I my desire to get the new Samsung MM-A900 phone, I’ve been dutifully checking HowardForums and SprintUsers. I saw this morning that the phone was available on Sprint’s website, so I ordered it. One poster reminded me that if you give Sprint your current phone number, they do weird things to your bill when buying a new phone. Basically, they post a credit for the amount they charge to your credit card to your account and then bill the phone to your account. Last time they did this, I got a major headache trying to figure out why my bill was screwed up. So, I didn’t enter my Sprint number and hopefully I’ll have the phone soon.One trick, however, is that the new phone is a Power Vision (fast data) phone, but I already have unlimited Vision, text messaging, and picture mail on my account. From what I’ve read, Sprint says you have to give up the free stuff and get a Power Vision plan. On the other side of the fence is people that say Sprint will just swap phones if you call them; further reading suggests that the call center has a different system than the stores and the stores can’t do the swap without changing the plan. I’m not out to cheat Sprint, I just want to switch phones and have the same functionality I currently have. Is that too much to ask?The saga continues…
Upgraded my server
Yesterday I received email that the OS my server was running (Fedora Core 3) was going to be put on legacy status and only security updates would be posted or something like that. Normally I don’t like to do major upgrades on my server as I always spend tons of time futzing. However, in order to get bug fixes and such, I had to upgrade. So I followed the directions on upgrading to Fedora Core 4. It downloaded 420 MB of stuff, installed, and rebooted without a problem. I had to do a few minor tweaks to get MRTG working again as well as MySQL with PHP (old configuration file had to be removed), but other than that, things went smoothly. I got new versions of lots of stuff, but I’m not sure any of it will be all that helpful to me. At least I know that I’ll be getting updates for awhile. (Fedora Core 3 has been out for about a year, so it was probably about time for me to upgrade.)
Sprint Customer Service Needs Work
Yesterday, Sprint announced that the new cell phone I want, the Samsung MM-A900, was available for purchase at sprint.com and at their stores. Well, the phone isn’t available online and calling them results in them not having a clue. I took a gamble and went out to another Sprint store today (the closest one is 10 minutes away and they had nothing yesterday, so I went 20 minutes away). I got to the store and found out that they had 2 phones (I basically had to dance around if I was a new subscriber/adding a line just to find out if they had the phone). Great, so maybe I could buy one. Unfortunately they would only sell it if I was a new subscriber or activated a new line as they have to meet quotas. So here I am a customer of 6 years that currently has 6 lines on Sprint and am paying $165 per month and they won’t let me shell out $350 for a new phone (I’m not eligible for a rebate and I wouldn’t take it as it would extend my contract). What kind of customer service is that? The guy at the store said if he had 10, he’d sell me one. My hope is that Radio Shack gets them tomorrow and I don’t have to deal directly with Sprint. Why can’t corporate headquarters make sure that phone stock is available when they make a press release and why can’t they tell stores that they should try to keep customers? Customer service says that it is cheaper to keep a customer than to gain a new one.If I didn’t have such a good plan with Sprint and we already have the phones, I’d almost consider switching. However, I’m sure customer service is pretty poor in the whole industry.
Crappy Power Adapter
On my last trip, I forgot my power adapter for my PowerBook. Luckily it was a one day trip and where I went, someone loaned me one for the day. Since I didn’t want to repeat that experience, I decided to purchase a second adapter. Apple’s adapter is $80, so I looked at alternatives and found one by Kensington. A cool thing about this is that I could get different tips and charge my cell phone or my iPod (it came with the iPod tip). I ordered it from Buy.com and received it quickly (UPS ground shipping from them is 1 day due to their proximity). I opened up the adapter when I got it and plugged it in. The fit was just awful; extremely loose and then I found that if I turned the tip, it was no longer charging. To top it off, the Apple adapter has a green ring showing when it was charging; the Kenginston one had nothing. Luckily returns for Buy.com are simple; total time from delivery of adapter to being packaged up and ready to go back…about 20 minutes. Maybe I’m just too picky about what I buy, but for the $16 I saved overed buying the Apple adapter, it just isn’t worth it to have a crappy product that I have no idea if it is charging without opening the computer and looking. I guess tomorrow is off to the Apple store to buy a second adapter like I should have done in the first place. Kensington used to make decent products; I’m not sure what happened here, but I’ll steer clear of them in the future.
Deterioration of language in our society
I’ve been noticing more and more how the English language is deteriorating into slang, misused words, improper abbreviations, and mistakes ranging from television to print media, to the web and most disturbing, everyday language. It has become so bad, that the English language has changed to “accept” this. For instance, anyways is often used for anyway. This really disturbs me as it just doesn’t sound right and makes people who use it seem uneducated to me. I hear this used on television and in everyday conversations all the time. The problem is that no one corrects the mistakes. Is this a breakdown of our educational system or does no one care anymore?Related to vocabulary issues and slang, the use of email, instant messaging, and text messaging has caused people to become very sloppy in their writing and many people just don’t care what they write. I find myself trying to proofread everything I write as it is a reflection on me and every communication can affect my work. I wish this was imparted on kids and teenagers as the more they neglect their writing, the bigger problem society will have later.It really only takes a few good influences to change someone’s language skills. It starts in the classroom, but extends beyond that. My wife is a science teacher and for the last few years, she’s been hanging out with English teachers. A few weeks ago, I commented to her that her vocabulary has increased just by being around people that use more sophisticated words. My wife is very smart, but has said that she was never good at the SAT words. Well, I think that has changed just by her friends’ use of new words.When is society going to start caring?(I’m sure someone will find grammatical errors with this entry, but at least I tried to get everything right.)
Sound isolation – the final chapter
Well, all my sound isolation stuff worked pretty poorly and I was a bit annoyed at the noise. I decided to take another stab at it and read reviews that the Antec cases were pretty good and quiet. I bought a Sonata II from NewEgg that arrived yesterday. I removed my computer from the old case this morning and put it in the Antec. I powered it up and was amazed at how much quieter my server is. The new case cost $99 + tax and shipping; the old one was about $60; the $40 difference is quite remarkable. When I got the server in the first place, I said I wanted a quiet case, not knowing a whole lot about build your own computers, I let Chip Merchant pick a case. That sure was a mistake and I won’t repeat that one. The Antec case is well built and everything fits together well. The cheap case I had before came with no instructions and was extremely bare bones. Too bad I had to go through the process of swapping cases and hearing my machine for a month.
eBay Feedback sucks
As I mentioned in a previous entry, I got a PlayStation 2 network adapter off eBay. It took forever to arrive and the seller wasn’t responsive. Once I received it, I left neutral feedback saying that shipping was slow and seller was unresponsive. Well, today I checked my feedback and found that I got neutral feedback from the seller with the comment that she had computer problems. A few problems with this: 1) I sent payment immediately which should make for positive feedback and 2) the seller had been posting feedback for others during the time when she was unresponsive indicating she had computer access, but didn’t respond to me. Lesson learned…eBay feedback means nothing…always pay with a credit card so that charges can be disputed in case of a problem. If I actually sold anything on eBay, this feedback would look bad for me.
Online gaming
I decided to try out online gaming, so I got a network adapter for my PlayStation 2 off eBay. Yesterday I also picked up a USB headset for it (it was $16 at Circuit City if you bought it online and picked it up at the store). So far the experience of playing against others is a bit frustrating as I really stink. The voice quality also has much to be desired, but I need to make sure it isn’t my firewall causing the issue. I’m going to try use the handle “scrubbbby”, so if you see me, join me for a game. (Scrubby comes from sgruby as that was my login name in college and due to how much I used a computer, my friends started calling me that.) I had to add a few b’s to get a unique account name.
Useful Applications for the week
I do a lot of work on two machines; one for testing and the other for development and is my main machine. When I’m testing, I regularly have to copy logs and files back and forth. This requires me to copy the file/log to my server and then pull it down from the other machine. After awhile, this gets quite repetitive. There is/was a program called Clipboard Sharing that allowed me to synchronize the clipboards of all my machines, so I could copy from one and simply paste on the other. However, the auto sync part stopped working in Tiger. I sent the author email, but was impatient so I started writing my own. I got as far as having everything work well before the author got back to me with a version to test under Tiger. It worked beautifully and now I’m pleased as punch. The author has published it as freeware, but has asked for donations. I sent him a nice donation yesterday because of how much time it has already saved me. (In fact my donation was more than I spend on most software.)
The second program is one called DropCopy. It lets me quickly and easily send files/folders across my local network to other machines. It works quite well, but the user interface is just awful. It is another free application. Definitely worth checking out and I hope the author can clean up the interface as it will make a top notch utility.
Registered Professional Engineers
Some time ago, my father and I had a discussion about being a registered professional engineer and what it means. He’s been a registered professional engineer (civil engineer) his entire career. He’s always told me that being registered means that you certify that your work is going to hold up and it is a matter of safety. Some states (I believe Texas), have attempted to register software engineers. I think that this is a complete and utter mistake. As a software engineer, there is no way that I can certify that my work will function properly on any machine at any time other than on my machine at the time I ship it. There are some many interactions between the hardware, the operating system, other applications, and hacks that I simply can’t say that it will work. While I’d love to have the moniker “registered professional engineer”, there is no way in good conscience that I could even apply for it if it became available.
However, I think the title “engineer” should be reserved for those that have successfully completed a 4 year engineering education. Engineer is thrown around by Microsoft, Cisco, and other companies when people complete a short course. I think that this is unacceptable. Microsoft lost a case in Canada and was told to stop using engineer for their MSCE certification. Like that will really happen. Furthermore, many programmers are not engineers; they simply code without designing and understanding the implications. This is where I see that engineers differ from programmers.
BTW, I am considered an “Engineer-In-Training” and will be my entire career as I passed the grueling California Engineer-In-Training exam while I was in college.