In my effort to post to my blog more often, I started to jot down things throughout the week into TextEdit, and then post them to my blog as ‘Random Access’. This week, there’s a couple of thoughts I wanted to share. So, here we go:

Treo 650
At first, I loved the phone. It was perfect for the mobile professional I am, and maintained the compatibility with my legacy Palm apps. Things like Missing Sync, MobiTV and others have made the device great in recent months and weeks. But bells and whistles aside, the thing still sucks.

I took delivery of my fourth (yes, 4th) Treo from palmOne this week. I’ve sent the phone in for repair/replacement too many times now. The software is horribly buggy, Bluetooth is about as useful as two tin cans with some string, the phone freezes and restarts constantly, and just yesterday, VersaMail (the mail client) took a dump, and erased my four e-mail accounts on the phone, and took some 4,500 messages with them. Re-configuring the accounts was easy; waiting 3 hours for the messages to download via my VPN client was not fun.

I’m seeking a replacement, but nothing out there seems to tempt me enough to make a switch. The rumoured Motorola RAZRberry looked hot, but no sign of it yet. I might go back to my Sony Ericsson P910, but I’m used to having a usable QWERTY keyboard. Some of HP’s smart phones have been appealing, and though I cannot believe I’m saying this, I might move to a Windows Mobile device if palmOne can’t get their acts together.

$224.90
That’s a charge I found hiding on my credit card statement the other day. My office was gracious enough to reserve my stay at the Omni Berkshire Place hotel, which was literally 100 feet from our Madison Avenue, NY office location. Aside from proximity, the place was gorgeous. And, like all nice hotels, had a very well stocked (and significantly overpriced) honour bar. I consumed two things during my four nights and five days there: 1 Diet Coke ($5.00) and 1 can of Giant Cashews ($18.00?!?) Yet, somehow, I end up with a charge for $224.90.

I called the hotel, they said we had consumed 4 bottles of water, 3 beers, 2 Jack Daniels, several bags of M&Ms, 1 Snickers bar, 1 Hersheys bar, 3 Beefeater bottles, and 4 sodas. I disputed it, and managed to secure a refund, only after nearly losing my temper and calling the Citibank Fraud Division.

The credit still hasn’t hit my account — yet — but it should. For their sake.

Bad Design, Bad Grammar
We had lunch at the Original Pancake House this morning. Besides being a heart attack served sunny side up, the food is good, reasonably priced, and the aged 65+ normal clientele mean the place is relatively quiet.

On a cue from the Cheesecake Factory, the restaurant now sells advertising space in their menus. While flipping through (and looking for one of ours), I found a well-placed yet pathetically designed ad for a web design, networking, graphic design, printing and security camera company. (Talk about conquering a market!) While the ad looked like something I created when I was two, I couldn’t help but notice the 6 spelling mistakes that my eye caught. Following those, I noticed several grammatical errors, and misplaced commas and apostrophes. A normal person wouldn’t probably notice, but I pick up on these things automatically.

In any case, I sent them an e-mail about their little gaffe. We’ll see what happens..