Phoenix

E and I went back to Phoenix for a credit analysis seminar. We stayed at the Airport Marriott. Marriott is the only brand hotel that I've never had a complaint against. Way to go Marriott!

The October Long-Ball

To be honest, I really couldn't tell you, with any confidence, which baseball teams will be playing post-season ball this year; besides the Yankees and the Mets of course. But I have never been to a baseball playoff game and I think Liz and I will make a trip this year to catch a game. If the Cubs make it into the post-season than I'd really like to fly up to Chi-Town for a weekend game at Wrigley. Of course, being a Yankees fan, I'd love to go catch a game at Yankee Stadium, but that the trip would have to be more substantial than just a baseball game. I don't think I'd spend that much time on an airplane for 3 hours on the ground.

Roman Empire

We had a major milestone in the Palumbo household this week - Roman, my only son, started crawling this week. As babies are known to do, he's doing more of a scuttle maneuver right now, but it is a clear predessor to full-on quadruped mobility. In a slightly unrelated story, Sophie got her first Barbie doll. Apparently while rummaging through some cabinets, Phia found an anniversary edition Barbie somebody bought my mom a few years ago. The collector's edition Barbie was still in it's packaging and Phia begged and begged to open it. When Liz told me this I had to stop on my way home at "The Wall" and get her a sleepy-time Barbie with glow-in-the-dark something or other and a soft body.

MIA Palumbo

If anybody is wondering about the title of this installment, when ever anybody is going to be out of the office at work, we send out "MIA emails" notifying people of where we're going to be, how to get a hold of us and when we'll be back in. Since I've been on blog-hiatus for a while, I thought it would be an appropriate title. Why was I not posting anything? Quite simple, I put my PowerBook in the trunk of my car and left it there for a while. I guess I was a little too lazy to get it out. Although, that is a bit embarrassing to post, but it's the gosh darn truth.

Transformers Redux

OK, so when I was just a wee young lad, Transformers were very near the center of my universe. I watched the cartoon religiously (and G.I. Joe) and I begged my mom for any new Autobot, Decepticon, Constructicon, Automaton, etc. etc. So I was totally psyched to hear that Hasbro is going to re-release updated versions of the old 1st generation figures. Check them out here. This sort of makes up for the fact that Michael Bay is mangling the Transformers franchise in digital. Sort of. Also, in related news, the original The Transformers: The Movie is being released in 20th Anniversary fashion on DVD - check it out at www.transformersthemoviedvd.com.

Exciting Mobile News

Bia came back from the Wireless Toyz convetion brimming with inside industry gossip. Who's-coming-out-with-which-phone-when kind of stuff. Exciting if you're into phones or if you make your living off the sale of phones. There are so many sites dedicated to rumor milling phone gossip so I'll spare you the details.

Need Software...Will Blog

Since I carry my 12" PBook almost everywhere and the PowerBook with the smallest footprint doesn't have a PCI slot, I'm stuck jumping from WiFi hotspot to hotspot. Up to this point I've been blogging exclusively on the Blogger dashboard, but when I can't get to a good 802.11x connection, I'm stuck using Mac OSX text program. What I'm looking for is an offline blogging program that I can use, save my entries and and post them to my blog once I find another bandwidth oasis.

Anyone have any suggestions? I looked on Versiontracker and found several options, I'll start trying them out and reporting back as to how I like them.

Yesterday I was on a solo-mission at the cell phone store. Due to some type of scheduling SNAFU I was the only person at the store on a Saturday. Not a huge problem, stressful at times. I know I lost at least two sales because I had to tend to several customers at once, but I made it out of the day with a Helio activation and a Verizon activation and a hodge-podge of accessories. Nothing really profitable though. In order to treat myself, I bought the Helio demo phone home so I could gift Liz's new replacement Kickflip with the ringers she had previously and some new music.

I am a pretty good sales person...
Early in the day two kids came in the store and I talked to them about Helio. One of them really liked the Kickflip. He liked it so much that he came back later in the day with his mom in tow. The mom said to me, "You're supposed to be such a great salesman, let's see if you sales this phone to me!" So I started off with all of the usual specs as to why I thought this particular phone was better than any phone in the store. I peaked her interest, but she still wasn't sold. She explained that she had just bought her son a 1Gb iPod Nano and what was so different about this phone. I explained to her that this phone was expandable up to 4Gb and could hold music as well, it has a TV output so he could play his music over the television or stereo, but most importantly, when he's go running while listening to music on his Helio as opposed to his Nano, if anything happens, he could call you or 911...and with it's GPS function, the police could hone in on him. Sold!

Congratulations to Roman who got his first (and second tooth) this week - he's been a busy boy. Liz and I were wondering why he had been so fussy lately. He didn't run a fever like Sophie did when she was teething and his stool didn't turn into something out of a Nine Inch Nails video. Two down and however many to go.

Another congratulations also goes out to Ephrain and Jackie who had their son Nicolas Abram Briseno last week. Where as Chloe (their first daughter) took heavily after E, Nicolas apparently takes after Jackie. Which is another way to say that Nicolas is a white-boy.

Sprint/Nextel should be dropping their first CDMA/iDEN hybrid phone in October. It's going to be the ic502 and I think I want it. I already got my Nextel demo line set up ($20/month for 3000 anytime minutes and unlimited everything else) on our last i530b. I went with such a bulky, ruggedized phone because that's the type of phone I think of when I think about Nextel and also because it's a discontinued model and it might got for decent money on eBay later on.

Big "Hello" to my Wichita connection, Jess. It was good to hear from you and I can't wait until you can come down and hang out with Pratik and I.

I'm going on two weeks now waiting for my Nextel demo line to be activated. I don't know if this is indicative of Sprint/Nextel or if my AE is just bad or lazy. My manager offered to let me have one of the store's demo lines for free, but I'd actually be saving money by porting over a non-AR Sprint line that I'm paying $50+ on a month to a Nextel AR plan that will have a much lower MRC. The only down side is that I have to buy the phones at SOR prices which can be very expeseive. The i530 that we typically sale for $24.99 with new 2 year activation is going to cost me about $200. Oh, well.

And for my next Mac...iMac. I've decided that my next Macintosh will be a 20-inch Intel iMac. I love using my PowerBooks and no doubt that switching to a MacBook Pro or a MacBook would be a massive upgrade for the same piece of hardware, I think I'll stick with my mobile warriors and get something a little more powerful to use at home.

And speaking of home...when Liz and I buy our house (hopefully soon), one of my requests is that I have my own room (what am I, 10 years old). Not my own room, but more like a den. Someplace where I can keep a small to mid-sized humidor and where I can sit and have a smoke and a drink every one and a while without having to take myself outside in the South Texas heat and humidity.

And speaking of cigars...I've switched my main brand from Avo 2 to Rocky Patel Edge Cigars (Toro Maduro, I think). There are two versions of this particular brand of cigar that I'm very fond of, but think in general I like the RP line of smokes.

A big thanks goes out to Ephrain! He brought in some friends and his brother-in-law to my store today. It was extremely slow because of the Labor Day weekend, but I sold his brother-in-law, Clay, a Boost phone and his friend Romeo got some information on Nextel. I think he's looking to buy an i580 (a really nice, durable phone with a great screen). I'm trying to get Bia to find a way to get me a Canadian i833 from Telus and get it unlocked for use with Nextel. That would be very cool.