It’s our little guy’s birthday today! The big 2. Isn’t he just the cutest little bug?

Happy birthday little buddy!

“Choo choo go!”

Okay… I’ve realized that continuing to comment each time Verizon or another telecommunication providers screwed something up would take up too much time and make my blog boring… Well, okay.. it’d take too much time… I’ve achieved boring already.

So, that said, Just keep an eye on Crunch Gear. They’re doing a pretty good job of covering the on going idiocy.

A brief quote from LifeHacker on the next version of Windows:

Microsoft says the next version of Windows - now known as “Windows 7″ - will ship in about 3 years.

So.. what? They’re going to call it… OS VII?

I can admit that I was wrong when I posted earlier about Sprint really wanting you to get an iPhone by canceling (I almost said laying off) people’s accounts for calling support too much. And let’s not forget canceling soldiers accounts for “excessive roaming” because they were stationed at an out of area base for two months.

No.. no I was mistaken. As you can see here in this Gizmodo article Verizon ALSO wants you to get an iPhone. And in reading the article you can see I’m not the only one who thinks so. Though I don’t know if I agree that T-Mobile hates the burden of your patronage. We’ll have to wait and see with them. But, Verizon are no angels to be sure. Terrible service and that blatant desire to crush Vonage doesn’t sit well with me.

Now… Through an amazing series of events ( or mind control ) AT&T are being handed the keys to the proverbial kingdom. Let’s see if they drop the ball on this one. All they have to do is provide adequate service and not screw the customers over. With these seemingly obvious (yet all too uncommon) business practices they could easily rise as the frothy creamy (all be it scummy) goodness at the top of the pond of cell providers.

And now… we wait.

Got your attention? =)

Ugg so I just got home.. 2:17 in the morning. Everyone else is sacked out but we’ve got “the book”.

Read the rest of this entry »

My father, on my recommendation of course, finally ordered himself a Mac Book Pro. After months of building and rebuilding the system in his shopping cart he finally clicked through to the finish when I gave him the high sign. He’s got a new Santa Rosa chipset MBP with the 17″ glossy high res screen and all the bells and whistles.

While he waited for his new machine to arrive he ran out and grabbed all sorts of accessories. One of which was this sweet bit of mousieness, the Logitech VX. He already had is new camera and he was ready to jump into the Apple world and Aperture.

So the MBP finally arrives we get everything setup… Firefox, adium, skype, etc etc etc. And then… Kernel Panic. Within the first 24 hours the system grays out on him and prompts him to reboot.

Now, my father isn’t the most patient. So needless to say he’s upset. But he reboots and keeps using it. Then it happens 2 more times over the next couple hours. ACK! Gives a call to Support and they tell him to just send it in.

(Time to shorten this up a bit)

So he packages up his new $3.5k machine and sends it back. He gets a new one. Sets it up and BAM! Kernel Panics again.

Drives it to the apple store… many miles away… to take it back and get his money… pissed now… They of course tell him they can’t take back an online order. But the manager offers him $200 to package it back up and send it back for another one. To keep the order alive. He’s pissed… says no.

After much hemming and hawing he comes around… sends the machine back with the thought that.. hell.. how could it happen 3 times?!

Gets the new machine… sets it up and…. (say it with me) Kernel Panic!!

At this point he’s achieved that kind of Zen.. that calm quiet that happens just before said zen master makes someones head explode with shear rage. Of course I’m scampering thing.. Jesus.. how is this possible? Gotta fix this.

This is awfully long perhaps I should just get to the point…. The mouse… it was the logitech drivers. For what ever reason… the drivers give OS X fits. Just google it and see.

So we removed the drivers - he went so far as restoring it to make sure they were completely gone - and he’s been running perfectly ever since. Still using the mouse. But without the drivers from Logitech. Phew…

In a way.. I’m glad this happened. Considering I’d been thinking about the same mouse. But anywho… if your Mac is freaking out and you have a logitech mouse, try removing the drivers and see if that takes care of the problem.

I’m not sure how deep the install goes. Not sure if the reimage/restore is needed or not.

I mean, seriously. What other reason could they possibly have for this sudden trend in dropping their own customers? It’s an especially dumb move in a time where I see sales people from those little mall kiosks with their big sad puppy dog eyes begging anyone who passes to sign up.

Obviously this is a dumb move even when they might hold all the cards. But now.. with lots of people wanting to get an iPhone but being locked into contracts.. it’s just insane. (Note: I read somewhere that 30% of the people buying iPhones that first week were taking the almost $200 hit to cancel their current service.)

Here are my conspiracy theories:

Either Sprint’s parent company (do they have one?) is setting Sprint up to be wiped out. Maybe a burning the house down for the insurance sort of move. Who the hell knows.

Or… perhaps they’re trying to set themselves up as an elitist company. Appealing to share holders and board members with their “Our shit is so hot we don’t need any customers not worth our time bringing us down.” attitude.

A favorite of mine… Steve Jobs has been testing out the newest innovation in Apple interfaces… mind control. Controlling your MacBook with your mind has been in the works for a long while (I’m sure). Starting as a project to address the complaints about the accessibility of the iPhone that they’d predicted long before shipping. This technology is rumored to actually harnesses the power of Jobs’ own reality distortion field (RDF). In testing Steve found that he can control much more than iTunes and is systematically causing each competing carrier to crush ITSELF. (Rumor: This mind control system might already be a hidden feature in the iPhone but is not currently bi-directional. As evidenced by the fact that YOU WANT AN IPHONE!)

Or… using Occam’s Razor… Those in power at Sprint have just simply gone loon-bats.

No matter what the reasoning… if you’ve got a Sprint account it’s time to start making constant calls to Sprint support from the remote wilderness of Alaska so you can truck on down the Apple store unbound from that annoying contract.

I’ll be interesting to see what comes of this unfathomable power play of Sprint’s.

I really wish I’d bought Apple Stock. Yeesh!

Hey guys. Been a little while. I’m cranking away on some Silverlight/Moonlight applications that I’ll be releasing here. A game and URL browser first. Then a few games after that. I’ll be sure to update when those are ready.

You know you want an iPhone. Heck.. even if you’ve got one.. you could always use another, right? I’m still saving up for mine but in the mean time I’m playing around with the demos at the Apple store. But I’m also listening to The Apple Phone Show to keep tabs on all things iPhone.

Take a look at their blog and give the show a listen. And drop me a comment with your thoughts on the iPhone.

Rev

I was having problems getting iTerm to work well with irssi.. specifically.. using the alt/option key to swap between tabs in irssi. Alt wasn’t doing it..even when set to Meta or +esc. So I dug around and found this in some comments to someones post about needing a new term app.

If you’re on a MacbookPro laptop, and using irssi with screen on a remote machine via ssh; heres what works (for me)

To switch between irssi windows (normally alt+1 etc.) - use;
Press Esc, let go - then press number, 1, 2 whatever

To pageup/pagedown - use this keyboard sequence (must be in this order)

Press (and hold) Shift-key, now Press and hold fn-key, now with these keys pressed (in that order) - press the pageup (arrow up) or pagedown (arrow down) keys to pageup/down

If your backspace key is acting as a ‘delete’-key in irssi in screen, Hit command+I, in terminal to bring up your window preferences, under the Keyboard settings, tick ‘Delete key sends backspace’ - that should fix that.

So, slightly more tricky on the laptop, but achievable none-the-less

Matt

Thanks, Matt

Who ever you are.