Florida or Bust

After the awesome concert last friday night, I had a quick rest and did the whole 10 1/2 hour drive down here to Mayport. I managed to evade whatever storms were supposed to come in my path and even with a handful of stops still made the trip under what Google said it would take. The ship isn’t too bad, our space has crystal-clear tv and air conditioning as well as semi-comfortable chairs. The people are pretty close-knit and welcoming, everyone knows everyone. We are still scheduled for a deployment the first week of April and we’re still headed to the South America region, we’re expecting a ton of port visits and days in port. Its taken me a little while to get used to things, but I’m happy to say that my rack is quite cozy (when it does finally get quiet and I’m inside my sleeping bag) and since its a clean berthing it doesn’t have a horrid stench to it. If you try and get a hold of me, most likely I wont get your call (your messages and texts possibly) due to the lack of service inside the ship, but I am able to check my facebook regularly via my phone.

Free Blackberry Software

With utmost love for my new little Bold 9700 (and respectively all my past blackberry models), I had to go out and find updated/new software to make my gadget even more useful. There’s basic criteria in order for the software to meat by eye: free, intriguing, useful.

Viigo

This program is like the Swiss army knife of phone programs. From being an RSS reader, to a flight locator, this program takes the cake. I love having the ability to view my favorite news sites without limit, view all the weather information possible for all the zip codes I want, AND being able to quickly find something interesting to do locally…all within the same awesome fucking program.

CalorieCounter

Ever since I got fat thanks to over-bulking this lifting season, I’ve been watching my intake and keeping track of my excersizing. This program is phenomenal when it comes to calculating what I ate (fat, carbs, calories) and how much I’ve burned (by doing anything from desk work to running 10mph). It does require an internet connection (which isn’t a hassle, really), but the ability to locate anything from ABC rootbeer to Z’s ribs n more.

Google Maps

I’ve been using this program since they released the first version a few years ago. It was quite rough in its early days, but Google’s engineers have made some spectacular fucking strides with it since. My favorite feature that it has now is how it informs you what direction you’re headed which is great for city-navigating.

Opera Mini

Since I bought my first blackberry curve I’ve had this program. I wasn’t a big fan of blackberry’s default browser then nor am I now. Although your traffic is sent through opera’s servers, its safely anonymized (as much as anonymity is worth) and simple things like cookie/session hijacking and xss attacks are filtered.