The Bar Scene

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Last night I went out and checked out the NYC bar scene. I met up with Gus & Vjay. We went to several places in SOHO, and the meat packing district. I honestly don’t remember the name of any of the places we went to. I normally don’t do the late night bar scene. It is fun, but I usually can’t stay awake on an 8 hour bar hopping binge. I have a good time, but I hurt the next day. I need my sleep. I normally get afraid that I will get a migraine if I stay up till 4 or 5AM. Today that fear rang true. I had to take 2 butabital’s throughout the day, but at least I was able to function.

The bar’s were cool. We went to a mix of places. From the nice old fashioned pub that was relatively quiet, to the swanky and busy club/bar’s. I am more a pub kind of guy, but I appreciate the fact that there are plenty of beautiful women at the clubs.

I got home at like 3AM, but realized I had voice mail from work regarding a problem. I ended up on the phone till 4AM with remote hands restarting a server. I slept till noon today.

All in all a fun night, but not something I would do every weekend.

Windows XP SP-2???

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So I sent out a notice to the employee’s not to install SP-2 on any work computers. We still don’t know what it will do to our desktops. We think we are just going to blow away every computer and re-image them with new builds of XP with SP-2 in it. This of course won’t happen for several months. for now no one will do anything, we hope.

I need to walk my dad through how to turn off automatic updates that I turned on his computer when I gave it to him. He is the perfect person for those automatic updates, but who knows what will happen to his computer if he gets SP-2. I would rather turn off auto-updates and take my chances with virus’s and worms vs. installing sp-2 and have him complain to me all the time.

Hey, SP-2 (for XP) may be completely safe. I am just not taking any chances with anyone I know, or any computer that I have to deal with at work…

T-Mobile Customer Service Is Great (Today)

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I called to unlock my Sony Ericsson T-610 today. They took down some information and are emailing me the unlock instructions. No questions asked. I have been a customer on and off since Sept 2000. I have had my current account since early 2002. You would expect them to treat you right if you have been around for a while? Other carriers I have had for years didn’t, but so far T-Mobile treats me well.

If you have had an account for several months they will unlock the phone if you ask and have a good reason (for me potential travel to somewhere that I will want to put a local SIM card into my phone). Hey, I own the dam phone. They get their money back from the subsidy if I stay with them for a year, or pay the early termination fee. So why then does AT&T Wireless and Cingular not do the same thing? AT&T does not unlock for any reason. Cingular I am not so sure about.

T-Mobile also doesn’t make me extend or setup a contract for changes to my account. I have been running without a contract for over a 1 1/2. I don’t plan on changing carriers, but I would think twice about staying with T-Mobile if I called and asked to change something and they did make me sign a contract. It is the point of the matter that they (Cell phone companies) lock me in for making changes. Verizon, and AT&T were terrible about that. T-Mobile has been good so far.

To sum this post up: If you are a T-Mobile executive, don’t change your relaxed customer service approach. Customers actually do appreciate it. I for one am a loyal customer not because I am locked into a contract (i have paid $175 to break out of other companies contracts because of draconian rules, etc.), but because T-Mobile can keep me without making me sign a contract.

Honestly T-Mobile may not have the best network in NYC, but they make up for it in all the ways I stated above. Verizon in my experience (and I have tried all carriers in NYC except for Cingular) has the best coverage and network. They do, I tell people that when they ask my advice. The problem is they cannot make up for the shitty customer service, and restrictions with good voice quality. They still suck even if they have the best signal strength, because support just sucks.

Vacation???

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Everyone is asking when I am going on vacation? I haven’t gone in a while and it is becoming apparent that I need to chill out for a while. The next question is where to go? I have pondered this in previous blogs. I have several ideas about what to do. I have prepared myself for the simple fact that some of my ideas were never going to happen due to several factors.

Now things may have taken a turn for the better. A friend of mine has an a crazy last minute idea that we are trying to see if it will work out. If so I will have news soon. If not, we will never speak of it again. All I can say is I am excited if it can happen. I can’t sleep. Of course I couldn’t sleep all week because of other reasons, so I don’t know if my current insomnia is due to a potential vacation plan or that I just cannot sleep.

If you got through this post and actually understand some of what I just said, you are as crazy as i. Enough rambling…

Went To Kingston Again Today

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Gus, Dan, and I took a road trip to kingston today to see a demo of some call monitoring software. it was really cool software. It can record calls our reps are on (we can do that with this package already), view screen shots of what the rep does on the call, and QA how they do and give them a rating. Nifty stuff.

I learned that Gus drives crazier than Dan. I also learned that when the NYC AC is working it is more comfortable in NYC than in Kingston. I survived the drive so I am happy. I am back home now. I was on the way out the door to meet up with people from work for a drink but I got a call stating that our dam reports website was not updating. I don’t know if anyone will be around by the time I get downtown.

Pix Is Sold

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It went in less than a day with buy it now. I love ebay. I am bringing it to work to ship tomorrow. Next up is my old T-68i and my Motorola T720. I have to take pictures of them and post them on ebay this week.

Can’t Sleep

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I have been having sleep issues. I cannot sleep. Not sure if it is the loud AC in my place (i need to get that looked at), or still settling into the new apartment. It could be just stress. I have no idea, but it is becoming a problem. I go through bouts insomnia, but I still goto bed normal time and try to sleep. it just doesn’t come, or it is very restless.

I had my laundry done today. I am all for having it done, instead of me doing it. It costs allot more, but I don’t wast 2 hours in the hot laundry room. I found that if I let it pile up, it is actually cheaper than doing small amounts of it. You pay a flat rate for the first like 10lbs. The first time I did it, I had 1 week of stuff and it was like $14. this time I had 2 weeks worth of stuff and it was only like $18. like I said pricey but worth it to me. Now I need someone to clean my place. I am good at light dusting, and washing the floor, but that is where my domestic talent ends.

Hosting Provider Gone

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So this awesome hosting provider I got is gone. They had a great plan, responsive tech support, etc. The only problem is they didn’t support IMAP4 mail. Their marketing info eluded to them offering it, but in fact support said they didn’t. I canceled my trial account after less than a week. I love that a trial account has your credit card charged right away. At least I got my money back relatively quick.

Right now I am hosting my site on Miguel’s web server. He is in the process of building a new box. Once that is done I can host more of my photo album and move my mail to it. So far it is working out ok, and best of all it is free…

Little Italy

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Tonight I went to little italy for dinner with Gretchen, Jayson, Jayson’s cousin and her friend. It was a nice night. We didn’t get to dinner until 10:30PM, I was hungry so that was bad. We hung out at Jay’s place for a while where the women were getting ready.

We had an awesome dinner at one of the 50 italian restaurants on mulberry street. I had veil parm. I don’t eat it that often so and it was really good. Some cheese cake and espresso after dinner and I cannot sleep right now. So I am up writing about the dinner. The ladies had a part tomorrow and it was raining so we ended up going home after dinner.

We ended up waiting for the subway for 30 minutes. After it turns midnight the subway start to suck in NYC. I don’t know how they can have any more “reduced service” they talk about if they have to cut the transit budget.

To make it to dinner I did have to have a butabital. I was getting a migraine head ache in the late afternoon. The one pill made me feel better, and it made me not drink. that saved me some $$$.

Now I need to goto sleep. I am just not tired, and it is almost 2AM. Tomorrow I am going to feel this…

Bye, Bye Pix 501

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I bought a pix a while ago. I blogged about it. It is fantastic. I can tunnel into work, and setup multiple tunnels. The PDM is exactly like the 515’s we have at work. Unfortunately I am selling it on ebay. I probably shouldn’t have spent the money on it when I did, but that is not why I am selling it.

I don’t have time to play with it. I got it so I could continue to explore the Pix and setup some cool functions on it. I am finding I have no time to do any of that. I spent half my day off messing around with it yesterday. I did this by choice, and had a good time doing it, but I need to have my firewall/router at home to just work. Also the lack of wifi for me sucked. I didn’t buy a separate wifi point and I couldn’t use my old linksys 802.11g point/router with the pix.

I am actually unhappy about selling it, but it makes sense, but the Pix is still so cool…