I finally applied for mineo, an MVNO on au’s network. The plan: go back to a feature phone and cut my smartphone bill — now I just wait for the screening to finish.

That’s ‘ mineo ‘. The 1GB per month limit is quite strict, but for me, who only uses about 2GB even with fairly heavy usage, it’s the perfect service.

Now that my smartphone is back, I took a picture of the Tamagawa River. What gorgeous weather!

The repair ended up free, cover included — but au’s support still left a bad taste. A record of how they hinted at a paid repair before playing their hidden card.

The phone’s symptom was that when I launched the camera app, the camera would normally switch using the “camera function switch,” but the app wouldn’t recogniz…

About a week has passed since I bought a smartphone. Now that I’ve finally gotten used to it, I tried posting a blog entry as a test. .

It finally arrived: the ThinkPad X201. First-day impressions from a former X24 user — the solid chassis, that full-pitch keyboard, and the trusty red TrackPoint.

Not mine — it’s from work, unfortunately. With all the business travel lately, a high-speed mobile data card finally made an appearance.

Going through photos, I remembered: back in June I upgraded from a 20-inch to a 37-inch AQUOS — ¥128,000 online. Remember when TVs cost ¥10,000 per inch?

I’ve set up MT4i, which lets me post to the blog from my phone. Testing it out with this post. The world really is convenient now.

A 30-minute snow delay at the very end of the platform, in freezing wind — redeemed when an N700 Series Shinkansen pulled in and I got to study that nose up close.

Finally bought wireless surround headphones — Sony MDR-DS6000, ¥21,800 in Akihabara. Now I can binge 24 at night without bothering the neighbors.

Kingsoft Office 2007 launches at ¥4,980 with Microsoft Office compatibility — thoughts from someone whose anti-Windows professor made him present a thesis without PowerPoint.

Picked up a ¥1,500 balance ball over the long weekend. For someone who sits at a desk all day, lying back over it stretches everything — the catch is it’s a 65cm ball in a small apartment.

Bought a Lenovo desktop for the part-time workplace — ¥89,250 — plus a cash drawer and receipt printer. The register program? Building it myself in Visual Basic.

This perfectly clear sky. Such good weather that I used the digital camera I recently bought at auction to take some photos of the school buildings.

Today a friend let me have a PDA at a good price. Writing by hand here, and I’ve found that it doesn’t always recognize what I write — tricky.

The professor’s logic: 24 hours minus a 5-hour shift leaves 19 hours — plenty for an impossible report. He knows about the job, too. I fail to follow.

Covered a coworker’s shift for some pocket money, then drove home via ETC — where the commuter discount halves the toll and a ¥5,000 install campaign sweetened the deal.