Geek Habitat

A headache and allergies make Shan a dull geek gal …

In case there’s any doubt, here are the highlights of the last couple days:

My new bookshelves arrived and are in their proper places. They’re currently half empty, with the other half comprised of clutter (read: stuff that was piling up on my desk).

Cingular’s “warranty exchange program,” for when your flashy new cellphone decides to go haywire, is actually painless and functions as advertised — imagine that! I received my replacement phone in less than 48 hours, delivered to my doorstep complete with a postage paid return mailing label and instructions on how to set up the replacement phone.
** FYI: The replacement, at least for the Razr v3 (Gawd, it has a Wikipedia entry!), doesn’t ship with a battery, SIM card or battery compartment cover.

The USB data cable I purchased for my phone wasn’t expected to ship until August 28th-September 2nd, yet it arrived yesterday. As a result, I have time to transfer my photos, ringtones and hand-entered Contacts to my PC before my old phone has to be shipped to Cingular’s warranty returns.

Along with the data cable, I now have software to make my own ringtones from MP3s. Of course, now the trouble is what song should I assign to each person on my Contacts list? I already have Justin’s — a snippet from “Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini” by Sergei Rachmaninoff (popularized by the movie, Somewhere in Time), and a snippet from “The Luckiest” (lyrics) by Ben Folds Five. As an homage to their influence on my extremely varied musical tastes, I’m thinking my Mom and Dad should have ringtones such as: “Tennessee Bird Walk” by Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan (Warning: very scary early 90’s web{cough}design awaits all who click there), or of course the song my late grandfather, Thomas Wakefield Blackburn II, wrote the lyrics for — “The Ballad of Davy Crockett“. There are many other choices, however …

Alright, back to my boring so-called life — a whole lot more coding awaits me, even though I think I have Beyond Compare screens burned into my retinas at this point!