Palm Pro

I went to the Sprint store today to find out which phone I could buy without switching away from my awesome SERO plan... The Palm Pre was ruled out because it required upgrading to an Everything pack from Sprint. I also found out that if I upgraded to a Blackberry, I'd have to add on some sort of Blackberry data plan, so that quickly ruled out a Blackberry.

I knew I wanted to get a SmartPhone/PDA type with a full QWERTY keyboard. That left a couple HTC models and the Palm 755, Centro and Pro. The guy at the Sprint store said that the HTC models freeze up frequently, so I ruled those out. The Palm 755 was too close to my 650 and the Centro was fine. The Palm Pro had different features because it had a major difference from my Treo 650: it runs on the Windows OS.

Long story short - I bought the Palm Pro mainly because it had OneNote Mobile and it can sync up with Outlook 2007, which my Treo 650 could not do. I love having my calendar with me at ALL times. It's SO awesome!! Now that I've been using it for the evening, I have to say I'm also very pleased with how easy it was to set it up so that it pulls down my Yahoo and Gmail emails! The camera is decent, a 2 megapixels one, but no flash.

Overall, so far, I'm pretty happy with it. The new OS will just take some adjustment. I'm really bummed I had to give up on the Palm Pre, but oh well. Maybe in a couple years... I have 30 days to return it in case I decide I don't want it or like it. I'll try to post another update to see if I'm still liking it in a couple weeks.

Palm Pre

Sprint has a new phone coming out on June 6, 2009. It's the Palm Pre and it's supposed to be some crazy awesome phone. I've been thinking I might buy one because my Treo has been quite temperamental lately and I'm worried it's going to just up and die on me. It's been randomly restarting when it gets overloaded and just hasn't been very cooperative lately. But then I read this on Engadget that says I won't be able to just add this phone to my existing SERO plan.

Sprint is taking a play out of the AT&T book and making its subscribers sign up for one of their "everything" plans. The cheapest plan they offer is $70/month for 400 minutes plus messaging and data, when I'm paying $30/month for 500 minutes plus messaging and data. Having a much higher monthly bill is completely not worth the super-cool new phone. I guess I'll have to start investigating other phones they have available. I really hope that all the phones I'm interested in don't have the Everything plan requirement because I won't buy that. I just don't need it. But I do need a new phone. Maybe it'll be back to eBay for me. That's where I bought the phone I had before the Treo 650 I currently have.

Gamex 2009

I'm at Gamex, one of the local game conventions and I'm sad to report that I am in my hotel room, posting a blog post about how lame and old I am. But really, I don't think it's so much that as all my fellow crazy-late-nighters aren't here. Edward & Seth didn't make it and I think those two are the two that manage to talk me into staying up late to play games.

I'm also contemplating checking out a day early. There really isn't much happening on Monday and I could save $100+ if I just go home to sleep late Sunday night. I'm seriously considering doing that. I usually have a roommate to split the cost of a room, but this time I'm flying solo. Too bad I don't have a roommate because they upgraded me when I got in and I have a bigger room with a sleeper couch and it would've been perfect to share with a roommate. Oh well, next time.

I'm running the Charades tournament tomorrow night. I'm not doing standard Charades-style, I'm doing a "fortune cookie" charades tournament. All the clues will be fortunes. I'm not sure how it will go over, but considering it was the first way I ever played charades, it's near and dear to my heart.

I brought shoes/clothes to exercise while I'm here. Let's see if that actually happens. It could. I haven't decided if I want to subject myself to a Power Grid tournament at 10 AM tomorrow morning. It will just depend on how I feel when I wake up.

I must be tired because I'm rambling about nothing! Oh, but I did win one first place ribbon for Ticket to Ride: The Card Game. I really love this game. It's my favorite out of all the TtRs!

25 Random Things About Me

OMG - could this meme be any more pervasive? And could I be any more behind the curve? Hi, here I am, four months after it was popular, filling out the 25 random things list. I'm never the early adopter on these, mainly because I kept getting 25 random things mixed up with 25 interesting things about me. So, once I gave up on trying to make them interesting, I was fine... And now, in no particular order, just the order I thought of them in... Dave - this is for you!!!! (I threw in a few more exclamation points just for you...)

1. I'm a huge game show fan. I remember spending summers watching nothing but game shows from 9 AM - noon every morning! Oh, how I used to love Bob Barker and The Price is Right! And then I got older and had a mad crush on Alex Trebek. How could I not? He was soooooo smart! Now, I just think he's smug and want to strangle him every time he pronounces something with the correct accent. Although Jeopardy! is still one of my favorite game shows.
   
2. Speaking of game shows... I've been on two since 2005. My sister and I went on Lingo (a Game Show Network show) in 2005 and proceeded to wipe up the competition. The stars were definitely aligned that day. In addition, I got to meet Chuck Woolery, Game Show Icon!! It was thrilling. If you ever want to see the episode, it's permanently on my TiVo and I also have DVDs made. Oh, and I was on the first episode ever of 1 vs. 100. It was such a terrible experience. Although, I did get to meet Ken Jennings (of Jeopardy! fame), so all was not lost.
   
3. I was married for 11 years. We met at my favorite dive bar in Burbank and eloped two months later. On my 21st birthday. We're still friends and hopefully always will be. He's known me for the most important third of my life to this point.
4. I went to a college prep magnet school for 7th - 11th grades . I didn't technically graduate from there, but the only friends I have from high school are from that school. As a nerd, I was on the Brain Brawl team and regularly traveled out of town for math competitions!
5. I've pretty much had a job ever since I could legally work at age 15 1/2. My first W-2 job was at a movie theater in El Toro, CA. By the time I was 20, I had worked the following jobs (roughly in this order): concession girl for two movie theaters (CA & FL), hostess for a seafood restaurant, greeter/cashier at Jiffy Lube, driver/counter girl at a dry cleaners, a shuttle driver for my college, a back office phone person at a doctor's office, a waitress at several restaurants, a concession girl at a country club, an auditor for an inventory company and a receptionist at an aerospace company. I then stayed at the aerospace company for 13 years. I think I held three jobs at once, but that was temporary. Now I'm a CFO at an awesome computer consulting firm and work from home.
   
6. I've been a B-52s fan since I was in the third grade and lived with my dad & his second wife and her family for a year. My super-cool 16 year old step-sister Danielle said they were cool and I believed her and have loved them ever since.
   
7. I own a Ruger .357 Magnum revolver that has a six-inch barrel. I'd like to buy another gun, probably something in the automatic family. I know all of you who live in the South think, only one gun? But in California, I'm the right-wing gun nut!
   
8. I can write with both hands. Backwards and forwards. Backwards as in, if you hold up the paper to a mirror, you can make out what it says. Oh, and in cursive. (I was bored in high school...)
   
9. My favorite number is 9. Like seriously. It's the only thing I'm slightly OCD about. Whenever I set my alarm or set the microwave, I make it so that the numbers add up to 9 or a number divisible by 9. I never put anything in for 30 seconds... it's either 27 or 36. See how that works? (OK, moving on...) [Wait, I'm going to make this the #9 thing on the list. There, that's better.]
   
10. I own 70 pairs of panties. I was having a conversation with a couple I know, during which he showed concern that if she didn't do her laundry, she might run out of underwear. I started laughing, then asked him how many pairs he owned. He guesstimated that he owned eight pairs(!). Wow. So, the next time I did laundry, I counted because I was curious to know how many I had. I can go two months baby!
    
11. I took piano lessons for seven years. I was in second grade and remember watching our new next door neighbor move in and seeing the piano roll down the ramp of the moving truck! I had always wanted to take piano lessons. I started taking lessons and we promptly adopted her as our "granny" for many years.
    
12. I have 364 items on my Netflix list. Probably not totally unreasonable, until I tell you that I'm on the "one disc at a time, maximum two discs per month" plan. And I've had Borat at home since September 2008. I probably should just return it so I can get the next disc on my list. But I'm a HUGE fan of the instant streaming through my 360.
    
13. I'm a list maker! I love making to-do lists and one of my favorite blogs is http://todolist.blogspot.com/. Most of the posts are photos of people's to-do lists. They're fun to read.
    
14. I'm a huge board game fan! I own 165 games and travel around the country to hang out with friends and play games. Along with #13, I track all my game plays on www.boardgamegeek.com. Since I started tracking in 2006, I've recorded 1,888 plays of about 500 unique games. In 2007, I traveled to Germany for gaming trade show. It was really fun.
15. My favorite food is fried chicken and I try it anywhere I can. My favorite fried chicken place is Mrs. White's Golden Rule Cafe in Phoenix, AZ. If Mrs. White's isn't open, Lo-Lo's is almost as good. My non-Phoenix favorite is in Nashville: Monahan's, a great family-style sit-down buffet place. My favorite place in Los Angeles is Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles.
16. I'm half Korean and 1/8+ Cherokee. What I find amusing is that some people think I look obviously Asian, while other people have no clue I am. I can't figure that part out.
17. The first time I ever played Charades was actually Fortune Cookie Charades while on break at a gaming convention in 2007. My first official game of "normal" charades was 2/15/09. It was a lot of fun...
18. I have an uncanny ability to guess what size pants guys wear. I don't know why I like doing it, but I do. I also am decent at guessing weight too. Maybe I should take a job at the fair...
19. I just started exercising and actually am kinda diggin' it. I haven't been doing anything that crazy, just walking with a bit of jogging. I've been using Podrunner Interval and it's awe-some! My love handles are already getting smaller.
20. I had a cookie-of-the-month club, where I made cookies for certain members "every month". That turned out to be just a wee bit overly ambitious. It has since turned into the cookie-of-the-quarter club, which means, I think they're due for some! It's the perfect Christmas gift for some of my guy friends who are real-life cookie monsters!
21. My favorite city in the whole world is Paris. I've thought about moving there temporarily. I'd love to go there with a boyfriend or husband one day.
    
22. I hate flossing. I try to make myself do it when I think about it, but I just hate doing it. I recently heard that flossing can help your breath smell better and this has actually helped me get started with flossing more regularly. Ah, vanity... Who wants bad breath??
    
23. When I was a junior in high school, I went on a date with a guy who took me and a couple of his friends on a plane trip across the state of Florida to Cedar Key. We landed on a little, teeny, tiny airstrip. We walked to town after being offered a ride in the local "cab," a station wagon driven by this older woman. We ate a hole-in-the-wall walk-up counter. I don't think I ever saw him after that. And to think I was interested in going out with him because he was a tall, dorky white guy that had higher a math SAT score than me!
    
24. I've been bitten by the poker bug. I think the gambling gene comes with being half-Asian. Craps used to be my game when I went to Vegas, but now it's all poker! I just went to Vegas for my birthday and we managed to spend 19 hours playing poker in a trip that was less than 48 hours. And most of it was on Sunday.
25. My favorite weird food combos are peanut butter & kimchi sandwiches, kimchi on my hot dogs, peanut butter on pickles and pickles with spaghetti.
    

Photo up on Womansday.com

Often I get teased for all the photos of food I take when we go out to eat. I love doing that. They aren't gourmet shots, just quick ones to remember what we had to eat that night. Hmmm... that reminds me, I need to download my birthday dinner photos off of my camera!

Well, womansday.com contacted me and asked if they could use one of my grilled cheese photos from our outing to Campanile a couple years ago. I asked them for $50 to use it and they basically said that they don't have a budget to pay people for photos, but that they'd link to my blog and flickr account, so I said, "Why not?" So, I have a photo up in their article: 10 Greatest Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. I'm photo #2 of the Croque Madame.

Fun!

Dating Update

I haven't posted much about dating lately. Last month I went out on a couple dates with a guy from OKCupid and they were fine, but no sparks from either direction. He's into board games though, so I have invited him over games once since and we had fun.

Other than that, I do have someone on the horizon and that's about all I can say about it because he knows about the blog and prefers that I don't blog about him, which is completely fine by me. Although, by mentioning him at all, I may have already broken the "don't blog about me" rule. Hmmm... Well, no particulars will be forthcoming, so I think technically, this is okay. :-) This will be the only mention unless things really ramp up and then I think he'll have to give me a wee bit of leeway to post a little something, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

And of course, I had re-joined eHarmony with some three-month special they had going on, so it just figures that this would happen right that! I'm going to go put that on hold for now.

Behind on blogging

I'm terribly behind on blogging. The last non-health-related post I was working on was that crazy 25 random things about me. Dave - I will get this posted soon. However, I'm not sure I can post it to Facebook. It seems too ancient at this point to do it. Although, with the new format, I'm not sure anyone will even notice it anyway. I hate how everything is so jumbled up. I especially hate that on the website you can't *just* get status messages, you have to go through the news feed and see everyone's quiz results. Although I bet there is a way to filter out the extraneous BS and just get status messages. I'll have to figure that out some other time. At least on the mobile version, I can still just get status messages.

Good News!

I spoke with my cardiologist today and it was good news!! He spoke with his colleague in Tucson and the verdict is that the Tucson doctor doesn't think that I need to do any further testing because he doesn't think the abnormalities that are on the MRI look like ARVD. He recommends that I do another MRI in a year to recheck it. So, that's what I'm going to do for now! :-)

I'm just happy because now I can exercise without worrying about keeling over!

Second Opinion

My sister was in the same boat that I was. Her MRI came back with abnormalities, but her doctor offered to send her MRI with the report off to a doctor in Tucson who is heading up a study of ARVD. This doctor reviewed the MRI and said that to him, they looked normal and she didn't need to worry about the ARVD, but to get checked every year (or maybe it was every two years), but the point is, she didn't need to worry about the ARVD.

Meanwhile, I got scheduled to do the angiogram and biopsies next Wednesday. My sister called and suggested that I have this same doctor review my MRI before I undergo these procedures, so I called and spoke with my doctor and he's good friends with the guy, so he's going to send off my MRI and other pertinent info to him to see what he thinks before I do any further testing. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and praying that he has good news for me. That would be awesome, but I'm preparing myself for the possibility that I will need to do further testing.

Second opinions are good. Especially when one of the possible side effects of doing the biopsies is that the wall of my heart could rupture. That would be bad. Very bad. He's going to submit everything to the Tucson doctor on Monday and I'm hoping to have some word back from him by Friday.

Heart Update

I saw my cardiologist today to discuss the results of my MRI from last month. He said there were some abnormalities, but nothing definitive to indicate ARVD, so I have to undergo more testing. He wants to schedule me for two more tests, hopefully next week. One's a right ventricular-gram where they are going to inject me with some kind of dye and then see the contrasting colors in my right ventricle to see if they can tell anything and he also wants to do some biopsies where they will take six tissue samples to test. He says it's a safe procedure. I don't really have any choice because I need to know.

I was very frustrated because I thought the MRI would tell us something more and it didn't, so now the timeline just gets longer and longer. Oh well. I think I'm going to go ahead and start exercising again though because I don't want to sit around for another month doing nothing. I'm not too stressed out about it. More than anything, I just want to know one way or another so I can deal with it if I have to and have it be over.

Health Issues

This year has started off with a bang as far as health stuff is concerned. I had two issues pop up in January.

I found out right before I went on my work cruise (hmmm... I don't think I ever blogged about that!) that I have fibroids, which are benign tumors that grow in muscle layers of my uterus. My primary care doctor recommended I see a gynecologist about it because I have six of them and one in particular was kinda big (6.6 cm wide), or as she put it: "the size of a small grapefruit." My first question was "How could I have something that big inside me and NOT know it?" I found out that common symptoms are problems with urination and heavy/painful periods. Luckily, I have nothing like that happening.

After waiting a month for an appointment, I met with the gynecologist who said that the big fibroid is in the wall of my uterus vs. taking up space inside the uterus, so that's good. He said that he didn't recommend taking it out because cutting into my uterus would be more likely to lead to infertility than just leaving it in, especially if I have no symptoms and there's no reason to take it out. I was so relieved, I almost started crying while sitting in his office. The next step is I need to have another ultrasound done in six months, just to see how fast they're growing.

The other thing I've been concerned about all month, although at this point, I've just given up being stressed about it, is the chance that I could have ARVD, a genetic heart disease. Basically, if you have ARVD and your heart has an arrhythmia, it can cause you to die. The reason I even got tested for it was because it was declared the cause of death of my cousin Donna, who passed away last August. Her sister Robyne was diagnosed with it and was almost immediately put under the knife to have a defibrillator installed, which was rather alarming. The defibrillator acts like a pacemaker and zaps your heart if it has an arrhythmia to get it back on track.

After all this, we found out that ARVD was the cause of death listed on my grandmother's autopsy several years ago, but no one ever TOLD US to go get checked because it's a genetic disease! If someone had, my cousin Donna could possibly be alive today. But Robyne says, Donna has potentially saved all of us. I love Robyne's faith and optimism. It's inspiring.

So far, I've met with a cardiologist who has participated in studies related to ARVD, so I hope he'll be able to properly diagnose me. I have a cardiac MRI scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, so I get to spend 90 minutes in a tube, trying to remain very, very still. I'm going to take a CD of the MRI to my appointment with my cardiologist on Wednesday morning so he can then interpret it to see if I have the dreaded fatty tissue on my right ventricle. You've got to love modern technology!

If I have it, I want to just know so I can deal with it, but ideally, not having it would be better! My sister did her cardiac MRI last Friday and is meeting with her doctor on Thursday, so I'm anxious to find out her results too. To be honest, I would love to get back to any kind of exercise other than just walking. I miss hiking and have been afraid to do anything else, in case it inadvertently causes an arrhythmia! By Wednesday, I should know, so that will be a relief.

Oh, Trader Joe's...

This guy made an unauthorized commercial for Trader Joe's on his Treo. Hilariousness! Enjoy! If you love Trader Joe's, you'll enjoy this...

Five and Dimes for 2008

First, I didn't hit 100 new-to-me games for the year like I was hoping to. But here is a list of the games I played more than five and ten!

The Big Dollar
277 plays - Race for the Galaxy - Still one of my favorite games, if not my favorite. It's just fun, fun, fun.

Dimes
30 - Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm
16 - Tichu - I really only play this at conventions
15 - Agricola
15 - Time's Up! - Still my favorite party game!
13 - Dominion
10 - Taboo
10 - Pandemic

Fives
9 - Time's Up! Title Recall
8 - Through the Ages
8 - Werewolf
7 - Ticket to Ride: The Card Game
6 - Brass - Definitely one of my favorite new games!!
6 - Cheeky Monkey
6 - Code 777
6 - Liar's Dice
6 - Password
6 - Unpublished Prototype
5 - Power Grid
5 - Tribune
5 - Yspahan


Games I expect to remain on my five and dimes for 2009?

Race for the Galaxy is an absolute... I'm already up to 12 plays. I also suspect that all my dimes will stay and probably most of my fives. Wow. Wait. Let me compare to my 2007 five and dimes. In 2007, I had 25 games listed on my five and dimes. There is a lot of overlap from 2007 to 2008 and I suspect that will continue in 2009.

Brass Online

One of my favorite games in the last year has been Brass, a game from Martin Wallace that came out during my trip to Essen in 2007. It was 50 Euros, so it seemed a little pricey at the time, but man, I'm kicking myself for not getting a copy. I really am a fan of that game.

A guy has posted a primitive website that has an AWESOME version of Brass. It's not pretty, but it works REALLY well and I think playing Brass by email is a great idea. This game can produce a lot of thought and this gives people the time to think out their moves!

I finished one game last week and it was great. And I'm totally looking to play some more. Here's the website:

http://wargamessoc.union.shef.ac.uk/brass/index.php

Anyone interested? You just create a free account! If you know how to play, you can check out the format on the game I just started up called Craftybeans.

Budgeting and Envelope System Update

I've now tried the Envelope System for two months. I allocated $150 each month for groceries and $200 for going out to eat.

December
Groceries - Wow, was December the completely wrong month to try to start this! Besides regular groceries, I cooked Christmas Eve dinner for Dave & his parents which was an extra chunk of cash. Trying to stick to a budget makes you realize how expensive meat is! I bought the prime rib on sale for $4/lb, so it cost $28. Between Christmas Eve dinner, there was also New Year's Eve. Those two "events" put me over my budget for the month by $89.

Dining Out - I managed to avoid the Christmas Eve dinner to Providence which would've set me back $150 easily. Instead, I came in $25 under budget. Woo-hoo! I really had to make an effort to do this. I had to turn down going out for dinner and stop myself from making a quick stop to pick up a quick something. This took a lot of conscious effort.

January
Groceries - I was out of town for over a week, which helped cut down on the groceries I needed to buy for the month. I stocked up on stuff that I can use over the next couple months, including 25 pounds of flour and hamburger patties. I came in $8 under budget!

Dining Out - I spent some money on the cruise for alcohol and ended up coming in $18 under budget!

So, over the last two months, I spent $38 more than I had budgeted, but! I feel like it's been a success. I easily could've spent a lot more money on both areas, but didn't because I was consciously spending. Or rather, consciously NOT spending. Normally, I'd just go with the flow and go out to eat whenever, but now I'm trying to plan ahead to figure out whether I want to spend the cash to go out. The groceries should be fairly easy to manage I think. It'll be tougher when I'm going to be entertaining more.

I'm going to continue on with the system for at least a couple more months and then reassess. The economy is totally going downhill, with no end in sight. Even though I have money saved, I'm definitely trying to save more money. It's always good to be prepared in case of an emergency and who knows, maybe I'll want to buy a house. I stopped at an open house yesterday and the home prices in Burbank have come down, with several of them even under $500K, but frankly, I think they'll come down a lot more over the next year, so I'm just going to sit tight and save up some more cash.

I did decide to not max out my 401(k) this year, but instead take more cash in hand. There's no company match where I work, so it's not like I'm giving up any free money. I'm still maxing out my Roth IRA though. I'm still investing in my investment account that is outside of my retirement account. That has been the most difficult. To keep investing the same amount of money in there without feeling a twinge of "OMG I'm going to lose money". I keep remembering what I read in the The Coffeehouse Investor about how the no matter what the worst five year span is, it basically always goes back up... at least historically, it has! So I'm going to just chill and wait. And cross my fingers and hope that everything goes back up eventually. Besides, like Chris said, "It'll eventually go back up and if it doesn't everyone will be screwed, so it won't even matter."