Discouraged by the complicated language and stymieing prices, I rarely ever drink at Starbucks. For over a decade, I have worked in New Canaan or pass through the town regularly and have the opportunity to stop at the Starbucks on Elm Street.

As often as I stop in Starbucks in New Canaan, I can compare with visits to the stores on High Ridge in Stamford, Route 7 near Walmart in Norwalk and the one on Post Road in Darien.

Why is the New Canaan Starbucks the only one of these stores that cannot make a Cappuccino? Consistently presented with an incompetent air from smug baristas it’s a cold day in hell when you find me returning to the Elm Street Starbucks.

I love the site makewords.com for finding domains but this time I’m sticking with a thesaurus and my brainstorming notes.

I’m going to make a product review website. I already host a product review site with a specific focus. The new site won’t be exclusive. My new site will range from Appliances to Socks and from Facilities to Experiences; Anything I have paid for. Products of life.

I like talking about products. I like building websites. I’m not the kind of person to create a profile on an existing popular review website and visit regularly.

Here’s the list of domain names I searched that were available today and my comments:

• whereicomplain.com – negative
• thecomplaindomain.com – negative
• productsoflife.com
• lifeismerchandise.com
• thegoodthebadandthe.com
• thegoodsthebadsandtheugly.com – negative
• thegoodsimpression.com – stupid

I don’t like any of these of course but I’ll figure something out soon enough and add another domain to my list.

I purchase 2-5 domain names each month. Only a few get cancelled after the initial one-year contract. Only a few have ever sold.

Ok, between typing sentances <–one of the only words I cannot spell after decades of typing… I bought productsoflife.com. ‘Doubt that’ll be the new site’s name but it’s motivational. Only problem is, logging in to my domain registrar and seeing the list of domains, each representing an idea for a website, was almost painful. There is so much to do and no time or income to sustain my desire to express myself.

With such poor memory skills, even though I just heard the ad again on television the following is not word for word but the ad says:

“People these days are thinking about the environment. We at CL&P are thinking about the environment too. There’s the Business environment, …”

Stop right there! WTF? The first thing that you think of when you hear the word “environment” is business???

Here’s a power company, the most powerful force against our environment historically, stating that they are considering the business environment foremost… and so they’ve invested tens of thousands or more into an advertising campaign directing people to a website… good grief. I hate the world’s priorities.

Samsung’s TouchWiz interface really just adds shortcuts to commonly accessed functions. There is no comparison of this “link” with a true facebook application. The links open a web browser while the applications are complete solutions.

With this Verizon phone I am missing my iPhone apps like twitterific, tweetdeck and a real facebook application. Interaction with the mobile sites sucks compared to true applications.

What’s the difference? With my iPhone, I can open the facebook app and upload a photo, video etc. With the Verizon phone I must email a photo to facebook then log-in via the internet to browse the site. m.twitter.com is a nightmare so horrific I might as well abandon my twitter profile.

Still not worth the huge cost difference and poor coverage of AT&T but this TouchWiz interface is a misleading selling point. The touted social networking widgets are nothing more than links. Simple shortcuts to a web address. Lame, lame, lame.

Wow, copy Apple much?

Physical Features: My first impression of the device is, it’s hefty. The Samsung Rogue is a tall, thick phone of substantial weight. The camera lens, flash and mirror protrude slightly from the back meaning every time I set it down, the weight of the phone rests on the camera lens. The plastic outer shell has a cool-looking carbon fiber aesthetic.

The Rogue slides open to reveal a full qwerty keyboard that I found much easier to use than a touchscreen-only keypad but not quite as easy as a cramped Blackberry keypad which I attribute to the depth, texture and spacing of the keys. A deciding factor in choosing the Samsung Rogue is the accommodating combination of touchscreen interface and physical keypad. This phone is very easy to navigate! Many operations can be completed with the phone closed via the touchscreen. The control is reminiscent of an iPhone/iPod touch interface in many ways. (Like rolling wheels for choosing dates…)

Around the outside of the Rogue is a Charging port, Memory Card Slot, Camera Button, Volume rocker, full-sized Headphone Jack, an On/Off/Lock button and a multi-function rocker. Below the screen are the send and power keys flanking a centered “home” button.

Samsung Rogue side view

Turning on the phone, the touchscreen has an iPhone-like strip of primary functions on the bottom with ‘Dialer’, ‘Contacts’, ‘Message’ and ‘Menu’ buttons. There is a tab on the left side when clicked opens a widget dock, not at all unlike a hidden OS X dock. The widgets are easily rearranged to ones liking. Clicking a widget opens that widget’s functions or options on the main screen. With this Verizon version of the phone, there are several pre-installed apps for things like Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Messenger, YouTube, etc… Some apps remain open while using other phone operations and can be dragged back to the widget dock to close.

The speakerphone isn’t too loud. Video and music play at an acceptable volume but the sound is not sufficient for speakerphone calls in a moving car.

I find that everything is easy understand and navigate for someone new to the phone. Again, the combination of physical and touchscreen interface is a real pleasure. Comparing the physical keypad and touchscreen functionality to the singularly important trackball on a Blackberry, I’ll choose the Samsung Rogue’s combo any day. IMO, where the Blackberry has a steep learning curve the Samsung has none.

Limited to Verizon Applications this phone isn’t an iPhone but it sure does resemble the ease of use and intuitive control. The keyboard better be worth it’s weight because the weight is significant. I’m worried about scratching the camera lens and I wonder how long before the slider feels sloppy; mine is tight but the demo at the Verizon store was a lot looser.

Samsung Rogue Bottom

Leaving out functionality of the apps, reception, overall speed, speed of web access and use of the phone I just wanted to impart some of my initial thoughts about the Samsung Rogue’s appearance and operations. The question that remains for me to learn is will this phone’s added functions (keypad, internet access, larger screen, accelerometer, etc..) be worth it’s weight? It is the heaviest phone I have ever carried.

• Will I still feel a need to bring an iPod to work? (yes)
• How long will the battery last if I plug this phone into an AUX port on a boombox?

Though my calling, texting and online usage are on the low-end, my monthly cost for unlimited use is $60 less than my iPhone plan. Over a one year contract with Verizon, I am saving in excess of $700. (Initial costs, including a new microSD, card are equal. My monthly cost savings are due in part to Verizon’s IN-calling)

On the website it says: “You can set up Auto-Refill and guarantee service continuity”  which is a falsehood. I had setup and provided a credit card, which was charged before my 30 day contract expired. Though I have paid $60, been under contract less than 60 days and have remaining minutes; I have no service. They took my money and turned off my phone.

If it were guaranteed continuity with access to my credit card, why is my phone off?

Today, I will contact StraightTalk, the Better Business Bureau and my Attorney!

Dastardly Bastards!

UPDATE: 3:30PM

After visiting Verizon and buying a new phone I called StraightTalk.

Here is the actual progression of my Straight Talk experience:

I bought the phone and card on July 28th, activating my service with Straight Talk, giving me 1000 minutes until August 27th.

The website offers the ability to enter a credit card for Auto-Refill. When you enter your credit card, they will immediately bill you the monthly fee. This will change your activation date, something I did not and still do not understand. [I entered my credit card in advance of my expiration date of August 27th in order to "be prepared" when my minutes expired.]

I lost the remaining 17 days because they billed me on the 10th of August, resetting my activation date, regardless of the fact I had approx. 17 days left. [I got 43 days for the price of 60 days]

This morning my phone was dead. While I was at Verizon, StraightTalk billed my credit card and reactivated my service because today is the 10th. With their website access to “my account” shut down for the past few weeks I have been unable to turn off recurring billing or change my account status.

After calling Straight Talk directly, I deactivated recurring billing, deactivated the annoying message at the beginning of each call that says: “Time remaining for this call is 6 hours and 12 minutes” and after 26 minutes on the phone, got a refund for today’s additional $32 charge for the next month.

Outsourced customer service always takes longer to deal with, doesn’t it? Thank goodness I bailed on this company, though it will cost me much more, there’s a reason it’s worth paying the difference.

Purchased as an interim provider while Verizon got some decent hardware in stock, I regret the waste of time and money, though I still recommend StraightTalk to those few people who don’t use their phone much.

1000 minutes, 1000 texts and 30MB of data – can’t be beat for $30. Just make sure to sign up online and not use the prepaid cards because the two forms of payment conflict. They ripped me off for 17 days of service.

Where I live, the company is Cablevision and I recently switched from AT&T to Cablevision’s promotional Triple Play offer of $99 plus taxes, fees and other charges for internet, telephone and television.

The television part of this completely sucks! Finding a decent show to watch is damn near impossible. There is a super-long list in the guide, which takes several clicks of the remote to access, passing a page with advertisements on it. Instead of highlighting or filtering the channels that have access to, I see all the channels on cable, 9 times out of 10 I select a channel that I don’t receive and I’m left scrolling from 1-700 or just settling on anything to watch other than the guide.

The quality of the TV is absolutely atrocious. I get digital distortion on the best of the HD channels. Some shows on popular channels can’t even be viewed clearly. My Optimum Online service is like watching small mpegs on a giant screen TV. Streaming Netflix is superior to my television service.

Why so many advertisements for a pay service? There are ads on the TV guide, ads on all the shows…and…. on to the internet service:

The reason I’m writing this right now is because of the search.domainnotfound.optimum.net redirect. This is an underhanded low-life redirect to optimum’s affiliate relationships, forcing anyone who leaves the TLD off when typing in a domain name to suffer an unwanted page of affiliate links, which btw can be unrelated to the domain name entered.

At least with AT&T’s DSL if I type in “google” it goes to “http://google.com” and not to “http://search.domainnotfound.optimum.net/cablevassistsearch_keyword/ws/results/Dns/google/…”

The only problem with the phone is that instead of being a separate cable to the pole outside my house, my telephone signal travels on the shared coax. Now my phone is not only dependent on the cable company fixing their equipment when a storm comes knocking down trees but also the internet and cable modem. That’s a lot of dependence on new technology that is proving to be full of issues.

I’m going to drop the TV service because I can’t stand paying for so many advertisements when the quality of picture is so poor with distortion.

The most annoying of issues is: Every time I send a text message, I get a confirmation that the text is delivered.

Here’s how it goes: I send a text and sometime between two and twenty seconds later I receive a text message. The text is a “delivered” confirmation and it’s incredibly annoying. If I don’t read the worthless text my phone will keep reminding me I have a new message in my inbox. This means for every text I send I have to wait for the delivered message and clear it. This is such a pain in the ass I am switching back to Verizon.

As if the annoying “delivered” texts aren’t bad enough, there’s something even worse happening now. Every call I make is preceded by a message that tells me how long I have to make a call. Here’s how it goes: I place a call and as the call is connected a computer voice tells me “you have 10 hours and 52 minutes for this call”… WTF!!!!!

What I touted as a worthwhile cell provider is now such a pain in the ass I will gladly pay to avoid these issues. Sorry StraightTalk, you have some serious issues and I just can’t fool with my primary communication device dealing with your hacked service.

I will say that my phone has worked fine in many parts of America, thanks to the Verizon Network that StraightTalk uses. Do I feel like paying twice as much to not get a “delivered” text after every single sent text message? Do I feel like paying twice as much to not hear how long I have to make a call? Sometimes being a cheapass doesn’t pay.

I think the straighttalk plan is a great deal, although I now feel like this ’service’ is more suited to people who don’t use their phone much, like senior citizens and recluses.

I’d like to talk to it right now and have it tell me tomorrow that I should take Lana into town tomorrow at 5pm.

It would also be ok, if I didn’t have to reach into my pocket, remove phone, open phone and bring to my ear.

It’s about time phones fit inside my watch. I’m wearing a Luminox watch. When you have a watch you like this much, and your a watch-wearing person… what better place to have my contact list, calendar, messaging and calls?

I’m in with the $30 straight talk plan for a few more months to see if Verizon will stock a worthwhile phone. The iPhone, though cool, is practically a joke while mated with AT&T’s exorbitant pricing.

So far, I’ve only three complaints with straight talk.

1. I signed up for the recurring billing but instead of starting on the 30th day, I was billed immediately which just shortened my initial plan expiration by 15 days. WTF!!! Now I have to call CS and deal with them again.
2. I can’t use the internet browser that’s built-in. I am getting a permission denied error.
3. About 50% of the text messages I send get an immediate reply, confirming the text was delivered. Am I using twice as many texts? I don’t want to open my phone after texting to dismiss these. I don’t want a delivery confirmation on every text message, thanks.