Ice Cavern Studios

1. Cingular has got to go. My reception up and down the east coast sucked. Hard. Seriously, when traveling from DC to Boston, I should always have perfectly clear reception. And dropped calls? Oh hells no. But what did I have on my trip? The same crappy service I get here in all the time. How is this possible? It’s the most populated area of the country. My patience with Cingular is growing shorter and shorter.

2. The T’s new Charlie Ticket machines? They’re beginning to win me over. Today, in about 60 seconds, I was able to purchase my monthly commuter rail pass. Seriously, if I went up to the ticket window, it would take like three to four minutes. It was awesome. Now if only all of the stations would move to them and get rid of the half and half situation we have now. Consider this my partial endorsement of the new system.

3. Why are my computers choosing now to die? Can anyone explain this to me? My powerbook’s network adapter is broken and my dvd-rom drive stopped working. My Windows box has become a weee bit unstable and randomly crashes, not to mention that it doesn’t always boot. And my raid array is having trouble sending data across the wire, and I think the machine is just in it’s dying days. I mean, i know my youngest machine is 2 years, but man, this is just not a good time for this to happen. Or maybe it is. I get replacing everything at once will at least let me have a unified solution, but still. This sucks. I don’t think I can afford to go to Kumori-con now since I have to buy a lot of computer equipment. Awesome.

Gadgets, Technology

So when I was in Seattle, a lot of my friends were on my case about my cell phone. All I kept hearing was how bad Verizon and it’s CDMA phones were. Mind you, a bunch of my friends worked for Windows Mobile and at the time, Verizon didn’t have any smartphones running our stuff. So, after my phone finally gave up the ghost, I switched to AT&T/Cingular and got myself my handy dandy smartphone. All was good. I had great reception. My phone was awesome. I had better mobile internet than anyone around. Life was grand.

Fast forward a year and switch up the locations. Now I’m on the east coast, where apparently, Cingular doesn’t care about anyone. My reception is bad everywhere. My calls are always dropping, and my phone is slowly dying. I wouldn’t mind so much about the phone, but I’m now hooked on having a smartphone, and Cingular refuses to insure my phone. Thus, they want me to buy one in full.

And oh yeah, Verizon now has mobile broadband. Super.

So…I’m going to be leaving my carrier when my phone dies. Given how much it would cost to get a smartphone; it’s a better deal for me to break my plan with Cingular, pay the fee, get a new smartphone from Verizon (which they will insure) and be done with it. Plus, the rate plan is better and costs me less money.

And the phone is better. The only thing holding me back is my desire to try and save a bit of cash. Plus my smartphone currently works…err..85% works. But I can feel it dying, so in the next couple of months, my wireless life will improve. Booo-yah. I can kiss Cingular and it’s awful service good-bye.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited about one of devices failing. But that should tell you how much I hate Cingular service. Love the phone, hate the GSM carriers. Oh well.

….

So I’m trying to post this and Cingular has dropped my data call. Seriously, I have full bars, and they dropped my connection. This is so incredibly dumb. This always happens, I have good service and then… BAM…call is gone. This is exactly the reason I need to switch.

Gadgets, Technology

So I currently own a Audiovox SMT5600 smartphone, which, after this weekend I am totally impressed with. Mainly because it lives up to it\’s codename of Typhoon.

So Friday there was a moral event for all of MScom that took park at a local lake. Part of the event involved the riding of jet skis (which is awesome and everyone should try it). Unfortunately, on my last run out, I forgot to take my phone out of my pocket; so when I jumped off the jet ski, my phone was completely submerged in water. D\’oh.

When I pulled the device out of my pocket, it seemed completely dead. I couldn\’t turn it on or anything. After letting it dry for a bit, I tried once again to turn it on. Still nothing happened. One of my house mates, who works in the Windows CE group told me to just let it dry out all the way. Figuring he knew what he was talking about, I followed his advice.

And after 24 hours of drying, my phone operates as if nothing had happened. It\’s actually pretty remarkable. I was already impressed with the mobile Internet; the ability to sync up with my work email, and all of the cool little features offered by the platform. But the ability for the phone to survive having been entirely submerged in water is awesome.

The crazy part is, this isn\’t the first time it\’s been subjected to heavy water. While at Reunions back in Princeton, my phone was thoroughly drenched during the P-Rade monsoon. And it worked flawlessly still.

I guess they really knew what they were talking about when they dubbed it the Typhoon.

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