My life as an iPhone 3G

My life begins in a Foxconn factory in Shenzen China in August 2008. A few months after my inception I was shipped to Malaysia to be sold. My previous owner bought me for a pricey contract, possibly from Maxis. After using me for a couple of years my owner decided to buy a new phone, probably another iPhone since I was so awesome and all.

So my first owner sold me to a shop at Low Yat Plaza in Kuala Lumpur. I stayed there in the glass cabinet for a couple of months until my second owner took a glimpse at my sad pretty face. Actually she wanted to get herself an iPhone as well after her husband bought his 3rd iPhone a few minutes earlier. She knew that the iPhone is cool and everything but until then she didn't get the divine revelation to buy me.

So she swiped her gold Mastercard for RM700.00 at the shop and I got myself a new owner. There's when my new adventure begins. Well, it's more of torture really. You see my new owner has 2 very active/naughty growing up kids. They played with me almost every single day. Not surprising since her husband did this thing called 'jailbreak' and downloaded all sort of cool apps and games into my tiny 8GB body. Her female child named Mia seemed to enjoy dropping me on the floor countless times.

One day a tragedy happened when Mia decided to take me for a bath. She had no idea that delicate, expensive electronics and liquid just don't mix. I was soaked wet. Needless to say, the owner called my time of death a few hours later. I was a dead iPhone 3G. Her husband who appreciates the beauty and extraordinary qualities of an iPhone did his best to bring me to life. He put me in a bag of rice for a day and gave me sunlight treatment for another day. After all that he pressed my power button and surprise-surprise I was alive again!

My joy of living again was short-lived though. Both my home and power button was malfunctioning, my LCD screen is very dim and my proximity sensor is not working. My new defacto owner brought me to a mobile phone repair shop at Low Yat Plaza and had my buttons replaced. He got me working again for a while until my LCD screen became permanently dim no matter how high he increases the brightness setting. As much as he likes to use me, he had a really tough time looking at my very dim screen. That's when he casually tossed me into his drawer and I was forgotten for the next couple of months.

Earlier this month though, my owner finally decided to get my LCD replaced at Low Yat Plaza. Perhaps he received some generous contribution for his wife or something who rumors has it, got her bonus this month. He spent 3 long hours waiting for me to get fixed and after what seemed like an eternity I was like new again! My screen is now constantly bright, I was jailbroken and everything is right with the universe again.

Today my handsome owner uses me daily alongside his shiny new iPhone 4. Yes my proximity sensor is still broken but all my other primary functions works like a charm and that what matters. After selling his crappy Android phone, my owner is now an iPhone man through and through. He wouldn't dream of using any other smartphone make other than the iPhone. Well, he does have a soft sport for those new Windows Phone but since they're still very expensive, second hand iPhones like me rules! All in all my owner spent like 500 bucks to get me fixed but he didn't mind because it was worth every cent. My current owner loves me so much he didn't bat an eyelid when a colleague offered to trade his HP 210 netbook with me. I guess his colleague would have to pry me from my owner's cold dead hands first.

And so we lived happily every after.

The End.

Remap your keyboard with SharpKeys

SharpKeys is a Windows registry hack that allows you to make certain keys on your keyboard to act like other keys.

You can reassign just about any keys on your keyboard to act differently like, use the F13 key to open My Computer, use another one to Log Off Windows and so on. The possibility is endless.

This program is especially especially useful if you use an Apple keyboard and you would like to remap the keys to resemble a Windows key mapping. For example I use the media player control on my Apple keyboard to control music on Winamp, Windows Media Player and VLC. SharpKeys developed by a Microsoft employee Randy is available for download from his website here. The latest version requires you to install .NET Framework 4.0 first.