I mentioned a while ago that someone from the New Yorker was talking to me about the whole Adam Gadahn thing. The story is the lead article in the current issue of the New Yorker, here. It’s by Raffi khatchadourian, who did a hell of a lot of research on the subject. I think he was the one reporter who “got it” more than others, with regard to the whole death metal thing. And he managed to dredge up a lot of details I never heard about, and I’ve read pretty much every article about him in the last few years. The article’s online, so check it out.
I babbled about the iPhone last entry, and that led me to get a Sidekick 3. I know the two are barely related, but I figured I’d rather get something for $200 and $30 a month that did 90% of what I wanted right now, as opposed to waiting 6-12 months for something that cost $800 plus $100 a month for something that did 70% of the things and looked neato.
This is my second sidekick – I was an early adopter of the first version, and it was pretty neat back then. It came in especially handy on my first trip to hawaii, where I was able to keep up with AIM conversations and email and web browsing without bringing a laptop. It was also nice on my jury duty stint, so I could spent my lunches outside reading the web, instead of sitting in an ancient building watching soap opera reruns on prison TVs. The new one has some plusses: it has a camera, more updated software, and it’s color. It also has a music player (worthless to this iPod owner, but still) and it uses SD memory for its junk. The big difference is that now I can get a $30 unlimited data/no voice plan instead of a $60 unlimited data/crappy voice plan, which is a noticeable savings for me, and I never use it for voice calls anyway. (I can if I need to, it just costs .20 a minute.)
Downsides to the 3 versus the 1: the keyboard has slightly glossy keys, as opposed to the slightly rubbery ones in the original. It uses a tiny trackball instead of a scroll wheel on the right side, which I don’t like as much, but I guess it’s better for games. The phone controls are more awkward, and I will probably accidentally dial more calls than I legitimately make. And the styling is not as neat as it once was. The original grey on grey looks made it more of a Star Trek device than a consumer ugliness device. Oh well.
If you’re so inclined, you can now reach me on this thing by sending email to my gmail address. If you don’t know it, it’s not hard to figure out. It’s basically the same as my rumored address. If you don’t know that, you probably stopped paying attention like ten years ago. Actually, even more than that, since it was also my username at IU since like 1989.
Still reading the Orville and Wilbur Wright bio. Good stuff. And we were out of town this weekend, but no huge stories. Just a good dinner, a night in the country, and hanging out with friends. We also shopped at Target, which is a moral imperative anything I leave this tiny island for a place with real shopping and groceries.