I hope everyone had a happy new year thus far. As promised, I�m posting a picture of me sans facial hair. Although my facial hair is growing back as we speak, I did shave to a clean, almost baby face state for NYE:

Aside from that, I was tempted to buy the HTC Touch Cruise, a PDA like phone with a GPS Navigator built in but the thing would have been close to US $900+ for me so I decided to hold of on a purchase like that until I graduate. I was also eyeballing the RAZR2 Gold �Luxury Edition� for $700+, but it didn�t have 3G and I�d have to ditch all the cool accessories I had gotten for the K800i, so I ultimately got the $500+ K850i instead and thus far I�m quite happy with all of the improvements Sony Ericsson�s flagship phone has. It has US quad band GSM and 3G/EDGE which basically means that compatible not only in the US, but with any GSM network in the world, and you know how much I like traveling the world. Well, OK I don�t travel as much as I would like to, but just in case I did travel, it cool to know that I have the phone for it.

One of the coolest features that I have began using regularly is the ability to post photos wirelessly and directly to blogger. Actually with the proper setup, you can do this with any camera phone with MMS capability; this model just has the special �post to blog� shortcut to impress all your friends. I'll probably post some pictures of my new phone in my photo blog, when I get around to it of course.

The lack of MMS capability happens to be one of those things that I absolutely do NOT miss about the iPhone. Because the iPhone could not send MMS messages I could not post any wireless photo blogs, which to me was simply unacceptable. Hopefully iPhone will fix that in a software update, I mean come one Steve, you need to stop rolling in all that cash that the yuppies are throwing at you from all those iPods, iTouches and Macbook Pros and stop leaving ridiculous stuff out of what can otherwise be a really cool device. But anyway I digress. Here�s the link to my new photo blog (permanent link coming soon):

http://iamderricksphotos.blogspot.com

Aside from that, I just started the winter quarter at school. I have a couple of interesting courses, one dealing with mobile interface design and usability and the other with mobile application development. Right up my alley I think. I hate to blog and run, but it�s time to get the hell out of work, so until next time...