4gb of excitement and language learning

From Brad. Sorry for the absence, but life's been a little hectic lately. What is the 4gb all about you ask? No, it's not 4 green burritos (like we could get those here) but gigabytes. For my birthday, my great father in law sent a package of goodies over (birthday stuff for all the kids, plus me!). It came today and contained a new 4gb SD card for my Treo phone (only $50 at Circuit city). This is double the size of my old card and gives me tons of more storage. For you non-techno types, that basically means I can store around 600-800 songs/messages/language learning files on my phone rather than half that amount. A need...maybe not. A convenience...definitely. Why not buy one here you ask? Well, everything technology here is 1) more expensive, 2) probably fake, and 3) sometimes non-existent. I have not seen a 4gb card for sale here (even though on the back is says it was made here :). Also, many of the stereos for sale now also have an SD slot so we plan to make that purchase soon and go straight from my phone to the stereo.

Now for the part I'm proud of. My phone, the Treo 650 is not compatible with a 4gb card. So I downloaded some files off the Internet, hacked into the ROM, and enabled 4gb technology on my phone. Impressed? I am, I knew for sure I was going to melt the whole thing about half-way through the process, but all-in-all it took around 1 hour. Now if I only had an 8gb card.

I'm excited about more storage b/c recently we cashed in some United Freq Flyer miles (which expire in 18 months if no activity) for 100 songs. So Amy and I downloaded around 80 of our favorite songs which we did not possess (just couldn't think of any more) and have been enjoying them this whole week. Now I can put them on my phone and let the taxi drivers enjoy them also. :)

Speaking of taxi drivers...these poor guys...they are my guinea pigs for my language learning. Yesterday, I learned a grammatical construction whereby I can say 'doing two things at the same time.' So I hopped in the taxi and began firing away...'can you talk on the phone and drive your car at the same time? Can you eat and drive at the same time? Can you sing and bathe at the same time?' Okay, I didn't ask the last one, but he was certainly giving me some strange looks. I encouraged (ahhh, maybe pressured...maybe commanded) Amy the other day to ask our taxi driver if he was going to eat ice cream tonight (a new word for her). The look he gave her was priceless. Annoying to them, yes. But we're paying them and most of them get a good laugh out of it anyway. Until next time...