Sprint has a friend referral program that gives you $25. Since I switched from Verizon to Sprint, I was eligible for this program. You can get full info at sprint.com/landings/refrewards/

All you have to do is follow the instructions and enter your friend’s Sprint phone number and you both get a $25 Visa debit card as shown below. It takes a few weeks for them to send out the card. But hey. It’s free money.

You may have seen a strange looking taco truck driving around town with the word “Calbi” on it. I’ve seen them in West LA, Downtown and other areas of popularity. They also have a website at calbibbq.com where they have a calendar showing the location of their 2 trucks and even a Twitter page. So the day has come when taco trucks have Twitter pages.

Calbi Taco (2)

Well, I like tacos. I like Korean BBQ, and I like Kimchee. So, it was a no-brainer for me to try this out. Unfortunately, the concept is great but it just doesn’t taste good. I thought it would be spicier and more… well, Kimchee-er.  To me, it just tasted like a bad taco.

The Palm Pre has a way to automatically upload pictures to Photobucket and Facebook.  Here are some pictures I took with the Pre.

Now that GM has filed for bankruptsy reorganization and showing that they are re-inventing themselves on TV, it appears that they are finally going electric… again. This is a GM electric SUV that I saw being tested on the 10 freeway in Los Angeles.  I hope it’s not too late for them.

Yes. This is real.

One of the coolest accessories for any cell phone is the Touchstone charging kit for the Palm Pre. This allows you to charge your Palm Pre without wires, just by placing the unit on top of the round charger.

Even the secret downtown Radio Shack was out of the Touchstone and all the regular outlets were out of stock as well. Back to Ebay I went and found a place in New Jersey that had around 50 of them but only 4 were left. I had to pay $10 over the MSRP (but still $10 less than buying it from Sprint at $70). But hey, what’re you gonna do when they have you over a barrel?

The “kit” comes with the round base (shown above) which plugs into the USB charger that came with the Palm Pre.  It also comes with a new back cover for the Pre as shown below.

The new cover (left) is not glossy like the original and does not match the front plastic but personally, I like the non-glossy look better and it doesn’t show finger prints as much.

If you have a Palm Pre, this charger is a no brainer purchase. To charge your Pre, all you have to do is place it on top of the round charger. No cables, no plugging in. Interestingly, while the Palm Pre is charging, the screen is on and showing the time.  The charge does seem to take longer than with a direct USB cable but I’m not 100% sure about that.  If you can get one, get it.

When a friend of mine told me about a great sushi place in Valencia, I was a little skeptical.  This restaurant is located in the Valencia Town Center, which is an upscale outside “mall” with movie theaters, restaurants and a bunch of other businesses. Who knew this place existed way out there.

There are “street” parking outside the restaurant or you can park in the parking structure and walk over. This restaurant does not look like your traditional Japanese restaurant, but instead looks more like any upscale restaurant with great lighting for ambiance. My friend tells me it can get really busy here so you may have to make reservations.

My friend tells me the hot food is great here but of course, we ordered the sushi.  We got an assortment which was prepared to perfection and about as fresh as possible. The chef prepares the sushi with ponzu and soy sauce so you just pop the pieces into your mouth where it will just melt away.

This was a wonderful discovery for me and will have to return for more of their delicious sushi here. The pricing here is a little high so don’t come here looking for bargains. Come here if you want to have some of the best sushi you can have in Los Angeles.

Maru
24250 Town Center Dr. #180
Valencia, CA 91355
(661) 290-2595
maruvalencia.com

Method 1: Keyboard
Hold down the Orange, “R” and “Sym” keys simultaneously.
I learned this method from the Sprint customer service when they were helping me transfer my old number over to my Palm.

Method 2: Power switch
Hold down the power switch and toggle the Ringer Switch (next to power switch) 3 times.  I’m not 100% sure but this method seems to turn off the unit immediately without saving anything, then booting up.

After crying myself to sleep on Saturday, I woke up to a text message on Sunday from a friend that told me that he was able to get a Pre at a Radio Shack downtown. What!? Sure enough, I called one and Jared tells me that they have one last Pre left. Why didn’t I think of this before? Unfortunately, the Lakers game was about to start so there was some traffic but I managed to get there in time to pick up my Pre.

As you can see, it’s a lot smaller than my Palm Pilot, which I still had from the 90’s. While I was buying my Pre at Radio Shack, no less than 2 people came in to buy one. Unfortunately, because of a previous identity theft problem, the first Sprint rep did not approve my account. Jared was nice enough to let me try again with the Sprint supervisor and after being asked about what company I worked for in the 80’s, I finally was able to open my account and buy my Pre.

This shot compares the size of the LG enV2 (my current phone) to the Palm Pre. As you can see, they are almost the same size.

My first impressions:
Some reviews are saying that the bottom of the phone is as sharp as a Katana. Although it is a little sharp, it’s not a deal breaker for me. Since I mostly text message, the keyboard is an important feature for me. Yes, the keys are pretty small and strangely sticky, but after 2 days, I’ve gotten used to the feel of it. However, keep in mind that I have small hands, so this may not be the case for you if you have large hands.

So far, the Sprint service is okay, although I only get 3 out of 5 bars at home, whereas I get 4 out of 4 bars with Verizon.

After using it for almost 2 days, I love the multi-tasking, iPhone like touch screen and combined IM/SMS messaging screen. The multi-tasking allows you keep all your applications running, like playing music. This is clearly one of the best features of the Pre. My LG couldn’t even make calls while I had the Navigation application going. With the Pre, when a call comes in when you are listening to music, the music will stop automatically. Then when you are done with your call, the music re-starts.

However, unlike music, if you are watching a video, it will pause when you switch applications. As for the sound, the speaker is on the back. So, although it is loud, it’s not as loud as my LG enV2 which has the speakers inside where the screen/keyboard is located.

So far, nothing has crashed but I have been able to get the contact screen to become blank. Cut and paste works but controlling the location of the cursor could be better with an iPhone type magnifier.

The turn by turn Navigation is better than the one from Verizon. The voice is easier to understand and the “ETA” is shown along with the remaining mileage.

The camera is pretty good for a phone and the flash is actually fairly bright. The images are certainly good enough for posting on myspace or using as wallpaper for the phone. There’s no video recording for the Pre yet. I’ve only used that feature once on my LG so that’s not very important for me.

After using it a lot for one day, the battery was below 10% by 7pm. This is with the screen bright, and WiFi on, but Bluetooth off. I’ll have to try it again but the level seems to go down pretty fast. This could be a problem.

There’s not really a lot of applications to download for the Pre (especially compared to the iPhone’s 35,000). What’s a little strange is you cannot queue multiple downloads. You’d think with the multi-tasking, they would let you at least queue the downloads.

Palm already released version 1.0.2 yesterday (Sunday), which I downloaded and installed. I’m not sure but I think it just adds an alarm clock and fixes some bugs.

After using the “Sync” feature, I got all my contacts from my google account into the phone. Actually, there were a lot of junk email addresses that I had to go in and manually delete. My facebook account is hardly used so I didn’t even bother syncing that with the phone.

The phone automatically backs up all your data once a day, which is a great feature. I had this feature with my Verizon account so I’m pleased that it is available with my Palm Pre.

So far so good. I’ll keep using it and reporting back here with any problems or thoughts.

Well, it’s June 6th and no Palm Pre for me. After finding out that my grease didn’t work, I tried going directly to the Sprint store and they put me on their waiting list.  I played with the demo unit at the Sprint store and the keyboard does feel sticky as the early reviews say, and the bottom of the unit is scary sharp and could easily cut cheese as the video shows.  I’m starting to have second thoughts about this unit.

In a desparate move, I even returned back to Radio Shack to see what they had to say again, and they too now had a waiting list so I got on that one too.