2007 December

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2008 Class Ski Trip

Usually, I’m not kind of nervous and very excited at the same time, but now is one of those exceptions. The reason for that is that I am going skiing this week! On Wednesday, January 2, 2008, my class (all of 8 people, including our teacher) will be driving up to the Catamount ski area in Upper New York and Massachusetts (on the state border).

This year, I have a number of new pieces of ski apparel, listed as follows:

• Rossignol ski pants
• Under Armour ColdGear mock-neck
• Falke ski socks
• LL Bean 3-in-1 parka
• The North Face Thresher hydration pack (hopefully the one-half hour I spent washing it out got rind of the nasty chemical taste)

This trip is really supposed to be a snowboarding trip, where my classmates will learn to snowboard (possibly without professional instruction). However, I opted to continue skiing, for two reasons:

• Skiing is usually significantly cheaper.
• Since I already know how to ski, why waste a trip on trying something I might not like?

In conclusion, I have a strong feeling that this will be one of the best ski trips of my (very young) life, based on the current weather forecast and my experience with skiing.

My Blackberry Idea

For a while now, my love for smartphones has been quite pronounced. However, after spending a weekend with various BlackBerry devices (keeping myself out of the “BlackBerries” vs. “BlackBerrys” debate for now), I have realized just how useful and thoughtful those smartphones are. So I came up with an idea which could potentially (but doesn’t really) get me a BlackBerry and only spend pocket money on the device itself.

To put things in to perspective, my current cell phone is serviced by Boost Mobile’s pay-as-you-go plan, which is just about the most I can afford. Keeping that in mind, it would be outrageously expensive and almost impossible for me to have my own voice plan from Sprint and have the BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service, which includes email and, depending on the price level, unlimited Web access), for two simple reasons:

• I am not of age to sign contracts (my age < 18)
• I don’t have a consistent source of income (the largest sum of money I ever made was from a summer job)
• I don’t have access to nearly enough money (it’s all in the bank, in my savings account nonetheless – and I don’t even have a checking account yet!)

Aside: Please don’t leave comments saying that when I grow up I’ll be able to enjoy this stuff. I get enough of those speeches at home from my parents.

Continuing, as I humored about earlier, my uncle got a BlackBerry 8300 World Edition from Sprint a short while ago. Realizing that I can’t afford to pay for my own voice plan from Sprint (or sign the necessary contract yet), I figured I could do what my uncle did for his BlackBerry: Buy my own BlackBerry device, and add another line and another BIS account to their family plan. In total, the deal would cost me about $50 a month, plus taxes and fees, which comes out at slightly more than $600 a year (more than a third of my earnings from last summer, which I plan on spending on something – I’d like it to be service for a BlackBerry). And I’d probably be keeping my Boost Mobile phone, still paying my $20 plus sales tax (no other taxes or fees though, since it’s prepaid service) every 90 days.

Now as any person would expect, my dad says that this would be too much of an investment, with very little ROI. He also said that I shouldn’t go digging into my savings account, which is my money for life. Being an irrational teenager, and one from a modern era at that, I highly disagree. But when it comes to money, I almost never get my way.

Getting a BlackBerry is a nice, but unfortunately, expensive idea. I really don’t have a business justification for it. But who said being cool (and connected) wasn’t going to cost me? For now, a smartphone is just a figment of my imagination, but I sure hope it doesn’t stay that way for long.

2008 will be the Year of the Web Worker

Now that 2007 is slowly rumbling to an end, I’ve glanced back at all of the amazing breakthroughs that have been made over the course of the year. Microsoft released Windows Vista; Apple released the iPhone, new iMac and new iPods; and many other new products and services have emerged.

Web Worker Daily would like to know why…

2008 will be the Year of the Web Worker

In response, I’d like to say that 2008 will be the Year of the Web Worker because the office will be everywhere, Continue reading »

Old Media != New Media

A quote from one of my favorite podcasters, Leo Laporte:

Everybody has to have a dream, but if you’re doing new media as a path to get on old media you’re missing the point of new media.