:: My Divided Soul ::

I finally did it. I finally got a new digital camera. I have been wanting a digital SLR camera for two years. Now that I make a decent salary for the summer, I could actually justify purchasing it. Two weeks ago, my Canon 30D, Canon 24-105 f4 L IS lens, and Canon 28mm f1.8 lens arrived.

How can I describe this camera and the lenses I got in one word? WOW! I knew the change from a G3 was going to be big, but I didn’t realize it was going to be this big. Here are some observations I’ve made:

1. The auto focus is extremely fast. When I was using my G3, the main cue for me that the camera had finished focusing was when it stopped making noise. The first few shots with the 30D and my 24-105mm lens, I was waiting for the same cue. I waited five or more seconds. Then I realized the problem: the camera had focused so quickly that I didn’t even realize it had finished! It used to be that the camera was the limiting factor in how fast I could take pictures. Now the limit is me. That is going to take some getting used to.
2. Focus in low light is actually possible. My G3 would hunt like mad in low light and I would be lucky to be able to auto focus at all. With a 28mm f/1.8 lens, it is no problem.
3. I don’t miss live LCD preview. The optical viewfinder seems to offer many advantages, including the ability to gauge DOF and focus more accurately than on a screen.
4. The camera is heavy. I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way, either. In fact, it feels good to hold it in my hands as I walk. Around the neck for any length of time is a little difficult, though.
5. DOF is quite a bit shallower at a given f-stop than it is on a G3. I knew this was going to happen and I have to say I find it useful. It opens up a wealth of artistic possibilities.
6. The pictures just look sharper, clearer, and more detailed. My G3 certainly produced some nice pictures and I thank it for its many years of service. However, the 30D and the 24-105mm make for a killer combination. Seeing pictures from many of you on this forum was what made me think I could get better quality photos with a dSLR in the first place and the camera has not disappointed.
7. Image stabilization is an awesome technology. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, image stabilization (IS) detects camera shake and shifts the lenses to compensate. Handheld shots at 1/5s? Not a problem. Not only does this help with low-light photograph of stationary objects, but I think it will open up some creative opportunities when photographing moving targets.

Overall, I do not regret the move to the 30D one bit. My G3 was and still is a nice camera that prepared me well for the move to better equipment. I feel somewhat overwhelmed with the new choices I have, but I see it as a challenge that I’m eager to take on. If you want to see some photos taken with my new camera, check out some shots around Palo Alto and my trip to San Francisco with Ganesh.

The other thing I have discovered is post-processing photos shot in the RAW format. Basically, when taking a picture, the data stored on the card is taken directly from the CMOS sensor without and compression and in-camera processing. Then, one can adjust contrast, color balance, white balance, sharpness, and a bunch of other things on the computer later. I’ve been using Adobe Lightroom, which is currently in beta for Mac and soon for Windows.

There was a time when I thought such post-processing was cheating. I mean, isn’t changing such things being untrue to the picture as taken? However, I then realized the truth: the camera isn’t capable of capturing a scene exactly as it was. Post-processing allows one to change properties of the photo to bring it closer to the reality of the situation. Moreover, it has the potential to make photos more visually stunning.

As an example, consider this photo, taken in Palo Alto:

With a little adjustment of the exposure, contrast, and color balance, the picture can become this:

I’d say that is quite an improvement. Post-processing also allows one some creative freedom. One effect I’ve seen that I’ve always wanted to try was with flowers. Consider a typical flower picture like this one:

Move all of the colors to gray with the exception of magenta and one gets this:

You can see larger versions of the post-processed pictures in the photo gallery. Commenting is a lot easier in the gallery, so if you see something that strikes you, feel free to write something! Needless to say, I am extremely happy with my new toys and eager to explore their capabilities.

I picked up three new releases last week, all of which are excellent and highly recommended. The first one is Live’s new release Songs from Black Mountain. This album represents some of Live’s best work to date, and that is saying a lot given how amazing their albums consistently are. Some have been complaining that the band have become too much pop and not enough rock. However, I think they are maturing as band and writing some happy tunes, some of which echo back to the acoustic-drive Mental Jewelry days. While listening to them in my cubicle, I can’t help but sway back and forth to the music. Standout tracks include “The River,” “Show,” “Sofia,” and “Where Do We Go From Here?”.

The next album is Holly Brook’s debut album Like Blood Like Honey. This girl can write some very emotional songs. You have probably already heard her on the song “Where’d You Go” by Fort Minor. I was completely taken by her voice when I first heard that song and was eager to get her album when it came out. The album does not disappoint, offering songs with deep lyrics delivered by a hauntingly beautiful voice. Highlights include “Giving It Up For You,” “Curious,” and “Saturdays.”

The final album concerns me that my music tastes are becoming more accommodating of emo. I used to dislike emo immensely. I still do dislike crappy emo a great deal (which describes about 95% of it). However, my recent acquisition of The All-American Rejects album has now been complemented with AFI’s Decemberunderground. Hardcore AFI fans are up in arms that the band has sold out, mellowed, become too commercial, embraced too much goth and new wave, and generally lowered themselves to the level of other punk/pop/emo bands. Apparently, the band used to be a hardcore punk band or something like that. Before buying this album, I decided to check out some of the older stuff. I was not impressed. However, I could not get their new single, “Miss Murder,” out of my head for three days straight. Originally, I was just going to buy this single on iTunes, but then decided to give the rest of the album a listen. I went out and bought it immediately. Yes, this album does embrace new wave and has some emo tendencies, which scares me to some extent. I generally dislike 80s-new-wave-inspired music and emo, but this album captivates me. The album is a well produced work with very diverse influences. The songs range from emo to new wave to straight-up punk. (hmmm…is that really diversity?) In any event, I’d say AFI’s new album represents some of the best music in this genre. Favorite tracks of mine are “Kill Caustic,” “Summer Shudder,” “Love Like Winter,” and “37mm.”

So those are my music recommendations for you!

As of Wednesday night, I am now a Palo Alto, CA resident. I flew out so I can start my internship at Intel on Monday. The trip itself was pretty uneventful, thankfully. I find travel–particularly to a new and unknown place in which I will be living–extremely stressful. My single-serving friend for the flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco was Andrzej, who works for an environmental conservation group and also places some cool folk/world/rock/country music. We chatted on the plane about our work and about music. Turns out he’d like to jam with a drummer, so I’m hoping I might be able to feed the drumming bug a bit out here, as I do not have my drumset with me.

I’m living near downtown Palo Alto with Polly, who I first met at Cornell (and who does not have a web page to which I can link…you need to work on that, Polly). This puts me in walking distance of many fine places to eat and shop, although about 14 miles from work.

Normally, this would not be a big deal as I have always had a car to get me places. I decided, however, that I would spend this summer without a car. I could have drove my car out here, although I’m not sure I want to try to get my car across the country and back. I certainly do someday want to drive across this great land, but I want to take the full two or three weeks one should really spend doing it. My other option would have been to rent a car; but, the $2300 it would have cost for the summer was not that appealing.

The train makes getting to work relatively easy, as I’m less than a mile from the train station. Intel also offers a shuttle from the train station on the other side to their campus. However, I am strongly considering the possibility of a bicycle to manage that last 3.4 miles. It would be good exercise and provide the more flexibility than the Intel shuttle.

Getting items for day-to-day living, however, has proven to be interesting. I did not want to spend much time sleeping on the floor, so I needed to acquire a mattress. I went to the Ikea about two miles away to do some shopping. I was hoping to get a mattress, small desk, and chair and have them delivered the next day. As I was standing there looking at mattresses, I realized something: I could get the mattress, small desk, and chair and have them all delivered for $79. This would require spending $79 on the delivery of furniture that barely cost that and also require sleeping on the floor for another night. Instead, it made much more sense for me to carry the mattress home so that I could have it the same night and then just get the desk and chair when Polly, who has a car, gets back from Europe. So I walked for two miles carrying a thin twin mattress rolled up into an 18-inch cylinder. It is nice to put my semester of work in the gym to good use. I’m sure that I was quite an amusing thing to see for those driving by.

Getting groceries also proved to be an exercise in carrying. I could have gone to the Whole Foods Market down the street, but they are all…organic….and….expensive…or so I assume. Instead, I went to the Safeway about two miles down the road and carried six bags of groceries back. I think my second shopping trip will be to the Whole Foods Market.

So to summarize my first day in Palo Alto: eight miles of walking, two of which were with a mattress, two of which were with groceries. Overall, I would call it a productive day. In general, I’m finding Palo Alto to be a very nice place. The weather is simply beautiful. As I understand it, the temperature stays in the 70s for most of the summer with the humidity pretty low. It is raining right now, but that’s probably not a bad thing, as it helps to keep the green plants alive and well. And there certainly are a lot of green plants.

The people here are also very friendly. I met a few people on the shuttle bus from the airport to here and they were quite chatty, as were the people at the checkout counters at Ikea and Safeway. People also smile and say “hi” when walking down the street, even more so than in Ithaca. My new neighbors, Scott and Lana, introduced themselves my first evening here. Overall, my first impressions of the area are very positive. You can see some pictures around Palo Alto that I took my first couple of days here. I’ll add to this album as I take more.

I’ve only met a couple people out here so far. Mr. “I Know Every Person Ever Born” has already informed me that several of his friends are out here, including Justin, Nitu, and Martin. The first two I knew when I was at Cornell. Martin was gracious enough to invite me to the Stanford CS department TGIF, so I got to meet several grad students in that department. I also took the time to steal all of Stanford’s computer science secrets and will be taking them back with me to Cornell.

Yesterday, rather than go completely stir crazy, I decided to take the train to San Francisco and walk around. It is one awesome city that I plan to explore much more during my time here. You can see pictures from my walking around, where there is much more commentary on my day.

So far, the trip out west has treated me very well. I’m eager to start work on Monday and actually do something.

My sister was graduated from Penn State this weekend. I am extremely proud of Hannah and everything she has done. She received two B.A.s, one with honors in Journalism and another in Political Science. Both were with highest distinction (that means her GPA was really, really good). Now, she is off to Philadelphia to intern at the Inquirer. You better believe you will see my sister in a good position at a very good paper in the near future. Until then, you can see pictures of graduation festivities. Congratulations, Hannah!

I signed into my Orbitz account this morning to check the mileage on the flights I am taking to and from California this summer. I check on my flights for the family reunion and I see the following:

Anyone notice a problem with this particular flight schedule? Apparently, United is extremely optimistic and thinks the flight from DC to Chicago to be quite early; or, the airline expects me to master time travel. I, however, am a bit weary of such things being possible and think a -35 minute layover is not enough.

This is, of course, not the flight I booked. Apparently, United changed my flight without informing me. I called Orbitz and they corrected the problem very quickly, putting me on a direct flight from DC back to San Francisco. So a thank you to the kind people there who made the change and were extremely polite and friendly in the process.

In fact I have not abandoned my camera, even if it has been since Christmas that I have posted pictures. You can now see all the happenings of Slope Day 2006. Take a little end of classes, add in some music, a dash of alcohol, and a lot of friends and you have Slope Day.

A few different things are in my mind, so I thought I’d just talk about all of them. First of all, it is going to be one busy summer. I’m headed off to California in two weeks for my internship at Intel. Big thanks to Polly for offering to share a place this summer and then finding said place. This summer is also going to include three trips to Europe to present four conference papers. Dexter and I have been very fortunate with paper acceptance this semester, with two papers we wrote together accepted, one to MPC in Estonia and one to RelMiCS in Manchester, UK. I have a second paper in RelMiCS, as well as one in MKM in Wokingham, UK (this would be the conference Terese and I had a paper in last year). I have to say that it is a great feeling going four for four on papers this semester after having some droughts in previous years.

Secondly, and completely unrelated to my summer, is the fact that I bought some new CDs yesterday. The primary of these purchases was Tool’s new one called 10,000 Days. This album wins for greatest packaging ever. First of all, the work is all done by Alex Grey, my favorite artist. All of you in New York City (Chethan, I’m looking in your direction) need to go see his Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. The artwork itself is not what separates this albums from others. No, the awesome thing is that this album artwork contains pairs of images that, when viewed with the attached stereoscopic glasses, appear 3D. Truly mind-blowing. The music itself is also growing on me very quickly.

I also picked up the latest Pearl Jam album. It has been heralded as the return of Pearl Jam to their roots, however, the album has not really struck me as that special yet. The last CD I got was Move Along by The All-American Rejects. I have been enjoying this album immensely. Shit, am I in danger of becoming emo kid? My hope is that this is not the case.

Finally, why is it that no one at Cornell or in Ithaca who wears a Penn State shirt actually went to Penn State? Whenever I see such a shirt, I like to ask its wearer if he attended the school. So far, no one I have asked actually has gone to the school. The most popular response is “no, I just like the football team.” The most legitimate response came from Meredith, who is from the central PA area and has a family member who teaches at Penn State. The amusing thing is that when I tell those with Penn State attire that I actually did go to school there, I can see that some of them suddenly feel like a fraud for wearing the shirt.

Perhaps the solution to this problem is for me to wear a Penn State shirt (I think I have one around here somewhere) and let people who went to the school come up and ask me if I went there. I can respond, “yes, I did my undergraduate work there.” Then we can reminisce about good ol’ PSU and take comfort in knowing that someone else who wears blue and white knows that Penn State is more than the football stadium.

I just got back from the best concert I’ve seen in quite some time. It was certainly the best of the six Live I’ve seen. The boys from York came to Penn State for the first time in about five years to play the Bryce Jordan Center.

Let me first explain my history with the band Live. This is a band I have seen in concert at many of the pivotal moments of the past twelve years of my life. Live was the first concert I ever saw, when I was in my first year of high school. Back then, bands could play Rec Hall and tickets were first available to people with Penn State IDs. Luckily, my mother working at Penn State allowed me to get tickets, which was a big deal to a fourteen year old kid. Ignoring my parents’ instructions, I went down to the general admission section (what we called “the pit,” back in those days) and rocked out to Live shortly after Throwing Copper came out and before it really blew up with the single “Lightning Crashes.” It was the first of many shows I would see in my life.

Live was also there when I moved to Ithaca and started grad school right before Birds of Pray came out, when the song “Heaven” was still called “Hell,” as I recall.

Live also has associations with three of the last four girls I have dated, including my first relationship to last over a year. If you are reading this, don’t worry, ladies, no single Live song was associated with more than one of you. The song “Dance With You” in particular reminds me of a moment I was caught in at that Live show in 2000.

So all of that history leads me to the show tonight. Lee and I waited patiently on the floor of the Jordan Center, set up in the much preferred side stage configuration, for Live to come out. Shows at the Jordan Center are always plagued by waiting at least half an hour between the opening act and the headliner. It was interesting to note that the crowd was diverse with regard to age. I think Live is one of those bands that will date me at some point, as they will be around for a long time and I can say I remember them back in ‘94. Some of these damn kids at the show were probably still unable to read back when Throwing Copper put Live on the music map.

The lights dimmed and some music started over the loud speakers for atmosphere. The band entered the stage and with a few clicks of Chad Gracey’s drumsticks, they blasted into “All Over You,” a song they often like to start with. At that moment, I already realized that this was going to be one spectacular show. Towards the end of the song, we all got to sing: “our love is like water, pinned down and abused for being strange…”

The band members looked really excited to be there, particularly the guitarist Chad Taylor, who, along with James Black from Finger Eleven, I find to be the coolest looking guitar player out there. “All Over You” was followed by the first Live single from Throwing Copper, “Selling the Drama,” which was the first Live song I ever heard (and fell in love with immediately). I will now, in a format championed by some friends, go over some of the show’s highlights.

• The version of “Lakini’s Juice” was just…wow. It was absolutely rockin’. I have never heard the song sound that good.
• Before the concert, I thought to myself, “what is one song I’d like to hear that I haven’t heard them play in awhile?” The song that came to mind was “Iris.” As I’m standing there at the show, I hear that distinctive guitar chord followed by the run of bass notes that leads to “I liked the way my hand looked on your head.” They played it! The song I was hoping to hear, they played. And they played it damn well.
• The songs from the new album, Songs From Black Mountain sounded like some of the best work Live has done, and that is saying a lot, as they have done some fine work. Four songs from the album made their way into the set list, including “The River,” “Mystery,” “Sophia,” and “Show.” No doubt I will be picking up the new album when it comes out on June 13.
• “The Dolphin’s Cry,” a song that has found itself with certain associations in my head was great, with the audience singing along to every word. “Heaven” was the same way, with Ed saying “I look at my daughters and I believe,” reflecting the latest addition to his family. I wonder what he would have done if his second child had been a boy….
• I turn to Lee after the first song of the encore, and said, “You know what would be cool? A song from ‘Mental Jewelry.’” Ask and ye shall receive, in the form of “Beauty of Gray.” Ed is right, we do all need some gray in our lives.
• After two songs in the encore, a chant of “Shit Towne” rose from the audience. A couple of the band members laughed and then Ed signaled for an electric guitar (this is the only song on which he plays electric these days). “This song is a request from the front row,” he says. And why shouldn’t they play it? After all, last time they were in State College, they said the song was about our town.
• Before and during the last song, “White, Discussion,” Ed led the audience through a chant of “We Are”…”PENN STATE!” He seemed truly blown away by the volume level the crowd reached, remarking, “you have to hear that from up here once in your life.” He then invited a member of the audience up on stage just to do that. Mike seemed to enjoy getting a chance to stand on stage with such greats of rock music, exchanging high fives with a few of them before walking off stage.

I came out of this show saying simply, “ummm…wow.” It ended all too quickly, but it was just the energization I needed. Live has never disappointed in the six times I’ve seen them, and I hope I get to see them six more times. I do recommend you pick up Song from Black Mountain when it comes out June 13. Until then, if you reading this own any Live, listen to one of their songs right now.

As mentioned in my last post, I have recently decided that using a cell phone is in my best interest. It’s been nearly a week now that I have had my Motorola SLVR, so I thought I’d take the time to review it in the hopes it will benefit someone out there who is considering one. When I invest in a new piece of technology, I tend to investigate the options extremely thoroughly and the quest for a cell phone was no different.

I have been perfectly content using a landline for my voice conversations for the past four years. Therefore, I was searching for a phone, not a miniature computer, not a digital camera. I had four basic criteria, in order of importance:

1. Good phone call quality: This is a function not just of the phone, but of the service provider one is using. Cingular tends to have good reception in my home and office, so the phone needed to be able to take advantage of that reception. Thanks to years of drumming without earplugs, my hearing isn’t the best, so call quality and volume were that much more important.
2. The ability to use a headset easily: I see a headset as very useful for a couple reasons. First of all, having my hands free to do other things mean I’m much less likely to drop the phone. I broke one phone I had on my landline because I dropped it while holding it between my face and shoulder and wanted to avoid such situations. Secondly, I figured not having the phone next to my brain was not a bad thing. I’m not saying it’s proven that cell phones cause brain tumors, but I’m quite sure that holding the phone away from one’s head does not cause them. I wasn’t so concerned about having a Bluetooth headset, but I was not opposed to the idea.

   You might be saying, “every cell phone can use a headset, what is your issue here?” My research led me to discover that some flip phones require the phone to be open to talk, even if a headset was plugged in. This was unacceptable to me.

3. The ability to synchronize the address book on the phone and my computer: I use the Mac OS X Address Book to keep all my contacts. I find the integration with the rest of the computer’s applications to be beautiful and I wanted my phone to share in that beauty.
4. A good feel in the hand, particularly with respect to weight: This criteria is pretty obvious. However, my situation was a pit special in that having been used to a landline phone, I wanted a phone with a pretty good weight to it.

As I first stated, I didn’t want a miniature computer or a fancy camera. I had a PDA for awhile and found it was more trouble than it was worth. I toyed with the idea of a Treo or Blackberry, but decided to remain adamant in my wish to avoid such devices. This also meant I was not concerned about data transfer or internet access for the phone.

As for the camera, since I consider photography a hobby, I didn’t need a camera phone that boasted awesome 6x digital zoom. I doubt a camera phone could produce the images of my current digital camera nor the one that will be in my possession in the near future.

In my week with the SLVR, I have to say that it has met all of my criteria perfectly. Allow me to break it down based on the criteria set forth above.

1. Audio quality: Call quality is just fine. I dare say I’m starting to get used to the way calls sound despite it initially seeming horrible compared to my landline. I have seen complaints about the call volume being too quiet, including in the CNet review. When I purchased the phone, I made sure that they would allow me to return it if this were a problem. While finalizing my plan, I was required to give some information through a call on the phone via an automated system. My comment when I made this call: “Whoever complained about the lack of volume in phone calls must have been completely nuts.” The volume on this phone is just fine, even for someone like me who has lost some of his hearing.
2. Headset: For me, this is an area where the SLVR wins big. Because of the integrated iTunes player, the headset provided with the SLVR is stereo; they serve as the headphones for the player as well. This means that the voice of the person with whom I’m conversing comes through in both ears. That’s something I didn’t even have with my landline. I really like the fact that the phone comes with the stereo headset.
3. Address book syncing: I plugged the phone in via the provided USB cable, I opened up iSync, I told it to search for new devices, I clicked the Sync button. All of my contacts loaded into the phone without any problems. Some people have complained about the fact that the Motorola address book lists a contact several times, once for each phone number. You can easily turn this off by going to the address book, hitting the menu button, going to setup, and changing “View” from “All Contacts” to “Primary Contacts.” Then, each person is listed in the address book once, with alternate numbers for contacts accessible with the left and right buttons.

   Through the USB interface, one can also load custom wallpapers for the home screen and mp3s to use as ringtones. With the phone connected to the computer, you simply drag jpg images (mp3 files) to the mobile/picture (mobile/audio) directory on the card, disconnect from the computer, go to Pictures (Audio) under My Stuff, move the files to the phone, and then change the wallpaper (ring tone) in the appropriate Personalization options. I currently have the Skype classic call in sound as my ring tone and Alex Grey’s Dying as my wallpaper.

4. Size and weight: The SLVR is a nice and heavy phone, particularly for its size. I’m sure it’s not going to be too heavy for anyone to carry or use, but it is heavier than other phones. Nevertheless, it is a great size: less than half an inch thick and pretty tall. I held other phones in the Cingular store and found none had as comfortable a feel.

The SLVR has a built in camera and calendar functions, but I have not used these. The camera is only VGA, which some people see as a con for the phone. I see it as a plus; it means that more attention was paid to other more important phone features.

One of the major selling points for the SLVR from Cingular is the inclusion of iTunes. I wasn’t sure I’d ever use this feature of the phone much, but after having experimented with it, I am extremely impressed. One can synchronize a playlist of up to 100 songs from iTunes on his computer. The phone acts just like an iPod Shuffle, including the ability to auto fill and auto convert music to AAC format. Since I keep all of my music in Apple Lossless, this automatic transcoding is great.

Most noticeable is the incredible sound quality for song playback. The audio is crisp and clear, putting my third generation iPod to shame.

The iTunes interface on the phone is well done. It looks and acts like the menu on an iPod, minus the scroll wheel. Artwork and artist/song info appear on the screen when playing a song. A nice touch is that you can hide the iTunes interface and go back to the main page. In this state, the album artwork and track information show up on the home screen and the four buttons on the circle control iTunes.

iTunes interface	Song info on home screen

The phone has a couple setbacks. They are issues that do not make me regret the purchase of the phone at all, but they do leave some room for improvement. First of all, silent mode should mean that the phone is completely silent. With voice dialing set on the phone, whenever I enter the address book and select a contact with a voice name saved, the phone says the name, even when the phone is in silent mode. I wish I could turn off its repeating of the name completely, but there does not seem to be an option to do so. The only other problem I’ve had is that transferring songs can be a slow process. Because I had to transcode from Apple Lossless to AAC, putting 100 songs on the phone took 45 minutes. I believe if the files had been AAC to begin with, it would have done the transfer in around 10 minutes.

Overall, I am extremely happy with my choice of cell phone. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a phone with good audio quality and a useful set of features as a phone. It does carry a hefty price tag at $200 with a two-year contract, but I’m glad I spent the money.

With my impending move to California for the summer, I’ve decided–wait, I haven’t yet mentioned my move to California. Granted, if you are a friend of mine actually taking the time to read this, it probably means I’ve already told you about my move. But, for the uninformed, I’ll be moving to Santa Clara, CA this summer to intern at Intel. I’ll be working in the Programming Systems Lab on the Type-Safe IA. I’m not going to bother going into the details of that. I am without a doubt looking very forward to this opportunity.

But anways, back to the main point of this entry. I’ve decided that it is my best interest to use a cellular phone as my primary means of distance voice communication. I have for a long time felt that cell phones are evil. About four years ago, before I came to Cornell, I was using a cell phone as my primary line. However, it annoyed me in several ways. Most importantly, sound quality was horrible compared to a land line. Also, I didn’t like the way I used the phone; for instance, I allowed myself to get distracted while driving and talking on the phone. When I made the move to Ithaca, I decided to have a land line at home. I kept the cell phone in the car for use in emergencies only. It has come in handy in some of those situations, I cannot deny it.

Up until this point, I have resisted keeping a cell phone with me, despite the objections of several friends. It is true, a cell phone would have made it easier to contact me. That is precisely one of the reasons I avoided using one–I like only being available by phone when I am at home. My voicemail allowed me to check messages online, so any important messages I got during the day while in the office and, in the event of something requiring my immediate attention, I could respond. With cell phone technology being adopted at a staggering rate (along with other technologies, including email and instant messaging), there is this believe that people should be available any time, all the time.

And with that belief cell phone users make themselves available all the time: on the streets, in the stores, in cars, and even in bathroom stalls. I doubt I’m saying anything new here. We’ve all heard the arguments against cell phones and how they are making people more rude. I’m still not sure if inconsiderate cell phone usage is part of the cause or the effect.

Nevertheless, I do believe that a lot of the times I have been treated rudely in the past couple of years have related to the way someone has used a cell phone. The driving incidents happen several times a week: someone driving excessively slow or not paying attention at an intersection with a phone held up to the ear. More interesting for me was an experience in Wal-Mart a few months ago. I was in line at the self-checkout behind a woman who was ringing up her items while talking on her cell phone. Once she had checked out, she just stood there continuing her conversation on the phone despite the fact that I was behind her waiting. After a minute, I said to her, “are you going to take your bags?” at which point she gets extremely angry and defensive telling me not to be rude. I do not think I was the one being rude here, however. I told her that she can’t just stand there oblivious to the world around her and to the fact that I was standing there waiting because she was on the phone. Her final response to me before taking her bags and walking away: “I think you need to go fuck yourself.”

The primary thing cell phones have had going for them is convenience. For me, that convenience has finally won out over the drawbacks. Since I will be in California for three and a half months and then (hopefully) only back in Ithaca until January, I find a cell phone is what makes the most sense for me with regard to convenience.

So with that, I upgraded my cell phone plan and got a new Motorola SLVR (hey, if I was going to give in and get a cell phone, I at least wanted to be a technology/style whore, too). The gadget lover in me does enjoy having a new toy. Nevertheless, I will do my best to remain true to my current phone habits as best I can. I never want to be that guy whose phone rings during the movie, who attempts to dial and drive, or who allows himself to get so absorbed in his phone call that he is oblivious to the world around him. So if you see me doing any of these things, please take what action you see as appropriate to prevent me from doing it again.