Procrastination Devices

Over the past few months, I've occasionally brought my laptop along to reference some online videos. Naturally, this'll result in burning time to jackass on the internet.

Civic Pride
No, not of the Honda variety, but of the city kind. It's fair to say I'm a big fan of Chicago. I stumbled upon a site (galleries 1, 2) with some unique views of the city. Specifically, from the Trump Tower while it was under construction. It's apparently the second tallest building in America, which is kind of odd because it doesn't seem that tall in the skyline. Anyway, the pics are from a sweet vantage point and they're pretty cool, imo. You can see my neighborhood in the default pic for the second gallery. It's around the green area in the middle right part of the pic - left of the collection of red buildings. Props to the photographer for the pix, and bigger ups for sharing them.

I don't know much about the Olympic site selection process, and I'm guessing that most people don't either. Chicago's in the final running for the 2016 games, so I've naturally taken an interest in the process over the past year. More accurately though, it's interesting to see what the plans are for the city. In terms of venues, you've got obvious places like Soldier Field and the United Center. But they're also talking about a downtown marina and two of the city's biggest parks, in addition to building new venues and an Olympic Village. I think it'd be cool to check out events at places that are local to me. Plus it'd be sweet to host the games. Here's the site that finally went live detailing the IOC bid.

Totally Unrelated
Odds are someone's already found this site. Still funny though.

For the past few months I've been considering getting a smartphone. Mostly for the sake of M3 year and putting medical reference software on it. Of course, there are other obvious perks to having a smartphone. Having it for rotations was seriously the main impetus though. I personally don't like having a big phone in my pocket. That said, I ended up getting a Samsung Omnia about a month ago. I didn't really like the interface of the Storm and the HTC was too expensive.

After a month of usage, I pretty much love the phone. (Admittedly though, I've no real baseline for smartphone comparison.) It's got pretty much everything I would really need/want on it: pretty good 5MP camera, wifi, FM radio, media player, MS office, Opera browser. I do have three gripes with the phone though. There aren't that many extra apps or games available. Maybe there are, but I haven't been able to find them yet. A Verizon version of the Apple store would be nice. Of course, that's not really VZW's m.o. On that note, in true VZW style, they disabled the onboard GPS and force you to use their interface. Boo - no google maps or latitude for me. Finally, using all aforementioned features throughout the day, mainly internet and media player, kills the battery. I've pretty much gotta charge it every night. Guess I can't really complain about that, since it's supposedly got one of the better battery lives out there.

As for my initial concerns, the phone feels a lot smaller in my pocket vs. my old phone. And yes, I have put on some medical reference programs. I snapped the stitched picture below with my phone from a conference room that my group studies in. We're a fan of the view. And I'm a fan of the pic quality. Pretty much delegates my real camera to shelf duty.