My, how time flies. I actually didn’t remember until just now, but a couple of days ago back on April 24th, the-journals.com turned 3 years old. The only reason I remembered was because I got my annually bill from UserLand. Well, look forward to yet another year of completely useless crap. Good luck to us all.

I know about 99.9% of the things on here are useless, but I’m feeling like make this post extra useless.

Dr. Laura is a bitch! I happened to catch a half hour or so of her radio show in the car. It’s beyond me to figure out why people need advice from her. Someone needs to get that frigid right wing whore to shut her cock holster.

I’m watching the Lindsay Lohan episode of Driven on VH-1. Man, I almost forgot how gorgeous she is. Definitely a top 3 for me. Watch out for Ali Lohan. Looks like she’s gonna ride the tail end of her big sister’s wave.

You know those Swisher sanitizers you see at the bottom of a public urinal? I noticed last week most of them have “Say No To Drugs” written on them. I always knew it said it, but never really thought about it. Do you think a pee station sanitizer can have that much of an effect on someone’s life?

Picked up the Force FX Darth Vader Lightsaber from Episode V today. I can see a whole lot more money being spent. Damn you Lucas!

Still watching Lindsay Lohan. Still hot!

Anyone else wondering why the newly elected Pope is so damn old? Heard an interesting theory behind it today. I’m sure these last two week have been a huge and much needed boost for the Catholic church. Get an older Pope and let him pope around for the next 10 years. He then steps down or bites it and the church gets another boost. Makes sense to me.

Alright. Done for now.

I’m all hopped up on the Star Wars drug which means I’m going to be spending too much money over the next couple of month. Figure why not kick it off with a serious bang. I think I bough the coolest “toy” of all time today. As far as toys go, I don’t think I have a single thing cooler than this thing. It was behind the counter at my local Game Stop. Something that I’d think they’d never carry. Had to get it. A complete impulse buy, but well worth it if you ask me.

The Force FX Anakin Skywalker Lightsaber from Episode III is the coolest toy ever! It’s hardly a toy, though. More of a collectible. Master Replicas is know for making perfect replicas and this lightsaber is no different. It’s all metal, just the right size/weight, and the blade lights up damn cool. Now I gotta pick up the Vader one. Yeah, I know I’m a dork.

I got them. I’m looking at them as I type this. They shall be placed in an envelope and sealed until Wednesday night, May 18th. Come midnight of that day, we are Episode III bound! First show baby. Just like the other Star Wars movies and the re-releases. And if that wasn’t enough, I got tickets for the very next night to soak in that Star Wars goodness once more. It sure doesn’t look like I’m the only one doing this. I’m just happy I didn’t have to wait outside overnight just to get tickets like I did for Episode I. If it’s that good, I might just have to get tickets for that opening weekend also. Oh man. I can’t wait for this!

If I wasn’t forced to upgrade my phone when I moved from an AT&T plan to a Cingular plan, I probably would have gotten another year out of my T616. With this being the case (and after a terrible experience with a Siemens S66) I got my Sony Ericsson S710a a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the review.

Let’s start with the form. The S710a is a swivel form phone. The face swings around to reveal the keypad. I don’t like moving parts. I don’t like flip phone. I really only like the bar style phones. For me, moving parts means more things to break. With the S710a, I can definitely see the swivel becoming unreliable a year from now after extensive use. Thank god for insurance. My first impressions was this was a big phone. After using it these last 2 weeks, it’s really not that big. You can definitely notice it in your pocket, but it’s not bad at all. It’s a little heavier than it needs to be considering most of it is high-grade plastic. They keypad is very nice. The buttons are flushed with the surface and there is a definitive click when fully pressed. Overall, I’m not very happy with the form. it’s bigger, heavier, and moving more than it needs to be.

The screen is absolutely beautiful. It’s large, bright, completely visible in daylight, and is capable of displaying 262k colors over its 240 x 320 pixel display. It is easily the best screen I’ve seen on a phone. The sound is good. It’s loud and clear when using it against your ear. The speakerphone could be a bit louder. The signal is great. I have Cingular in the Los Angeles area and the S710a picks up a noticeably stronger signal than my old T616.

No matter how many extras a phone has, it’s always a phone first. Now that we know the keypad works well, I can see everything on the screen, and the signal is strong, let’s see how the other basic functions perform. The user interface is what you’d expect from Sony Ericsson. It’s clean, intuitive, and easy to navigate. There is a bit of lag moving from item to item within the UI. It’s a little annoying, but easily overlooked. Contact input and lookup is a cinch. Text input for messaging, e-mail, and web is as simple as it could be without a full QWERTY keypad. Even with all of the extras on the S710a (which I’ll get to soon), Sony Ericsson didn’t lose focus and made basic phone functions work great.

Now let’s hit some of the extra functions of the S710a. First and foremost is its 1.3 mega-pixel still camera. The images are large and beautiful when taken with lots of light. Outdoor images look great. Low light shots are a bit grainy, but you can compensate for this a little bit with the built-in light. There is also a video option on the phone. It works ok. Nothing great, but it’s nice to know it’s there if ya need it. You can shoot as many still shots and video that can fill up whatever MemoryStick Duo card you decide to use.

Web browsing is done through Cingular’s MEdia service and the S710a supports EDGE technology. Remember when you upgraded your home dial-up service to broadband service? Well that’s what it feels like to have a phone moving data through EDGE. Browsing and downloads are fast. EDGE was a big reason why I went with the S710a and I couldn’t be happier.

Alright, the largest deal breaker with me is connectivity to a computer and syncing capabilities with my address book, calendar, and other PIM applications. I’m happy to say that through Bluetooth, I can perfectly sync the S710a with my Mac (through iSync) and PC (through Sony’s software). It’s an amazing and beautiful thing when it works and it couldn’t be any simpler with my Mac.

With everything that’s going on in the S710a, you would think there’s absolutely no battery life what so ever. Well it’s definitely not as good as my T616 was, but you can easily get a couple of days out of the S710a before you need to hook it back up for a charge. I charge every night anyway so I really don’t see too much of a difference between my T616 and the S710a.

This review has been long enough. Time for some conclusions. The good greatly outweighs the bad on the S710a. The swivel style, oversized, and overweight form factor is easily overlooked once you look at that beautiful screen, hear the clear sound, play with the excellent imaging features, browse with EDGE support, and sync flawlessly with your computer. There’s definitely room for improvements, but I’m not in a rush to see them. The Sony Ericsson S710a exceeds my needs and expectation and I can see a long, fruitful relationship with it.

Macworld News: “Interested in remixing a Nine Inch Nails song yourself? You can, legally. All you need is an Apple Mac running GarageBand 2 and a file you can download courtesy of Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor — he’s released a version of the song “The Hand That Feeds” in GarageBand 2 format.”

How cool is this? He actually wants you to take his song and cut it up. With so many creative GarageBand users out there, we’re sure to hear some excellent (and not so excellent) remixes out there in a couple of days. Here is a copy of Trent’s read me file that accompanies the GB file.

“Hola.”
“Mi nombre estaciona.”
“Mi nombre es retarda.”
“DËœnde estΩn mis pantalones?”
“Qu⁄ puta? Qu⁄?”

Esto es parte del espaˆol yo aprend‚ mientras en Rosarito. Era una explosi˜n y yo no puedo esperar para volver en mayo. He anunciado algunos de las imΩgenes yo tom⁄ mientras allΩ. Si⁄ntase libre verificarlos fuera.

Here to (poorly) translate this post. Here to see the pictures I took from the trip.

They have the full video for The Hand That Feeds posted on the front of the NIN site. Very cool.

I’m leaving for Rosarito Thursday night and wont be back until Monday night. This is probably the largest vacation I’ve had in 3 years. I know. It’s only 4 days, but that’s still more than any other time I’ve been away from work. We’re staying at a friend’s parent’s beach house. The back yard is literally the beach. Never been so I hope it’s cool. I’ll try and make sure we stay clear of the federales. If ya don’t hear back from me on Tuesday, call home land security. Good luck to us all.

This past week has been polluted with death. First Mitch Hedberg, then Terri Schiavo, now the Pope. Although I don’t share the same beliefs that Catholics do anymore, you have to respect someone like the Pope who has been so firm and consistent in their beliefs with a want to make things better.