Technology

Or Not To Join!

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My tryout trip with Cingular and my HP iPaq phone didn’t go so well for Cingular and the phone. First I should say the phone didn’t even get really used on the trip. By the time I was ready for the trip I had decided that the Windows Mobile phone software was too clunky to use all the time, and that the iPaq was nice as a PDA but was too big to use as a phone. Having it reboot 3 times while I was trying to sync it with my Mac didn’t help it.

With the Windows Mobile woes I figured I might as well try out the Cingular SIM in my Treo and see if the service was better and if the “high speed” data was worth the extra money. In NYC the signal seemed fine for singular. It even worked on the tracks in Penn Station. At my companies upstate office however where I had great service with T-Mobile I had 1 bar or no service with Cingular.

The data plan worked fine with no configuration necessary. But it wasn’t noticeably faster than my T-Mobile data plan that was half the price. Wanting to test that I used my Treo as a DUN modem and connected to the internet on my Powerbook using both Cingular and T-Mobile. The Treo 650 supports Cingular’s EDGE network and should have given me performance somewhere in the 100k range. I ran the CNET speed test and got a response of 26k. I tried my T-Mobile SIM on the same phone and got performance of around 60k +. That was what I expected with T-Mobiles GPRS system. That was the final decision to get out of my Cingular trial. The bad signal at my office was almost a death kneel, but paying double for a data plan that was slower was the final straw.

I will give Cingular credit. They are true to their 30 day money back policy for the service and phone. I had no problems returning the device and canceling the service. I say that before I get the bill for usage I had, but I think everything should be ok. If they improve the data speeds and service in the area I travel to I would look at them again, but for now I am fine with T-Mobile.

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Join An Evil Empire?

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I have pondered switching mobile carriers for a while. I have always ended up staying with T-Mobile. I have had them for almost 4 years and all in all they have been ok. But besides being cheap, and offering GSM they don’t have that much going for them. Well except nice customer service. That is a plus but for the once a year I call is it worth all the other trade offs? They offer the worst phones. Their high speed data plans may be cheap but they are really slow.

I have been eying the HP iPaq 6515 Windows Mobile phone for a while. Cingular offers it. It has a nice size screen and a keyboard. It is larger than my Treo 650 but the larger screen is REALLY nice. I saw it in the store today on my day off of shopping. I was originally not going to switch but I was surprised to find they had the iPaq in stock (they didn’t several other times I went to the store trying to take a look at it). I was impressed with the screen size, and the fact that the whole unit was not much bigger than the Treo even thought it was wider.

To make a long story short I made an semi impulse buy and am on my way to switching mobile carriers to Cingular. Now I have 30 days to see if I like the phone and the service, but for now I am switching. I will pay almost double for the data plan I had, but I am also (in theory) more than doubling the speed of the wireless data. The plan I am moving to is almost identical to what I had. 900 minutes vs the 1000 that T-Mobile gave me for the same price. The advantage is that I get roll over minutes now. Some months I use allot of minutes but others I almost never use any, so now I can roll over unused minutes to the next month.

I am going on a trip tomorrow so I will give the phone and service a real trial. More news later.

Oh and as for the title of the post I think most large telecom companies are evil. I love them, and use them all the time, but when something goes wrong you are at there mercy. You are in a contract that you cannot get out of, they can be very evil. But at least it is an evil you know!

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RAM & a DVR

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I ordered a 1 Gig RAM upgrade for my new iMac. It finally arrived and I installed it today. It was actually pretty easy to do. I was happy about that. The machine is noticeably faster now. Especially when I have several apps open. With the original 512megs on board I noticed the system would freeze up when I was doing some intensive stuff this weekend. The added memory is a nice solution to my problem. Now all I need is more apps that are run on the intel chips natively.

I also got a new USB DVR adapter for my DVR machine. The goal is to have 2 tuners running on the same computer. Snapstream says it will work. The problem I have is that I have 2 different revisions of the same USB DVR hardware. One driver version works with one unit but not the other. When I get the second one to work the first one decides to stop working. I gave up after several hours of messing with the system. I am RMA’ing the unit and will probably just go out and buy a PCI tuner card. I didn’t want to do that, but in order to do what I want I will need one. I may also just move the DVR setup to my HP desktop since it is not doing much right now. Still pondering my options.

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Sort of Free Lunch

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Twice this week I went to lunch with Cisco or a Cisco VAR. Free food is nice, but nothing is really ever free! We need to get allot done with these people so they think it is nice to do it at lunch. They are right, and we did make allot of progress. We are trying to shop around a new integrator for our Voice systems. The first meeting was to talk with my Cisco rep about the current issues we have and what we want to do. The second meeting was to meet with an integrator and talk a bit about what we want and what they can offer. I think both meetings went well. The first impression of this new integrator was a good one. I still have to meet another integrator next week that we are looking at but I think this group had a good start.

I want to get all the leg work of this phone system design done now before we actually have a lease signed and the powers that be at my company are asking for us to move as soon as possible.

xbox

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My home entertainment system now boasts a state of the art gaming console. Well, as of 2001 it was state of the art. I know I am a few years behind the times but I just picked up an xbox. I got one cheap off of ebay. I figured now I can brush up on my halo without looking like a fool in front of my friends. I really suck. Now I can also go online and play against John, Dave or anyone else without having to go over to their house. That means whenever they want to play we can do it, instead of planning a day a week in advance.

I already played a ton of Halo 2 on Friday. I got a head ache from the motion of the game. I used to get that allot when I played Doom or Half Life. I play till I can’t play anymore. I am honestly not a huge gamer, but every few years I get into a game and then play till I am done with it. The last time I did this was 6 years ago with Half Life. When I wasn’t working for a few months as a contractor when I was in Baton Rouge I played every night for like 3 months.

This time around I am playing Halo 2. I didn’t go with the xbox 360 since most of my friends who do play games allot said it is not worth getting it yet. I am getting my regular xbox supped up anyway so I can use it as a mini media center anyway, so why do I need a 360? No games that any of my friends will play are out on it anyway. I figure I will be fine with this purchase for a while. The xbox and a bigger hard drive barely set me back $150. You have to love ebay!

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Intel iMac

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I thought about it for a while and said I would wait. I really said I would hold off. I said I didn’t need another computer that was all in one. I said the mini was perfect. Then I heard great things about the new iMac. Office ran great dan said. Then I tried some new applications on my mini and stopped using them because the mini was so dam slow (man it is a great little box, but it really is slow). The final nail in the coffin was my tax return. I got around what I thought I would get. That meant disposable income. I could save it, but returns where meant to be spent.

I think I may have a serious problem. I think it is called eBay. eBay is my enabler. It allows me to sell stuff and buy newer stuff. It has gotten me into this mentality that I can buy stuff and sell it in a year or so and buy something else. It is more than a mentality. It is a reality that I have been living since like 2000. When this iMac gets to be not enough computer for me (and it might not for a while) I can goto eBay like I did with my last 20″ iMac.

I got picked up the iMac last night after work. Jayson (always willing to go with me to spend money) and I hit the apple store in soho after Danny, Jay and I had some dinner and drinks. It is always better to spend money after drinking! I had the new machine setup in like 15 minutes. The rewiring of my desk took all of today.

First impressions are good. So far Office installs and runs fine in rosetta. Cisco’s VPN which didn’t work at all finally came out with a universal binary on Friday. It was if they knew I went out and bought a new computer. Toast works fine even using rosetta, and they promise an update to universal binary soon. The only program that I want to install that may have a problem is the Missing Sync for Palm. Mark/Space does promise a universal binary by the end of march. For now I will sync with my work Powerbook.

More thoughts on the new computer soon.

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Archiving

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I finally broke down and bought Roxio Toast Titanium 7 today. I really wanted some of the advanced features it offered over the plain old burning of disks of the Apple finder. I am now able to take MPEG-2 files I DVR and back them up onto DVD’s. Not just as a file, but playable dvd’s in any normal player. My digital archiving and clean up continues. I probably should clean my apartment, but physical cleaning is less interesting!

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Busy Documenting Crap

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Today I was busy doing documentation for Bob. he needed to be prepared for a meeting and needed my operations overview updated so he can get a handle on our systems. It took some doing but I got it down. I also had to deal with finding a suitable replacement to our IBM Thinkpad laptops. My team finally said we don’t want to deal with Thinkpads anymore. Too many issues to list here, but we ended up with a similar configured HP unit. The first user gets it tomorrow since his thinkpad is toasted.

Not Quite Black Projects

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I was busy yesterday and today. I just don’t think I can write about it here. All good things, but busy things.

On a topic I can discuss I started reading bits from O’Reilly’s RT Essentials. I already have some big changes I want to make to how we use Request Tracker. I have always been a huge fan of using this system. Reading what little I have of the book has got me thinking of enhancements we can make to our ticketing system. I like the fact that the changes I want to make will allow for better metrics of what we do, and help us isolate recurring issues. Now all I have to do is get everyone else like the tool and not just use it!

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