I assure you I’m not still going on about my Palm Vx.
What I am going on about is the Palm m505 that I won in an eBay auction and am just enjoying the hell out of. I have to say that eBay is really one of
those incredibly simple ideas that I kick myself in the ass for not having thought up before someone else. eBay is also a great place for cheap bastards like me to enjoy the thrill of an auction and the
thrill of getting a great deal on something.
Now I have to admit I feel a little bad about winning the auction I did. The only reason I feel bad is because at the time I was rabidly trying to make sure I won I was up in Lake Tahoe with my wife and my In-Laws and I had to excuse myself from the dinner table early to get my last minute bids in. I apologize whole heartedly to all at the table for this indiscretion. The auction was just too good to pass up.
The m505 I ended up winning had the same body style as my Vx, but it had one very frivolous thing that my Vx did not: a color screen. This alone was a very big thing for me and made me want to get one bad. I don’t know why. I didn’t really miss having color on any other Palm but the fact that it was out there and I didn’t have it really bugged me.
This m505 was also had potential of being a really incredible deal. This auction didn’t just have the Palm you see… it also came with a belt clip carrying case, the 16MB memory expansion card, the Game Pak expansion card, and in the truest of geek toys a 
foldable keyboard with carrying case to use with the m505. Now, I have a laptop folks… it has a small keyboard too. I can use it for lots of things
and there is no real reason for me to ever really need a keyboard to slide my Palm on to so I can type things into it faster. OK, maybe if I was on a quick commuter plane trip and had Sync’d my email into the Palm and was responding on the trip… that’s about it though. Sensibility doesn’t play into this one bit though… this was a cool gadget with a bunch of cool stuff and I just HAD to have it.
Needless to say I won the auction and I won it at only about $50.00 above what the typical m505 was going for on eBay. So I only spent an extra $50.00 and ended up getting over $200 in accessories I never would have normally bought. THAT my friends is a great deal.
Another quick side note to this story is that the m505 actually arrived today. While I was sitting there giggling to myself while typing an email using my Palm and the folding keyboard one of my co-workers came in and just laughed. After his initial reaction subsided he just looked at me and said, "I can’t believe you have two computers and a laptop all running on your desk right now and there you are typing something into your Palm."
It’s a thin line between dork-ness and techno-cool… and I’m now officially way the hell on the wrong side of that line.
-WW
Just a quick note to rave about my birthday weekend. I spent the past four days up in Lake Tahoe at my In-Laws cabin with my In-Laws and my wife. After going up there two months ago I knew this is how I wanted to spend my birthday and I just knew that by hook or by crook it was going to snow.
Since I don’t have to live it in every day there is something so peaceful and relaxing about watching snow fall from the sky and blanket the world around me in a clean and pure coating of white. The near absence of sound as something so relaxing happens almost lulled me many times into a state of nirvana.
To those that have to live in the snow and think I’m completely off my nut, my apologies.
-WW
First I would like to say to everyone that if you read yesterday’s entry then I would like assure you that my birthday hasn’t been miserable at all. It’s been a very wonderful day and the people around me have all be great. A fabulous day indeed.
Also, if you read entry then you know that I have a bit of a problem with some missing Palm Vx’s: one broken, one not. Well, the good news is that I can tell you all that I am not crazy and the buildings security has identified the culprit. I’m not saying they caught him, I’m just saying they’ve identified him. You see, our building has video surveilance and the moment I realized something was amiss we notified the buildings security. After spending most of yesterday and half of today reviewing tapes they finally ran into something. I’ll try to explain everything as it went down.
At approximately 3:53 PM PST on Monday, March 18th a middle aged man of African American decent (hereto known as "the suspect") entered the building wearing blue jeans, a white button down long sleeve dress shirt, a dark hat with the letters LA on the front and a black backpack slung over his right shoulder. At this same time the lone security guard for the building was doing
his mandated "rounds" and was not at the desk. The Suspect boarded an elevator and proceeds to the 7th floor. He enters two offices and quickly leaves them as well and makes his way to the eighth floor at approximately 3:57 PM PST.
At around the same time building security returns to the security desk in the lobby. A brief viewing of the monitors leads them to discover that a person from the 24 Hour Fitness office (located in Suite 530) is apparently going door to door in the building trying to sign up memberships. Since soliciting within the building is not allowed he proceeds to call an elevator and head to the 9th floor where at…
3:58 PM PST the 24 Hour Fitness employee enters the front door of my work while I’m at the printer getting an article about a problem with Outlook XP I’m trying to fix on the VP’s computer. A quick acknowledgement of her sends her packing as I inform her I already have a membership.
3:59 PM PST the 24 Hour Fitness employee is greeted in the hall outside our offices by security and is taken back down to suite 530 where the security guard begins to tell their manager why this activity can’t be done in the building. At this same time I go to the very back of the office to tell the VP what is wrong with his computer. He is in a very lax conference call so I wait patiently at his desk to tell him the news.
At 4:00 PM PST The Suspect calls for an elevator on the 8th floor after entering one suite and then proceeding back to the elevators to move up to the 9th floor.
At 4:02 PM PST The Suspect steps off the elevator from the 8th floor and proceeds to go down the east end of the hall. He finds nothing but empty office suites and then proceeds back up the hallway.
Now, at 4:03:02 PST we begin conjecture. You see, the end of the hallway where our suite is happens to be a blind spot for the camera because you walk under the camera to get in our door. This means that you are out of site once you get within 6 feet of our suite door. At this time The Suspect steps in to the blind spot. Within the blind spot are three doors: one to the North (locked
and occupied), one to the West (locked and unoccupied) and one to the South (unlocked and occupied and the office where I work). At 4:04:45 PM PST The Suspect steps back out of the blind spot and goes back to the elevators to proceed to the 10th floor.
So The Suspect steps into the blind spot and is out of camera for 1 minute and 43 seconds.(I know this doesn’t sounds like a lot of time but sit there and just do nothing for one minute and 43 seconds. Seems forever don’t it?) By simple deductive reasoning we can assume that he took this time to enter our offices and have a look around. My office, as well as the front door, are at the end of a hallway and are actually a blind spot for the rest of the office. This means that The Suspect has a full minute and 43 seconds to enter, not be seen, proceed directly into my office, quickly look around, see the small electronic gadgets, quickly throw them in his bag, turn around and leave undetected. I won’t bother going on with detailed times because after the 10th floor this guy got out of the building. I returned to my office shortly after he was in it and didn’t even notice the two small things missing from my desk. Security gets back down to their desk after he has left an no one is the wiser.
The most frightening thing out of this isn’t the theft itself but just the thought that this guy was in an office where at least 7 people were working around at the time and no one knew. I also find the amazing chain of events that allowed this guy to go undetected simply astounding. Had the 24 Hour Fitness employee not been going door to door the security guard may have been at his desk and noticed the guy going from the 8th to the 9th and 10th floors. Had I not been waiting on the conference call to end I would have been in my office and simply saw someone walk in who probably would have covered his ass by asking me where the bathroom was. So many little things that easily contributed to a very simple theft.
Anyway, we know who did it. Security seems to think these guys like to come back when they find an easy mark. I think they won’t be back because I’m the only one that got nailed. That means he’d probably move on to somewhere else where there might be a chance for a greater looting. I just know that if he doesn’t come back then the building security will print his picture from a
screen grab off the video and put little posters in the glass doors for a week.
If they do I’ll snag one and make a scan of The Suspect.
Thanks for dropping in for my little story.
-WW
For those of you that don’t know… tomorrow is my birthday. I’m not one of those weird people that hates their birthday and I really don’t give two figs about the whole "getting older" thing, it really doesn’t bother me in the least.
With recent events I am starting, for some reason, to get concerned about a seeming string of bad birthdays starting to form. I say this because last year’s birthday really really sucked. I was away from home and couldn’t be with my lovely wife or anyone in my close circle of family. My friends I was staying with tried their darndest to make it not quite so sucky, but there’s only so
much that they can do.
Now I know to some this really doesn’t seem that bad and I have to admit that as a stand alone item it really isn’t all that sad and depressing. After today though I have to question if it wasn’t the harbinger of a very nasty pattern.
Yesterday I made an oversight when I left work and my Palm Vx was left behind on my desk. When I say "my Palm Vx" I actually mean two Palms. One was the replacement model for my original Vx that I mistakenly broke on Friday. The
replacement came quite expeditiously and yesterday I went through the process of migrating my data from one to the other and erasing the original so I could send it back to the fine folks at Palm. Because I actually took it out of my trusty computer bag I made the mistake of leaving it behind since it isn’t part of my ordinary list of procedures to grab my Vx from my desk at work.
This morning, to my horror, I found that not only was the shiny new replacement no where to be found, but the cracked and broken one was also completely and utterly gone. The working one I can understand, but the BROKEN ONE?!?!? What the hell were they thinking?!? It’s not like you hold on to a spare to keep it laying around because of spare parts for gosh sakes!
Usually a little electronic gadget such as this being missing wouldn’t bother me all that much but this time it really feels like a violation because I had just gotten all of my information into the new one. Right now my Vx is out there, somewhere, with every bit of information I like to carry with me on a daily basis. This is just miserable. The only thing I can equate it to is the same feeling when your wallet or purse is stolen (of course I’m just imagining the purse thing never having owned one).
Let’s all cross our fingers and hope that around March 20th of next year things will be much much better.
-WW
