ratman.com

i love my droid. i can’t leave home without it. i use it everyday. recently, reading some of the forums, i came across what others have know about for some time. launcherpro. by far, now my favorite, especially the agenda integration. the rest is very cool as well. go try it out!

launcher pro

out to the lake for memorial day weekend! back home last night. all set for work today!

last night, the hawks – the mighty blackhawks took a 2-0 lead in the stanley cup! woohoo!!! not that i am a hockey fan, cause i’m not. but i am a chicago fan. hell, i even rooted for the sox a couple years ago. continue onward and upward!

finals for jon tomorrow. then it’s a summer of drivers education. what fun it will be!!!

michele’s almost done with school. if you know of a teaching position, please forward whoever to this website… mlratcliffe.net. her work samples and resume can be found there! can’t hurt!

awful accident at the close of the indy on sunday. from a safety standpoint, how far we have come.

there was an f1 debacle on sunday as well. teams should play nice within their little group. i would be willing to bet that there was an immense amount of being talked to for the rest of sunday. would not have wanted to be either of those drivers.

that’s it. off to work! it’s a brand new day!

the good:
two of my kids hooked up with me on twitter. devin and ian. interesting tweets.

my better half has started her observations for school. won’t be long now before kids will be bringing her apples.

there was a reunion of the hudson flight survivors. what a great story.

last weeks house episode was one of the best ever. how i love that show.

looking forward to the start of 24 this weekend.

can’t wait for true blood to restart.

my kids made it through finals. not stellar grades, but they tried hard and did their best. i expect that since they made it through the first hurdle, that it will be easier next time. congrats jon. congrats devin.

the bad:
palin gets a fox network show. holy cow. it must have been god’s will. or. god really does have a sense of humor.

haiti gets wiped out by a natural event. i feel terrible for the people of haiti. i can’t imagine that happening here.

more and more ice is melting at the poles. sure. it’s a natural occurrence. my ass.

the state of illinois needs to get it’s act together. i have no idea who i will vote for because they all seem a little self involved and dirty as well. why do things have to be this way.

j. p. morgan chase made a ton o money and will be paying huge bonuses to some of it’s employees. why are we letting this happen? who’s money are they using for this?

a snowplow trashed our mailbox last week. bummer.

the ugly:
pat robertson, the bitter old religious man, made statements this week that even god can’t believe in. so why did he make them? maybe he’s just old and tired. may be he’s just an idiot.

sports players are said to have guns in the locker room. why?

mark really did use steroids. what a revelation!

nbc has lost it’s mind with the leno conan thing. they will simply loose more viewers to the far superior letterman show.

shameless plug:
windows home server. don’t just take it from me. search the web. find any number of reviews and what it can do for you articles to see why everyone should have a server at home. i absolutely recommend this for everyone. what are you waiting for? go get one!

sundays will be the weekly letter post. i figure i will try to take a letter and exploit something that starts with it. ought to be able to go through the alphabet twice this way, right?

a:

android. or the moto droid phone is just the greatest thing. i have some apps on mine. i am pretty picky. but i do have a list of favorites so far…
barcode scanner
places directory
layar
where
shopsavvy
sportstap
google voice
goggles
facebook
listen
evernote
ourgroceries
twidroid
touchdown
life stories

my real world use of the phone is this. i have tried any number of ‘smart phones’. windowss devices. palm. and i even made an attempt at the blackberry, which was my favorite of them all. i have many friends that own iphones. i like them. really. but i already own a touch, so it seemed stupid to me to ditch it for an iphone. the touch does exactly what i want it to do.

the droid however, has exceeded all of my expectations. it makes calls (thanks verizon). it runs assp. it gets my mail, all of it. it has some pretty cool accessories. like the car mount. stick it on your dash, or throw it in the windshield. once you place the phone in it, it turns into one of the smartest gps machines on the planet. turn by turn, finding the destination with just the entry of where you want to go. get a power cord though. it does use some juice. or the moto dock. it’s more of a toy for me since i have the touch. but it does give me the time, date and weather at a glance. i have a photo frame at work that rotates pictures, so i don’t know that i will ever use it that way. but ya never know. it oes charge the phone while it’s in it so that is a good thing. i can also reach out and hit it for the feeds, twitter and facebook things that i need to do fairly easily.

the google voice part of this is another great thing. i make calls. not 100′s but enough. now, i let gv do the work instead of the regular vw network, and all seems to be great. i also like the sms part of that application.

have already made use of the scanner things to date. yes. they saved me money. and where got me to cheap gas today. 3 cents cheaper in the area that i was shopping today.

what i want is an app that reads emails and the like to me. i had one on the bb, and with the laws correctly changed to no longer allow texting or the like, it would be really beneficial. still haven’t found one. but i know one will show up soon…

my impression so far is that it is every bit the equal of the iphone. i admit quietly, that i miss a couple things on the bb, but it wasn’t that much of a loss.

well. that’s it for ‘a’ this time round. next sunday, the letter ‘b’.