I’m at the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop this weekend, giving a few talks and listening to a few others. I’ll write more about that later. Here’s the coolest thing I think I’ve learned so far.

Sorry, I mean “PERL tutorial.” I guess there are so many of these that it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, but I found yet another one today while looking for some JavaScript docs. Seriously, why isn’t there a really good installable JS reference yet?

So, it’s funny that I ended up with a phone that can’t iSync, because this morning as I was walking to work, I was thinking about what I want in a cell phone. I wasn’t sure about everything I want, but I knew that the first thing on the list was iSync. “If it can’t use iSync,” I thought, “it’s out of the running.”

I mis-read the iSync supported devices page. Oops. My Samsung SGH-D807 is not a supported phone, meaning that I can’t easily keep it in sync with my Mac’s calendar and address book. It’s fairly easy to delete all the contacts on my phone, then import all the vCards from my Address Book. I would go so far, in fact, as to say that I don’t mind the hassle. iSync was nicer, but it’s something I only do once in a while.

I still have no phone. Well, that’s not true. I have a really neat-looking phone that I can’t use yet. T-Mobile assured me that I could go get a new SIM from a place about a mile away, in town. When I called that store today, though, they told me that I’d have to go to a T-Mobile corporate store, not a “satellite” store. In other words, six miles, to Whitehall, through traffic. Forget that!

Yesterday, we headed downtown and watched the parade for Celtic Classic. It was okay, but I was disappointed by my high school’s lackluster regimentation. A scoop of maple walnut ice cream dulled the pain.

Today, I hit the road with my Franklin CDU-680 from 3gstore.com. As the bus left Bethlehem, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. Sure, I was online and staying online, but I was only getting about 80kbps, only about twice what I got on GPRS. As we got to Quakertown, I started to quit apps, thinking I’d reboot for… well, because I was desperate. Around then, though, ping times dropped from about 700ms to about 100ms, bandwidth increased tenfold, and things got to be what I wanted. I stayed online all the way to Philly, with great speeds.

I have lost my cell phone. I think John C. thinks this was an excuse to have to get a new one. In fact, it just sucks. I’ll either have to pay full price or extend my contract, and I have no idea what phone will be tolerable.

The guys from RCN came, today, and switched our television service over to RCN. They also set up cable modem service, which will replace my longstanding Speakeasy service. Speakeasy is great, service wise, but their prices haven’t changed in ages, leaving me paying $70 per month for 1.5/384 DSL.

My EVDO modem, the Sierra AirCard 595U, was a piece of junk. It kernel panicked, for Pete’s sake! I called Sprint, today, to arrange for its return. I think it’s a sham that they say that it’s compatible with Mac OS, since it seems very problematic on Intel, which is now, I think, all that Apple sells. Worse, it’s the only USB EVDO device they sell.