Mobile Tech

Got my new verizon phone today

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I finally got my new Motorola T720 phone for verizon wireless. So far the phone is cool, but nothing spectacular. The spectacular thing about it is it works almost all the time!!! I will take that over some phone that does everything for you except hold a good phone call. The big test for this new “toy” is tomorrow when I take it to the remote city of Kingston NY. My T68i with AT&T doesn’t work at all up there, and my old verizon V60 worked ok. I will let you know the results.

Nothing else on the personal level happened today. I got home to late to have any sort of life! My cleaning lady came to the new apartment for the first time today! Yes, I have a cleaning lady. I got spoiled with cheap cleaning people when I was in Baton Rouge so I have someone come at least once a month now. Hey, I am a single guy living alone. I need someone to know where to dust and scrub, because I sure don’t.

OK, off to bed early tonight. I have to get up early for the road trip.

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.

Cleaning up and wireless issues

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I was wrong in my last post. The major moving of stuff was done, but the work was not. Today I cleaned. I put stuff away, and otherwise cleaned up stuff. I am mostly done. I still have some crap in my soon to be dining area, but other than that things are neat. Well, the bathroom doesn’t count. And my desk is always a mess, but at least the computers are all tucked away. I built a Windows 2003 Server and it is up and running in my closet. I got the Wifi card I got to work without incident.

I am still having issues with my Linksys 802.11g wireless router. It worked great in my old place, but for some reason it keeps dropping connections in the new apartment. I ended up taking out my old Lucent Wavelan AP-1000 and using that along with the linksys. I still get dropped signals, but the Lucent point recovers better than the Linksys. I am betting my neighbors are using a 2.4ghz cordless phone or something. I tried half the channels I can use and all of them are having the same problem. Updating the firmware did nothing. I am getting pissed. I wanted to do almost everything in the new place wirelessly, but now I am holding off because of the problems I am having.

On a lower tech note, the stove works. I cooked up some potato’s to go with my steak I cooked on the george forman grill today. Didn’t do anything of note today. It looks like I have plans for tomorrow and sunday. I always like at least 1 day of resting on the weekend so I just had it!

Mobile Phone Jugleing

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So I got really pissed with AT&T wireless Monday and changed my pricing plan. I cut my costs per month in half. There seems to be a problem near my house. They said they knew about it, but had no ETA on fixing it. I saw no reason for paying $100 a month for unlimited cell phone usage when I only used 400 minutes on it last month. I changed to the $50 plan with 700 minutes.

I also beefed up my verizon wireless plan to 800 min a month. I got a new promotion so I had to sign a contract for another year, but I was probibly going to stay with them anyway. The service is rock solid. I also got a deal on a new phone when I renewed. I got a Motorola T720. People at work have them and like them. As much as I want to keep using AT&T I will use verizon for a while since the service is much better.

i cannot wait until number portability in november. Then I can take my sweet and easy to remember AT&T number and switch it to verizon.

And yes I have 2 cell phone contracts. I had 3, but just canceled my T-Mobile account since I haven’t used it since April. Since I don’t have a home phone I wanted 2 phones. in case I have problems with one (like I am having). I also kept one for work and one for personal, but it is turning out that work calls me however they can if they need me. Enough technology ranting. I am off to bed.

Apple support and verizon fraud

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I am having a bad week dealing with big companies. I ordered a High speed (well sort of) data card for a laptop at work. We got it through verizon wireless. the card is fine, but for some reason I got charged an extra $575 on the same day from verizon. In their defense they cannot find the charge in their system and believe it to be fraud. But it had to be one of their people doing it. I called the order in over the phone. At least my credit card company is taking care of it.

As for apple. Their support is good, when you get them on the phone. But if you don’t have applecare (i don’t) you pay first and then only if your problem requires hardware to be fixed within the first year they wont charge your credit card. First off applecare is expensive. Does other support agreements cost that much? Apple hardware is more money as it is, I don’t want to pay an extra $250 for a support deal on top of my expensive computer.

At least in my case the problem IS hardware related, but I hate giving out my credit card number to people if I am not actually buying something.

Work, ipod’s, and Blog’s

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Work was crazy since I was only in for a half a day due to the eye doctor. We are going to go with the 3 ton HVAC unit. 1.5 tons for our new computer room is not enough, but my inflated estimate came out to requiring a 10 ton unit. Sorry Gus your theory of taking a maximum theoretical number of servers in the room and then increasing the heat load by 50% sort of put us way over the top:) It was sort of funny to hear the construction guy tell me we were way off and wanted to do my math since he thought I was crazy. I sent him my calculations, and they were correct. We just inflated stuff. Oh well.

While I was out this morning I think a demo that someone was supposed to do was not up. I don’t think people were happy since the site was supposed to be ready last week. Keith said their was some yelling going on. It was something my team didn’t screw up and I wasn’t their for the meltdown. I am glad for small favors.

It also looks like we are going to overhaul our Dev & QA hardware. I am waiting to see what the needs are before I make any changes.

Gus and I went to the apple store in SoHo today. He got a new 30gig Ipod. I am jealous. it is great. I can’t goto the apple store. They make it tempting to buy a new computer.

On the blog front another person I know did a blog. Howard Morgan got one going today. I felt really stupid since he asked a bunch of questions about Moveabletype and I didn’t have all the answers. I would consider it an honor to teach howard something new. I bet his blog will be incredible. So far I was the first person to comment on it.

Bluetooth dial-up works, finally!!!

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I actually got my Thinkpad to dial a GPRS connection through my Sony Ericsson T-68i using a bluetooth connection. I found an updated driver package for my Xircom card. It actually works with XP now. AT&T’s connection software still didn’t work. That ticked me off, but I found instructions on their web site to do it with XP’s built in dial up networking. It worked like a champ. Now I have to see if it works out and about. I have problems allot of the time when I try to use it on my powerbook. It is all due to spotty data service.

I am just happy I figured it out without having to buy new hardware. Now I wait until Verizon comes out with a Bluetooth enabled phone and I am all set. Of course having verizon’s data plan come down in price would be nice also. Until then I live with AT&T’s sub par GPRS system.

I like it when technology works the way it is advertised. Lets ignore that it took like 4 software revisions and like 6 1/2 months (with this provider) to get it working on Windows.

Bluetooth Woes

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I may have mentioned my problems with bluetooth and my IBM thinkpad T30 running Windows XP. I have a Xircom Realport 2 Bluetooth card. I cannot get it to dial out using the bluetooth modem on my Sony Ericsson T68i. I can do it with my powerbook. Turns out that my problem may be the Xircom card. Howard (aka super smart guy that is an investor in my company) got it to work on his Thinkpad T40 with a built in bluetooth card and the same type of phone. that sucks because now I need to get a different bluetooth card. The Xircom one does not seem to work with XP. I hate wasting money on tech that doesn’t do what it was designed for. I am off to search ebay.

Technology Treadmill

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So you buy some new device, and you are happy. Then a month later a new one comes out that is way better. What to do? That is the problem I encounter. If I sell the original device and throw in a few extra dollars I can have the new device, so what is the harm in that? It can add up.

I am pissed off because I just got a HP Ipaq 1910. It is a great little PDA. I love it, except for one limitation. It doesn’t have bluetooth. I am an early adopter of bluetooth, I think it can be a great protocol. I got the ipaq beacause it did everything else I needed, and gave up on the bluetooth option. It was a tradeoff, size vs bluetooth. Size won. The problem now is that I hear HP is coming out with a new version of the 1910 and it will include bluetooth.

Vonage & Other Tech

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So I got my Vonage phone number and router already. That was very quick. I didn’t expect that stuff till next week. I can’t use the dam thing since I don’t actually have a phone to plug into it yet. I want to get a better phone number than what they gave me, so I am not giving the number out yet. I am willing to pay whatever it costs to get a good number, but I need a nice one.

I need cordless phone for this vonage system. The problem is that I need an older technology 900mhz phone since I don’t want it to interfere with my 802.11b/g wireless network I have at home. Man I will be lucky that I don’t get some sort of brain tumor from all this wireless radiation I got going on around me all the time at home and at work.

As expected my dam AT&T Wireless GSM phone didn’t work all day today while I was in Kingston. Thankfully I had my backup Verizon Wireless phone. It worked like a champ. The blackberry pager works up their most of the places. That is good news for our alert system.