9/8/04 12:33pm: I’m sitting outside wondering what to write and trying to learn the new Graffiti. I just got this new Palm yesterday and this is really the first time I’ve tried this. My speed is abysmal. There are new strokes for almost all of the letters, so I am learning it all over again. I’m finding the double-stroke characters the hardest. Half the time, the old strokes work, but there are a few that insist on their way only.

I’ve had trouble with Graffiti in the past. My 5’s have always been indistinguishable from my 9’s. That alone allows for why K-Mart put me on data entry during inventory.

The preceding took me over a half hour to write on my Palm using the new Graffiti. I know that I’ll get faster the more I practice, but right now, it’s bloody annoying. My stroke that looks like a 7 that always made the perfect T is now useless and ends up putting apostrophes where I don’t want them. I know it should be easier because a lot of double-stroke things (like punctuation) are simplified, but I am having a hard time adjusting.

Learning Graffiti the first time was a piece of cake. I had to learn a different way to write a V (backwards), which is completely useless now. I never really was able to write a G, Q or Y correctly. With this new system, those letters seem to work better. I know this new Graffiti is better, but I’m just learning right now and it’s frustrating as hell.

Don’t recommend that program to me that lets me use the old Graffiti system. This is the new system and I’m going to learn it, dammit. The gauntlet has been thrown down and I picked it up when I bought the Tungsten E. Now I have to conquer this beast. It’s a point of honor.

For the last three to four years, I had been happy with my Kyocera SmartPhone. It was only within the last month or so that I realized that if I bought one of the cool new Palms and went back to my Motorola StarTAC, then I could have all those cool features that I have been coveting on those Palms lately: those beautiful color screens, the memory card slot, that new operating system, the MP3 player functions, the huge amounts of memory and (once again, for effect) those beautiful color screens. Plus, the Tungsten E was so shiny.

So I made the plunge. I gave up the convenience of having my Palm in the same machine as my phone. In return, I have six albums of CD quality music with me at all times. I have a crystal clear screen that has all of those pretty colors. I have more memory than I know what to do with. I have a new version of Bejeweled that glimmers and shines.

I dug the StarTAC out of the basement, charged it, and made the switch. I haven’t missed the SmartPhone yet. I keep thinking that I’m going to miss the phone numbers programmed into the phone. Since I stopped being a real estate agent, I’ve found that I only call three people a week: Stacey, my mom and Mike. I have to admit that I don’t have those phone numbers memorized, but the StarTAC has enough speed dial entries to cover my huge list of peeps.

Now, I just need to learn this new Graffiti system and I’ll be all set.