Technology

AT&T Has To Go

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I tried. I really tried. I gave AT&T some time. I even gave them a second chance by using them again this week. Once again they have failed me. Today GPRS was up and down all day. And phone quality in my apartment sucked even when I had 4 bars of signal. I am a friggin stock holder of AT&T Wireless. Now I know why my stock is doing so bad. This company has some major issues.

I am on hold now with T-Mobile to transfer my coveted AT&T wireless phone number over to my working T-Mobile account.

Well that didn’t work. The person I spoke to said I had to goto the store for them to transfer my old number to an existing T-Mobile account. that goes against everything I heard yesterday. I am about to call back and see if I get another answer. the trick with dealing with customer service reps is call a few times and see if you get the answer you want. it actually works allot of the time. I will return the Treo 600 and wait for T-Mobile to come out with it. What good is the device if it cannot connect to get data anyway?

I know I have been preoccupied with this problem but it is an issue I have wanted to resolve for years and now that I am so close to fixing it I am getting roadblocks everywhere I turn.

Have I mentioned I dislike all telecomm companies???

This entry was written while listening to Satellite from the album “Under the table and dreaming” by Dave Matthews Band

Finally The Day Is Here

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So number portability day is here. Now that it is over, the day didn’t exactly end up the way I wanted it to. I tried to change my number from AT&T to T-Mobile like I had planned on. After an hour at the T-Mobile store with no end in sight, I bailed and went to work. Gus wanted to goto the AT&T store to check out if they had the Treo in stock. I figured they wouldn’t so I went along for the walk. Turns out they did have them. At first neither of us were going to pay the high price of the phone, but then he broke down and got one. I then played with his and broke down and got one. The only problem is that AT&T is having huge system problems right now so I cannot get my new price plan working. It is now 12 hours later and their system is still down. If I cannot get the changes done by tomorrow after work, I am returning the phone and switching to T-Mobile like I originally said I would.

The Treo 600 is awesome though. Speaker phone rocks. It feels good to talk on. It sounds good. Now I have to get AT&T to get their act together.

Cell Number Portability Tomorrow

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After years of waiting, Cell Phone number portability will happen (or so they say) tomorrow. “Experts” say to be warry of making changes tomorrow or for the first month or so. They say that the kinks are not out of the transfer system. I have waited too long and my patience is gone, so knowing the risks I will go tomorrow morning and transfer the number I like away from AT&T Wireless’s poor service T-Mobile who has given me decent service recently. The news articles I have read say up to 25% of all requests made to transfer numbers in the first week will fail. Since I am not currently using the number I am transfering, I can take that risk. I will know in 24 hours if it worked.

Treo 600 Update

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Just my luck that it is availible from everyone (Cingular, Sprint, AT&T) except the carrier I want (T-Mobile). AT&T just announced it friday. I am not happy. The good news is even after waiting for over a month since it has been released I still want to get it whenever I can. Not sure if Gus can resist buying the AT&T version of the Treo 600. He still won’t leave AT&T even after he has huge issues with their service.

The New Mac

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So I sold the Powerbook like I said. Now what? It is not like I didn’t have another computer to use. In fact I have 1 desktop at home, a server and my Dad’s old desktop that can be built into anything I want it to be. I also have my work laptop and countless desktops to work off of when there. So why did I feel compelled to buy a computer? I missed my Mac. I sort of didn’t want to part with it, but I got a decent deal and I was thinking about a mac desktop for a while. I did the math and figured out what I wanted. I wanted a huge flat pannel monitor at home and a decently powered machine. To get another top of the line powerbook and a 20″ flat pannel would have been super expencive. To get a low end G4 Powermac and a 20″ flat pannel would have been in the mid $2500 range. Then Tuesday Apple came out with the 20″ flat screen Imac. I always said I was not a fan of the all in one computer, but this machine had some nice features. it was also several hundred less than doing a powermac and a large flat screen. Another major selling poing was the fact that it took up very little space (it really does) and it is not loud. The G4 towers are know for the noise they put out.

I tried to goto the Apple store thursday and friday but work would not permit it. I went Saturday and was instantly sold on the imac. the screen is beatiful, it is so small, and it is not a slouch when it comes to power. I think this will do me well for a desktop for the next 2 years. I know they say desktops last 3 years, but I am a realist. I used to go through desktops every year. I am averaging 2 years now, or actually 23 months since I last got my Atholon XP desktop. I go through laptops quicker.

So far the iMac is great. I got most of my software on it. I just plugged in my Lacie firewire drive into it and all my stuff was restored. I also got the Apple bluetooth keyboard. it is nice. I think the usb keyboard that I had before felt better to type on, but this is pretty good also. Now all I need is a wireless mouse. I didn’t like the mac mouse so I need a logitech one.

The jury is still out on if I want a laptop also. I like the thinkpad, but I may at some point in the future get my own small laptop that I can kick around. I will see how things go with the iMac only and my ThinkPad. The iMac purchase revolves around my desire to write when not at my desk, and I don’t like doing it on the thinkpad. I have issues with its keyboard. I know I am nitpicking, but I have to be realy cofmy when I write, especially when my hands react poorly to bad keyboards.

With the new iMac also comes more space at/on my desk. I had a 4 port KVM with 2 desktops setup, along with a space for my powerbook and Thinkpad when I brought it home. That makes for tons of cables and a mess. I ripped out the KVM. I put my desktop in my closet near my server. It is now connected via 802.11g. If I need a windows xp box, all I do is remote destkop into it. It is faster than setting up virtual pc on the mac. I still have some cleaning up of some cables but the desk looks much better now.

My living room is a mess with all the old cables thrown around. I need to put them away neatly, and store my old 17″ flat pannel.

Updateathon

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I reinstalled the OS on my ThinkPad last week. I was having some weird issues so I felt it was time to do a refresh. I like to do that every few months. Another advantage of the mac. I never felt compelled to do that on my powerbook unless I was upgrading the OS to a newer version.

With my powerbook gone, and both my home computer and work computer’s just receiving new OS’s I don’t have a single machine that is configured with all my stuff on it. My data is backed up on a firewire hard drive I cannot access since I don’t have a mac. My mail is only on my laptop and almost nothing is on my desktop at home.

Slow Posting

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It’s been almost a week since my last post. I have been busy, but I don’t think that is an excuse anymore since I am always busy. I am on the train, my most popular spot to write blogs these days. I am doing this blog from my ThinkPad. The reason is I sold my Powerbook yesterday to a friend, nelson. He had been nagging me to buy it for months. I kept pushing him away since I said I would wait until it was a year old and then upgrade. Well I didn’t make it. Not sure what I want to get to replace it yet. I really liked it, but I don’t know if I need 2 laptops. The company one I have (the ThinkPad) I a great machine, it is just not MY Powerbook. I can type faster on the Powerbook. But the ThinkPad has more battery life and a bigger screen. I am conflicted between another upgraded Powerbook or a new 20” imac. I want another Mac, but not sure if the portable is what I need.

Part of doing this blog entry is to see how I like typing on the train using the ThinkPad. My hands do cramp up, but I am still undecided on what to do. Gus and I will goto the Apple store today so I can browse the selection.

It is also important to note that Cell phone number portability is only 4 days away. Monday is the big day. I will go against what experts are saying and attempt to change my number first thing Monday.

New Servers

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I may have mentioned a project I am working on to build the hardware for our new fulfillment system. Our design calls for 3 servers. We finally got the 3rd one in today. One of the first 2 had a bad drive so keith was working on that today, while I was building out the newest one we received. I have to say the serial ATA RAID 5 setup is just as sweet as serial ata mirroring we did on a previous machine.

Hopefully all 3 machines will be built and ready to goto our datacenter on friday. then we can create a domain and finish configuring them.

I also got thrown some security documentation that I have to do. it was a last minute thing that is going to be a pain to write. I am told I do documentation well, but I don’t like doing it all that much.

A VMWare World

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I have spoken often about the wonders of VMWare. I will keep doing so. I finally got my desktop at work configured with a larger hard drive and have been busy setting up Virtual Machines. I have several deployment projects that are benefiting from VMWare. I can take 2 physical machines and make them into many virtual machines.

Howard finally started using VMWare with Red Hat 9 on his laptop. It is funny that I am getting him to use it more, when my cousin and howard were the people that got me hooked on the idea of virtual machines in the first place.

I am using VMWare on numerous projects currently. I have a test domain controller running windows 2003. That is a physical server. I then take my desktop and attach servers and client machines running VMWare to it to test all sorts of things. Today I created a sub domain on my test domain using a windows 2000 server virtual machine. I then was able to test destroying active directory without worrying about rebuilding a server. I just saved the Win 2000 virtual machine and I can restore it if I have problems.

I have done the same thing with SMS 2003. I am busy now and cannot work on it so I just backed up the virtual machine I was trying it on. I don’t have to take up a server testing with it. it is just 5 gigs on a hard drive.

I was also able to test some security changes we made to my companies active directory without affecting anyone. I just added a windows XP virtual machine to our domain and ran tests on it. I just restored from backup if I messed up the virtual machine. it is great technology.

Keith and I also used a virtual machine of XP to test windows update services we are deploying. that also saved us from creating ghost images of desktops and tying up several in this test.

My next challenge is getting a working FreeBSD 5.1 workstation as a virtual machine.

Microsoft just announced a new version Virtual PC. I will see if it is anywhere near as good as VMWare.

Family Things

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It took me most of Saturday afternoon, but I was able to install all the programs on my dad’s new computer. Then it took me 5 hours to move all his stuff off his old machine and finish setting up the new one on sunday. It didn’t realize he only had a 10megabit network card in his old computer. It took forever to move his 3 gigs of data off the old computer. It took 20 minutes to move it onto the new computer from my laptop.

I was able to setup all his new gadgets to the new computer. he has his new 512 meg flash drive to bring stuff to work on. I also got his Treo 300 to sync up to the new computer.

With all that work done, we went to my sisters for dinner. I got to see Morgan crawl. I helped my sister move some stuff to my parents house for storage. I also burned myself a new CD of morgan from last month. I will update the website soon.

I am cleaning up my place so I can figure out where the furniture is going to go. My sister gave me the number of the movers they used. I will call them this week.

In my spare time I was also messing around with some video editing. I am playing with Final Cut Express. I imported an old family video I had and I am trying to figure out how to do editing. My dad said he has a bunch of 8mm reels that we could get converted to DVD also. I am going to see how much that will cost. Getting a VCR tape into a DV format that Final Cut can edit is a time consuming process. Granted I don’t have the best tools to do that, but it does work after you follow all the steps. I didn’t have much time to work on that project this weekend.