I ordered and received two Motorola Razr phones. I got a blue one for my Grandmother, because her phone no longer works due to some water damage. The responsible party for that being my daughter, Patty. I also ordered an orange one for myself, because with all the commotion that has been going on over Grandma not having a phone I realized that it could just as easily be me in that situation. I figured that I would be a lot better off having a backup. I ordered them both from two different sellers on eBay. I am not really a big fan of ordering things from eBay, because I have a general mistrust of people on the internet, and those fears were not allayed as the blue phone showed up and worked just fine, but the orange one had a bum battery and actually had to be glued together at the bottom of the phone, because one of the snaps that holds it together was broken.

I did contact the seller right away, then waited over 24 hours for a response. I do not believe that makes me impatient, but I could be wrong. The seller said that they would send a new battery right away, and then after a week I finally received a “new” battery. I do not even know if this is an official battery or a Chinese knock-off, because it sort of looks like the original, which someone told me that the original batteries were discontinued in 2006. On the bright side the glue is holding and the battery seems to be holding a charge.

I have spent the last day importing contacts from Outlook via bluetooth to the phone, because I do not store contacts on the SIM card. I tried to install the Motorola software – but that did not go so well. I am not sure it is even compatible with Windows Vista. I also got ahold of wallpapers and some ringtones that I’m trying out with this phone from a website that I am very glad I found. It is sort of a good thing that this is not a smart phone or a windows mobile phone, because I might very well have started my search looking for themes and such for that type of phone. Knowing that Motorola Razr’s were (still?) very popular I searched for that. It seems I spend more time playing around and customizing the look of my phones than I do actually talking and using the phone for its intended purpose.

Speaking of playing around and customizing things I went ahead and installed Windows 7 Ultimate RC2 on my laptop. I even went with the 64bit version, which is a little more work, because I had to find 64bit drivers, and it seems that Dell stopped providing links to these drivers, since they never sold the Inspiron 1520 with a 64bit operating system. I have to believe that this policy is going to chance when Windows 7 actually goes retail and people can purchase that for their laptop. I haven’t had much use for the laptop this summer, since I do not feel like carrying it to class and I do not spend enough time away from home to really need to have the convenience of having a laptop there with me all day, so when I ran into a Vista specific bug with the wireless I went ahead and installed the new operating system.

The bug in question was that the laptop did not show it was connected to the wireless network when it was. I spent hours looking for an answer. The problem with wireless is that first you start with your operating system (Windows Vista Ultimate), then you move on to the hardware. The hardware in question is the Intel 4965AGN, which I ended up at one point downloading and installing both the drivers and software from the Dell site and the Intel site. Then I was searching the Netgear site and the DD-WRT site, since that is the 3rd party firmware I use on my router. As you can see it is a complicated process, especially when there is no remedy for the problem – short of reformatting the system. Yes, the final word is that it is a bug that was introduced in SP1 and Microsoft still has not fixed it apparently.

The issue arose when I was installing the Intel 4965AGN wireless card, and since this is a really new setup for me I went the extra mile searching for a solution, rather than just blaming the OS. I decided I needed to go ahead and try an N network in my house, because I found this Netgear router on sale at newegg.com for $20. I was only allowed to get one, so I had a friend of mine order another one, since I had ever intention on putting DD-WRT on both and using one as a router and the other as a network bridge. I have a friend that already offered to buy my old router, and all I have to do is go over there and set it up for him, so this whole thing is working out pretty good for me.

Long story short my new setup has been working marvelously. I even have internet to my Samsung television now. Which means that I am able to take advantage of widgets on my television. I can check the weather forecast, news, and even twitter from my television now. There is no new firmware for the television, but there was a software update that I was able to get, so I will have to see when they release a new firmware if you can download that or if you have to put it on a USB key or something. The reason I am still really hoping for a firmware update is that I am still having the problem with the contrast, especially white letters appearing grey, then white, then grey again while watching cable. I do not even honestly know if that is an issue with the television at all and not a problem with the cable box. I should probably contact Samsung support and get that cleared up.

I am certainly glad that I moved my computer downstairs into the basement. This summer has been very warm and it is definitely much cooler down here than it would be upstairs. I think that it might even be a little cooler upstairs now that my computer is not there to add even more heat to the equation. This is of course to say nothing of the increase in privacy I have. Not that I necessarily have been watching inappropriate things, but I do enjoy watching youtube videos and other things without having people looking over my shoulder.

I had to buy a rug and a dehumidifier in order to move the computer down here, because the basement does have some water in it whenever it rains. I did not feel it would be safe to put the computer desk on the floor. Ever since I’ve been running the dehumidifier and my computer downstairs it has gotten noticeably warmer down here. It also smells better and everything feels drier.