DavidGervino.com

GoogleTalk

I just found out that if you go to www.blackberry.com/googletalk from your Blackberry, you can download Google Talk.  Google Talk is a nice gadget because you can run it from just about any computer, inside the browser, without having to download and install a separate program.  Additionally, Google Talk allows you to communicate with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) people, as well as people with Google accounts.

I also just learned that Google Talk can be added to the iGoogle page, which is what I use for my homepage.  Previously, I had to keep a separate Gmail window open in order to stay logged in.

Dick's Sporting Goods

So I went to Dick's Sporting Goods yesterday with a friend of mine who was in search of a new duffel bag.  The people there are so incredibly helpful.  One of their employees spent a significant amount of time with us, going over the various bags they have, which ones he particularly liked, which ones are small enough use as carry-on luggage, etc.

I LOVE good customer service.  I told the guy that I'm going to go and get in shape now, just so that I have a reason to give them additional business....

To everything there is a season....

.... And the season of dealing with Nextel technical support issues is over!

I finally ditched my Nextel Blackberry and got the Blackberry Pearl (Pictured on left) from Verizon.  I've used several different Blackberries with my Nextel account but I kept having problems when it came to sending & receiving email, as well as calls dropping.  It would be frustrating to send an email, see a "check-mark," as if the email had gone through, and then have my phone beep the next day, showing me a "red 'X'" to let me know that the message, in fact, hadn't gone through....

As is typical of me when I get some new gadget, I stayed up all night and fumbled around with the different options and settings on the new phone.  Thus far, it seems to be a great phone.  I'm surprised to see that the battery-life seems to be fairly good, especially considering the bright back-lit display. 

Additionally, I've been thrilled by Verizon's customer service.  The guy at the store, as well as the lady I spoke to at their tech support desk were both extremely helpful and knowledgeable.  I hate when I call a place for tech support and find that I seem to know more about their product than they do.  It would be nice if their tech support were open 24-hours, as I'm a night-owl and generally like to call into help-lines when things are slow, and they don't have a lot of calls holding.  Actually though, I got through relatively fast when I called Verizon during the day.

paperLESS

I've been keeping it a secret.  I didn't want to tell everyone before I was sure I could succeed at this.....  I am proud to say that I have been paperLESS for the past 90 days!

If you've been reading my blog for very long, or if you know me personally, you know that about twice a year I go through a phase where I decide to put my Franklin Planner on the shelf, in an attempt to go paperless.  The phase generally doesn't last more than a week.  Until now.

I was having lunch with a friend of mine in the middle of last year and he went on and on about the perils of paper-based planning.  He told me how I could lose my planner and all the notes and info I had written inside it would be compromised.  I scoffed at him and said, "I've been carrying a planner since 1994 and I have NEVER misplaced it." Well, wouldn't you know it, I wound up forgetting my planner and leaving it in the restaurant that very day.  How ironic....  You can imagine how embarrassed I was to tell my friend, "Umm...Can you please stop the car? I left my planner at the restaurant...."

Freaked out by the "Miss Cleo-like" accuracy of my friend's wise counsel, I decided that I would try, yet again, to go paperless. 

He actually taught me a pretty cool system.  I don't think he has patented it, so I'll share it with you.  Basically, he carries a reporter's notebook with him, because it is impossible to go 100% paperless (Hence the term "PaperLESS," as opposed to "PaperNONE").  The notebook is awesome because it is the perfect size to fit in the map compartment in your car door, the back pocket of jeans and/or dress pants, as well as a perfect fit when you hold it with one hand and write with the other. 

He'll take notes throughout the day at meetings and such, and then transcribe the notes into Outlook later on.  Then the page gets torn out of the notebook and shredded.  Outlook is synched with the Blackberry, and both are password-protected AND encrypted.  So even if the reporter's notebook gets lost, the only info compromised is 1 day's worth of notes, as opposed to the 3 months+ that I was carrying around in my planner.  What's even cooler, since the notes have been synched with the Blackberry, all the text now becomes search-able, which is way better than dealing with reference binders and paper indexes in a paper-based planning system.

Voice to text transcription

I was checking out one of my favorite websites, BlackberryForums.com, when I stumbled upon a product called SimulScribe.  Basically, it is a service that transcribes your voice-mails into text.  You can then have the text sent to you via email and/or an SMS message. 

This is great because here's something I run into all the time:  I'm in a 2-hour meeting and someone is calling me on my cell phone -- maybe I recognize the number of the caller and maybe I don't.  The caller leaves a voice-mail message and I'm left to ponder whether or not the message is important enough for me to politely excuse myself from the meeting so that I can listen to the message.  With SimulScribe, I have the voice-mail message transcribed and sent to my pager, so I can glance at my pager real quick, read the message, and then decide whether or not the call needs to be returned right away.  Moreover, SimulScribe utilizes caller ID and sends the phone number of the caller to my pager, so I can reply via an SMS message if the caller is calling me from his or her cell phone.  Another cool thing is that I can also have the transcribed message sent to my Gmail address, so that I have a search-able, archive-able "hard-copy" of every voice-mail I receive. 

SimulScribe also makes it possible for you to integrate all your voicemails into one mailbox.  So rather than having to check your office voice-mail, your home voice-mail and your work voice-mail, you just have one mailbox to deal with. 

To quote some other random blogger that I read earlier today, "Quite frankly, apart from EFAX, I have not found a more useful and intuitive tool than SimulScribe to help me manage my day-to-day [communication needs].”

My new coat

I went to Dick's Sporting Goods last night and got a winter jacket made by The North Face.  I love it! At this point, I don't care if Columbia loses my jacket and never sends it back (See previous post regarding my Columbia jacket).  This coat feels "lighter" than my Columbia coat but it seems to keep me just as warm.  And, in true Dick's Sporting Goods fashion, they provided me with great customer service.  They even dug through their stockroom to find an empty box so that I could ship my Columbia coat back to the warranty people at Columbia Sportswear.

New Amateur Radio

I first got my amateur radio license back when I was in high school.  I had always wanted to have a mobile radio installed in my car but for whatever reason, I never got it done.  Until last week.

At the suggestion of a friend who knows way more about this stuff than I do, I wound up going with the Yaesu FT-8800.  I like that it is able to monitor just about every frequency, including the 800Mhz band.  I also like that it has dual-receive, and I'm able to monitor 2 VHF, 2 UHF or one VHF and one UHF frequency, at the same time.  Its like having two radios in one.  So far, I'm very happy with the radio's performance.  The external speaker produces clear, loud audio.  This radio has a lot of features that I'll probably never use but the dual-receive feature is not available on the lower-end model that they make, which is why I went with this one.

New Coat

I went to zip my coat up earlier today and the zipper broke.  I've had the coat for over 6 years and I don't have the receipt, so I wouldn't expect to be able to get it repaired by the manufacturer for free.  Nevertheless, I called Columbia Sportswear to see what they had to say.  To my surprise, a human answered the phone in less than 2 minutes.  The gentleman said that regardless of the age of the coat and the fact that I don't have a receipt, it would be their pleasure to repair or replace the jacket.  I was thrilled!

The downside is that it may take up to 4 weeks before my coat is returned.  So that gives me an excuse to go out and buy another winter coat, so that I can keep warm while I wait for my Columbia coat to be sent back to me.  I'm leaning toward a coat from The North Face.  I have one of their backpacks and I've been impressed with the quality and functionality of it's design.

2007: The year of discontinued products

All in all, 2007 was a great year.  That being said, I kept finding that my favorite products were being discontinued.  Let's take a look:

Ragu Rich & Meaty Sauce was the best.  You know how a lot of people buy bottled spaghetti sauce and then they add ground beef to it? You didn't have to add beef to this sauce, as it already had plenty.  I wrote a letter to Ragu and told them how their sauce had motivated me to start making spaghetti again and how sad I was to see them discontinue this line.  Their reply basically explained that they had priced themselves out of the market because in order to make a profit on this sauce, which cost more to make than most of the competitor's sauces, they would have to charge significantly higher prices than their competitors.  I, for one, would have been willing to pay a premium for this sauce but I guess most people don't feel that way....

Hall's had these awesome cough drops that had this gooey cough-syrup center.  It was kind of like Freshen' up gum, from back in the day.  So you got the benefit of a cough drop & cough syrup, all in a small, easy-to-carry- package! Apparently these cough drops are no longer being made.

I am resisting the temptation to go down to the corner store and purchase both of the above items.  They carry stuff on their shelves that has been discontinued years ago.  But the potential health risks of using stuff that is way past it's shelf-life outweighs the benefits....