| < March 2009 | Matthew Loar > Blog | May 2009 > |
A few weeks ago I replaced my broken Blackjack with an HTC Fuze. So far it seems to be an improvement. The HTC Fuze combines a touchscreen with important things like Send and End keys and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The slide-out keyboard is definitely an improvement on the Blackjack's tiny keys and allows the Fuze to be narrower than the Blackjack, if twice as thick. The Fuze is pretty heavy, and I have the feeling that it would not take well to being dropped. Another thing I like is that unlike the Blackjack, it has a standard Mini-USB port.
Software-wise the phone is marginal. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1 and comes loaded with HTC TouchFLO(tm) software which provides a shinier and more touch-friendly home screen. Of course it's not very customizable, so the first thing I did was turn it off. I like how it files SMS messages into conversations. I never used SMS on the Blackjack, so I don't know if this is a recent feature or not. When using the web browser I have run into an issue where it returns a "403 Forbidden" page for all sites. I suspect this may be an AT&T issue rather than a phone issue, as disconnecting and reconnecting to the network fixes it. This is made easier by the fact that the function performed by holding the End key is configurable, and I have configured it to toggle "airplane mode."
The voice quality on the Fuze is fine, but using it as a phone can get very irritating. The keypad is through the touchscreen. When a call is active, the display has a number of buttons for functions such as turning on the speakerphone, and you have to hit a softkey to bring up the keypad. Also, the screen turns off after a second while a call is active (presumably to avoid inadvertent touchscreen presses), so you have to press the power key to turn it back on. This makes using touchtone interfaces (like voicemail) very frustrating.
Today I woke up to find my phone frozen and had to remove the battery to restart
it. I think the phone had been up for about a week. It's a sad state of
affairs that I think a phone crashing after a week of uptime is marginally
acceptable, but hey, it's WinMo.
Sigh.
So I picked up the keys to my new condo a week ago Friday, and due to various issues I decided it was best to hold off moving in until later today. In the meantime I decided to paint the living room. The room is quite large and two of the walls were a very dark green color. This color is also used in the kitchen and bathroom, but it just seemed wrong for the living room. The living room has a window which faces west, so I figured a brighter color was in order. I figured that since I wasn't moving in right away, this was the perfect time to do it. And I guess I had this need to assert my ownership of my new home.
So I went to the hardware store. For whatever reason I decided that the right color for my wall was a Benjamin Moore hue called "Mellow Yellow." Well, let me tell you, it wasn't so mellow once I got it on the wall. It is very overpowering, and I'm not sure if it really works with the pale green on the adjoining wall. My sister was undecided, her boyfriend thought it clashed. So today I went back to the store and looked at some more color cards, and brought home a sample of a much paler yellow to try on the wall. I think this one might work, but I was dumb and bought two gallons of the "Mellow Yellow" color before I had so much as brought a color card home to compare it with. Well, live and learn, I guess.
Speaking of tomorrow, I have to go pick up a truck at 8 AM, and here I am typing this at after 1 AM. And I still need to walk back to my old place, where my bed remains until tomorrow. I still don't have everything packed up.
Plus just to spite me, my cell phone decided to stop working today. I can hear
people, but they can't hear me. It's funny, just last week the PM was saying
his phone had broken in exactly the same way. This is ridiculous - I already
had to replace the Blackjack once. I don't think it's in warranty any more, so
I won't even have that option this time. Argh.
| < March 2009 | Matthew Loar > Blog | May 2009 > |