Looks like some extreme temperatures are going to hit Austin on Sunday… Thanks for the forecast, News8Austin!

I can’t be the only guy who puts wallpapers of beautiful women on their phone, can I? I actually have a program called Locale on my G1 that will switch out my wallpaper automatically at different time intervals. So I have a bunch of various wallpapers ranging from landscapes to CG abstractions, to sports logos, and yes, women! Izumi Sakai (singer), Yoshino Kimura (actress), and Toda Erika (actress) to be exact. I guess it’s a little unusual to have them on there, but whatever!

I’m so excited to become friends with a beautiful French woman! I don’t know what attracted her to me. Perhaps it was my awesome “Condi Wearing Beer-hat” avatar that did it.

A warm day is gonna turn into a chilly evening. From 77°F down to 35°F tonight. Welcome to Texas! Brrrrr.

One thing that a lot of people don’t like about the T-Mobile G1’s design is the “chin”. It’s the bottom of the phone, which is at a slight angle. I think the comment most given is that it messes with the simple design. But, functionally, it’s great. That little curve helps a bunch with one-handed control of the phone. It’s sort of like the kicktail on a skateboard. It makes holding the G1 more stable and comfortable. That and the trackball make using the G1 with one hand a breeze. Speaking of the trackball, it’s really a great way to navigate around web pages, form fields, and scrolling screens. And since you can press the trackball down to click, it makes for easy precision selections on small items in a web page. Really helpful!

But back to the chin. Like I mentioned earlier, it messes with the clean lines of the device, but this is really a good design because you can lay the phone down on its face, and the screen and buttons will not touch the surface of a flat table. When listening to music or streaming audio through the speaker, this is perfect. No need to worry about scratches to the screen or an errant button press. Also, the width of the G1 comes in handy because you can put the phone on its side if you wanted to. On the other hand, HTC really blew it when they failed to include a simple 3.5mm headphone jack. My brother bought me a little adapter that fits into the mini-USB port that will allow me to plug in my standard headphones, plus a mini-USB cable at the same time. I can’t wait to try that out.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been going to my gym (the YMCA) on Sundays. It’s great because it’s nearly empty so I can use any of the machines without wait. But even better is that I know I can hop on the treadmill and just run without a time limit. On Tuesdays when I run, I have a max of about 45 minutes before Koa gets out of his gymnastics class. So Sundays (and sometimes Friday after work) I can pop on the headphones and listen to podcasts or music, or watch the tv’s while I run at a leisurely pace, without a care in the world. These days I run pretty slow, at about an 11:30/mile pace, which is fine. I’m not training or anything, but just running to keep fit and relax. The only problem was that this Sunday as I was running, my foot started to hurt a bit. I was going to stop at 5.5 miles, but at 5.35, I had a sharp pain in my foot, and had to stop immediately. Today the foot feels a little better, but I might have to switch to the bicycle machine for a week or so.

By the way, I recommend the site RunningAhead.com to track your exercise routine. It’s got some cool graphs and stats, plus you can map out your different routes using google maps. Here’s a link to my page in case you want to see.

There are three Japanese doramas I am watching right now. Ryuusei No Kizuna is the one that both Mariko and I are both interested in, so we watch more or less at the same time. (I have to wait a little longer for the subtitles to be released, but that’s just a few days) This story is about three siblings whose parents were murdered when they were youngsters. Now in their twenties, they try to find the solution to the mystery that has eluded both them and the police for all those years. The story has a bunch of interesting sub-plots, and what looked like a simple motive to the crime has become complicated and there are a couple of good twists. The acting is pretty good, with the main three roles being acted out convincingly. It’s a little hard to identify and fully sympathize with them, however, since they aren’t the most likable bunch. They part-time as swindlers, and the oldest brother is the mastermind, but he’s also kind of weak and pitiful. Then there’s a couple romances starting to happen, and one of them just seems too kimochi warui (bad feeling). Apart from those small things, I am finding this dorama to be fun to watch, and I look forward to each episode, wondering how they are going to resolve all the small subplots as well as the main story. I’m also a big Toda Erika fan, so it’s nice to watch her every week. She’s actually a pretty good actress!