Some time ago, I blogged about my opinions on the Real Estate Bust many have seen coming.

As a bit of an update, not only are homes not selling in our neighborhood, but prices are beginning to plunge. Prices for houses in our neighborhood seem to have stepped back to the pricing of December 2004 when we first signed a contract on our current house. And they are still not selling.

Wonder how low things will go around here....

Today I am thankful for the good and the bad
Today I am thankful for the happy and sad
Why am I thankful for things big and small?
Because God provides everything, all in all.

Or in other words, be thankful for everything. You could have nothing.

I feel like a horrible mean dad today.

Today was Declan's 1 year checkup. (It kinda goes with that birthday thing from a few days ago.) First, Declan seems to have developed a big case of stranger anxiety lately. Not really sure why. And he's also gone into super Cling-On mode...so taking him to the doctor and having him go into the exam room immediately resulted in screams, tears, and crying....

Then, add the 3 vaccinations. "Pin Cushion" syndrome as Zandra puts it.

Then add that mom had to go back to work and dad got to take him home. Fortunately, he fell asleep in the car on the way home and slept for 2 hours.

But then, after being all rested and fed, dad picks him up from his toys to drag him over to the local lab to have blood drawn as part of his physical. More pricks. More tears. More screams. More blood. More agony for dad.

Makes me wish I had had more meetings today....and it's not like those have been fun lately either...

(Graphic copyright ESPN)

A sad day in Michigan Football. Bo Schembechler has died at age 77 today. Coverage at ESPN. Truly the passing of a legend.

Hard to believe it has already been a year. Happy Birthday Declan! What a difference you've made in our lives!

See more pictures here.

So the background to this project is that I'm being placed back on the Corporate Paid Cellular Plan at work. Instead of submitting my monthly cell phone bills to work, I'm now going to get it paid for automatically.

One caveat to this, however, is that the corporate policy appears not to allow Blackberry devices, which is what I've been using for work, and, which is the account I just signed a new 2-year agreement with.

So, I had to get rid of the Blackberry. Too bad since I really liked my 7290 (see the review back in August). I decided to go Treo, and with a Treo 650 to be exact as these appear to be well-liked within the company (and the company actually issues them to the service engineers in the field). One problem....T-Mobile, my carrier, doesn't officially sell these devices. And a new unlocked one costs $549 (and the company won't pay for the new equipment). What to do?

So...I decided to turn this into a small project. I started with a used Cingular Treo 650. I purchased this unit from my friend at church for $150. Good deal for both of us - eBay average seems higher than that - no shipping, and I'm helping a buddy clean out his closet (I think he switched to Verizon because where he lives, the Cingular reception is very poor). My friend included the sync cable and charger. Phone is in pretty good shape - has a few nicks and scratches on the case. Clean. Used, but not abused -- the previous owner is a fellow Mac person who knows how to treat electronics right.

First thing I discovered - you can't charge the Treo off the USB port. I don't know why. I suspect because it draws more power than a USB port might safely supply. A little annoying....time to go out and get yet another iGo tip for my iGo Juice unit....

Went down to Walmart and paid $29 for a 512MB SD memory card + card reader (this was actually important - see later step).

Paid $24.95 for a MissingSync upgrade from my old version (old version was way old, but still got $15 discount for an upgrade). I last used it about 2 years ago when I still used my Sony CLIE unit.

All pieces together, the first thing I did was install MissingSync and sync over the unlock650.prc file from http://650unlock.com . This little utility extracts the necessary information from your Treo into a memo pad item to feed the phone unlocker and verifies your phone can be unlocked. Paid 650unlock.com $15 for an unlock credit.

Took the unlock code, went to 650unlock.com, fed it the information, my unlock code token, and got a code back. Inserted my T-Mobile SIM Chip, verified it didn't like the non-Cingular chip, followed the instructions on website, voila, phone now likes chip. Carrier restriction removed. At this point, I had a Cingular Treo 650 on the T-Mobile network with a T-Mobile SIM card. Half way there.

Next the unbranding so I could use T-Mobile's internet access properly. It seemed (to me, YMMV) that it would be easier just to whack all Cingularisms rather than try to figure out how to undo each Cingular inflicted branding issue as it came up. And, unbranding freed up 7MB in the ROM. More room for applications I really want....

Branded Treos don't want to accept unbranded firmware though. There's ROM settings that prevent that. Fortunately, folks out on the internet have figured a way around that. One person, in particular, apparently had a whole company's worth of Cingular Treo 650s to unbrand, so, he wrote a Palm equivalent of a script to do the ROM edits and flash the new firmware on to the phone. Downloaded the zip file referenced here, unzip'ed it, and then copied the files (per the instructions) directly on to the SD Card via the flash card reader.

Inserted flash card with this magic package into the Treo and reset the phone. Phone rebooted and spent 15 minutes loading, erasing, rebooting, loading, rebooting, etc. At the end of 15 minutes, voila, latest unbranded Treo 650 firmware and not a trace of anything Cingular anywhere except on the face of the phone. Unlocking and unbranding complete! Woo Hoo!

New internet settings appeared to get read off the SIM card (thank you T-Mobile for providing this). Did a little modifying of the default Blazer Web Browser settings to utilize the T-Mobile proxy cache and get me to T-Zones home (I actually like that launch page). Program up VersaMail with the configs for Work Email and Home email. Sync up contacts, calendars, to-do from the Mac. And away we go. I configured to sync via USB or Bluetooth.

Downloaded a few favorite apps I had been using on the Blackberry. Google Maps looks good. Google Mail required me to download a JVM from the Palm site to get it to work, but it seems to just fine. Downloaded the Adobe Acrobat Reader for Palm.

I then set about to get my Bluetooth headset to work. That new Nokia BH-900 I talked about in the last few days. This was a little harder than I thought it would be, but finally after about 20 minutes of fiddling got it to pair up properly. The Nokia headset I have has the capability of being able to remember 6 different pairings. So I already had it paired with the Nokia 6126 and the Blackberry 7290, and figured I would just add the Treo 650 as another pairing. Wrong. This Treo seems to have an ego (it rhymes). It wants to be the *first* paired device. So I had to erase all the pairings, pair the Treo first, and then the 6126. Seems fine now.

I've since loaded the DataViz doc translators, a good Klondike game I used to have, a few MIDI ringtones, and a few miscellaneous other little programs I used to use on my CLIE. I also, with some help from the nice customer service folks at T-Mobile, managed to adjust my plan to get off the Blackberry plan and get on to a regular phone plan with unlimited internet and HotSpot usage....

Issues I'm still working on:

Charging. Will probably go out and get yet another iGo tip for my Treo. That'll be another $10....I'm not crazy on getting one of these USB sync/charge cables because I think they will draw too much current from the USB. I might also go find myself another plain Treo charger...

Case. Need a case. Probably another $15 eBay purchase.

But the point is, it works. It can be done. It works well, and I've got a nice replacement unit at about half the cost.

And now that I've freed up my 7290, my wife can retire her 6230 and get a more modern Blackberry.

With the purchase of my new Nokia 6126 (see review here), I gave my old Sony Ericsson Z520a to my wife (who by the way seems to be having much better luck about not getting pictures of pocket lint from that phone....). Giving her that phone also meant my Sony Ericsson HBH-608 Bluetooth headset went with it, since we believe in using hands free devices while talking on the phone, and I never bought a corded headset for that phone.

So I set out to find a replacement headset since after just a couple of days, I was going nuts with the old-fashioned corded ear pieces....

After much research, I purchased a Nokia BH-900 headset from amazon.com. They had it for 41% off retail - just about as cheap as getting it off eBay but with a better return policy. And cheaper shipping (I found selecting ground is just as efficient as selecting 2-day since it ships UPS Ground both ways...). The key selling points were price (on Amazon), noise canceling features (remember, I drive a convertible Mini Cooper S), battery life, ability to mute via the headset (you wonder why this isn't standard), and good reviews about sound quality and reception.

I've had this device for almost a week now, and I have to say, I'm very happy with it so far. The sound quality is great. The volume is even better (I have a hearing loss - I can turn the phone all the way up and then further amplify it with the headset). It pairs to both the Nokia 6126 and Blackberry 7290 I have (though not simultaneously - at least it remembers both phones and I can switch back and forth without having to pair the phone every time I switch). Seems to have good battery life. It also uses the same charger as my Nokia 6126 phone.

I do dislike the funky clip thing over the ear. I haven't quite mastered how to put the headset on. It's very comfortable once I get it on, but getting it on my ear seems to take an inordinate amount of fumbling. My workaround has been to make sure I put it on before I go anywhere. I also do dislike the smaller-than-miniature power button on the phone. I don't know how anyone with normal sized fingers manages to get their headset to turn on....

Despite the drawbacks, I think this headset's a keeper.

Whether or not you are happy or sad over the results of yesterday's elections, I'm sure that most of us registered voters can agree on one thing.

We sure are glad we're not getting any more of those phone calls reminding us to vote, return our absentee ballot, vote for this candidate or that candidate, or political poll.

Don't you agree?

This cute little creature was helping me hand out treats last night during Halloween!