February 21, 2006

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on February 22, 2006 by stlplace

I ordered Motorola E815 and Verizon Wireless new service plan from Amazon yesterday, after doing some research on the web. My contract with T-mobile expired recently, and I was not impressed by their service: the biggest problem is their limited coverage area. Many times when I am off the highways, I no longer have the signal. The other day when I was in MSP airport, in some places it had signal, in other places it didn’t. And their customer service is not consistent either. I heard mixed messages from time to time.

I checked out the cell phones and plans from Amazon. Cingular and Sprint both require 2 years contract, which I don’t like. I had some difficulty to choose the phone between E815 and LG VX8100. Sometimes choice is not necessary a good thing. I chose the Motorola because it’s slightly cheaper and it comes with bluebooth headset.

This evening (Feb. 21) I drove by the Verizon store and decided to take a look at the real thing. It seems the LG phone is much sexier than the Motorola E815. Now I can only hope the E815 has better substance. How can I forget the store which I drive by everyday? I know I am a little out of mind these days.

Note: I found the cell phone buying guide from eBay to be helpful.

Note on Feb 22: on second thought, I changed my order from Motorola E815 ($20 money back with mail-in rebates) to SamSung A850 ($100 money back with mail-in rebates). People in China will think it’s crazy we can make money here just buying cell phone. But it’s just a way the carriers here used to entice new customers. The monthly rate of the plans is not cheap. The one-year plan I am going to have is $39.99 per month before tax. That’s $480 for one year. Thinking I may not be in St. Louis for several months in the coming year, I want to cut the phone bill a bit. Besides that, I don’t think the extra feature offered by E815 such as 1.3M camera, video capture and MP3 player will be very useful for me. I am just a simple guy who use phone for talk and text messaging.

Olympics figure skating

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on February 21, 2006 by stlplace

The highlights of the Torino Olympics, Ladies figure skating will start tonight. American Sasha Cohen and Russian Irina Sluskaya will be the favorites. While I like both of them, I hope Irina could win because she went through a lot (illness) in recent years and I like her personality better. Compared to Sasha, Irina is more mature and more easy going. There could be some dark horses in the event, just like Tara Lipinski and Sara Hughes in 1998 and 2002. Michelle Kwan was favorite in both events, but she did not win the gold because those young girls did better. I guess it’s just the nature (or the beauty) of life: there is always something unexpected.

A side note: in the past week I enjoyed watching China CCTV channel 5 coverage on Winter Olympics, which is mainly about Chinese athlets. After I came back, when I watch the NBC Olympics program, it mainly shows American athlets. I have to go to web if I want to know how Chinese did.