Archive for March, 2008

I <3 ATT Wireless

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Phone unlocking is a touchy subject for a lot of people.  There are numerous ways to do it.  Searching Google for “phone unlocking” takes you to some weird back-alleys of the internets.  One can often have their phone unlocked by “a friend who works at a phone place”, but are you really going to trust the guy named “Sam” with his Persian mafia haircut, dress shirt, and gold chain to fiddle with what is most often the most (or second-most) important piece of electronics in your life?

Fast forward to my conversation with an ATT representative this morning.  I’ve been with ATT for over 5 years, and I extended my contract another two years with the activation of my iPhone.  My fiancee has been with ATT even longer, since I was stuck in the muck that was Sprint Wireless from the time I graduated high school until that contract ran out.  She actually still has her “Pacific Bell Wireless” SIM card somewhere.  But anyways.  I love Sony Ericsson phones.  If I did not have my iPhone, I would have some manner of Sony Ericsson phone in my pocket.  They are fantastic devices.  I’ve had my W810i for over a year, but she got it when I got the iPhone.  She’s looking to get a Crackberry or something similar in the near, so the W810i would be moved to backup duty.  T-Mobile’s prepaid service is easier (and cheaper) than ATT’s, so we have one of those SIMs that would probably go into it.

The ATT rep was very nice about it, and was able to provide the unlock code immediately via SMS.  I think that this experience is a lot like people’s experience with online music.  If you give folks an EASY, reasonably priced way to legitimately unlock their phone (even if they charged $5 or $10 for it) people will not be as likely to pay for shady unlocking services and that market would dry up.  The fact that the unlock code is FREE is only icing on the cake.  ATT’s current policy seems to be really fantastic and it is one of the reasons I will continue to be a loyal customer of theirs.  I’m sure if I was requesting unlock codes multiple times per month, their willingness to provide them might be affected, but I am not a reseller.  I may not always use the unlocked phone on their network (obviously, that is the whole point of unlocking.)  But I will certainly send them my monthly check knowing that they are willing to make a customer happy by not holding on so tightly.

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Things You Should Know About Owning A Computer (but nobody wanted to tell you)

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

1. Your data is not important.
That’s right.  Your documents, pictures, videos, and other stuff on your hard drive is not important.  That is, unless you have it in at least one other location, if not more.  Hard drives die.  USB keychain drives get lost.  Your toilet overflowing will ALWAYS happen immediately over your home office space.  If you don’t have at least one spare copy of your information, preferably stored in a safe place outside of your home, it is an indication to everyone that your information is not important to you.  Think of it this way:  if your hard drive started making smoke right now, would you be able to get a new drive up and running without losing important stuff?  If you answered “no”, then you are playing Russian Roulette and you have no excuses.  Don’t whine to anyone about losing your baby birthing pictures.  Now that little “Taylor” is starting kindergarten, you’ve had plenty of time to back those up.  Nobody really cares about your loss because you didn’t seem to either.

2. That dent on the computer from 7 months ago voided your warranty 7 months ago.
It doesn’t matter what happened after you dropped your laptop.  The moment it hit the pavement (or enjoyed the glass of Two Buck Chuck you let it taste), the warranty was long gone.  Now that it is making crazy sounds like it is dying, or the screen is flailing around like an epileptic having a seizure, be prepared to pay for your mistake.  Yes, it is YOUR responsibility.  If you care about your warranty, it is in your best interest to have the damage fixed, that way when you have something go to hell later on, it should be covered under the warranty.  If you have cash coming out of the wazoo, you don’t need to worry about this because you won’t complain about paying whatever you need to pay to get it working again, right?  The point is that the moment you screwed up, the warranty was done for.  Everything after that is just really unfortunate for you.  Speaking of taking responsibility for your mistakes, you backed up your data, right?

3. Your cracked screen is not a manufacturing defect.
Laptops are designed to be rugged.  They are made to withstand being moved around, and even being used hard.  When I say hard, I don’t mean abused.  Dropping a laptop enough to dent the case and not crack the screen is getting pretty lucky.  Having your cat “Mittens” jump on the screen is very unlucky because Mittens probably just cost you $800.  Also, when you are in a hurry and leave your writing instrument on the computer keyboard, bad things will ensue when you close the screen.  Grabbing your laptop by the screen to move it is about as smart as grabbing your 18-month old child by the head to move it.  Treating your expensive electronic device like a cheap toy, then complaining about warranty coverage is like street racing your Honda Civic SI then complaining when the dealer won’t fix your blown automatic transmission because of all of the manual shifting you’ve done with it.

4. You are not a computer technician.
It’s kind of like taking your car to the shop and proceeding to tell the mechanic exactly what is causing that knocking sound in the engine and what he needs to do to fix it.  If you’re the expert, why are you having someone else work on it?  Now, I’m the first person to make fun of lame computer support technicians.  Assuming your person has adequate skills and understanding of your problem, shut up and let him or her do their job.  If you want to know what went wrong, that’s fine.  If you want to know how to fix it, that’s fine too.  Don’t ask to know everything the technician went through to diagnose the problem.  And if they are diagnosing the computer with you present, don’t ask them what they are doing every mouse click they make.  Chances are, they can fix it faster with you not distracting them, and most of the time they won’t mind showing you the correct path to take to fix it.  What a tech doesn’t want to do is tell you what they are doing, realizing that it is not going to address the problem, but have you remember that step and mess something up down the road.

5. The programs you use to download illegal music and videos may cause problems.
You are a fool to think that using LimeWire or Kazaa or Bearshare or eDonkey or whatever the current file-sharing program du jour is will not create problems for you.  On Windows, there are security problems left and right.  Using programs like that then complaining about whatever virus you picked up is like going clubbing and having random sexual encounters without wearing a condom then complaining about the burning feeling you have later on.  On the Mac, LimeWire causes so many file system problems, Alsoft’s DiskWarrior is almost completely reliant upon LimeWire’s corruption issues wreaking havoc on your system.  If you don’t get scared by people suing you for breaking copyright law, maybe you’ll get scared for risking your data to software that is made primarily for breaking the law.  Your call, but in my opinion, it’s not worth it.  Speaking of risking your data to LimeWire, you have a backup right?  Nobody cares that you lost your pirated 82GB iTunes library.

The list is longer, and I will post addenda to this list as things come to me.  Despite the tone my rants took, I am not truly trying to be mean.  I’m trying to show the novice computer user things to do when they need to do them, and what not to do unless they are ready to accept the consequences.

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The Music Industry Sucks

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Politics aside, and Trent Reznor is probably not on the same side of the aisle as me, the new Nine Inch Nails album is fantastic. Not only is it a wonderful 110 minutes of audio to listen to, the distribution model is one to be duplicated.  I’m not going to lie.  I am not a music expert.  I’m not even a NIN fan.  This is the first piece of NIN music I’ve purchased.  But in terms of its statement to the recording industry, I think that everyone should pony up the $5 for a copy of “Ghosts I-IV”.

I can, at times, tell the difference between audio CDs and audio files ripped from CDs.  If at all possible, I prefer to spend my money on higher quality audio that I can scale down if needed.  When I heard that “Ghosts I-IV” was available for $5 online, I was game.  When I heard I could get it in Apple Lossless along with hi-res album art, desktop backgrounds, and a PDF of “liner notes”, I knew I had to get it.  At first, the audio was secondary to supporting an individual who is demonstrating that the recording industry as it has metamorphosed into today, is not very relevant.  Like I said, Trent Reznor and I probably agree on very little politically.  But, despite what he might say about his economic beliefs, he has mastered what I believe is a VERY capitalist idea:

Provide easy access to a great product with a reasonable variety of options along with nice extras at a price that cannot be refused, and you’ll have people spending their money in droves.  Even folks who may not ordinarily spend their money on the product can be swayed to buy it.

Congratulations are in order, and even though he is not the first and certainly not the last, I can only hope that buying music moves in this direction in the future.  I’m an evil Republican Capitalist Pig, and that’s why I support Trent Reznor’s entrepreneurial venture wholeheartedly.

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Employer Restrictions on Personal Technology and the Death of a Blogger

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

My employer does not allow personal computers in the workplace, and they do not give computers to employees to use outside of work.  This is an artifact of my position not being salaried, hence their desire to not violate California labor law.  One thing I did notice, however, is that when I moved job locations, the enforcement of this policy went from near-nil (I almost always had my laptop) to almost 100%.  As a result, my usage of the internets and blogging has gone down significantly.  When I get home, I take care of business and do some reading of websites, but I find myself lacking interest and a desire to “blog”, though I hate that term with a passion.

I can only wonder if this phenomena is desired or is only a side effect of the policy on personal technology.  My employer is not known to be blog-friendly, and I can only hope that it doesn’t completely mash my desire to write online into nothingness.  It’s a little depressing.

I will find a way!  Don’t know exactly what, though, but I will!

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