New Cell Phone, LG enV2

I got a new cell phone yesterday, a LG enV2 from Verizon. I wanted an iPhone. But we use Verizon because they have good coverage while out in the “boonies”. My husband’s railroad job takes him to the boonies often. A working phone is far better than a fancy handset with no signal. We have 2 lines that use the same pool of air time. So, no iPhone for me.

This phone has a camera, removable micro sd card (bought extra, of course), it opens up and has a keyboard. And it even places and receives phone calls.

Update 27 June 2008:

I like this phone. When I was looking at phones, I wanted a simple phone that had a camera. Gary liked the enV series phones (he has an older one) and he wanted me to get one too. On his phone, the buttons on the outside are hard to read. On mine, they are larger. Many of us who are over 50 (or perhaps over 40) have difficulty seeing the controls on the very small phones.

I’m not a heavy cell phone user, I don’t get email on it or use it to access the web. I have a MacBook Pro for that. I have used the camera in the phone a few times. It’s nice to have a real, though small, keyboard for entering names and numbers. I do know how to text, BTW, but I find it less appealing than email or voice mail.

On the Railroad Track at Paulden, AZ

I went with Gary when he got called into work. Here are some photos of what happens on the railroad tracks. Taken in Paulden, AZ

The first image was taken by laying my Nikon D80 on the track. Note the Memorial Day weekend storm clouds.

A raven in flight, likely looking for food. These are scavangers, so it may be looking for railroad kill.

Hyrail truck as seen from the track. These vehicles can run on the track and the road. The railroad wheels lift up under the truck for highway travel.

Burn rope being used to expand the track. A pull apart was being repaired, to do so the rail had to be expanded to fill the pull apart gap. Heat from the burn rope expands the steel rail and thereby closes the gap. When the gap closes, railroad workers use a bracket (you can see one in the image above BTW) to connect the 2 sections of track. A 1500 foot length of rail can be expaned as much as 1 foot with this technique. For today’s repair about 2 inches of expansion was needed.

Click on any of these to see a larger image.