Wow, it’s been more than a month since I posted anything here. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say, but most of it would have been work-related and I have always tried to keep anything about work out of this blog.

First, I’ve been sick for the last 4 days. Not a lot of fun. Heavily medicated. If history is any gauge I am sure I’ll be fine by the time I go back to work on Wednesday.

Val’s cell phone display finally gave up. I tried fixing it but couldn’t. The Motorola v220 has to be one of the biggest pieces of junk ever released as a cell phone. Do a search on the v220 and display issues. Quite a few. So we went to get her a new cell phone. She is a Cingular customer so we went down to the nearest Cingular office and learned a lot about phones, plans, and timing. Val’s 2 year agreement isn’t up until December 2006. So, she’s had the phone more than 1 year, but she has had it less than 21 months; the period of time when Cingular will be glad to give you a new phone if you sign up for another 2 years! They will do nothing for you if you are in the dead zone that Val is in. They will only sell you a phone at full price or very little discount. Meaning: expect to pay hundreds of dollars for a new phone if you go this route.

So I headed to eBay. Tons of phones on their and most come “unlocked.” Unlocked is a new term I learned while researching a new phone for Val. This means that the phone is able to work on any GSM carrier’s network by just putting your phone’s SIM card in it. I have no idea what you do if you are a Verizon customer, but if you are a Cingular, T-Mobile, etc. customer this is a pretty cool thing. You can find some decent deals on eBay, but you need to watch for one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen – insane shipping costs. Apparently many of the people selling cell phones on eBay think we’re too stupid to notice that they price the phones pretty low and then try to nail you with an enormous shipping charge. $60 – $120 was not uncommon. People can’t be that naive can they? Well, someone must be buying these phones or how are these folks staying in business? I think I’d rather find one that an individual is selling.

So I knew someone that used to have AT&T wireless in our area. Cingular eventually bought AT&T so I figured I could take an old AT&T cell phone and use it with Val’s SIM card. Wrong. I found someone that had a Sony T616 cell phone. Very nice, very small phone. One problem with the one my friend had; it wasn’t unlocked. No problem, there are tons of sites on the Internet that tell you how to do it. Except this phone is a little different and needs a special cable and software to unlock it. I looked everywhere but could not find that cable. I’d have to buy one on the Internet. Then I came across a site that said for $25 they could unlock my T616 with a code. I paid the money and tried the code provided. Nothing. Thankfully the place I dealt with had a policy of unlocking it for me if the code did not work – and they paid for the shipping. A few days later my phone was returned to me, I put Val’s SIM card in it and it became her new cell phone. Since it has bluetooth I was able to pair it with the Mac Mini connected to our TV and transfer all of our contacts to her phone wirelessly. Very nice. It took her a little while to get used to the phone since she would rather have a flip, but the price was right. We’ll see what she wants to do when her plan is up at the end of the year. She may want to return to Verizon or just stick with Cingular for another 2 years and get a new phone for free.