weeks of waiting it has finally been fixed. Took ‘m long enough, but at least it’s done. No more stupid colored lines on my screen. Huzzah!

The guy called me early in teh morning to let me know he was gonna show up somewhere between 10am and 2pm. I was pretty exhausted from being up all night so I figured I’d at least try to get some sleep before he’d come. Even though it was already nearing 9am I set teh alarm for 9:45am knowing I’d be a wreck no matter how late teh guy would actually arrive.

I think he showed up around noon or so, friendly chap. Only took him like half an hour to replace the panel, pretty quick. Anyway, it’s fixed, I’m happy and got some sleep afterward, heh.

My birthday was a month ago and yet I haven’t posted about it yet. I guess now as a good as a time as any. I didn’t have a party or anything, I’m not really big on those, and it had been a pretty rough time on us financially for a while that I’d rather do something small. So it was just me, the wife and kid, mom, dad, the handyman, Werner and uhm.. damn my memory really does suck, I should blog more. Anyway, my mom brought some cake, which was delicious, and we mainly just babbled on about stuff. Oh and presents… Yes.. the presents..

First of all, my kid and my mom had been talking to each other about some mysterious present my mom was getting for me. And of course me being my curious self just had to know what it was. Hints were unintentionally dropped (like the possible need to bring it sooner, before my birthday) and after a few days I figured it out. Which was then confirmed later by trapping my mom in idle conversation.

It was a kittycat. A tiny orange fluffball of a kitten. Awesomely cute and immediately adapted to his surroundings. He’s very cute, and loves to play, mostly with Ryan. It’s not the first time my mom got me a kitten for a present, but this marks the first time I ever got an orange one. Too cute! Wife and kid pressured me later that evening to get him a name so I blurted out Comet. Which fits the galaxy them I have with my cats and he looks like a flaming ball of fire.

More presents! My wife gave me one of my presents early, a Creative ZEN! Awesome! I’ve been wanting one for a long time and had been looking at that specific one in the store. It’s the 2GB version and features an SD card slot (I bought a 4GB card later), 320×240 video playback, which is quite sharp I might add, and it’s nice and small while keeping the screen big. I love it!

I also got some monies, most of it from my dad, which is always welcome. The Wii game Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2, which is awesome and more difficult than I thought it would be. It follows all the main storylines from the DBZ show starting with the Saiyan Saga. I’m stuck at the moment with the battle between Piccolo and monkey mutant Gohan.

I also got a few DVDs, some silly knick knacks, and other stuff I can’t remember at the moment. Did I mention I have to blog more?

Last week or so while checking my email I received a newsletter from a store we go to regularly. They have this internet only department which at times has some pretty nice deals. This time, even more so.

They were advertising a 24″ widescreen LCD TV, 1360 x 768, HDMI, SCART, PC-in, the works. Almost exactly the same as my current semi-broken LCD TV. And they were selling it for 399 EURO. That’s already not that bad a deal but here’s the thing.. There was gonna be a soccer match in the following days, the UEFA EK Euro 2008 (or whatever they call it, I just googled it) match of the Netherlands vs Italy, the latter apparently being the former world champion. Now, this store said that every goal we (The Netherlands) would make they would take off 100 EURO of the price, up to 3 goals. Meaning if they’d score 3 goals I could get that TV for only 99 EURO! Now that’s an awesome deal, right?

So we eagerly await the match, we’re relatively good at soccer so I was expecting at least 2 goals, which was my minimum for buying the TV. The soccer match starts and I have my internet page up and ready to go. The deal starts as soon as the match is over until midnight or when they run out.

Few minutes in.. WHAM! Goal! Awesome, hundred bucks off the price! The about 20 minutes later… WHAM! Goal! Sweeet! 200 bucks off, Meaning I will definitely be trying for the TV. Half time starts, I check the site to see if they update the info already or something and…. it refuses to load. THE DAMN WEBPAGE REFUSES TO LOAD! Ok.. ok… relax.. maybe there’s just a bunch of people checking it around halftime ’cause they have nothing better to do. It was only a deal through some newsletter, they can’t get that much traffic, can they?

All throughout the second half of the match I keep checking the website… nothing… just dead.. every so often we’d get a partly loaded page which would take literally 5-7 minutes to load, and just stop. Images rarely appeared and what could be clicked never responded either. My wife and I both tried accessing the damn webpage until half an hour past midnight when the site finally decided to respond again. It had a nice little message saying “Sorry! We ran out!”. Now, does my ISP just suck so bad I couldn’t even go through, or was it all a stupid scam and no one really got to buy it at all? Either way I was kinda pissed. It felt unfair and unjust. I had to go watch a damn sports game for this shit.

A few months ago when I turned on my widescreen LCD TV I noticed there was a yellow vertical line across it on the right side of the display. It disappeared soon after so I didn’t think much of it, just a fluke I guess. Then it kept happening more and more and remaining on screen longer, but I figured out that switching channels back ‘n forth sometimes worked to resolve the issue.

Then one day another line appeared, almost right next to it. Gah! Don’t tell me it’s dying! Then they started to change colors, they started as yellow, then turned cyan, then magenta. Then a third line appeared, though not always. They started sticking longer too, sometimes for hours.

I got this TV from my dad, it was one of his old ones, an Acer AT2603, so he had to look if it was still covered under the warranty. So one sunday he brought the paper and I apparently still had a few weeks to call Acer and see if they could get it fixed for me. So I called them and I had to give them the model number and everything and told them what the problem was. They said they were gonna send me a new panel for the TV and to call some other company to set a date for them to actually come over and install it.

Today I finally got the panel after weeks of waiting and wondering if it was ever gonna get here at all. It’s huge, and I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t just replace the damn thing entirely. Ah well, as long as it works I guess. I just want my TV back in proper working order.

This sunday we went to Linaeushof which is the biggest playground in Europe. This may not sound very exciting to you, but it is really quite fun. They have the weirdest playthings out there, not just the random stuff you’d expect in a normal playground like swings ‘n stuff.

There’s kid-powered ferris-wheels (one person has to ride a hometrainer-like bike to keep it going), karts (both motorized and not), waterbikes, Flintstone-style 2-person cars you ride over the park on a monorail, but again self-powered, you had to peddle to get forward, a very high slide that takes a while to get down from, a small water park with a big refilling bucket on top that’ll splash everyone in the area every few minutes, trampolines and an air castle, and lots more things.

There is also a lot of the playthings that people like to ban from school playgrounds because they are deemed too dangerous (by paranoid parents). To them I’d like to say: ‘Meh’, kids will always find a way to fly across the ground and shave their knees while landing, it’s what they do. ^^