I received a pleasant surprise when I got home this time. My Sprint PCS "Merlin" wireless Internet card will now work here at home. That's great, because I no longer need to maintain a dial-up Internet service or even a phone line to my house just so I can connect to the Internet here from home. I've dropped both the dial-up Internet service as well as my home phone line. I've got my cell phone to make and receive calls with -- I just have to be careful about not going over my cell minutes. Dropping these two services will save me in excess of $38 dollars per month, which can really add up to substantial money over time. I even managed to set it up so I can "share" the Sprint PCS wireless Internet connection to the other computers on my home network when I've got this laptop plugged in at home.

As I mentioned before, about two or three months ago I got one of those new camera cell phones, a model LG 5450. Until now I haven't played around much with the built-in digital camera, since I had no direct way of transferring the photos to my computer. Emailing the photos was slow and tedious since each one had to be individually emailed to one of my email addresses.

I solved that problem by purchasing a special serial USB cable that allows me to connect the phone directly to my computer, quickly and easily allowing me to download my photos. Since then I've been taking a large number of casual photos in all sorts of different places and situations.

Everyone in public these days seems to have a cell phone either in their hand or glued to their ear. It's to the point where people ignore them. Having a camera built in to a phone is great because it doesn't LOOK like a camera at all. Unless someone can see the color LCD screen, they have no idea that I am taking photos and think I'm just fiddling with it. I even turned off the "click" sound that it is capable of making when snapping photos to add an extra measure of privacy.

Just think of the possibilities!!!! Now when I do a restaurant review I can actually take a photo of my gross-looking Big Mac that I've taken a bite out of!!!