The Chris Gonyea Project

With the Patriots winning last night, we have a perfect regular season. Never thought I would see one of those. The game was a very good game and I have to give the Giants props, they fought very hard before folding at the end. Given that both teams could have easily sat their starters at some point, it was refreshing to see a “meaningless” game so well fought.

However, it doesn’t mean anything without winning the Super Bowl. A loss at this point will be disappointing to say the least.

Time for 3 Games to Glory IV!

I think these are going to be my tech purchases in 2008:

1. iPhone - #1 on my list for a reason…it is the first cell phone that is easy and fun to use, while syncing without issues on Macs. Now for the bad news: gotta wait until December 28, 2008, as I am under contract with Verizon Wireless until that date. Hopefully by then the iPhone will have a memory increase or two, plus 3G wireless.
2. HP Photosmart C7280 All-in-One printer - My current all-in-one printer is alright, but it is starting to have issues to say the least (like saying my black cartridge is a red cartridge every other printing job, requiring a printer restart). This printer from HP sounds really good and replacement ink might be even be a reasonable price for a change. The option for wireless or ethernet printing/scanning absolutely rocks…I can move the printer to another spot in the room and free up space on my desk. Plus it helps when I am using the Macbook on the couch or on the kitchen table.
3. Apple Airport Extreme router - If Time Machine ever gets official support for backing up to AirDisk connected hard drives, I will buy one of these routers as that feature will rock for laptop users like myself.
4. Laptop hard drive -  I really need to upgrade the size of the hard drive on my Macbook. The new 320GB laptop hard drives sound about right.
5. Large external hard drive - I am thinking that if I get #3 above, I will need a very large external hard drive for backups and other data. Something like a 1TB hard drive will work and provide plenty of space for future uses.

How many of these are realistic? #1 is definitely happening barring a financial disaster this year. Given how my all-in-one printer is acting, #2 is probably going to happen at some point.

The others? Probably more “wish list” type items, unless I get a major raise or something.

I detest sending/receiving text messages (well, at least on my current cell phone). They are a complete rip off, not to mention I cannot stand typing on normal cell phone keyboards. Watching my brother Dan send a text message reminds me of the reaction I got in middle school from my friends when typing on a computer: pure amazement. I don’t know how he does it. He could probably write a book that way if he really wanted to.

I was once told that the sound of me typing was like a machine gun going off. I have slowed down my typing on purpose these days, as I am trying to prevent carpel tunnel syndrome and other issues with my hands/wrists. Plus it helps with the accuracy. When computers are a person’s career, your hands and wrists are the most important assets you have.

Anyways, my wife likes text messaging and insists on sending them to me. I think she does it to tick me off, but I have no evidence of this. For awhile, I tried to fight off the urge to get a text messaging plan for both of our phones. After looking over our recent bills from Verizon, I decided to see if I could get more for our money.

I ended up buying the $5 text messaging plan from Verizon for each of our phones, as last month our text messaging charges equaled about $10 for only like 40 or so messages. So instantly, we are getting more text messaging (250 messages on each phone) for our money.

Also while checking over my bill, I noticed that I was being billed for Mobile Web when I had never used it or signed up for it. Called Verizon and was able to get a refund for the last 6 months of Mobile Web charges.

So after all of this, we will be getting more for our money plus our cell phone bill will actually drop about $5 a month. Not bad.

I still hate text messaging. At least until I can get my iPhone on December 28th, 2008.

I think my hard drive in my Macbook is dying a slow death. When I get home I am going to verify that Time Machine has a good backup and do some extra backups on DVD before calling Apple.

Update: Yep, it is the hard drive. The Apple tech support guy didn’t even question me, he just started the process to get it repaired. Also going to get the trackpad button on my Macbook fixed…it has been sticking recently. Time to do some mega backing up.

My brother got an iPhone. Very jealous!