I'm home again. Tired. Will blog tomorrow about recent thoughts.

To people who read my blog and know M in person: M doesn't know about my blog. But I should explain. There are reasons.

1. If she read my blog, I would run out of things to say and share with her.

2. There are issues I open for discussion with everyone, and some of them involve her, or are issues I don't want her to get involved with.

That's why. Thanks for understanding.

Glowing

My CEO just got a hummer. He's just glowing, and gloating about it too.

Oh, I mean a Hummer H2.

I have a prescription-happy doctor. The conversations generally went like this:

"I have experiencing [this] lately, and wondered if there's something I can do about it?"
"Sure, I can get you some [that] for it."
[scribble scribble, and a new prescription is born]

I went in for a physical exam, and a checkup on my cold. I left with four prescriptions, and a referral to an allergist and pulmonary specialist. (I only used one prescription; I don't really need the others.)

I dreamt about hEr again last night. This time, we had spent an enjoyable day together and it seemed as if things past had been forgotten and forgiven. sHe extended an invitation that I could "be with hEr for a while", and it made me happy that perhaps there was still some hope.

But I woke up more confused than ever, in perhaps more of a predicament than I had thought I was in. It could have spawned from Friday night, where I went with M to a place that I heard sHe frequents. I spent that evening trying to enjoy my time there, while always keeping an eye out to see if she was around.

Maybe this is a more nagging issue in my head than I had given credit for, growing more and more into an internal struggle. I'm messed up. I may have to take action soon.

WLNP (wireless local number portability) happened today in select metro areas -- it basically lets you switch cellphone carriers (and from landline to cellphone) and still keep your same number.

It's been a big fight until now (carriers not wanting this added support cost which can only increase subscriber churn in an already fiercely competitive business), but it's going to happen anyway. T-Mobile is the only carrier so far to have agreements with the others (AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Sprint, Verizon Wireless) to port numbers easily, showing that they are well prepared for today.

How do we get on that? The CTIA has created www.EasyPorting.com with Verizon Wireless, to educate consumers on how to port. There's also a site called WireFly started only recently (in response to the pending WLNP movement), which will compare plans from multiple carriers based on your usage. (CellMania did this two or three years ago, but doesn't seem to have it anymore.)

But what to do with your old cellphone? (Phones for one carrier will generally not work for another, even if they're both GSM technology.) RMS Communications lets consumers sell their phones at CellForCash, while Reliable Communication has options for selling or recycling or donating, at keepyourphonenumber.com.

Here are some articles for more info. Wireless Wars: Who Wins?, Wireless carriers answer call for number swaps.

I will probably wait a few weeks for them to sort out the number transfer process (and bugs) and then make a pointed call to AT&T Wireless to have them make me an offer I can't refuse. Yay!

Stoned at the Bar

I don't know why, but I sometimes enjoy watching the progress bar move when my computer is busy doing something -- installing software, stitching my images together, exporting an album, downloading mail. Sometimes I sit there and watch it go, even if process is 5 minutes, and I know I could be doing a lot better things with those minutes.

I just like watching it move along, getting subtasks done in its predetermined order, and reporting to be immediately when things are complete. Or maybe it's that I want to read each step as it goes, so I can understand what it's doing to get what I want done done. Not that it matters -- it only matters that it's done.

Reason being what it may, that little partially-coloured digital bar, changing ever-so-slowly, still mesmerizes me. It takes away minutes that I can never get back, and yet, I still sit there watching it.