Wireless continued...

Wireless, continued….


Well, I ordered a phone off of cingular.com. It came in broken. ( I could hear but not talk.) It was a refurb, so I tried to send it back.

Couldn’t send it back via online, have to have it more than 15 days. Went to a cingular store, they said you gotta go to a corporate store. Went to the corporate store. He was going to do an in-store exchange until he saw what I paid for it (1/4 the price of a new one). SO, he gave me an 800 number to do the exchange (it’s 800-801-1101, in case you ever have a warranty repair). Hit send as I hit the door, THIRTY-SEVEN minutes later as I hit the door at the house, I am still waiting. Three minutes after I talk to dude on the phone, he transfers me to Some Chick.

This person was willing to help me, and got a new refurbished phone on the way. I had to pay for it, she SAYS they will take it off when they get the original phone back. I am smelling the wireless version of a cleaning deposit, but I want the damn phone, so I agree. Then, she (I thought) was making a list to return. She asks for the phone’s serial number, and the SIM card that came with it.

Then she says sweetly, “I’ve updated your SIM in the system.” After I scream, I tell her that she absolutely has to undo that. My old SIM has all my numbers in it. The new one is empty as the pit of my is stomach right now. There are like 150 numbers there. She says she’s fixed it, sends me a return label for my broken phone and peremptorily hangs up.

Whew. All ist goot, no?

HELL no.

The girlfriend and I go out for dinner. I glance down at my phone, and it says nothing. NOTHING. Dead in the water.

Much much much much later, a new SIM card and programming later, I get the phone I had prior to all of this crap sputtering back to life. Cingular tells me this is the way things are now, the old card is unusable forevermore. A couple of days later, still no phone in the mail.

Lesson learned?

You think that your phone is a convenience until you try to live a few days without it. Standing in line sucks, but being able to stand in line gracefully and patiently is both a blessing, and a good way to confuse those around you.  

ROOF!

Ah. Neat. I am using photobucket to add pics to my site. I like this picture. My neighbor had one of those big dogs. She was large enough that when I would come home, this nosy bastard would come along, and stick her head IN the car window. Flat footed.

 

My girlfriends' mother just got one of the little dogs. It could live in my shoe. It was trying to manhandle one of my shoelaces today like me trying to drag a fire hose. It's not the size of....the.....well.... you know. ;)

Photobucket

This is a test post from Photobucket.com

Can you hear me NOW??

Can you hear me NOW??????



I *just* ran out of my plan with my phone provider. Excited at the prospect of finding a much better, and better-fitting plan, I started doing some research.

Disappointed isn’t the word. However, to save others the legwork, I reproduce my results here, for you. Remember that they change all the time, and this was current today (23 January 2006, East Tennessee Market)…


I got ripped repeatedly. I had an excellent plan with US Cellular back in the late eighties / early nineties, because I was working for them part time as an equipment technician.

THEN, they sold my subscriber area (Roane County) to Eloqui Wireless. This made everything around me long distance, and caused me to roam when I left Kingston.

So, I went to a Nextel National Plan. Did I mention that Roane County is sort of near the National Time Zone Border?

I started getting a HUGE bill ¾ of the way into my contract. I hadn’t moved, and was doing most of my phoning from the home/office. After much sleuthing, I found this: There is only one tower that my phone could possibly reach. It is MILES from the time zone. However, the computer that keeps all the records (called a switch) is across the border, at the other end of the state.

So, with the incorrect setting of one flag, a time zone issue started. The SWITCH thinks that I get free nights and weekends at 9PM. Unfortunately, it is an hour behind, so when I think it is 9PM, the switch thinks I am starting at 8PM, and charges me anytime minutes.

Well, the phone itself gets time data from the tower, which gets time from the GPS receiver in the tower site.

I said all that to now say that the handset says 9PM, but the billing computer thinks it is 8 and charges the higher rate. And, they DON’T care. Even under threat of lawsuit, and a front page article in the local newspaper.

SO, I dumped them, and went with Cingular. A little bastard in the kiosk at Best Buy TOLD me I was getting a 1000 minute/free N&W/nationwide plan. No, I got a 500 minute plan, with 500 bonus minutes for signing up. Remember the cell commercial; “HappyholidayfromtheHendersons >click<”

Yeah, that’s me until nine o’clock. For TWO years.

Well, now, I finally get out of contract. Here is what I found. I currently pay about $48 a month (base, usually with a little overage) for 500 minutes.

Eloqui – waste of time. Check out their website, it looks like it was built by a high schooler. No, that’s disresprectful for a high schooler.
US Cellular – won’t sell to people in Roane County, and the helpful little girl said that if more than 50% of my calls were placed out of my home area, they would drop me. (800 minutes nationwide for $49 / 1200 for $69, btw)
Cricket – Doesn’t cover or work well out of Knoxville, they say. (Unlimited talk for $45 a month, btw)
Nextel – Who cares? I hope they roll up and die. Why would you ask? Momma says that Nextel is the preferred wireless choice of satan.
Sprint – 1000 minutes for $55, nationwide, unlimited N&W. All of the people I talked to were unhappy with Sprint service due to coverage, or billing issues.
Verizon – 900 minutes for $59.99 or 1350 for $79.99, nationwide. EXCELLENT coverage.
Cingular (sigh) – 900 minutes for $59.99, or 1350 for $79.99, nationwide, plus rollover.
T Mobile – online, said they didn’t offer service to my area. Wonder if they ‘piggyback’ off of USCC towers?

Remember that these are base prices. Like a fricken car lot, you gotta add tags and title (universal cost recovery charge, charge charge, whatever). A national plan keeps you from having to make EXTRA sure that you don’t start accidentally roaming (been there). And, if you want to send a lot of pics or text, that also is extra….

So, since a lot of people I know are on cingular, ESPECIALLY since they got swallowed by SBC/AT&T (calls to other subscribers in the network are free), I opted to stay with cingular. Coverage isn’t too bad. I did learn at Howard Forums why Nokia phones work so well, and most Motorolas have issues with Cingular – the tower site equipment is all nokia. They just ‘talk’ better to each other.

A word on pay-per-use plans (boost, t-mobile, go phone, tracphone). If you actually use the phone, these will cost you more in the long run. They are designed for people with zero credit, and no ability to get a credit card or checking account. Yes, those people exist.


OH – There is considerable buzz about cingulars’ push-to-talk system. Unlike the failed sprint system, this one may very well be a competitor to nexhell. Time will tell.

So, now we start pricing wireless cards for the notebook……….. ;)
-Shawn

impersonator gets NO attention

How come this didn’t receive more attention?

08/23/05 KCSO Arrests Phony Deputy
The Knox County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man posing as a Knox County Deputy Monday, August 22, 2005. Twenty-eight year old Jonathan O. Bowman of Oakland Road in Maynardville was charged with impersonation of a licensed professional and was given a $2,500 bond.  He was released at 11:30 Monday night after making bond.
Bowman is accused of pulling over a car with two people who had just left Cotton Eyed Joe’s Sunday, August 21st.    According to the witnesses in the car, Bowman flashed a badge and told the driver to stop. After pulling into the Baptist West parking lot on Parkside Drive, Bowman said he was a Knox County Deputy working undercover and made the people in the car perform a field sobriety test and threatened to take them to jail.  Another car with two friends of the victims pulled up, and Bowman made them take a field sobriety test as well and said they were all drunk except for one and she could drive them home.  A security guard at Baptist also witnessed the incident and said that Bowman identified himself as a deputy.  The victims also said that Bowman had a radio, a badge, and a weapon which he showed to them.  
After the victims were allowed to leave, they became suspicious and called 911 to report the incident. 
A special note: If you are approached by individual claiming to be an officer or undercover officer and you are suspicious, stop in a well-lighted area and ask the individual for identification.  If you have a cell phone, call 911 and ask if there is an officer by that name.
Posted By Media Relations on 08/23/05 at 09:49 AM
[img] http://www.knoxsheriff.org/mediapics/BOWMAN,JOHNATHAN_51517_03-21-1977_Front.jpg[/img]

Yes I said it...

Yes, I said it………..


The recent tragic events in West Virginia beg a question…… if 12 people were killed at the same time in a nuclear power plant, the outcry to stop ALL N-power production would be deafening.

Yet, there is no parallel for coal-fired plants. There isn’t even any outrage expressed by the anti-mining community.


Why is this?



-Shawn

All I heard was 666.......

All I heard was 666…

[quote]
Spallation Neutron Source Amazing Science Facts

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. Dec. 22, 2005 -- The New Year is bringing the science community a grand present: The Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. On schedule for completion in 2006, the Department of Energy's new science facility will provide researchers with the world's most powerful and most advanced tool for analyzing a host of materials with neutrons.

As they home in on the fruition of seven years of construction, SNS staff members have compiled the following list of SNS Amazing Science Facts to illustrate what's in store for the neutron science community once this state-of-the-art, world-class materials research facility starts up around mid-year. Read on and prepare to say "Wow."

Around the world: The energy of the SNS's proton beam, expressed in terms of voltage, is 1 billion electron volts. That is equivalent to 666 million 1.5-volt D-cell batteries joined end to end. Such a string of these batteries would nearly reach around the Earth!

Fast off the line: The proton beam accelerates through the linear accelerator (linac) from a standstill to approximately 90 percent of the speed of light in two microseconds!

Now that's cold: The SNS's linac takes advantage of superconducting
technology: Approximately two-thirds of the linac's total 1000 feet is at superconducting temperature, chilled with liquid helium to 2 degrees above absolute zero, or 2 Kelvin. How cold is that? By comparison, a December night-game spectator at the Green Bay Packers' Lambeau Field should dress to endure a comparatively toasty 275 Kelvin!

Flurry of punches: Following 1,060 turns around an accumulator ring, 150 trillion accelerated protons (150,000,000,000,000) strike the target in a pulse that lasts only one millionth of a second. These pulses strike the target 60 times per second!

Ouch: The pulses strike the target vessel at enough energy to release neutrons from atoms--neutrons that are then used for research. That energy is similar to a 200-pound block of steel hitting the vessel at 50 mph!

Over the horizon: The SNS requires the tuning of the beam lines to be so precise that the Earth's curvature was factored into the construction of the linear accelerator_a tiny but critical difference of 7 millimeters from one end of the 1,000-foot linac to the other!

Fine as frog's hair: All components on the SNS that comprise the accelerator and the target, independent of size, shape and weight, are installed to specifications within a mite-sized 2/10 of a millimeter!

Plugged in: Beam power in the linac is 1.4 megawatts, enough juice to power 1,400 homes. It will require 42 megawatts of electricity to generate those 1.4 megawatts of beam power. The total SNS electric bill will be, at current rates, $10 million a year, or enough power to serve a town of roughly 30,000!

Admiration from afar: The SNS will increase the number and intensity of neutrons for research by factors from 10- to 100-fold. So intense that, once the SNS is operational, no one will ever again enter the target bay. All maintenance operations inside the target--even changing light bulbs--will be performed remotely, with state-of-the-art robotic manipulators Because they have to be performed robotically, all anticipated remote operations inside the target facility, for the 40-year design life of the SNS, have been planned and practiced beforehand!

Thick as a brick: Shielding over the tunnel into the target facility "monolith" consists of 7 feet of steel and 2 feet of concrete. The target facility floor is 5 feet thick. There are 12 million pounds of steel shielding in the monolith alone, and 4 million pounds of concrete!

Chock full o'neutrons: The SNS is the first facility to use pure mercury as a target material. Why? The liquid mercury can be continuously circulated, thus dissipating the enormous heat and energy. Mercury is also rich in neutrons--the average mercury nucleus has 120 neutrons--and consequently, has a very large mass. The target's 20 tons of mercury is only one cubic meter in size!

Come together: Five Department of Energy Office of Science laboratories--Argonne, Berkeley, Brookhaven, Jefferson and Los Alamos--participated with Oak Ridge in the design of the SNS project.
The $1.4 billion Basic Energy Sciences project has been constructed on time and on budget with an excellent safety record.

But the most remarkable aspect of the SNS is the science that will be performed there in the years ahead. Researchers from the United States and abroad--an estimated 2,000 a year--are poised to come to the SNS to study materials that will form the basis for new technologies in telecommunications, manufacturing, transportation, information, biotechnology and health. This broad range of scientific impact will strengthen the nation_s economy, energy security and national security.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram laboratory managed for the Department of Energy by UT-Battelle.
[/quote]

-Shawn