Out My Window

Zagg invisibleSHIELD Might be the hottest new product for the gadget generation.
My son came in with this body shield on his G1 phone and attacked it with a key. Not a mar one.
I, of course, had to have one of my own and purchased a full body kit for Lenora's myTouch phone.

I am a cell phone holster junkie. Hard cases, leather cases, clips, and ropes. I have tried them all and this may turn out to be the answer to many gadget user's prayers.

I found it fairly easy to install and the feel is fantastic. One of the things I liked about the myTouch was the looks of the shiny case but it this also made it a disaster to hang on to. It didn't take much to make it go shooting right out of your hand. Zagg fixed that. The shine is still there but the phone now has a tacky feel. Much more secure.
It was made up of many small pieces but if you keep your fingers and the phone moist, intermediate skills can apply the whole thing in about thirty minutes.

The shield comes with a lifetime warranty and they seem eager to ship you a new one should something happen to your old one. Just make sure you keep your receipt. (more on that to come)
Although I was happy to pay almost $30 for mine at Best Buy, I found you can get them on eBay or straight from the company site for around $25.

Now for the bad.
The plastic shield comes stuck to a piece of slick coated paper. I am sure anyone who has ever applied a sticker knows what I mean. The kit that I used had an issue with the backing wanting to separate. The slick side of the backing tore off along with the shield. Not a big thing and I over came this once I knew about the issue but one piece was rendered useless because of a wrinkle caused by this.
It was the screen protector part.
The email support I received got to be hilarious. I even pasted it into this blog so all could enjoy but it turned out to be just too long so I had to take it out.
They would have been glad to send me another whole kit but they needed an itemized receipt and even advised I could get a duplicate receipt at Best Buy. (seventy-five miles away)
Not even a copy of the credit transaction and a picture of the defective product was good enough. To get my screen protector, I had to go get the copy, strip the shield off my phone, order a new shield kit on my credit card, and when I return the complete old shield, they credit my account.
Since I didn't want to strip my phone I kept asking if I could just buy a new screen protector. These pleas were just ignored. I did give up and went to their site to find they do sell them separate and they are many times cheaper on eBay.
In an effort to provide such a great warranty and confidence in their product they have completely destroyed confidence in their customer support. I will pick up a copy of my receipt though, next time I am through that town because I am hearing these things start giving problems after about a year.

I think I will try a different brand next time on my G1. GadgetShieldz sells one for about $8. I might send them an email just to see what support is like.

UPDATE: In yet another email from Zagg, it is explained that the way the warranty works is:
You have a hold put on your card for 25 days. They send you a brand new complete kit. You only strip off the bad piece from your phone and replace it from the kit. You then send the kit back, with the bad piece, and the hold is released. This works. They just failed to realize that I didn't care.

Former veep candidate Palin and her family were the focus of Letterman's "Top Ten" list broadcast Tuesday night. But it was a line in his monologue about Palin's visit to Yankee Stadium with her 14-year-old daughter, Willow, that set off waves of criticism.

One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez

Letterman tried to calm the storm by saying he was making the crack about 18-year-old single mom Bristol Palin - not Willow
Letterman has been getting a lot of millage from the Palins ever since he took on the the Republicans and, to all outward appearances, made it his personal quest to get Obama elected. Of course it is his job to poke fun at anything and everything but it seems he has rode the Palin pony into the ground. Now others are beginning to think twice about his rhetoric.

I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It's not your fault that it was misunderstood, it's my fault that it was misunderstood. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I'm sorry about it and I'll try to do better in the future.

A Web site called FireDavidLetterman.com is organizing a rally outside Letterman's show.
Polls do show that a lot of people are upset about this but I don't think it will ever go as far as firing him. I do think his reputation has finally been scared by taking things a little too far. He has contended that Palin is fair game for his repeated shots because she let her daughter get pregnant. Yeah, dumb analogy but he is a comedian not politician.
Now he has committed as big a sin as she. All the excuses in the world won't change that he screwed up his facts. He is responsible for advocating child abuse just as much as Palin is responsible for her 17 year old getting tossed but the hockey star. I'm sure Letterman didn't write the joke, I'm sure Palin didn't watch the kid diddle her daughter.
Maybe we can watch Late Night again now without having to endure the Letterman politics. Who does he think he is anyway... Oprah?

I was sitting at the drive through ATM the other day, trying to see the screen through the sun glare, when I noticed that the keys all have Braille markings on them.
My mind wanders to the sight of a blind person pulling up and having to feel for the correct numbers. It wanders again as I question what they push for "English".
It is about that time the car behind me honks so I know I have taken too much time to to buy my $20 bill for $22.50 and start to pull off.
Was that guy shaking a white cane at me?

If you are old enough to remember this picture, click on it.
You will enjoy where it takes you.
If you don't recognize the picture, click on it anyway and listen to some good music.

Muslim martyrs will not go to heaven and marry 72 black eyed virgins. This idea stems from a mistranslation: the Quran says martyrs going to heaven will get “hur,” and the word was taken by early commentators to mean “virgins.” But in Aramaic, hur meant “white” and was commonly used to mean “white grapes,” which the Quran compares to crystal and pearls, and contemporary accounts have paradise abounding with fruit, especially white grapes.

Boy, there is going to be quite a few disgruntled terrorist in heaven with a jet engine stuck up there backside, wondering where their virgins are and what the heck is with all this fruit.