Mitch Scoggins' Weblog

Two blog posts in one day, I think I deserve some kinda award.

So, T-Mobile sucks.  All two of you who read this have heard me whine on at length about AT&T and how much they suck; well – while T-Mobile sucks somewhat less, they still suck.

About 6 months ago I went shopping for cellphone service that had no contractual obligation.  I ignored AT&T and checked with Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile.  There’s definitely some kind of price fixing going all, since they were all in the same range, though each had some gimmick they tried to say distinguished them from the pack.  Maybe it was 50 extra minutes, or roll-over minutes, or some other silliness; but they all came out at $60/month.  I am a state employee and they each offered some percentage discount for my being that, but it made no substantial difference.  I ended up going with T-Mobile since I’d read a survey that said they had the best customer service (but this was not my experience).

I bought a phone and argued the salesman past selling me on a contract plan.  Only after I convinced him that I was not going to buy a contract from him did he reveal that contract plans cost $10 per month more than month-by-month plans anyway.  What a rip-off.  For a 2-year contract they charge you an extra $240 for your “free” phone.  I shoulda assumed at that point that something else was hidden.

They guy took a copy of my state ID, and I was supposed to get 12% off my monthly bill – though he did tell me it would take a month or two to kick in, but I would receive full credit.  On my fifth bill (yeah, I’m slow) I noticed that I was still getting charged the full rate, with no discounts.  This weekend I went into the T-Mobile store in Nampa, ID and asked them to please fix the bill and credit me for the past months of service.  After some checking they declared that there was no discount on the month-to-month plan, since it was so cheap anyway.  At that point I told them to cancel my account.  After he fled for a 5-minute meeting with the manager, the salesman came back to tell me that he really wished I would stay with T-Mobile, and could I not recognize that I was getting such a good deal?  I didn’t respond and stared at him until he became uncomfortable.

He told me that he was not able to close an account, but that I would have to call customer service to cancel.  I did.  The interesting thing was, after a few minutes with customer service on the phone – once they realized that I really was going to cancel, I was told that if I would hold on for two minutes that they might be able to override my plan details to give me the discount from now on.  I declined.  I do not give rip-off companies a second chance.  So, forget the phone number you have for me.

I am running out of options.  I hate AT&T and now T-Mobile is on the don’t-buy list.  I’m not a huge fan of Verizion, though they are not completely off the list, and Sprint will not sell month-to-month plans.  So, now I am carrying a pay-as-you-go cellphone, and I am thinking I might kind of like that.  One of the down sides is that the actual phones are really cheap since they are essentially disposable.  The first one I got goes into sleep mode and will not wake up, from time to time, until I remove and replace the battery.  I am working with TracFone tech support on the issue.  I would just go exchange it, but I want to make sure my minutes move over to a new phone.

Anyway, long story short (too late), watch our for AT&T because both the phone service and their customer services sucks.  And now watch out for T-Mobile though their service and customer service seems ok, they have no hesitation about lying about their deals and costs.

Happy early birthday for me Thanks to Kevin I am now rockin’ 4 gigs of RAM in my computer, and have a NAS box.

I wouldn’t typically need 4 gigs of RAM, my Windows XP OS won’t even address that much (since it’s 32-bit), but when I am running my VirtualBox on Linux I need more memory since I am essentially running two operating systems simultaneously.  Also, my Ubuntu install is 64-bit so if I am running memory intensive apps (like GIMP), it’s nice to have the extra.

What’s way cool though, is the Network Addressable Storage box.  I’m going to drop two 1.5 terabyte drives into it in “standard” mode.  It will also do RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD; but I don’t need speed so no RAID 0, I don’t need redundancy so no RAID 1, and I actually want two visible partitions (one for Amy and one for me) so no JBOD.  Three terabytes of extra space is cool in and of itself, but this NAS does a lot more that that.  It’s really got a little firmware computer inside of it which allows it to (even when all the PCs in the house are off); 1) serve media to any streaming media device in the house, 2) run BitTorrent both up and down, 3) run a secure FTP client that let’s anyone with a password access the files from anywhere in the world, 4)preform scheduled downloads from any web or FTP site, 5) send email to announce any changes in it’s status (e.g. power failure and self shut-down).  And, when the PCs in the house are on – and providing that they have backup software installed – preform automatic backups of our hard drives.  Since the SATA drives are removable/replaceable, I can up the storage on this box as super-huge drives get cheaper.  I can also install different disks for different projects, such as having all my home video raw footage on one hard drive, and sticking that drive in when I want to edit video.

I still have to get the drives to put in the NAS box, but I plan to have a lot of fun with this in the coming weeks.  I just hope I can get the security on the secure FTP server locked down really tight.  I’ll probably need to keep my eye open for firmware patches to make sure I’m protected from known exploits.  It does allow me to create users and groups and allow different people access to only certain parts of the drive.  I’ll probably only set up one little folder that’s accessible from outside our firewall, and not keep anything important on it.

For the past few weeks I’ve been playing chicken with Microsoft Windows.  I blinked first.  The problem is, simply, I can’t get Civilization III working in either WINE or VirtualBox.  After reading many blog posts and fora, I discovered that even people who know what they’re doing in Linux (which I do not) can’t get Civ3 to work.  The general recommendation is a Windows XP install just for that game.  And, since Civ3 is the greatest game ever to grace a computer, I put a Windows installation back on my computer.

I actually put in on an old IDE 200G HD I had in a drawer, with my Master Boot Record on one of my SATA drives.  So now, if I want to banish Windows for a while (or forever if anyone can get the game working on Linux), all I have to do is yank the cable out.

So, back to William Gibson, as I go from time to time. I’ve been reading Spook Country and, while reminiscent of Pattern Recognition in many ways (mostly good ways), it’s been a good read. A character in the book, Milgrim, makes the statement (a non sequitur really) “A nation consists of laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual’s morals are situational, that individual is without morals. If a nation’s laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn’t a nation.” I tried Googling the quote, thinking Milgrim was channeling someone else, but it turns out that it’s pure Gibson.

Reading that passage brought immediately to mind the rather heroic stance that Senator Russ Feingold took on the 25^th of October 2001, where he alone had the courage to vote against the “Patriot Act” in the Senate. If you’re bored sometime, you can read the statement he made when it was his turn to speak.

During the nine years following the Patriot Act (and the events that led up to it), so many politicians and political appointees have used situational ethics to justify their actions, and sadly, people have accepted their excuses. “If a nation’s laws are situational, that nation has no laws . . .” William Gibson really cuts to the root of the discussion, and in four sentences renders invalid the claims of Bush (jr), Cheney (that rabidly paranoid psychopath), Obama (yes, the Donkeys are as bad as the Elephants), Tenent, Ashcroft, and the list goes on to include every legislator who voted for the Patriot Act, and for FISA, and and and (ad nauseam). (Edit: How could I have forgotten to add the head of the U.S. Gestapo, Napolitano, to this list?  Now there’s an agency that cries wolf thirteen times before breakfast).

Over the last few months I read John Twelve Hawks The Traveler trilogy, and it was incredible. I’m delighted to find a similar (though more subtle) theme in Spook Country.

After looking for a couple months, we bought a “new” piece of furniture today – scare quotes around the “new” since it was really used off Craigslist. The price was right so we went to see it, then bought it. We paid a little extra and the seller hauled it to our house in his trailer. We spent almost all day with Old English wood oil cleaning it up. We also removed all the hardware (brass) and Brassoed the hell out of it (yes, I did just verb Brasso; you’re welcome).

And here’s the finished piece in our dining area (I hesitate to dignify the space with the appellation “room”).

After giving the oils a day to soak in, and after a getting a small angle iron to fastening the thing to the wall, we’ll fill it up with stuff. We’re looking forward to having some extra space in our low-on-space kitchen. Until now we’ve had a grand total of four drawers in our whole kitchen.  We now have 10; sweet.

Wasn’t planning anything in particular for the day, so it was nice to have a project pop up. Not a bad find for $150 (incl. delivery). Craigslist is da bomb.

We went to the Canyon County Fair today, kinda small (ok, really small) but it had bunnies, and pygmy goats.  There were not nearly as many bunnies as they will have at the Western Idaho Fair next month, but enough for a weekend fix.  We got in when it opened (11am), but it was already pretty warm.  The poor lil bunny tent wasn’t air conditioned so they were breathing kinda fast.  We went to the pygmy goat shed after that, that was fun too.  We also saw some huge cows and some baby pigs.  The mother of one of Amy’s co-workers won a blue ribbon for a quilt, and we got to see that too.

Anyway, we had fun and we’re home now.  Looking forward to the big fair next month (lots more bunnies).

I’ve gotten tired of having to boot back and forth between my Linux and Windows partitions.  I only use Windows (XP) to run Quicken (2000) and for games, but that does mean I’m booting back and forth 3-4 times per week.  Nick mentioned VirtualBox to me some time ago, and one of the IT guys where I work was telling me about it also; I figured I’d give it a try.  Turns out VirtualBox is awesome.  Linux is now the only partition on my OS drive (I use a separate HD for data) and when I need Windows I run it in a window on my Linux desktop.  When I added Sun’s VirtualBox Guest Additions to the install, it became even more awesome.

Setup and option-setting was easy and painless.  I did end up reinstalling Linux since I wanted to resize the root partition to eat up all the space Windows was using before.  I tried to boot up using pMagic 5.1 and resize the partition that way, but the program – neato as it is – would only let me make the partition smaller, not bigger.  So I used the export function within VirtualBox to backup my Windows install to my data drive, then just reinstalled Ubuntu (10.04), it’s fast.  Then I just restored the Windows VB and tada.  I’ve saved my Windows VB backup to a thumb drive (it’s only 3.3 GB) so now I have a “ghost” of my clean Windows install that I can load up if my virtual Windows machine ever goes screwy which Windows will do from time to time.

I have decided that I need a bit more RAM in my machine in order to handle multiple OSes running simultaneously, so I’ve added some to my Amazon wishlist (birthday present hint).  Since VirtualBox can virtualize a host of OSes, I may play around with a few others just to see what they’re like.  I did try to install Windows 98 so I could pay some old games with it, but there are no Win98 drivers for a lot of my hardware, so it didn’t work well.  I just deleted it.

We’re 69 minutes into the final match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and so far there have been eight yellow cards; I’m guessing that’s some kind of record for a final match.  After the 3rd/4th place match with no cards at all, this one is just plain ugly.  But, with the game being tied (goalless) and both teams going for their country’s first ever win, I guess the stakes are pretty high.

76′ still goalless, looks like E.A.T. might be in the cards.  That would be fine.  But I really hope this doesn’t come down to penalties like the 1994 Brazil/Italy game.  I know someone had to win, but that was just sad.

According to some news outlets, this game is expected to be the most watched event in human history.  They are expecting something like 700 million viewers, that’s more than 1 out of every 10 people on the planet.  Compare that to the ~100m viewers for the American football Superbowl.

83′ another yellow card, this one for mouthing-off to the ref   Silly players.  Never in the history of football has anything good come from arguing with the ref, but the players still do it – every game.  Still goalless.  Looks like added time’s on the way.

30 seconds plus stoppage time left….  3 minutes of stoppage this time.  Letting us know how much stoppage time there will be is actually new for this World Cup.  In the past the viewers and players were not told how much time would be added, but I think it’s better for them just to announce it.

90′ +3  Extra Added Time it is.  Two more 15 minutes halves.  There’ve been only three substitutions this game out of the possible six.  I think the coaches kinda expected the E.A.T. and were holding the fresh players for that. I can only imagine that this is the broadcasters’ wet dream, since they get to sell that much more advertising.

105′ (first half) of E.A.T. and still goalless. Yikes. Only 15 minutes left and then penalties. The pace of the game is picking up though; I don’t think the players want it to come down to a penalty shoot-out either.

108′ another yellow card (10th this game), and the first red. Holland is now playing a man down. 12 more minutes, then penalties.

111′ 11th yellow card. Three for Spain and eight for Holland.

116′ Spain, finally, makes a goal. No penalty shoot-out it seems. And another yellow card for one of the Dutch players for haranguing the ref.  And another for the Spanish goal scorer for taking off his shirt.  That’s 13.

120′ yet another yellow.  14.

And that’s game.  Congrats to Spain for their first-ever win.

Wow, who’da thunk it?  It’s Spain v. The Netherlands in the final for the FIFA World Cup.  Neither of these countries has ever won the Cup, and Spain has never even made it to the final game (The Netherlands has twice, but not since the ‘70s).  This match-up is way off my prediction of the final being Brazil v. Germany, but Holland beat Brazil (quarter final) and Spain beat Germany (semi final) to get here.

At this point I really don’t care who wins on Sunday, since either way we get an all new world champion.  I just hope it’s a good clean game.  This last semi final, the Spain/Germany one, was nice and clean.  Not a single card, red or yellow, in the whole game.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.

So, Uruguay beat Ghana today – and they shouldn’t have.  Ghana got a penalty shot in the last 2 seconds of the game (E.A.T.) and that should have ended it, but Gyan missed @&#*&%$^&#%.

Ghana lost in the penalty shoot-out.  That Uruguayan (is that the adjective?) goalie is some kinda good.  So, the last African country is out of the World Cup .  So, who to support now?  Since Holland has never won the World Cup, and since they unexpectedly beat Brazil today, I think I’ll start pulling for them.  Go Holland!