GSM

AT&T Wireless Officially Sucks

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Yes they do. So I bought a cheap used unlocked GSM phone on ebay. It is a Ericsson T-28w. I had one years ago. They are ok, but it was dirt cheap and unlocked. That means I can plug any GSM card into it and it will work. So I put my AT&T Wireless card in and the calls sucked just as bad as they did with my top of the line Sony Ericsson T-68i. I put my T-Mobile SIM in and the thing worked fine. It even worked decent at work, where T-Mobile with a T-68 never worked well. I was about to cancel T-Mobile last week and something told me to hold onto it for a while. I have gotten everyone to use the new number for like 3 months now, but I figured I should keep it around. Good thing I did. Now I don’t know if I am going to get rid of T-Mobile or AT&T. One has to go. AT&T, I love my phone number but that is about it. At this stage in my contract I am just thinking of keeping it and putting myself on the $19.95 plan and not use it. That is cheaper than canceling the thing. Then in November, I can keep that number and move it somewhere else. November is when phone number portability comes to cell phones!!! Finally. On the plus side the T-Mobile account is really cheap for allot of minutes. I get like 600 min with unlimited nights and weekends for under $40.00.

I am going to use both for a while, and see what happens. Thankfully I have my verizon phone still. Yes I have 3. I am only supposed to have 2, but I can’t seem to get rid of T-Mobile. I am really a techie.

Scuba try 2

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I believe this weekend is another crash cource in SCUBA training. I am hoping to call today to get in it, but I don’t know how that will pan out. I also need to sit down for an hour and order food from fresh direct. I have been putting both tasks off for about a week. I just have tons to do.

I also need to unlock my T68i or get another unlocked GSM phone. I have another SIM card I want to put in my AT&T phone and I cannot. It pisses me off that I buy something and it is disabled even after I use it for the 1 year it was discounted for. Dam AT&T. I am about ready to sell my AT&T Wireless stock and dump the dam phone. Good cell number be dammed.

On the plus side I sold my old Palm Tungsten T, and shipped it yesterday to the person who won the auction on ebay. Looking around the house to see what can be next. I like cleaning out the house of old stuff and getting extra money to buy new stuff at the same time!!! Way to go ebay.

the short vacation is over

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The holiday weekend is over and I was back at work today. Thankfully we tracked down one of our two missing T-1’s today. I am going up to Kingston tuesday to sort things out. Dan and I are driving up tuesday morning. It will be interesting, since dan is an interesting driver!

I have some other issues I need to take care of while I am up there so it should hopefully be a productive trip. I am also planning on being up there next Wednesday to oversee our next T-1 install. I won’t let this screw up happen again.

With my cell phone and wireless internet, it is almost like I am in the office! Who am I kidding!!! It beats being totally out of touch on some island.

Got a bunch of Kingston related issues worked on today. And I survived an almost 2 hour long management meeting. I felt very productive today. Hopefully tomorrow I get the telecom issues taken care of.

More work, less hacking, unless it is for work

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It is monday again, and I am off to work. Today we meet with another telecom provider to see if they have a good deal. We need to make a decision this week.

OK, time for me to gripe about something. I am on the train, and cannot stand it when people receive cell phone calls (or make them) and have an entire conversation. In addition to that these people usually talk like a plane is flying by. Now I am all for cell phone use. I have 2 of them, and I don’t even have a home phone (another story). When I am out and about I will receive calls but only talk for a min if it is not important. If it is a work emergency (which I get more often than I would like) I talk. What is with this casual talking on a train with 100 other people. We don’t care what you have to say to your friends or family. We don’t need cell phone restriction laws, we need some etiquette from people. Ok, I am done ranting.

Speaking of cell phones I am kind of bummed that my main phone (an AT&T GSM Provided Sony Ericsson T68i) won’t work in our office in Kingston. Actually it wont work in kingston at all. I am not sure what will work well up there. I know verizon works, and t-mobile, but not sure if either of them provides good signal at our site. I have a verizon phone but I wanted to cancel it. No I am paying the monthly fee to wait and see. I also have a T-Mobile SIM card, but no phone. I am holding onto that for a bit longer also.

I gotta tell you, I go through phones (just like PDA’s) fast. I just upgrade to the latest and greatest allot. I was on ebay last night looking for a phone for the CEO of my company. He is going to europe and wanted a phone. He has a SIM already, but no phone. Since I didn’t have any extra he said to look for one. Well after looking I don’t see any GSM phones that do everything I want, except for the one I already have. For my CEO we are just going to rent one, but I started looking for myself also. Like I said I don’t have a phone for my T-Mobile SIM. It is weird. For the first time in a while I am ready to spend money.

OK, back to work talk. This post was supposed to be about work. I ended up sending back the low end Compaq 1U server we got. FYI, 1U is the size of it. Computer racks are broken down by U’s. Each standard rack has 42U. A 1U server takes up 1U of that 42. They are really small. It turns out the compaq server we bought does not have a RAID card for IDE like were were told 3 times. The were going to send me one for free, but I decided to send it back instead. Part of my reasoning is that we were going to get 2 of these. And I want to get them and see if I like them. if I do like them I want to standardize on them later on. If we got a free raid card, I would have to pay for them in the future. That would put the cost well over what I wanted to budget for these low end machines. I ended up ordering a super micro box and saved like $600 off my original quote. It is a no name brand, but we already use no name VA Linux machines, and this thing has a 3 year warrantee. I will see if they are any good.