Deep’s “not so evil” lair

Just figured out that I am a Nerd God!

After a long hiatus!!

Benita and I have been with T-Mobile for the last 4 years. We like T-Mobile. We have had a few issues with them just like you would in any relationship lasting over a few years. A couple of arguments with the Customer service but nothing major wanting us to switch though.

Lately I have been awed with the advent to faster mobile data services. T-mobile has lagged a bit in that area. Nowadays with Benita and I constantly on the move we sometimes feel that it would be quite cool to have a data plan and a phone which could be used for a few basic things such as get quick information from the internet and send out some quick emails.

I started looking into some plans and services.

• Verizon - great network reception, fast EVDO data service but on CDMA, hence uncool phones (unless you go for a Treo). But far more expensive than any other cellphone provider. Maybe justifiably so.
• Sprint - not so great reception, fast EVDO service again on CDMA, a-la Verizon but far cheaper. They also had the new Treo 700p that I like a lot.
• Cingular - GSM based service but I had heard of some major Customer service issues. And similar technology to T-Mobile. If I was going to stick to GSM, I’d rather stick with T-Mobile.

I narrowed my decision to sticking with T-Mobile who was willing to give us a small discount with a 2 year extension or Sprint with a 2 year contract with a much cheaper data plan and phones that would cost us twice as much as the ones that we liked in T-Mobile. No biggie.

I call up Sprint to have one simple question answered:

If I am on a family plan, then is my data plan shared as well or do I need to get a separate data plan on each phone?

I had to call them thrice, had to be put on hold twice and the third person answered my question without even flinching. I cannot believe that 2 reps could not answer a simple question such as this.

Sorry Sprint, you were looking great for a sec but I cannot deal with 2 years of crappy customer service.

T-Mobile is dead. Long live T-Mobile! We are getting 2 T-Mobile SDA’s for ourselves and hopefully 2 more years of decent customer service.

Well, I did look into the disappearing blog in blogger issue. Some if it does seem WP’s fault. I cannot fathom that WP can change the template but not store the existing one in a temp location and restore it.

The template was easy to restore though on blogger, minus any customizations. That would be the links in the sidebar in my case. No biggie. Can’t believe that any links that appear on a blogger blog in the side bar are supposed to be a part of your template. Very kludgey.

Anyways, I have added a hyperlink at the bottom of the page to the Get GNU/Linux project. I have been quite passionate about promoting and using Linux and other quality open source software the last few of years. I’d be happy if I can get just one person to switch.

This is really odd, I imported all my posts from blogger a couple of weeks ago. I went back to my blogger site and noticed that my blogger blog had been very sneakily replaced by a link to wordpress and a list of archives.

Some searching on the WP forums indicate that WP has to muck around with a template in order to import files and hence ends up wiping it out on the blogger site. I find that a little hard to believe. WP can alter the template and place a link to wordpress.org on my blogger blog but cannot restore a template that was existing before it started mucking around with the blog. Sounds like a whole bunch of crap to me.

I do like wordpress a lot. It has served my needs well but serioulsy if they insist on calling this a “feautre” instead of recognizing a bug and fixing it, I may be looking elsewhere pretty soon for my publishing needs (as long as I can export posts from here amd import them elsewhere)

Another one for the wall

Originally uploaded by MrTinkertrain101.

Rahul and Kiran were with us for a good week. It was quite a refreshing change for both Benita and me from our regular routines.

It’s back to the grind today!

One for the wall

Originally uploaded by MrTinkertrain101.

I love web services. Especially when they work seamlessly. I am trying to post this entry from Flickr.

This is a picture of Benita and me from our trip to Disneyworld Florida in Dec 2002.

If you can see this picture be rest assured I will love web services even more.

I finally have a website of my own.

Well I have had this domain name for a while but I have been trying to get a good Content Management Software going for a while. I tried Mambo for Benita’s website and found the default interface too cramped up and was too lazy to sort it out and clean things out.

I installed Wordpress today. It is not as feature rich as Mambo but does the job for me. It was quick and easy to set up.

DSC00250
Originally uploaded by MrTinkertrain101.

This is awesome!

Just posting an old picture of Benita and I to test out the new Picasa features.

Finally Google managed to get rid of the “Hello” dependancy.

Thanks GOOG!