Tag: Technology

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Received my new phone!

The UPS guy shows up with my new phone. I open the box and found my new Samsung A940 phone. Wait a second, I ordered a Samsung A900. I could almost understand if I ordered on the phone, but I ordered on the website and got confirmation:

YOUR ORDER:
Phone(s) and Accessories:
PCS Phone by MM-A900 by Samsung®
Price: $349.99
Quantity: 1
Subtotal: $349.99

So I call Sprint, tell “Richard” that I ordered a Samsung A900 yesterday and received a Samsung A940 today; did he see a problem with this? He said no. So I had to explain the problem to him. He couldn’t contact anyone so he’ll send me a return kit for the phone and order an A900 for me, but I won’t get credited for the 940 until they receive it. That’s fine, my credit card bill doesn’t come for a few weeks, so I’ll dispute the charge if need be. What a hassle; this is after spending 40 minutes this morning getting a tracking number for the phone.

As I said before, the saga continues…

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Phone obsession

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…

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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eBay Feedback is a joke

I bought a PlayStation 2 Network adapter off eBay a few weeks ago and still haven’t seen it nor heard from the seller. If it doesn’t arrive soon, I’ll have to start the eBay process to get my money back. Checking the feedback of the seller, she was almost all positive feedback. Reading the feedback, I see things like: “never recieved it, was told it was returned damaged. thanks usps.” and “cd cases broke, missing disc, but shipped quick & still an ok deal” both listed as positive feedback! The problem I believe is that if a buyer leaves negative feedback, the seller will do the same thing even if the buyer pays immediately after the auction closes. So because of fear of getting negative feedback, people leave positive feedback with negative comments. For the hassle and aggravation, I should have just bought this from a local store or a known dealer. On the other hand, my other recent eBay purchases were smooth and shipped quickly.

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USB – Is there magic sauce to make it work?

I really like the concept of USB where devices from different manufacturers plug into hardware made by lots of different vendors without having to worry about getting the right plug. From a user’s point of view, it is great as long as their are drivers for a particular OS. Some types of devices such as hard drives have drivers built into just about every OS, so you just plug it in and you’re golden. Other devices such as PDAs, you have a big problem. I’ve been writing USB drivers and applications that talk to USB for over 3 years now and must say that as a developer, I hate USB. It seems that no one knows enough about USB to implement it correctly on the devices plugging into the computer, so as a developer, I have to code around their issues. Furthermore, each USB device should have a unique vendor and product ID. Vendor IDs seem to always be fine, but the device manufacturers, for some reason or another, give multiple devices the same product ID. This would be fine if the devices had identical USB implementations, but they don’t. Two companies in particular that seem to play games are Palm and Sony with their PDAs. They’re probably either trying to conserve product IDs or someone didn’t have a clue that it should be changed as they expect that they’d be the only ones talking to the devices. It is such a nightmare to deal with these devices. Right now my desk has 8 PDAs so that I can test my code. Things were humming along fine until an issue was reported and the log indicated a problem with some code I changed. Now, I have to find every Sony CLIE that has the same product ID and test my fix against them. Right now, there are at least 7 devices with the same product ID.

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iPod Nano Dock

Apple was nice enough to include an adapter so that an iPod Nano fits in a standard iPod dock. That’s fine and dandy, but I already own an iPod Mini dock where the adapter didn’t fit. Not wanting to buy another dock, I did what any engineer with a Dremel would do; I modified the adapter so that it fit in my Mini dock. Thanks, Apple, I was looking for a reason to break out the Dremel!

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The Mothership called

No, I’m not talking about aliens, I’m talking about Apple Computer. I got a cold call from a researcher at Apple who saw my resumé on Linked In. (I’ve thought that Linked In was kind of a joke, but now I might reconsider.) Apparently my resumé looked interesting for a couple of positions. Unfortunately the big sticking point is my unwillingness to leave San Diego and move to Cupertino. I know my in-laws would love for us to move, but it just isn’t happening. I got a follow up call from an Apple recruiter as they’re looking for people that do human interface. Now, if I was willing to move, I could possibly get a job there. The recruiter will pass my name along to the group that does contract hiring, so who knows, maybe I can become a contractor.