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After replacing the battery in my phone I was back online. Unfortunately I let that battery run out. The MDA phone that I have is notorious for battery drain. When the battery goes dead the phone doesn’t turn on again. The phone needs the battery to function. So much so that I can’t even charge the battery if it’s dead because the phone requires the battery to boot. See the conundrum? If I don’t have batter power then how is the phone going to boot so I can charge the battery? Also, the new battery didn’t solve the problem of the MDA holding a charge for at most 36 hours. I’m not the most careful person in the world. I need more time to plan to charge my phone.

Long story short - my phone is dead again.

Off to E-Bay I go! We recently had a decent experience when purchasing a phone for Courtney. Her Samsung spent a day in the rain and had to be promptly replaced. We purchased a refurbished replacement from a seller on E-Bay. The phone came to us slowly but in excellent quality.

My first stop was back to the same seller for my phone. I’ve decided to go back to a traditional phone…for now. Depending on how my E-Bay experience goes I’ll either get a Motorola PEBL or the Samsung T629. I just want a phone that works well and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

So I have to wait, now 13 more hours to know if I won an auction. E-Bay is so addicting. It’s like winning your own personal lottery. Except you’re paying to win.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 7:02 am under cellphones
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If you were wondering if we still had a child — yes we do. Riley turned 9 months old a few weeks ago. About 6 weeks ago he figured out crawling. Shortly there after he figured out how to pull himself up on everything. Courtney and I haven’t sat down since. We spend our time with him making sure he’s safe. It’s a tough job when he can get into just about anything.

We are looking forward to heading to the fair this year. We will be one of those “wagon people” this year and we’re quite excited. Sure, every other year we’ve gone to the state fair we’ve complained about those inconsiderate people who stop in the midde of the walking paths to futz with something/someone in the wagon. Well, the benefits of watching Riley giggle and laugh (and probably scream a bit) outweigh what other people think.

The picture is from early July. Riles was 8 months and a week old. I call Riles the drunken sailor because, while he’s able to stand up and cruise about the furniture, he does so with an funny swagger in his step. He’s definitely a ways away from walking.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 8:43 pm under Riley walking fair
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“I’m supposed to give you this, ” he said with a thrust of an object.

“Oh, okay, is there anything I should know about it?”

“Yeah, i didn’t charge it last night so you’re gonna want to plug it in.” With those kinds of instructions, I knew I was in for trouble.

I managed to avoid “on-call” duty at work for my first 2 months of my new job. I knew I couldn’t avoid it much longer. My day had come.

My co-worker had handed me a Blackberry with no instructions on how to use it or how I go about answering support issues. I took the phone with little regard, nervous about what could happen with it in my possession. I checked to make sure I knew how to turn it on, check the contact list, and check out the Bricks game everyone was raving about. I put it on the charger as suggested and waited.

I took my new found nemesis home with me. I checked the call logs on the phone to glean any type of information I could about call frequency, duration, and especially time. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. In fact, over the course of the previous shift my co-worker had only one issue during work hours. I could handle that. I put the phone on my dresser and we went to bed.

Buzz, buzz, BEEP BEEP BEEP!

11pm, the cell rings. I literally fall out of bed running to answer the thing. “Oh great, just must luck,” I think. I grab the phone and run out of the bedroom so I don’t disturb Courtney. There’s a message on the phone. “I didn’t even hear it ring!” I mutter. I fall into the kitchen and turn on some lights to help me concentrate.

Scroll, scroll, push button, scroll, push…”What the hell?” From what I can tell the Blackberry had received an email, not a phone call. I read through the email and it’s a server check telling me that a server fell offline and came back online a minute later (for the uninitiated, that’s quite common). Whew, no major issue, no action required. I head back to bed.

Buzz, buzz, BEEP BEEP BEEP!

“JESUS!” 5 minutes later the phone starts humming again. I repeat the same process: grab phone, run out to kitchen, check messages. Again, it’s just more server checks. “Godammit…” I go back to bed.

Buzz, buzz, BEEP BEEP BEEP!

“For F’s SAKE!” I shout in my quiet voice. The phone marches across the dresser again at 2am. By this point I have already lost about an hours worth of sleep. I was just getting back into the swing of things when it started ringing. I quickly check. More server checks. I’m going to throw this thing across the room at any moment.

Buzz, buzz, BEEP BEEP BEEP!

“Oh, this is just plain ridiculous, ” I tell Court, who is also awake. “They’re just emails! Not even messages!”

“Can’t you turn off the message notifications?” She asks.

“NO!” I say and go back to bed. The real answer to her question is “Yes, just not at 2:30am when I’m drowsy and pissed off.”

I think it buzzed one last time at 4:30am. By that time I had been awake more than asleep that it didn’t really phase me. I compared my late night experience with the previous week on call. Sure enough it was my shift that received the most over night notifications.

When I got into work I asked my co-worker about the server checks. He said, “Well, if it’s REALLY important, someone will end up calling you anyway.” That’s what I thought.

Night 1 down, 6 more to go.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 2:42 pm under cellphones, on call, work
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I was rear-ended this morning the Mazda. I was at a red stop light. When the light turned green the lady behind me thought I moved…and I didn’t. The hatch and bumper on the Mazda have been crushed, literally, but I’m okay. I’m quite lucky that Riles wasn’t in the car. I think I would have had a heart attack if he was.

I can only assume getting the car fixed is going to be a big pain in the ass. I love the Mazda and it’ll kill be to be without it. I’ve never been in a car accident before and of course, I didn’t have any insurance information on me. This’ll teach me a lesson in preparedness.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 9:58 am under No Tags
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Courtney’s always telling me to put my phone down. Ever since I procured my MDA I’m constantly checking something on it.

Well, the day came last week. I woke up Wednesday morning and was unable to turn my phone on. It’s always been a little finicky with battery life, barely running for a day and a half without a charge. While out with friends Tuesday night the battery ran dry and it died. An overnight charge did not bring the monster back. So I’ve been gadgetless and incommunicado for an entire week.

Courtney claims that it was a well planned device hiccup with all the iPhone nonsense of the last week. Sadly, though, I’m in the middle of my current T-Mobile contract and I’m not willing to pay $200 to hop carriers. So I’m left trying to fix or replace my dead MDA ASAP.

It’s been a quiet week if anything. I can say I’ve been hindered too much without the phone because, in all honesty, I don’t know what I’m missing. No one can get a hold of me so it doesn’t really matter if I miss it. Granted, there were a few times this weekend while at Chad and Tina’s wedding that I wished I had some sort of communication device.

So after dilly-dallying for an entire week I finally ordered a new cellphone battery. It’s a cheap attempt at fixing the phone. It just needs to make it 8 more months until my contract ends. Then I can get my iPhone. w00t.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 9:31 am under gadgets, phone
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Chad forgot to mention it before he left on the honeymoon with Tina that you can follow his escapades through Hawaii via Twitter.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 3:33 pm under chad, friends, vacation
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Saturday night I had a late night shift to cover at work. We have a big “All-Stars” event going on all week and being the new guy I drew the sweet shift of covering from 9pm to midnight on Saturday. Courtney was out on the town with Tina and Elizabeth for T’s bachelorette party. Seeing as the ladies better-halves had congregated around a fire as well I figured I would swing up to see what the crew was up to.

Just before the end of my shift I received a phone call from Courtney. She was cookin’ up a plan and needed my assistance. Since I had the luxury of working Saturday night while all my friends whooped it up, I was the soberest one of the bunch (My soberity was relative. I had drank 4 cups of coffee in 3 hours and was having a hard time keeping my eyes straight). She called for a ride home…just not yet. She wanted to wait until bar close.

So, after work I moseyed up to Aaron’s. About an hour later I received the “cabbie” call and I went to pick up my wife and Elizabeth. We played a game of clown car seeing as my passenger list had grown from 2 gals to 4 gals. Luckily for all of us, the Mazda had room in the hatch for the car seat. Trying to do the rider math at 1am with 4 drunk ladies was a challenge, but quite amusing. We got back to Aaron’s where we continued the fun.

Court and I strolled into the house at 3am. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the lighter half of 3am. My 3am’s have typically consisted of late night stumblings trying to soothe a crying child. It was so late that even our local Taco Bell was closed, much to our dismay. We crashed and tried not to think of having to get up in the morning.

3 1/2 Hours later I was wide awake and trying to figure out how to get back to sleep. I had nothing going for me so I just got up and headed for the kitchen. Crazily, we got our act together and were out the door to get our son by 11:30am.

I write this to let you know a few things:

1. Even given a crazed 20-somethings evening, we still are responsible parents and were quite excited to get to see our son in the morning

2. 3am is not a good time for me. I don’t like that time of day

3. 4 cups of coffee in the evening is a very bad idea

4. If you want me to haul you someplace, just let me know so I can remove the child seat. Preferably let me know before 1am.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 7:57 am under booze, friends, work
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There’s been someone in the bathroom all day. I don’t mean standing there either. He’s been in the stall all day. I’m pretty sure it the same guy. It seems to be the same pair of shoes. I thought about knocking just to make sure he’s okay but I thought a turd burglar stunt might make for an awkward moment. I hope he’s not dead. I’ll leave it for the cleaning crew to figure out.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 3:38 pm under No Tags
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Tim Armstrong, of Rancid fame, recently released A Poet’s Life . It’s been almost 10 years since I picked up a new ska album. I was quite happy that he’s still carrying the torch. It’s more Joe Strummer than Less Than Jake, with the standard reggae beat throughout the album. The album is great for the summer time, perfect timing. The third track, “Into Action”, requires the stereo cranked and the windows rolled down.

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 6:35 am under music ska
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With the new job I am now traveling a bit further than I’m used to. It’s not much further in miles, maybe an extra 5-8 miles, but unfortunately it’s on one of the heaviest corridors in the Twin Cities. I get to jet up and down Highway 169 every day. In the evenings it’s not unusual for me to spend a good 40 minutes in traffic.

Lucky for me we just finished paying off the truck. While I love the truck, it’s not great on a daily commute. It isn’t built to handle stop and go traffic. The brakes complain with every stop.

So this weekend we went car shopping. I had a fairly good idea what I wanted. I have wanted a Mazda 3 hatchback for awhile. We found a used one that met most of the criteria and were able to pick it up for a fairly decent price. It’s 2005 with 29k miles on it with a sunroof. The best part of it is the engine — Its quite snappy. It’s got a lot of “go” on it, or as Mazda would tell you “zoom, zoom”.

I had crunched all the numbers before we went shopping and I knew this one was within our price range. I knew that if I got a 5 year loan and an decent interest rate that I could get the car for $300 a month, I just needed to squeeze the price down by $1000. I’m not much of a haggler so I wasn’t too sure how it would go. But I figured if they didn’t want to sell me the car, then I would find somewhere else that would be willing to sell me it. While I was in love with the car, I wasn’t in love with the process.

Our sales lady was nice but she played the ditzy card too many times. I think it was in an attempt to get me to budge. She was a little put off by the fact that I had everything lined up. I knew about the 4 square and I knew what numbers they could play with. I gave her two outs, one of which i wish I hadn’t. They could either: 1. Drop the price by $1000 OR 2. Give me a stellar interest rate — well under the average rate for a used car. In the end her finance guy saved her by getting me an awesome interest rate. The price of the car was only dropped by $500. In the end, though, I got exactly what I wanted.

They did take 2 hours to come to the number which was the sucky part. Although this time I feel like I did my best. I don’t feel ripped off and I think both parties got something out of the deal. At one point Courtney looked at me and said, “Do you think they hate people like you?” I said, “Yes, yes they do.”

Filed by Jason Motylinski at 12:17 pm under car Jason
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