So what’s my 2 cents on this? Simple. AT&T, their horrid network, and even more horrid customer service can go die in a hole!  I disavowed them when I had home service and went cell phone only and I am not about to give them money now. Not to mention that they cap data at some stupid low bandwidth limits and charge you at 10 bucks a Gig if you go over! Sorry but if I am paying 30 a month for data on my phones I better be able to use it for more then a couple of videos and some email, 2GB is nothing in this day and age.

So right now I am in a wait and see pattern on the whole deal, I personally am praying that regulatory approval fails and AT&T has to go die in a hole. But we al know Big Blue has deep pockets and will pay them off so they can fuck up what I consider the best GSM network in the US!

So if you want to see my stuff and maybe even buy a print or 2 drop on over to drupi.deviantart.com and have a look around!

Last night My throat swelled back up to the point of I was almost unable to breathe. I called Chelle home from work and had her take me to the ER to see if I could get some help breathing again. I had a CT scan and pumped full of IV antibiotics and another steroid. This morning I went to the Ear nose and Throat specialist and they drained off the abscess prescribed me a new antibiotic and an oral steroid to keep everything working normally until I heal up fully.

The doc this morning said this abscess is usually an automatic trigger to remove tonsils but as an adult for me to have this again is around 20 to 25% vs. a child at greater than 80%. I am of the opinion that if I don’t need a surgery I won’t get one, but I promised my wife if it does return I will put myself through the pain of it.

Anywho if anyone knows of a good family doctor Pass it along because mine is so fired!

My next option was an Android Tablet. I started looking and found that there was a large and varying ammount of different tablets around, most chinese made and of poor quality. I orginally settled on an Archos 7″ tablet as it seemed to be of the best quality and a resonable price. But then a friend told me about the ViewSonic G-Tablet. I started to do some research and it has some stout hardware but all the reviews pointed to a lack luster UI and poor preformance because of it.  I continued to look around and see if there was any way to make it better and of course the first place I looked was XDA-Developers.org!

XDA-Developers is the place if you want to modify your mobile device and I have used them many times in my windows mobile phone days.  Sure enough when I started looking around they had a forums section dedicated to the G-Tablet.  I started looking into the development section and found that their was 4 different and Stable ROMS for the G-Tab from the bare bones Android 2.2 (VEGAn TAB) to a better version of TNT (TNT Light 2.x). Finding this plus how to maket full on android market work along with a few other choice apps and I was now dead set on getting this device. 

I bought the G-Tab after getting my Tax Return and appeasing my wife with some mad cleanup skills, brought it home, and the first thing I did after charging it was flash VEGANn on it. This was painless and only took about 5 minutes! This put me into pure Android Bliss! I have access to all the same apps a regular android users plus with a little digging found several HD versions of apps I use every day. So here now Are my pro’s and con’s of my device

Pros:

nVidia Tegra 2 Hardware
WiFi and Bluetooth
No need to root the device before flashing
10+ hour battery life even on WiFi
Full USB port for use with thumb drives and keyboards.
Micro SDHC slot for support for 32GB cards on top of the 16GB onboard
Dock port on the bottom for charging, sync to PC, and outputting 1080P video.

Cons:

No built in GPS
Lack of 3G/4G support
Default interface
Local availability

Overall this is a great device and would reccomend it to anyone that is looking for a great 10″ Android Tablet.

People that do this need to look at getting a blog of some sort. Plenty of free ones exist like WordPress (http://www.wordpress.com) and Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) and will allow you to have a full domain name or get a sub domain of some sort through them. Then once you have written your blog post you can share it with your facebook friends. Not to mention you can get add-ons (like i have above my posts) that will allow people to ‘like’ your post on to their Facebook so others in the Facebook universe can also go and read your blog.

I am not trying to be an ass hat but merely trying to save people from a 30 post 200 comment person talking about just one part of something going on with there lives. Doing things like this is in the social networking world is just not accepted as best practice. I have been known to un friend people in my network for doing it along with over advertising on there personal account vs making a commercial account. I know some folks just don’t like the idea of blogging so the other option you have within Facebook is notes. if you really need to go on a long ass tangent about a trip your taking or some stupid idiot who cut you off on the highway and then caused you to go into the grass and run over a little kitten causing you all kinds of pain and suffering then use the notes feature in Facebook.

This is similar to blogging but keeps it all self contained within the Facebook world.  Many people use it and several Facebook App’s also use it. this way your rant is all in one place where people can read it in full without having to go through a bajillion comments and posts just to get the whole story.  People like myself who check Facebook or update Facebook via a Smart phone aren’t going to look at all your posts and comments but skim right by them. I do check Facebook on my PC at night but I only do that when I have seen a post that had a link that for some reason wouldn’t open in my phones browser. The chances of me reading your spread out post because I chose to skim by on my phone are slim to none…

So please I ask of all my fellow netizens who have to put up with this either become an active blogger or keep it short!

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Everything above has been great for us but some of it causes issues when we are at friends houses or at my In-Laws.  She has never really known TV as we did when we where younger, having to wait for our shows to be on or dealing with commercials.  So when we go to some of these places and wants to watch her shows she gets mad when we tell her they aren’t on. Her typical response is “well they are on at my house” and we can’t explain to her its because we have special stuff at home for that and Grandma and Grandpa don’t.  When we go visit my Dad in Texas we don’t have these problems because he does have it and well my tech habits spawned from him!

This brings up the whole reason for this post is what kind of effect will this have on my child? While doing research I only could really find answers either talking about limiting the amount she is exposed to or on the extreme not exposing her at all.  We do limit it and even she limits it herself. She loves to play outside, and has a very vivid imagination and likes to pretend she’s different animals, and loves to play cook in her toy kitchen! But I won’t tell her no if she wants to play on the computer or if she comes and asks me questions about the camera’s around the house or even my phone.

A lot of these so called experts say exposing our children to to much technology could create a screen addict. I personally think it’s not the technology doing it but the parents choosing to let  technology be their babysitters instead of interacting with them.  While I will admit I am guilty of this a time or two but I still believe that spending quality time teaching my daughter the ways of the world instead of TV or the internet doing it is far better.  Being a geek dad I do look for toys and other things that have technology embedded in them to further her along the path of accepting technology in her life but I don’t think she needs a TV in her room or any other technology yet that detracts from the family.

I might be called old fashioned for it and yes to a point it is but being a child of parents who came from what has been called the last great generation I do believe the good family values still need to exist today. Plus I have taken to the philosophy that it does take a village to raise a child and I surround her with people that can teach her other things besides computers.

I will say to each their own in raising children but don’t blame Technology for our kids actions in society just like video games shouldn’t be blamed for violence in schools.