A while back I won the Touch Diamond 2 in an internal app development competition and I got the device today. I had a choice to pick either the Touch Pro 2 or the Touch Diamond 2. My current phone is the Touch Pro (aka AT&T Fuze) and I want to try one without the hard keyboard, hence Touch Diamond 2.

This device is not as thin as I expected, but lot thinner than my Fuze because of no keyboard and has much bigger screen with 800 x 480 resolution. It also packs a 5 mega-pixel auto focus camera. The back of this device is flat unlike the diamond backed Touch Diamond and Touch Pro, I like the diamond back better. This one comes with Windows Mobile 6.1, have to wait for the 6.5 upgrade which HTC has promised.

Yet to switch on the device, oh the joy of customization :-)

Photos – Touch Diamond 2 un-boxing

later…

Something smelly hit us as we returned to our home as the weekend winded down with a birthday party. It smelled awful and we know it is that dreaded smell of a gas leak! We did the initial precautions by not switching on the lights and getting up the stairs in the dark, but to our surprise there was no gas smell in the living room or in the kitchen, where the gas outlet is. That was strange, but a relief that the gas leak is not from the main gas line and a doubt that it is not a gas leak at all. I made the call to PSE, our LP gas provider and after about an hour, the technician showed up with a leak detector (apparently he was having difficulty in finding the address, don’t they have a map of all the connections they supply to!).

The technician, carefully tested all the outlets starting from the water heater in the garage to the kitchen range for gas leaks and confirmed there were no leaks from them. Now he is confused and in doubt whether there was a gas leak. I couldn’t smell the gas leak in the stairs because of opening and closing of the door and letting in fresh air, but my wife could, the technician couldn’t either, in his own words, “I only smell your cooking which is very good ” (compliments to my wife!).

I suggested about the possibility that it might be from the neighbor’s garage as their water heater is just behind our stairway wall. So, off we went to trouble our neighbor to get the garage open so the technician can do his leak detection magic. Once the garage door opened, we knew, the whole garage was smelling awful with the gas. Our neighbor couldn’t smell that :-( But to our surprise, the technician couldn’t find any leaks in the garage. At this point, the technician suggested to shut off and all the outlets and see if the meter is running in our house and the neighbors, ours came clean, but the meter was running in the neighbor’s house. Then we got reminded that there is a fireplace at our neighbor’s house, the pilot to the fireplace might’ve been the cause. The technician entered our neighbor’s house to shut it off, but the whole was smelling gas, he then tracked the smell to the not completely closed grill burner in the range :-o

There is no gas leak! the gas was coming out of the not fully closed burner and it filled the house, the garage and started leaking into our house. So far, I was not aware that people cannot smell Ethanethiol that is added to LPG, but good to know. And yes it was fun hunting

for the leak!

later…

A very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2009 to all.

I  know it’s been a very long time, 7 months, I guess this is the longest break I took after I started this blog. Everything’s been, just being lazy to write an entry. Hopefully I continue updating this space going forward. Even though this space has gone silent, I’ve been active in these following places

Windows Live Profile - http://cid-a857a72a2837300b.profile.live.com/

facebook profile - http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=716907174

So, what I’ve been busy with all past year, it’s already covered in depth, so some links are in order…

• http://windowslivewire.spaces.live.com/
• http://thespacecraft.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!8AA773FE0A12B9E3!50309.entry
• http://download.live.com – Windows Live Essentials

For an in depth, check out Rob’s posts at http://robdolin.spaces.live.com/

I’ve worked especially on Windows Live Events and Windows Live Groups, so if you got any comments, feature request for Windows Live, don’t hesitate to post here. I’ll do my best to get answers for you.

Personally 2008 has given some great experiences, moved into a new house at the start of the year, realizing what it is to own a house, enjoyed exceptionally great summer here in the Northwest and equally fabulous very white holidays (check out my snow pictures - https://cid-a857a72a2837300b.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Mobile%20Phone%20Pictures). I also lost some weight, but that is for an entirely new post ;-)

Here’s hoping for a great and beautiful 2009! Wish you all once again a very Happy New Year!

later…

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/05/25/tests-find-vistas-uac-nails-rootkits

Of 30 rootkits thrown at XP anti-malware scanners, none of the seven AV suites found all 30, a similar story to the six web-based scanners assessed. Only four of the 14 specialized anti-rootkit tools managed a perfect score. For Vista, only six rootkits could run on the OS, but the testers had to turn off UAC to get even this far. Vista's UAC itself spotted everything thrown in front of it.

In a period of where Vista has received criticism, Microsoft's programmers can at least point to evidence that UAC is efficient at stopping infections from happening automatically.

Are you running Vista with UAC turned off - well turn it back on :-)

later...

http://search.live.com/cashback

I'm a big fan of Ebates (www.ebates.com) for getting cash back offers for online purchases (received the big fat check a couple of days ago). Now a new player is in the field, Live Search - Cashback. On the first glance it seems the cash back percentage is more. Signed up right away :-)

later...