Eric Krassinger

For being a 3 and a half day weekend, I did not do very much. I did go to the Cards day game on Thursday which is always a blast. Met up with some of the boys afterwards to hit the town. Finished up by winning our last game of our sand volleyball league.

Friday was pretty laid back. I did hit up some deli with Smith on Mackland in South City. It was good.

Saturday was a float trip day. It was a pretty good time. The water seemed cold at first but it was a perfect day. Not sure if it was because of the area or the time of the float but there was no one on the water but still a good time. The cabin concept worked out perfectly even though it was not hot at night. It is just so much easier sleeping in a real bed. The cabin was pretty nice and could have fit a queen size matress easily to add another 2 people. Its hard to beat floating and a cabin for $55/person for a group of 4.

I did absolutely nothing on Sunday. So much that I don’t even remember what I did. I do remember hitting the Ponderosa buffet with the crew in Farmington. Finally went there with the Rengler after all the talk over the years.

So I finally figured out that I do not have the latest release version for my Blackberry Bold. I was actually at least two versions behind. I was hoping for a new version to fix my various performance problems that I have blogged about before like speed, memory, and the web browser.

The Process

It was somewhat easy but I would not say that the average Joe could not figure it out on their own and I did not see any instructions. I am sort of mad at myself that I did not do this earlier since the download file is in the same dropdown on the AT&T/Blackberry site as the Desktop Manager.

1. Connect the phone via USB
2. Install the update on your PC
3. Run the Desktop Manager where it then realizes there are updates
4. Choose the updates you want. I had 35. These range from libraries to new firmware to new applications, etc.
5. Click okay and watch it go to town

I actually got a fatal error when I did it the first time and was sort of freaked out but the phone worked fine. The weird part was that I could not get it to recognize that it was plugged into the PC via the USB. I tried two cables and plugged into both my dock and laptop. I did notice that my dock was not seated properly so I fixed that and restarted it which did the trick. The second install went fine and took about 20 minutes.

New Software that I have found so far

1. Visual Voicemail – There are third party applications but this one is available for supposedly only the Bold according to Engadget. I had to add the service through AT&T but it was free. Not sure if this is only temporary since it seems like they are testing it on the Bold.
2. My-Cast Weather – Looks to be a Garmin app which probably means it is pretty good. It does have satellite radar which I couldn’t find in any of the 3 apps on Blackberry App World. The one thing it does not have (which is pretty big) is that it does not have detailed weather for the day or a 5/10 day forecast. I like how WeatherEye shows a different icon for the various weather on my homescreen plus shows the weather if I hover or it so I will still use it as my primary weather app but will use My-Cast for radar.
3. New Games – Pac Man, Scrabble, and Tetris
4. Mobil TV – I clicked on it and it looks to be a $10/month service where you can watch over 40 channels like ESPN, Discovery, Disney, NBC, ABC, and CBS
5. I now have the ability to update BB firmware via the phone. The option was always there but supposedly did not work on v.167.

Conclusion

I did notice that I had 30MB of device memory when I restarted for the first time. I though this was higher because all my apps needed to be started for the first time. Once I started weather, Google Maps, Twitterberry, Facebook and others and looked later I had 42.2MB which is crazy. Just looked an hour later and it is 43.7 while running Pandora which is making me just giddy. It for some reason went up plus I had never seen it that high before. This will be awesome and make my day if they fixed the device memory issue which has been my major complaint about this phone.

Lets hope it fixes my other problems like the following. Only time will tell.

1. The web browser and other apps saying there is not connection to the internet even though the phone says I am on Edge or 3G
2. The memory issue
3. Speed or lack of lag that it gets at times
4. Battery life which should improve if the memory issue is fixed

The ManEater is reporting that Reactor Field will be closed for tailgating and parking for the entire football season. This is after going last season to a schedule where they opened the field a couple hours before the game. I am not entirely sure what had prompted this closure. I remember the days when I was a student and Reactor was actually a field unlike its current state of being a gravel parking lot. It was the best time. I remember having kegs and eggs for the early morning games and tailgating all day for the late games. Throwing around the football and just enjoying life. I do also remember the hoosiers who would do donuts with their big trucks in this same field when it rained since it became a big mud pit. I thought this small group of individuals were the ones responsible for causing the small window of being open but evidentially not because they haven’t been able to do that for years. I remember reading a couple years ago that MU wanted the limited window of openness to curb people’s drinking and try to prevent people from just tailgating and not going to the actual game. This is a ridiculous idea to me. There is no way you are going to stop that. People will move from one spot to another. Another thing that bothers me is that they allow this at all the big money “donor” parking lots around the stadium but this never gets any attention. The other thing that bothers me is that I have not seen any out of control behavior in the past couple years that we have tailgated on Reactor. It actually has been pretty low key and tame. The other thing that just blows my mind is that one alternative is parking along Providence where speeding cars are flying by; just waiting for someone to get hit by a car. It also seems like it is a giant waste to be letting a big parking lot somewhat close to the stadium to stay closed when the school was making $15 a car. I guess it is only my tax dollars paying for that school.

This was definitely an exhausting weekend. We did our normal Friday night on Wash Ave hopping between Dubliner then Rue 13. We did fit in some Rock Band before and I also might have busted out a few car windows from errant tee shots from the new driving range in Forest Park. My only complaint is that the driving range is pretty small but it is better than nothing. I seemed to be driving over the range. Maybe I am just that good.

I knocked out some good errands on Saturday. Had to buy new ipod headphones since mine literally fell apart, went cloth shopping, along with concluding my epic quest to find natural light CFLs that fit in my fixtures. I guess I went against Lowe’s recommended buying guide and against what some of my friends thought on Saturday night. I think the light makes the place look awesome but it does make everything look super white so I will definitely have to paint very soon. Nice bright colors will make the place spectacular.

We ended up going to Harrys Saturday night which was a blast. We went to a couple other places that can not be named and then had a hot tub afterparty at my place. It was awesome. We had both hot tubs in use till daylight. All the boys were on fire that night. We had a perfect score if your keeping count.

Unfortunately I paid the price when I went out to the river that morning. Less than 1 hour of sleep is not recommended but it was worth it. We were also going really slow after it was decided to bring out the waverunner too. We were even more delayed after we sucked up a random floating rope in the marina in which we had to get the trailer back out to pull it out of the water to dig out the rope from the motor. The weather was perfect. The water was surprisingly warm but there was a lot of mud instead of sand once you got past knee deep water. I got some great sun and had fun. I concluded the night by watching True Blood. The season has been very off but also very good. I think they have done a great job by keeping the audience entertained. I think Entourage should pay attention closely to True Blood’s style. I can’t wait for the final two episodes.

• I am talking with a CPA/Tax guy about redoing my taxes to deduct for my entire Wash U tuition. Here is a good article on the subject. I know it will raise a red flag if I refile my last 3 years and get a bunch of money back so want to go through official channels.
• I am officially uninstalling Civ 4 tonight. That game is too addictive. Its taking to much of my time and preventing me from working out and getting other important items done.
• Not sure if this Smoltz pickup is good. I guess it is at least not bad for the Cards since it only cost them $100k. The upsides could be huge with small downsides.
• Does no one want to go floating on August 29th? The Rengler is going with a huge group (25+). Hoff and I reserved a 6 man raft and a cabin with AC that has 3 beds (For Friday and Saturday but we might only use it Friday). The total costs comes to $210 so that would be split amongst whoever goes. Let me know if interested. We are floating the Black River. Were trying to mix it up.
• Going to check out Parties in the Plaza for the first time before volleyball on Thursday.
• Does anyone know a good St Louis cleaning service that will buff hardwood floors? Mine really need it and I do not want to buy/rent the equipment needed to do it.
• I realized that my favorite character is not Kevin Nealon on Weeds. He does offer comedic relief which has gone downhill throughout the season but I realized that Guillermo is not only funny but he makes the show by bringing it back to its original plot line which is more entertaining …. selling drugs.
• Looks like I will finally move/sell my desk tonight. I have posted on Craiglist 3 times and got good responses but everything always fell through. I am still very hesitant about selling stuff on Craigslist. Especially when it is a low cost item.
• I was somewhat entertained with the Shaq Vs show last night. Not sure if any other sports star could pull off that show. I liked it for the same reason the only sports star I follow on Twitter is Shaq….he just says funny things. The staged aspect of the show sort of bothered me.

This week was a very laid back weekend. I took off one of my “mandatory unpaid vacation days” on Friday so I had a nice 3 day weekend. My weekend consisted of sleeping a lot, playing video games, cleaning the house, and the Cards game on Friday. Sitting by the pool and watching a movie on Saturday. Doing laundry, shopping, washing my car, watching the PGA championship and other TV shows on Sunday.

So pretty boring. I did get a ton of sleep this weekend which was needed. Unfortunately, I did not even attempt the one thing that I needed to do so I have to get it started this week. I also went to the new Schnucks called Culinaria downtown. I was actually very impressed and prefer this size compared to other grocery stores. The reason I say that is that I do not need 10 brands of every items. For example, there does not need to be 30 feet of retail shelves for tomato sauce. Not only did I like the layout but I liked the prepared food section. I ate a couple great slices of pizza. The parking was also very convenient. Simple park in the garage above and a voucher for free parking prints with your receipt. The only negative I have is with the deli. They have only Boars Heads meat which is more expensive plus they do not carry super sharp cheddar which is my fav. I ran into this same problem with the Clayton Schnucks. The guy did turn me on to their new EverRoast chicken. I have to say it is pretty awesome. The guy told me it is flying off the shelf in their test markets. It has the taste of carrots, celery, onions, and parsley to give it a full meal kind of taste. Also, the place was packed. I went around 2 on a Friday so it seemed late for a lunch crowd but everyone seemed to be grabbing food. Not sure if this is just from opening or if these people will be return customers. If they are returning customers, Schnucks will be happy but also regret not opening sooner.

Does anyone know of a good BB Twitter app because I am tired of the bugs in Twitterberry and the recent changes in 0.9.1.1? They said they fixed two things in the change log. (1) “Fixed an issue when notification icons may not disappear after viewing unread messages.” I had never seen a message notification icon before this update. Now, I only randomly get them and they do not go away until I restart. (2)”Added a new @replies popup. Now you do not need to leave the list screen to post a reply.” This option sucks and the previous version was great. Not only does it look bad, but I lost the ability to spell check and see what my character total is.

I have been using this app since December and loved it then except for Twitpic not working correctly in which it now does. They need to quit messing with the design and fix the bugs. Please correct this and add native support for sending a picture from a Bold so I can send a picture straight from the picture screen instead of having to go to the picture folder to send it.

Mike Hoff and I went on a float trip with a crew from AB. I realized I had not been on a float trip for a while since I missed the last couple group floats. I totally forgot how much fun they are. Saturday was one of the better times I had all year and it is super cheap and only 2 hours away. It has everything I love in life; girls, alcohol, water, and the sun.

The river was packed. We stayed at Bass River Resort which brought me back to high schools since it is where I always use to float. It was an extra 30 min drive compared to where we normally float but worth it. The river was actually low so we ended up doing the exact same float on the Current that we do with Ozark Outdoors.

The float itself was pretty memorable. The river was more packed than I ever remember and almost all rafts which is not normal in my opinion. We went though the 75 Jello shots pretty fast. Unfortunately we do not have any pictures because we sunk Mike’s waterproof camera a couple hours into the trip. Never thought it would be possible to lose it in the 2 feet of water. I hung out with a girl (from Chicago) the last couple hours of a trip and thought I lost my group. Mike said he got kicked off the girls rafts so not sure what he did. I am amazed how many groups were from Chicago with no ties to St Louis. Do they not have these kinds of things in the IL side?

The thing that is holding me back from doing float trips all the time is camping the night. I despise the heat at night. I thought I was going to kill myself last night. I didn’t fall asleep until about 5 hours laying down which just happened to be the time that dew started appearing so it was cooling down. I was debating on turning the car on and sleeping in there but thought it would wake everyone up. I also thought about just packing up and leaving but would be hard to do in the dark.

So all my friends, I have a suggestion. Bass has a ton of different cabins and houses with AC. Look at this one here. It would cost us less than $30 a person to sleep in the AC with beds, a kitchen, and a shower. I payed $15 to camp so seems like an amazing deal. The camping was so bad that I felt like they should have paid me $15. Not sure what everyone thinks about this or the availability but Mike and I would like to do one of these again this summer. Possibly with the Rengler group at the end of the month.

I signed up for Google Voice this week to see what all the talk about was. I had heard rumors that AT&T was going to block Google Voice and I thought that was the case when I tried to download from my phone and the web address kept giving me a weird error but finally it worked. I got a number with a 314 area code and the last 4 digits are the same as my current cell number which is a plus.

Features

This is a hot app because it allows you to bypass your phone carrier’s bill. What I mean by this is that you could totally cancel your text messaging plan and have people send you texts over your new number via your data plan or WiFi. The same works for your voice plan so you could have the lowest voice plan available. The other big features are that you get a rising credit for international calls (which I don’t understand yet) plus you have visual voicemail.

Below is the list of the complete features.

• A single Google number for all user’s phones
• Free calls and SMS in the contiguous US
• Calling International phone numbers for as low as 0.01 USD per minute
• Call screening. Announce callers based on their number or by an automated identification request for blocked numbers
• Listen in on someone recording a voicemail before taking a call
• Block calls
• Send, receive, and store SMS online
• Answer an incoming call on any of your phones
• Phone routing. Choose which phones should ring based on who calls
• Forwarding phones
• Voicemail transcripts. Read voicemails online and on my BB
• Listen to voicemail online or from a phone
• Receive notifications of voicemails via email or SMS
• Personalized greeting that varies greetings by caller
• The ability to forward or download voicemails.
• Conference calling
• Record calls and store them online
• Switch phones during a call
• View the web inbox from a mobile device/phone
• Set preferences for contacts by group

Here is the main screen. The purple dots are text messages and the blue dots are voicemails. I left myself a couple voicemails and I never got the text to read exactly right but it was close. I could not get it to show the users names like above even though they are in my BB address book.

Making a call or text does take another step so not sure I would use it as it is now. I am use to just start typing a name and it automatically goes to my address book where I can then click the Blackberry button to choose the option to text, email, or call. This app does not allow you do this. To get it to do this you, you have to (1) be in the app and click the Blackberry button (2) select address book (3) scroll to the person you want (4) then you get the options above to call and SMS using Google Voice. I am not sure why it is not directly integrated into the address book but shows up when you initiate through the app. I have a similar problem with sending a picture through Twitterberry.

I do receive texts and calls along with sending texts but I can not get the outbound calling to work. I keep calling my office phone and it rings and rings and rings. I did also notice that voicemails take a couple minutes to show up on my phone where they show up immediately online. I also do like that it says my name when you call my Google number from an outside line. It is a very neat feature that I see all carriers doing. It basically would stop you early from continuing a call if you dialed the wrong number.

In summary, below are my big advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages

• Basically free texts and calls
• Visual text voicemails

Disadvantages

• Does not have native commands built into the Blackberry menu
• Is not directly tied to my address book so it only shows numbers in the inbox instead of names. Not sure how the above picture shows names.

Day 1 – Chicago

We rented a mini van after a little trouble and began our journey to Chicago. We arrived at the HoJo around 9PM. We got ready and I left early to meet my friend Ann from grad school at Rock-It. The place was dead. Once the boys arrived, we caught a cab to Rino (the one bar I did not want to go to). Fortunately, there was only a $10 cover but the place still sucked but at least I was there with friends. I heard rumors of $1 Vodka drink but I sure was getting charged more than $1.

Day 2 – Driving and Spring Lake

We slept in the next morning so we did not get into Spring Lake until after 6PM. We normally go to Grand Rapids this day but we were all exhausted so we did not go and ended up going to sleep early. I think this was an awesome move and enabled me to go strong all the way up till the last day.

Day 3 – Fishing, Spring Lake, and Grand Haven

We woke up bright and and early to fishing. Unfortunately for Mike and I, our bodies did not like this morning. I took Dramamine but it could not hold up to the 4 to 5 foot waves on the water. I felt sick almost as soon as we hit Lake Michigan. Fortunately, I felt better are a little bathroom time. We also only caught 1 small King Salmon so the effort was not worth it.

The disastrous day continued when we thought we were helping out by cleaning the “Scream Machine.” Unfortunately, we thought Jeff’s Dad told us to beach the boat, which we did, but he did not because one of the props has a history of not going back down. After a couple hours of being on a rocking boat (that also made me not feel good after I got off) we were able to fix the issue by jumping the hydraulic solenoid. Afterward, We took the boat for a quick spin but had to get ready to go out.

We hit up Kirby’s that night. I had planned to explore the city but was still not feeling the best so I decided to stick with the boys for the night.

Day 4 – Spring Lake and Grand Haven

This Saturday is supposed to be the best day on the Hanky Pank for the entire summer due to Coast Guard week. Unfortunately it rained the entire day plus it was cold but that didn’t stop hundreds of boats from being out in the cove. We had a lot of fun. Some people on our boat did have an almost near run-in with the law after a water balloon launcher incident but everything worked out.

Mike and I decided to mix it up and no go to the Kirby this night. On the suggestion of Mr Kennedy and a little luck, we stumbled upon the Eagles beer tent. They had a band from Chicago that was well received. The place was packed. I at first thought it was going to be like Paddyo’s but unfortunately it never got to that level. I did have fun and enjoyed the $3 beers. Mike and I then bar hopped to Rose Bud, Theater Bar, then Kirby. We ended the night with a 1 hr cab ride to go 3 miles. Mike was pissed.

Day 5 – Spring Lake and Grand Rapids

This was by far the best day out of the trip. The sun was out in full force in Spring Lake but I was surprised with how little boats were on the Hanky Pank. We did pull up to some good boats with a lot of girls and had a lot of fun. Once we were pulled in, we cleaned up and drove to GR. Unlike the other times in GR, we only went to one bar; Crush in the BOB. It is an 18 and up bar and there were very little people over 21. The good part was there was a lot of dancing, super cheap drinks, and no cover.

Day 6 – The drive home

Nothing really memorable for the drive home. I drove a little bit and spent the rest of the time sleeping, surfing the web, and writing this post. We dd though hit up a Chinese buffet.

Memorable Moments

• Steve and his “wedding ring”
• The most stupid 19 year old I have ever met in Chicago. “What do you mean to 55? There is no 255 in Chicago.” I still think she is clueless.
• Watching all the “kids” bump and grind at Crush in GR. I remember the days of just going up to every girl you could with to dance.
• Someone stealing the floating couch and having the boys swim to the other side of the cove to retrieve it.
• Everything associated with the water balloon incident
• The inability to get a cab in Grand Haven and the fights that ensue once a car/bus rolls up
• The car ride to Chicago once we “picked up supplies”
• My body not agreeing with being on a boat even though I love it so much