So I got to the local T-Mobile store today at Countryside Mall. First time I had actually found the location of the store inside the mall (it kept moving). And what do you know? Launch day for the G1! Who would have thunk it.

While I didn’t toy around as much as I would have liked to with the HTC G1 as I would have liked (and they had 3 dummy models and one working model), there was one problem with the device that kept me on the fence with the phone: the keyboard.

Folks, those keys are not raised in any way – they seem flush with the rest of the device. While the bottom of the phone has been remarked as a hindrance to typing, it’s the keys themselves that seem to be a problem. I am basing this off scant use, of course, but also by comparison to the Blackberry 8700g’s keyboard. While having a large display on the G1 is superawsomecool and all that other stuff, that keyboard is a pain in the ass to type on.

Of course, in comparison, I didn’t like how ultra-compact the Blackberry Curve 8330 has turned out to be in person. It feels smaller — not just thinner — than my 8700 and squeezes the keys together even tighter.

I dunno folks. I dunno. I told the sales person, and I am honest about this, that i probably would have bought the G1 today (and learned to live with that keyboard) if I wasn’t curious about the new Curve / Javelin that is due out from T-mobile before Christmas.

We’ll see

Well, I finally did it. I’m done with FanHome. I resigned.

I haven’t talked about FanHome much on here in recent weeks or ever explained how I got attached to the site in the first place. I’ll correct that lack of knowledge right now.

Back in 1999, I was running Abolish the Designated Hitter (as I still am) and I got invited to join Baseballboards.com as an affiliate in November of that year. I jumped on it because I wanted to see if I could get everyone’s attention on the matter of the DH… Which didn’t happen.

I wasn’t immediately drawn into baseballboards.com – it happened in March of 2000 because of how putrid the Tampa Bay Devil Rays had made themselves in the off season that only I could seemingly see. I came onto the site and I ended up taking a deep swim in discussing baseball. The site founder, Kevin Cabral, launched Hockey, Football and Hoopsboards.com soon after Baseballboards.com and I found myself wanting to further promote these boards because I liked the layout and the intelligence of the communities. Kevin ended up hiring me to find affiliates and do some other stuff for the sites.

I resigned from that post shortly before FanHome.com was launched – which combined Baseballboards.com with hoopsboards.com, hockeyboards.com and footballboards.com – a major breakthrough. I loved the new concept and thought it was a money maker. However it seems I was more committed to the site than Kevin was over the first year of FanHome’s existence. And surely that’s what it felt like. I ended up doing much of the administrating on the site by myself and being lead on with the future of FanHome and my “ownership stake” in the site.

I had a measly 3 percentage points of equity in the site while I did the majority of the work. On top of it, these 3 percentage points of equity was never given to me in writing.

Now FanHome has joined The Insiders and I am disgusted by a lot of how FanHome has changed for the worse technically and administratively. We’ve relied on volunteers during the existence of the site and we are not giving thanks to them in how we’ve treated them since the switch. Add to it that the new site layout doesn’t even help us run our site and you’ve got more of a headache than a sports message board community.

I got burned out a while ago because of the nit-picking and some shitty attitudes on FanHome that I had to deal with day in and day out, so I was already on the way out during this past summer when I found out about the Insiders (which I had bad feelings about to begin with) and the change with that.

I could keep writing and actually find something worth saying besides what I have written above but alas – I’m just too tired to do that.

This is probably my last entry for the time being. I’ve got to get some sleep tonight and I need to / want to talk to some people before I leave tomorrow and I would be more likely to stick around talking to them than tap-tappity-tap-tap the keyboard and write out a journal entry on this web site.

I published contact/feedback information for Sony Music on the Fab 4 Lyrics section of the site. If you’re pissed that they are pulling this shit (threatening over lyrics being published on the web) — TELL THEM. Make sure you tell them it’s in regards to Beatlelyrics.com

I got a haircut today and lets just say the guy who appears in the Stonegauge logo above does not look much like me right now. For those of you who saw my picture in the St. Pete Times from the 1st article about the situation that arose with Beatlelyrics.com – I can say that my long locks in that photo are gone as well.

I spent most of the morning pinning about politics…. I really continue to despise George W. Bush and feel half of what I’ve gone through is helped along because of his administration is so pro-corporate… I also feel the US is guilty of Terrorism with their threat on Iraq… Sure Iraq poses a threat with biological weapons or other stuff — but SO DO WE! So does GREAT BRITAIN, so do other countries that are our allies but we aren’t going to bomb them and invade. We aren’t about to oust the government in Saudi Arabia even though they support terrorism. Hell, we sponsor terror by allowing Saudi Arabia to remain our ally and continue to have unrestricted access to the US. How many of September 11th’s hijackers were from SA? Where is Osama Bin Laden from? It’s bullshit.

I want Bush out of office so bad…. I look and ask are we better off than we were 2 years ago and I gag at the thought… Economics are skewerd, corporations rule, the environment means little to Dubya and some of our freedoms are being taken away by the Attorney General who is a far-right-wing thinker. Why don’t they just burn the Bill of Rights, declare the Bush family the first monarchy of dictatorship and throw all liberals (like myself) in jail who might question the President. How many times have I heard that I am in the wrong for questioning the president because we are at war? Should I be intimidated like that? No sir…. ESPECIALLY seeing the president’s Administration is doing objectionable stuff.

Oh well, just about 13 hours before I need to be up and ready to go… I’ll hopefully get to leave you another comment in this journal soon….