Mercwear.com – Curtis Morris

I completed my dive gear today by adding a regulator, BC and computer to my collection. This allows me to be completely self-sufficient in terms of my diving gear, the only thing I don’t have is a tank which is not a recommend buy for several reasons that I wont go into here (You can rent them for $10.00).

I ended up with the following set of SCUBA gear:

Mask:		Scubapro Clear VU 2
Fins:		Scubapro Twinjet
Snorkel:	Aqua Lung Technisub
Boots:		Scubapro Boots
Wetsuit:	Scubapro 3mm
BC:		Scubapro Nighthawk

Regulator:	Scubapro MK25 first stage / S555 second stage

Computer:	Scubapro (UWATEC) Aladin Prime 3

The dive computer came with some great software that links up to my PC using IrDA (infrared) and pulls all of my dive stats off the dive computer so I can catalog them. It even creates a graph showing my whole dive! I am going to mess around with it and post a few of the profiles on this site, very cool stuff.

All in all I believe this is a great set of gear that will last me a long time.

I went to the coast last weekend with my buddies Jason and Mike, it was nice to get out of San Antonio for a little while but the fishing was abysmal. The surf at Padre Island National Seas Shore was so high we could not keep the lines out even with 10oz of weight on them. Since the wind was blowing so much sand into our tent and the fishing was poor we decided to camp for only one night and end the trip at Bob Hall pier.

This was my first trip to the pier and I have to say – it’s pretty nice. There are a ton of people there and they all seem the be fairly friendly, the fishing was poor here too so after about 4 hours we packed up and headed home. Jason took pictures which I will post here soon, there are some good ones of us getting the Jeep un-stuck from a patch of really soft sand.

Good times – I am going back in October with my dad, I hope the fishing is better.

I have been thinking about getting a new phone for a while but the cost of the one that I really wanted has been holding me back. I mean there was really nothing wrong with the phone I had so why upgrade right? Well last weekend my existing phone made its final call and took the long distance journey to cellular heaven.

I had been noticing that the phone would not hold a charge, I assumed that the battery was about to give way and went about my business – the phone was still getting me through the day so I had no complaints. Well on Saturday it went completely dead and I could not for the life of me get it to charge. It turns out that the battery was fine it was the internal connector between the phones main board and the charger that had gone bad, all 3 solder points had broken off. Although it was showing it’s age it still contained valuable data that I could not loose (phone numbers!) so I dusted off the soldering iron and got to work.

20 minutes and several bridges later I got the phone to charge just long enough to grab my numbers. I was then faced with an even larger issue: I had no phone, so off to the Sprint store! I knew exactly what phone I wanted I had been drawn to it by features such as remote desktop connections, internet explorer, pocket office and built in video recording hardware – it was more computer than my first computer!

Once we arrived at the Sprint store I spent about 20 minutes checking out the other models and I even looked at a new Trio that runs pocket Windows (For those non geeks that read this blog a trio is simply another type of cell phone) but after ruling the Trio out due to the keyboard size (among other things) I opted for the phone I have always wanted (ok for the last 3 months anyway) and purchased the Sprint PPC 6700.

A short role-call of the phones err.. Pocket PCs features:
Windows Mobil 5.0 Operating system
Outlook Mail
Pocket MS Word
Pocket MS Excel
Pocket MS Powerpoint
Pocket MS Internet Explorer
Slide out qwerty keyboard
1.3 MP Camera with a macro mode
Video recorder
Mini SD slot for additional storage
Wi-FI (I can use the phone as a hot spot detector)
Bluetooth
Ton of games
Touch Screen

The list goes on and on – I am going to take a few pictures and upload them here to show the quality of the camera. I have also installed a script on the site that will take updates (including images) from the phone, so I can blog from anywhere now =)

“Steve Irwin, the Australian TV presenter known as the “Crocodile Hunter,” has died after being stung in a marine accident off Australia’s north coast.”

First reports are saying that a stingray barbed him in the chest, having been around stingrays my whole life I know for a fact that they are not aggressive. I am looking forward to more details on how this happened, he seemed like a good guy and I loved his show.

Today is a sad day