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Well, I knew it would come to an end, but I didn't expect it to be this soon. It looks like when I installed Vista, my venerable PPC-6700 dial up networking solution went deep into the grave. The fun part is that I know the driver is still on my machine somewhere, but good luck figuring out what it was called. I guess I'll have to dig up the Sprint CDs and see if they install on the oh-so-shiny one.

UPDATE: Woo hoo! The bluetooth connection works just fine. Just set your PPC-6700 to Bluetooth modem and it'll just work. Sweet.

Sent from my Window Mobile 5 Pocket PC.

Looks like EVDO Rev A is right around the corner and while I won't be picking one up anytime soon (I'm 1 year into a 2 year contract with Sprint), I think as soon as my contract is fulfilled, I'm going to be on the prowl once again for this bad boy. Basically, it's like my current PPC6700 but it uses the fancy schmancy EVDO Rev A network. What's Rev A you say?

Rev A is basically true DSL speeds anywhere (well, anywhere your little Rev A compatible device can grab a Rev A signal). Everyone who knows me, knows that I'm enamored with my PPC6700 and the ability it gives me to get stuff done on my two hours of railway captivity each day. But I think I'll wait until next Xmas to pick this bad boy up with a Microsoft discount. Or maybe Windows CE 6 (and thus Windows Mobile 6) will be happily boxed and ready to go inside something like this puppy by then and we'll all have a very merry EVDO Rev A, Windows Mobile 6 Xmas 2007.

You can read more about this guy over at the very weird EVDO-coverage site. (This site is the most bizarrely blog/shop hybrid I've seen. It gives a lot of good info and hawks some of the most tech-drool inspiring products, but just be warned...you'll get lost in the forest of fonts, product nav bars, and cool EVDO info).

Whoa...sucks to be a Verizon customer...

I heart you PPC6700. Seriously...this thing has got me photoblogging (finally) and ready to cancel my TMobile account (finally). Why haven't I cut the wireless Tmobile cord yet? Well quite simply I had to let the little PPC6700 prove itself. You see it works out like this:

My PPC6700 costs me $14 per month to use, while Tmobile wireless costs me $30. Simple math says that I'd save $192 per year if I dumped Tmobile and used my PPC6700 as a wireless modem. The problem has been that I couldn't get it to connect reliably. It'd start up for a few minutes and everything would go quite well, but then it'd just drop the connection and bringing down my other Bluetooth devices connected to my PC at the same time. The connection was really crappy too...something like 100Kbps down...ick.

Today I had a little time, so I decided to fix the issue. I planted myself here at Starbucks to research the issue and it looks like the PPC6700 geeks have been doing some homework and have paved the way for my wireless untethering from all that is pink (Tmobile's color is pink). Basically it breaks down like this:

Use USB. You get faster speed and a reliable connection. I've tried and failed before, but now it is working gloriously. I did a broadbandreports speed check and I get a whopping 1Mbps downstream! "Yowza," I scream as I kick the Tmobile hag, Catherine Zeta Jones out of my speeding car and drive off...dry your tears Cathy, I'm sure Micky D will keep you warm at night...

Not to geek out too much, but I'm posting this on my MSNTV2 box using a Junxion EVDO to Ethernet bridge device. Talk about cool. I could just pack up the TV, MSNTV2, and the Junxion box I'm testing out right now and boom...road trip :) BTW, I'm streaming some Yahoo launch radio at the same time. No drop outs so far. Kudos to Verizon for their kickass EVDO solution (we've even been able to stream 300kbps video over this thing!). Ok, enough geeking out for now...

Anyway, back to your originally scheduled post... Last night Hongyun's parents headed to he US consulate in Beijing to try for a visitor visa to the US. They were able to get one without any problems! I was amazed since we've heard some horror stories. Anyway, we're brainstorming on ideas when would be a good time to bring them over and we're thinking maybe the holiday season would be good. Right after Hongyun finishes Fall 2005 at De Anza and we move into the holiday season I think would be a great time for them. First, it's going to be fa-reezing in China in the winter so being here will be much better or them. Also after this quarter, Hongyun should have more time to spend with them and take them around. We're thinking they can stay for 6 months so that'd mean they would be here until May or so which is nice.

Another option is to have them come here in Spring 2006 so they can spend the spring quarter with us which should be a very unstressful quarter for Hongyun since she will know her college situation for next year and won't have very many classes to take. Also, she'll be off all summer and we'll have a chance to move up to whereever she's planning to go to school so her folks will get to enjoy living in two different parts of the Bay Area. Anyway, we're both excited to have them come over...it'll be fun I think.