Today I received two packages: one was a couriered bottle of wine from my friends at Vaja (that’s a twist tie stopping it from rolling off my desk if you’re curious). Yes, they really are that friendly - they sponsor contests for us all the time, give us anything we want for review, and are amazingly supportive partners all around. And as a Happy New Year gift, they sent me some wine. This particular swag will be opened and consumed at a dinner with friends.

Next we have something on the other end of the scale: it’s not food related, and it’s all gadget goodness. This is a T-Mobile Dash from a press release event that Janak Parekh went to in New York - I was invited, but I wasn’t about to fly down for one event, so Janak went instead. They gave him a Dash to keep, but he didn’t want to use it and switch back to GSM, so he reviewed it for Smartphone Thoughts then sent it to me. Janak doesn’t like lines, so it took him a couple of months to get it in the mail to me. But now that I have it, I’m pretty excited because I haven’t used one extensively before - and it’s also my first Smartphone with a keyboard (that’s right, I’ve never owned a Motorola Q, Samsung i320, etc.). It’s SIM-locked to T-Mobile’s network though, so I have to get it unlocked - and all before Friday night when I leave for CES.

My heart is pounding, my throat is dry, my palms are sweaty…no, I’m not looking at one of those Web sites. I’m setting up and testing out the three Dell 24″ LCD monitors that showed up today. For those keeping score, I just went through this last week, so I’m feeling a bit pessimistic about whether or not this is going to work out. Drummer, start that drum roll…

• Monitor 1: Ashley unpacked the box, no missing parts, looks like it’s brand new. No cracked LCD. Plugged it in over VGA (connected to the Fujitsu 17″ laptop). Ran the colour gradient test, no banding - sweet. Ran it through the solid colours…what’s that speck? Augh! NO! Wait…oh, it’s a piece of dust. Checks monitor, nearly blind now from examining it so closely. 100% perfect - no dead or stuck pixels. We have a winner!
• Monitor 2: Looks ok coming out of the box, hooked it up…display comes up. Looking good so far. Fire up the gradient test….AUGH! Stuck pixel in the bottom right corner. Damn damn damn. Fire up Jscreenfix and run it by placing the pop-up window under the dead pixel - not sure if this is an elaborate hoax or prank (I’ve never seen these things be successful before), but it can’t hurt to try. Play with the positions on the monitor a bit while it’s Jscreenfix’n (reminds me of Rubberneckin’), monitor goes down to lowest position, snaps into place - now can’t get it back up. Button on back of monitor is supposed to release it to move up, it’s locked. Press harder. It’s locked. Move monitor down a little more, button releases, monitor is free to move again. Still Jscreenfix’n. [leaves it for 60 minutes] Jscreenfix didn’t do a damn thing, like I thought. Maybe there’s some real science behind it, but it didn’t work for me. Curses.
• Monitor 3: Unpacking it, the monitor looks new, not a re-pack. Good stuff. Hook it all up, power it on. No obvious dead pixels - wait, what’s that in the bottom left corner? It’s a…scratch? It’s not on the upper layer of the monitor, it’s on a layer beneath, so it looks like the actual LCD is damaged. I didn’t even think LCDs could scratch. Well, whatever it is, it’s huge and nasty and not staying in my office.

So there you have it folks: one out of three monitors is good, the other two are going back. Now it doesn’t seem so crazy that I ordered three monitors in three separate orders, does it? For those keeping score, I’ve now had nine of the 2407WFP monitors since I first started buying them in August of 2006, and I’ve just now found my first one that is actually worth keeping. This has now reached comical proportions, so I’m going to keep going down this crazy trail. The price is still $699 CAD, so I’ll be ordering two more and returning these two defective monitors. But at least I have one good one - so even in the pixellated darkness, there is hope…(but Dell, your quality control SUCKS).

Given how sensitive some people are in the blogosphere, I thought it might be a fun experiment to keep track of all the swag, review gear, and other assorted sundries that come my way over the next couple of months. It might be enlightening for some people if they saw how much, and what sort of things, come the way of an online reviewer type such as myself.

Above we have a package that appeared out of the blue from AMD - likely related to the Velocity Micro MCE promotion. The bag is quite nice - very high quality, and it stores a laptop vertically, which is one type of bag I actually don’t have (I own around 20 laptop bags/pouches). They also sent along a combo four port USB hub that has an integrated ethernet cable, along with a separate four port travel hub. Both look pretty cheap, but I’ll keep ‘em for spares or give them away on Digital Media Thoughts.

I always swore that I’d never use this blog for posting every random lame survey I did (or was asked to do), but being a former comic book geek I felt this was appropriate. How much of a comic book geek am I? On New Years Eve we had three other couples over and we were discussing the trailer for Spiderman 3 and how cool it looked. Someone said that Venom was in it, and I patiently explained (without rolling my eyes even!) that the black “costume” is really an alien symbiote and Venom is created when said symbiote bonds with Eddie Brock, who’s name they dropped in the first Spiderman movie…thus setting up Spiderman 4 for a possible Venom storyline (depending on how Spiderman 3 ends of course). Yes, I’m a coming book geek. So who was I when I took the test?

You are Superman

Superman 95% Green Lantern 75% Spider-Man 75% Iron Man 65% The Flash 65% Hulk 55% Robin 50% Supergirl 50% Batman 50% Catwoman 35% Wonder Woman 30%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Also, through no advance coordination, when my wife Ashley took the test, guess who she was? Supergirl! We’re sooo cool.

They also have super-villain test, which of course I didn’t take because I’m super-hero minded, and Superman after all. Ok, ok, I know my friend Mitch would want me to take the test, so here’s who I am as a super-villain…

You are Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor 80% Dr. Doom 76% Apocalypse 62% The Joker 57% Juggernaut 54% Dark Phoenix 52% Riddler 51% Kingpin 51% Mr. Freeze 50% Magneto 49% Green Goblin 46% Venom 41% Catwoman 20% Two-Face 18% Poison Ivy 18% Mystique 14%

A brilliant businessman on a quest for world domination and the self-proclaimed greatest criminal mind of our time!

Isn’t it interesting that my “hero” side and my “villain” side are the arch-nemesis of each other? I’m not sure I want to think too hard about what that means…