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Useless case protector

Since the Samsung Reclaim isn’t a flip phone and the screen risks getting scratched in my wife’s purse, she wanted a case. I saw that Sprint had a plastic case that clips onto the Reclaim to protect it. I didn’t order it right away because the price went up from the time I looked at it and the time I was going to purchase which basically meant that I could get it cheaper at the Sprint store with my Sprint Premier discount. I was at the store today and tried out the case; the sales person was nice enough to clip it onto my phone.

While the case fit tight and protected the phone, it didn’t protect the screen! So, it protected the back cover and the sides that no one really cares about. It appears that someone forgot that the Reclaim doesn’t have a touchscreen so having a hole for the screen is a bit pointless.

My wife is using the case from the Pre I have for work and it fits well, but having a clear case to protect it would probably work better in the long run. Anyone know of this type of case for the Reclaim?

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Review: Samsung Reclaim

Last week, I finally bit the bullet and got new cell phones for my wife and me. (The batteries weren’t holding charges and I’ve been unable to get replacement batteries that hold a charge.) I was very cautious to pick phones that wouldn’t affect my plan, so that pretty much ruled out phones such as the Pre or HTC Hero. As I liked the slider on the Pre I have for work, I decided on the Samsung Reclaim for our new phones (we already had unlimited data for both our phones; unlimited data being EVDO Rev. 0 data).

Some may think that this is a step down for me as I’ve had a smartphone pretty much all the time since I first got a Treo 180 on Cingular. Every smartphone I’ve had has been for work and paid for by a client or by work. In addition, I swore off smartphones as my primary phone since the Treo 300 when its battery drained itself on a number of occasions due to OS crashes.

In any case, I’ve had my Reclaim for about a week and my wife has had hers for a day. The primary use of a phone for me is to make phone calls and the Reclaim does that fairly well. I paired the phone with the Bluetooth car kits in both our cars (both car kits are aftermarket, one is a Parrot CK3100 and the other is a Raytel Tellphone 4200) and it works well. As a phone, so far it lives up to what I need.

Battery life is a major concern for me and even playing around with it throughout the day, the battery hasn’t completely drained, so in that regard, it is looking good.

While the phone isn’t a smartphone, its email and web browsing capabilities are quite respectable. Email can’t show HTML, but I don’t see that being a bad thing. I was able to setup my Gmail account quickly and reading email isn’t half bad. The keyboard is small, but usable. If you don’t have big fingers, you can text and compose email with very few mistakes.

Pros

  • Speaker independent voice recognition. (Only some smartphones have this which is surprising as my 3 year old Motorola RAZR had it.)
  • Battery life appears to be good.
  • Keyboard is usable despite it’s small size.
  • Decent email client.
  • Good value for the money (phone was free with a 2 year contract renewal; I just had to pay taxes on it).
  • Very compact size.
  • Easy to navigate using one hand.

Cons

  • I’m unable to use Google Maps even though there is an icon for it; I’m getting a SAX error when I download the handler. I’ll need to contact Sprint about this.
  • Sending a bunch of contacts over Bluetooth from my Mac resulted in 1 entry, so I had to send them one at a time and I’m not quite done with this.
  • Sending contacts from my wife’s RAZR to the Reclaim failed when it got to an entry with a / in it. I’m not sure if this was on the sending or receiving end, but I tend to blame the receiver as it gave the failure message.
  • Email can’t display HTML messages.
  • Web browser isn’t a full browser.
  • Only a limited number of J2ME applications can be loaded onto the phone and most aren’t very exciting.
  • The Sprint network can’t do voice and data at the same time; it’s a minor inconvenience.
  • Dialing phone numbers that aren’t contacts is a little harder than on the RAZR.
  • Contacts and calendar don’t sync with Google where I store all my info.

Summary

While I’ve only had this phone a short time, I don’t plan on returning it. It looks like it is going to more than adequately meet my needs. It is a basic messaging phone that I think can meet the needs of many users. Many of the features of a smartphone will go unused and paying extra for features that you don’t need doesn’t appeal to me.

If you’re on Sprint and looking to replace a phone, the Reclaim is a good phone. The “green” aspect may appeal to some, but to me, it’s just a gimmick. My wife has never had any type of messaging phone and is really enjoying the phone. While she wanted a BlackBerry, I couldn’t justify adding the BlackBerry plan and then text messaging on top of that. For her needs, this phone is comparable to the BlackBerry.

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Affording cell phone service

Recently I replaced my cell phone and my wife’s phone with new ones. As I was doing so, I was quite careful about not getting a phone that would require me to change my cell phone plan. Many of the new phones (at least on Sprint), can’t be activated on the plan I have. My plan is over 7 years old; I got it when I first got my Handspring Treo 300. This plan originally cost $85/month which included unlimited data, unlimited picture mail, unlimited SMS, 2000 anytime minutes, free mobile to mobile (on Sprint), and a second line. Since then, I’ve been able to get some additional discounts on it and I’ve added 2 lines to the plan (for my parents). Now I pay about $90/month including taxes for the 4 lines (unlimited data and SMS is only on the primary line).

Let’s compare this plan to what it would cost for an iPhone plan on AT&T. A 2100 minute plan for 2 lines costs $109.99 + $9.99 for each additional line. Data for the iPhone is $30/month and unlimited messaging is $20/month. So to get a comparable iPhone plan for me and standard phones for my family, it would cost me $180/month + taxes which is more than twice what I currently pay.

If we just look at individuals, we’re talking about $39.99 for 450 minutes + $30 data + $20 for messaging. That is $90/month + taxes for a single line!

It turns out that I’ve basically written about this before, but aimed at teenagers.

Maybe I’m just cheap, but I can’t justify spending more on cell phone service. This might change later on, but for now, I’ll stick with what I have. If I was more mobile and didn’t work from home, maybe I could justify the added cost, but my cell phone needs are pretty basic. It’s kind of funny saying that as I work for a company that provides wireless data solutions to companies!

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Review: Ryobi One+ 18V Cordless Combo Kit

About a year ago, I wrote about getting the Ryobi One+ 18V Cordless Lithium-Ion 4-Piece Combo Kit. Once I got the kit, I put the tools to the test and was very pleased with it. I used the reciprocating saw (much larger than the 12V version) and the circular saw (again, larger than the 12V version) to remove a tree. Both tools worked acceptably. However, the circular saw started making a grinding noise, so it went in for service.

I’ve used my tools on and off since then and recently bought 2 more tools that go with the Ryobi One 18V line and am more than happy than the line of products. They aren’t the most expensive products and aren’t professional quality, but this kit has everything I need to do projects around the house. A few weeks back, I used a number of the tools to build a stand for our clothes dryer; I never had a circular saw before and never had a drill with so much power.

Pros

  • Powerful tools for home use.
  • Easy to swap batteries.
  • Fairly long lasting batteries.
  • Reconditioned saves a few bucks and probably doesn’t make a big difference in quality.
  • Magentic screw tray on the drill is handy.

Cons

  • Flashlight is kind of pointless.
  • Quality is questionable; the tools won’t hold up on a job site.
  • Circular saw is a little small; a 5 1/2″ blade will barely cut through a 2×4. If you accidentally lift the saw, you won’t cut through the bottom of the 2×4.
  • Extended use of drill may give you blisters; the drill is a bit heavy and the grip could be more comfortable.

Summary

While I was originally just trying to replace my old cordless drill, I now realize that by not having the right tools, really hampered my ability to do projects. This combo kit provides the right pieces for a homeowner that needs to do small, weekend projects. There are more expensive kits and tools, but they may be overkill for people like me that occasionally do home projects. If you’re in the market for a cordless drill, definitely consider a kit that has options for other tools. (I bought a jigsaw and a finish sander to go with the tool line.)

I know that Ryobi isn’t the most trusted name in tools, but the versatility of the product line and low cost of this, make it a winner in my book.

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Is more security a solution?

I just heard on the news that the TSA and local police were beefing up more security at the Detroit airport. For off, this sounds like closing the barn door after the horses have left. Second off, the flight didn’t originate from Detroit (it didn’t even originate in this country)! So adding more security in Detroit won’t help flights coming into the airport. Wow, brilliant.

(I hope the news just got this wrong, because if someone actually decided this, it seems like a complete waste to me.)

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End of “Sacrifice the Tree” Holiday

While Christmas was yesterday, I consider today the end of the holiday as it’s when I started to see Christmas trees ready for recycling. While running today, I saw a number of trees at a local drop off facility. This seems like such a waste to me; forget the environmental impact (I’ll get to that later), but if you went to the effort of finding a tree, lugging it home, putting decorations on it, and putting gifts under it, wouldn’t you at least want to keep it for a few more days? I wonder if some people took the tree down right after the gifts were removed from beneath it?

In our local paper today, there was an article about recycling Christmas trees where Environmental Services Program Director Lynne France of Chula Vista said:

Christmas trees are not as environmentally horrible as everyone thinks, because they are plantation grown for the purpose of being a Christmas tree. It’s not like they are cutting down old-growth forests to give you a Christmas tree.

Is she really that clueless or did that just make for a good quote? The cutting down of the trees isn’t the only environmental impact. Consider that the trees are cut down (primarily) with chainsaws or other motorized equipment which burn fuel and contribute more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Then the trees are trucked from where they are grown/chopped down to Christmas tree lots which could be pretty far away. Then people drive to the lots to pick up the trees. After they’re done with the trees, people either drive to dispose of them or have them picked up (for single family houses in the city of San Diego, those with trees can leave them at the curb and they’ll be picked up with other green waste which shouldn’t cause the Environmental Services folks to have to make another trip), then motorized equipment (chippers) are used to convert the trees into mulch. So, if you think that there is little environmental impact from the trees just because they were grown specifically for the purpose of being Christmas trees, you’re clearly mistaken.

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Programming extortion or poor estimating?

For a project we have at work, we needed to have some Java code written for encryption. The tool we have has example code for it, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted. So, one of our developers got a quote from the company that put together the example to change the code to what I wanted as I don’t know Java. The quote to modify the code was 4 hours @ $155/hour. While I don’t have a problem with the hourly rate, I thought the 4 hours was utterly ridiculous as the example code was almost what we needed and the encryption libraries are already built into Java. In addition, getting $620 approved for this might have been more trouble than it was worth.

On Friday, I sat down, did some Google searches, installed NetBeans, and within an hour, I had the Java code working. Prior to this, I had never written a line of Java code. However, Java, like most languages I work with, has a very similar syntax that for my very small piece of code, was quite easy to understand.

So the high quote was one of three things. First, they might not have understood the request (I just double checked the email exchange and it seemed quite clear to me). Second, they could have been extremely poor at estimating. I’ve been writing software for many years now and my estimating is sometimes way off whack, but that is usually for big tasks and tasks where I’m starting from scratch, not sample code. My worst estimating that I ever did, I estimated 2 weeks (80 hours) to complete a bridge between a Mac application running as a native Intel application and a PowerPC plugin. Somehow I managed to complete this in less than 4 hours. However, I wasn’t and am still not aware of any commercial shipping application that has this functionality besides what I wrote, so writing this was a complete unknown. Third, the quote could have been high because they may have thought we had no other option and when you’re a monopoly, you can charge whatever you want.

Initially, I quickly jumped to the conclusion that the third option is what happened. After thinking about it and throwing out the other 2 options, I’d like to say that the 3rd option wasn’t the real reason, but it is really hard to discount it.

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Valuing my business

I’ve been a Bank of America customer for many years (I actually started with Security Pacific in 1991 which Bank of America bought). I’m in the process of moving my home loan to another bank because BofA’s rates are pretty awful. As such, I lose my free “Prima Checking” account. So, I’m closing all my BofA accounts and moving them elsewhere where I don’t have to worry about fees. Well, the problem with that is I also have a safe deposit box at BofA and in order to have a box, I need a BofA account.

OK, fine I’ll drop my account down to the basic account (MyAccess checking) which if I don’t maintain the minimum balance, it will cost me $8.95 a month. When looking online, I see that if I open a MyAccess checking account online, there is no minimum balance and no monthly fee. So, I asked BofA about it and they said I’d have to close my account and open a new one despite them being the same type of account. How is that for loyalty? This just reaffirms my decision to move all my accounts away from them. Hey, Brian Moynihan, work on customer service and stop trying to nickel and dime your loyal customers.

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Time or money (or quality just isn’t there)

Several months ago, my wife and I bought our son a Tonka Mighty Motorized Garbage Truck from Costco to give him for Hanukkah as he’s a bit scared of the garbage truck coming down the street and we thought that this could help him. We gave him the truck last night and within 5 minutes, the lifting mechanism stopped working. My wife got new batteries as it shouldn’t like the motor was dying, but that didn’t help. After a few online searches, my wife saw many horrible reviews of this product with the same problem.

I told our son that I’d try to fix it after he went to sleep. Well, it has triangular shaped screws which made it a bit hard to take apart. However, a small flat head screwdriver seemed to fit and turned the screws. I disassembled the entire truck and found the problem. One of the gears wasn’t firmly attached to the metal shaft. I used some super glue to glue it onto the shaft and presto, it started working again. Yeah! However, this little repair job took over 2 hours! Tonka doesn’t make toys like they used to, so the $20 we spent on the toy was topped off with 2 hours of repair work making the toy a lot more expensive than $20.

Our son was delighted that his garbage truck was working again. He probably has one of the only Tonka garbage trucks that is still working. While it is still early, I’m crossing my fingers that my repair job worked.

We, as a society, keep demanding lower prices on products, but in a lot of cases are willing to accept poor quality.

Note, it appears that Tonka has licensed its name to a company called Funrise Toys. That’s too bad because I always thought that Tonka trucks were well built.

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Imprinting a signature in a PDF

The other day I needed to put my signature on a PDF, so I used PDFPen to do so, but noticed that I could still move the signature even after saving it and tried to use the “Merge Imprint into Page” option, but found that it didn’t work either (their support confirmed that due to changes in PDFs, this feature was kind of useless and should be removed). My solution was to print out the PDF and scan it back in; my signature was definitely imprinted on the PDF as the entire PDF was a bitmap image. I kind of forgot about this until today.

I heard about the TSA document leak on the news and searched for it. Wired had a lot of information including a link to a document that explains how to properly redact information. The basic idea is to save the PDF as a multi-page TIFF, then convert the TIFF to a PDF. While PDFPen, this is easy:

  • Open PDF in PDFPen.
  • Add signature and other information that you don’t want editable.
  • Save PDF as TIFF.
  • Open TIFF in PDFPen (or Preview).
  • Save file as PDF.

Presto! Now the PDFPen folks just need to adds this as an option to eliminate the steps. I realize that this significantly increases the file size, but it does accomplish my goal.