Deep’s “not so evil” lair

The tourist with her gracious hosts

Originally uploaded by MrTinkertrain101.
Thought I should post something from the London trip. Rahul and Kiran were the most gracious hosts. Thank you both.

Halke Halke maze…

Always such a pleasure to spend time with Dinu, I was in St. Charles IL for some training and spent the weekend with Dinu a.k.a. Daka in Bloomington IL.

Another diving humpback

Originally uploaded by MrTinkertrain101.
Here are some of our pictures from our whale trip last month. I also took some videos that I plan to upload to youtube or google video sometime soon. Needless to say, we thoroughly enjoyed the trip! My first time looking at any kind of baleen whales. We saw about 12 to 15 humpback whales, 2 finback whales, 2 Minke whales and even a 30 foot basking shark!

Now that I have been using my new T-mobile SDA for a while, I have been pretty pleased with it on occasions. It is a decent phone with a plethora of features. Lots of software available for download. Good predictive text features. It is a decent phone with a plethora of features. Lots of software available for download. Good predictive text features.
It does serve my basic needs of a phone that can check email and browse the web for some quick stuff. It has already come in handy a couple of times.

• I was able to check my email on my way to work when I was running late and was able to call the sender back with answers to his queries. He would have had to wait for me to come in if I did not have the phone
• Benita has been able to chat with my parents online while we were driving to our whale trip near Boston.
• I usually take pictures and forget to email them to other people, having a phone handy helps. I took a picture of my friend Nishant at Times Square and emailed it to him from Times Square! How cool!
• It helped Benita and me get driving directions when we were lost in Queens trying to get to the US Open.
• I have been able to watch the BBC news, check my gmail account, read engadget while waiting in line for tickets at the US Open.

Now the bad:

• Windows mobile sucks sucks sucks!!!
  • I have had to deal with multiple hangs and reboots/resets.
  • The only way to close out apps is via the task manager.
  • The phone went into “hang mode” one night and my alarm never rang!
• Camera quality sucks but I did not buy this phone for it’s picture taking abilities. But a better camera would have been kinda cool.

All in all it is a decent phone with many features. It is not a PDA-phone but definitely a phone with some PDA features which seems to suffice my needs for the time being.

hoping to catch some action

What started as a rainy day is looking bright and sunny now.

We decided to go whale watching on what seemed like a very gloomy day. Hoping that even if we do not get to see any, we’d still enjoy a great drive.

Nishant visited NYC last week. I took this picture with my new phone and posted this entry using the same phone.

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.