So I finally got my hands on an Android based phone: a Droid X. Sweetness… Yeah, I love the phone so far. Supposedly I’m going to get the 2.2 update tomorrow and that’ll be a whole ‘nuther bag of awesomeness.

So somebody please explain to me why I’m paying $15 a month for a texting plan – on top of my unlimited data plan?! This irritates me no end because texting is nothing more than a limited email system. Don’t believe me? Grab your phone and send a text to your email address, not a phone number. Bam! Not only does it pop up in your inbox as just another email – but you have captured the email address of your cell phone.

Needless to say, I think I’ve figured out a way to trash the texting plan but not lose texting. And it’s all centered around Google Voice. I had to go and sign up and get a local number in Google Voice, but since I already had a Gmail account that was pretty simple. After I got the number I proceeded to play around some. And now, since I’ve gotten my Droid X, my plans of ridding myself of the burden of a texting plan are coming to fruition.

How? Well, Google Voice integrates extremely well with the Android operating system. And that Google Voice number I acquired (the first one is free – costs $10 to change it…) can receive texts. Unfortunately it cannot receive pictures or audio files.

I called up the big V yesterday and set this present billing cycle to be my last one with a texting plan. My wife and I have long since abandoned texting each other. She uses a crackberry Blackberry and we communicate via Google Talk all day long. I’m planning on utilizing this to communicate more often with my friends who have smartphones, and for those who don’t, or can’t, then they can text to my Google Voice number – with the caveat that they will have to send any pictures/audio to my email address instead of the GV number.

So that’s my grand scheme…I’ll post an update in another month or so about how this is working out for me. Has anyone tried this? Any suggestions?

Okay, here’s an apology for all of you faithful readers who have begun to wonder if I dropped off the face of the earth. I’m sorry I haven’t posted in, um, three months…wow. Yeh, sorry about that. Some things crowded up my schedule at the end of the summer and then my third son was born. So yeah, those are my excuses…

I’m back, slightly. The posting will be sporadic for a few more months until the baby starts settling into a better night-time sleeping habit/schedule. I wish I had more time to dedicate to this blog, but with family and work and school, well, blogging just gets dropped off the radar pretty quickly.

In other news, this blog is focused on Linux in general and not necessarily on Ubuntu. Ubuntu has been my starting point into Linux – and I highly recommend it to anyone who is just starting. But I’m branching out. I finally got my Droid X phone in the mail, so I’m going to start a couple of new categories: Android and Droid X. I may also re-organize my present categories to reduce clutter. Clutter irritates me. I’m also going to start a “Google” category which I’ll flag any post related to Google services with – whether it’s about Ubuntu, Linux in general, or Android.

Note that you can subscribe to any specific category rather than just to the blog as a whole, so if you’re only concerned with Ubuntu stuff, then subscribe to that category and you should only receive posts I’ve placed in that category.

Thanks for all your comments and/or feedback!