T-Mobile Smartphone Cheap Internet

Okay, I have a Windows Mobile Smartphone.  I want to get internet and email on my phone.  I don't want to pay $20 every month to do this.

It is possible to do it with the old $5.99 internet plan.  Here's what I had to do:

WARNING – This requires messing around with configuration files on your phone.  You can render your data connections useless if you do it wrong.

That said, I haven’t had any problems with this method.

Get the $5.99 internet plan on the account.  This required changing my phone on my.tmobile.com to something other than a smartphone.  I used a V3 Razr, as that's the phone I used to have. -Note that it may take 24 hours for this to go active on your account.

Delete all connections and proxies set up on the smartphone.

Install the cab from this page: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=395203. Get the tmobyjoe599.cab file, not any of the others.

Reboot the phone, and tada, your connection is active!

Now you can set up to sync with Exchange, surf with PIE, and do all kinds of stuff.  Please note that Hotmail and Windows Live will not work.  Some other applications can have their proxy/connection settings set manually to get them to work.

Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, so your mileage may vary.  If it doesn’t work, try rebooting your phone.  If it really doesn’t work, try deleting all your proxy settings and reinstalling the cab file.  If you totally screw everything up, you can always hard reset :)

Ubuntu Stuff

I recently took the jump and installed Ubuntu linux (Hardy Heron, specifically) on my work laptop.  Here's some of my thoughts:

  • The install was super easy. I had left some unpartitioned space on my hard drive after installing Vista, so I just had Ubuntu use that space.  Apart from that, everything was really simple.  Gone are the days of having to tweak the bootloader install location, manually screw with the grub.conf to get it to see the windows installs, etc.  The installation was easier and faster than any Windows install I've ever done.
  • Ubuntu looks nice.  It's been a couple of years since I've played with any flavor of Linux, but the Gnome desktop is configured out of the box for clean, simple, operation.  I'm not a fan of the brown, but that's just me and that's easily changed.
  • Sun's VirtualBox is some nice virtualization software.  As a developer, it's nice to be able to start and stop multiple machines with different configurations with ease.  Added plus: when Windows crashes, it doesn't take everything else with it.  And I can save a safe snapshot of the machine config to combat the "oh crap I screwed everything up now what do I do" problems.
  • There is no great media player.  Everything I looked at is okay, but sub-par compared to iTunes and WMP.  BMPx looks like one of the better contenders, but I can't get it working right now.
  • Firefox and Flash make for a volatile combination.  I get crashes all the time.
  • No good native Microsoft Exchange client exists for Linux.  If you don't use Exchange there's a plethora of solutions (a plethora, jefe?) but otherwise you're out of luck.

So, bottom line, I like Ubuntu.  I'll probably continue using it for now, especially since I can use VirtualBox to run Visual Studio, NetMeeting, Outlook, and all the other windows-specific crap that my company hasn't gotten away from.

This Blog's Not Dead!

Okay, just a quick placeholder post, because I have to run off to a meeting. But I'm not dead!

It's been a busy month or so for me, both at work and at home. If you know me, I'll tell you about it sometime.

Anyway, there's more to come, stay tuned...

Clean Up, Clean Up!

I have gotten lax in my cleaning routine on my PC.  Take a look at my downloads folder:

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I’ve got multiple versions of installers in there, old stuff that I don’t use and need to archive, just a general mess.  My downloads folder ends up looking like the area under my bed when I was a kid.  I would take a book to bed and read it, and then it would get pushed under the bed by the next book that I brought along.  After a few weeks (or months) I would notice that I was missing a book I wanted to read and I would need to clean out the literary mulch pile that I had been working on.

The same thing happens with my Downloads folder.  Part of this I attribute to the default behavior of Firefox, which always saves files to a default location.  IE at least gives you a button marked “save as” for saving in a non-default location.  So with FF3 I download something, open it from the downloads window in FF, and forget that it even existed.  133 Items, what are they?

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Unfortunately the same thing pretty much happens to my email inbox.  This in only a couple of weeks of detritus, and I delete most irrelevant stuff.

So, for the rest of the day, I will not rest until my inbox and downloads folder are clean!  Can I do it in under two hours (so I can get home on time)?  I’ll post an update on Twitter so you can find out.

 

[edit] – I found the setting in FF that prompts for a saving location when you download something.  Looks like i just needed a little RTFM medicine!

Sweet Sounds

I work in a cube farm.  I think this is one of the most annoying half-measures foisted upon us by our corporate overlords.  behold the sight that greets me when I stand up in my cube:

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Now don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy having some personal space and some privacy, but in a cube farm you only get the illusion of space and privacy.  It reminds me of a description I once heard:

“Having the appearance of [personal space and privacy], but lacking the power thereof.”

That’s the problem.  I have somewhere to sit, somewhere to hang up pictures, somewhere to store all my junk, but no real privacy.  I have no door; people can walk in and bother me at will.  I have no (real) walls or ceiling; I hear everything that happens around me with astounding clarity. Even my boss doesn’t have an office, so when we need to have a “real conversation” we need to go find an empty conference room so we aren’t overheard.

Give me an office.  Or at least let me hope for one someday.  There are engineers/managers/directors here that are pretty senior that are still in cubicles.  Granted, they are big cubicles, but that doesn’t solve my problems.  I’d rather have a smaller office that I can close the door and shut out the outside world with all its distractions.  Somewhere that I can paint the walls and hang some real pictures.  Somewhere that I can play some music, albeit not very loudly.

So this brings me to my temporary imperfect solution: I use a white noise machine.

Okay, okay, technically it’s not white noise, per se.  It’s an environmental sound generator.  And it’s not a machine, it’s a computer program.  I like the sound of the ocean breeze along with some light surf.  Since using it, my cube has become a much more enjoyable place.  It feels like coming home (kind of).

Here’s the linkage, freeware, works with XP and Vista:

http://www.relaxingsoftware.com/atmdeluxehome.htm

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Twitter me This, Twitter me That…

I am a Twitter user.  If you want to follow me, go here.

Twitter is kind of a fun little thing.  Posts have to be less than or equal to 140 characters, about the size of an SMS message.  That’s nice, because Twitter is designed to be updated from anywhere, SMS, email, IM, web, etc.

I’m a cheapskate and don’t want to pay for an SMS plan, so I update twitter on the web, either from my desktop or my phone.

Just be careful not to follow too many people or the SNR will become unmanageable.

Proof of Life

Over the weekend I was chided for not updating in a loooong time, so this post is to let everyone know that I'm still alive.

My excuse for not posting is that I have been very busy both at work and at home.  The project that I'm working on at work has been a serious effort, what some of us around here would call a "death march" effort.  It started out as a quick eight week project that turned into a protracted effort that involved misunderstandings in scope and complexity, trying to design to hit a moving target, failed partnerships with external companies, and serious intra-team conflict.  (Please not that the previous list is nowhere near all-inclusive of the difficulties this project experienced)  By the end of the day, the last thing I wanted to do was sit down and write on a computer.  I thought I needed something more mind-numbing than that.

I was wrong.

It turns out that man is made to work.  Work is like exercise for your productivity muscles.  By doing, one further increases his capacity for doing more.

At any rate, I'm still here and I'll be posting more often now.  If nothing else, writing helps me to focus my thoughts and gives me a good pause in my thought cycles.  Sometimes that's just the thing to break the blahs or the non-productivity loops I get stuck in.

Understanding Nerds

I ran into a really great blog the other day: Rands In Repose.  He's got a great couple of articles (written a few months ago) about nerds.  Specifically The Nerd Handbook and N.A.D.D..

We'll start with The Nerd Handbook.  Written as a nerd-oriented "Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus," this post is actually quite accurate in describing my relationship with the world.  (Note to Suzanne: read the part about Your nerd has built an annoyingly efficient relevancy engine in his head, it might explain some of my apparent forgetfulness... my relevancy engine just needs some tweaking)

N.A.D.D. is all about the ADD-esque disorder that most nerds are afflicted with.  I don't think my case is quite as advance as Rands describes (I only have seven open windows on my two monitors) but the underpinnings are definitely there.

If you can bear/ignore some gratuitous language, Rands has quite a few good articles about management, work relationships (the professional kind, not the personal kind), the work environment (or cave), and so forth.

Why Windows 7 Will Win (and lose)

I thought this was an interesting post at thebetaguy.com.  To quote the interesting stuff:

"...Windows 7 will be a from-the-ground-up packaging of the Windows codebase; partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows. Making the break from backwards compatibility is a dangerous proposal but a dream for software developers. Performance of native applications can be increased, distribution sizes can be cut down, functionality can be added without the worry of breaking old applications, and the overall end-user experience can be significantly improved.

However, Windows' lure has always been that applications from older versions of Windows are almost guaranteed to work post-upgrade..."

This is exactly what Microsoft needs to do, from a technical standpoint.  From a financial/business standpoint, it may not work out so well.  In the long run, however, continuing down the backwards-compatibility path will only further harm their performance in future versions.

Sometimes the medicine hurts worse than the sickness.  On the other hand, Apple did it right back in 2000, so why not?

Don't Make Me Stop This Fish Tank!

I like fish.  My parents had a large aquarium as I was growing up and I always enjoyed watching the fish.  As I remember, we had a few neon tetra's, some tiger barbs, an angelfish or two, and a kuhli loach.  There was a brief (and disastrous) flirtation with a small brood of fiddler crabs, but they always ended up getting out.  We found one in the toilet once.  It was amazing that it made it that far!

But I digress....

I have a betta that I have had for a little over 18 months.  A couple of months ago I decided it would be good to bring him to work and make a "proper home" for him: I bought a real aquarium.  It isn't anything fancy, just a five-gallon hexagonal aquarium with a small filter and a cover with a light.  I'm sure to Sammy (the fish) it seems like moving up from a shack to the penthouse suite.  He is definitely a lot more active than he ever was in his cold little fishbowl.

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-Sammy in his natural environment (sorry for the reflections)

Problem: the tank grows algae and the rocks are dirty with uneaten food.

Solution: Get a snail (for the algae) and a frog (for the uneaten food).  Problem solved!

So a funny thing happened today in the tank.  The snail (as yet unnamed) has been quite listless since I got him a couple of days ago.  I was beginning to wonder if Frogger (the frog, duh) had killed him, as he likes to poke at him whenever he comes out of his shell.  So the snail was kind of half hanging out of his shell and Frogger decided to come over and poke his head in between the snail and his shell.

Big mistake.

The snail is still very much alive and decided it did not appreciate the intrusion.  He sucked down back inside his shell in a very fast manner.

Problem: Frogger's head was still inside the shell!

So now the frog is thrashing around like mad trying to get this shell and snail off his head.  He thrashed all around the tank and finally succeeded in detaching the unwanted snail appendage from his snout.  I thought he might be dead after all that.

Rest assured he is not, he still swims around like normal, but he has good reason to be afraid of the snail now.  I need to think of a tough name for the snail, he's shown himself to be no pansy!

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Good Picture

Here's a good picture.

My corner of the cube farm

I enjoy having my own space.  This is the entrance to my cube at Cypress.  The silver nameplate is the standard nameplate for the Boise office, but I maintained possession of my nameplate when I left Micron, so that's the blue one.  (I don't think they have to worry about any other Cameron Stewart's coming to work for them anytime soon).

The CASS on my nameplate is/are my "Cypress Initials" or TLA (Three Letter Acronym).  Mine is actually a "FLA" because they started to run out of TLA's to hand out (They could have just given me "CAM").  FLA's are becoming more common here.  My TLA is my email address (TLA@cypress_dot_com).

Clippy FTW

Like most longtime Microsoft Office users, I have accumulated a large amount of loathing and hate for Clippy, the annoying, not very helpful Office Assistant in versions of office from 97 to 2003.  I usually just hid the assistant until later versions disabled him by default.

I saw this picture on icanhascheezburger.com and thought it was hilarious.

Humorous Pictures

I Work Saturdays...

...sometimes.

Suzanne and I have this thing going where she works every other Friday.  I take the Fridays off when she works so I can watch the boys while she's gone.  Then I go in to work the next day (Saturday) to make up for it.  That way she can work to keep herself involved in her career and I don't have to take all my vacation time to make up for it (or pay for some sort of day-care service).

It's important to me that Suzanne can work.  She's a physical therapist and needs to be involved in order to stay current in her field.  As committed as we are that she should be a stay-at-home mom and I will be the supporter, I don't want to deny her the enjoyment of exercising the knowledge and skills she has acquired.

At any rate, I don't mind working Saturdays.  It's actually quite nice!  Some of the perks:

  1. No rush to get in for meetings or anything (although I'm usually here before 8:00 anyway).
  2. No-traffic commuting.
  3. Not may people at the office to bother/distract me (I get a lot done).

The only con I have found so far is that I have one less day to spend with Suzanne and the boys together.  Well, really it's one less day with Suzanne since I get to be with the boys all day Friday.

And it's hard to be at work on a Saturday when it looks really nice outside (sigh).

The Turkey Test

I just read a great piece on Jeff Moser's blog entitled "Does Your Code Pass the Turkey Test?"  It's a great piece for any software developer writing any kind of UsWare or ThemWare.  (MeWare developers are assumed to write code that works in their own localization with some degree of proficiency.  If not, you might want to think about finding another profession!)

Basically, if your code is going to be used by anybody else, ensure that it will be usable by people in other localizations.  Jeff just happens to focus on Turkey because of some unique peculiarities that exist there.

Read his post.  It's worth it.

A Little Programming

I use Visual Studio here at work.  One of the projects I'm working on right now is done completely in C#, which is an easy language for me to work in.  I minored in Computer Science at BSU, and most of the classes they teach there are in Java, especially the lower-division classes.  This works out well because Java lets you focus on all the theoretical/academic features of computing without really having to worry about the technical details of a language.  Data structures, algorithms, they go down real easy with Java.

I'm also working on a project that's written in C++.  This is a little more difficult for me because I hadn't done any C++ coding before starting on this project.

That's right, not one line.

It's kind of a jarring transition from user-friendly, object-centric Java to power-user, uber-language C++.  I had done some embedded C programming, which helps with some of the very basics, but that did nothing to prepare me for Windows Application programming in C++.

Message pumps?  Thread safety?  Templates?

I have a coworker who asked me (in reference to another coworker) the following:

"Don't they teach threading in school?  I don't think (this other guy) understands what that means."

My reply was that they don't teach it, at least not in the classes I took.  Granted, my CS education is nothing near comprehensive.  I don't know what goes on in such lofty classes as Operating Systems or Theory of Computation.  My experience is limited to the practical, EE-centered subjects of Computer Architecture and Microprocessors.  Much more hardware-oriented than the CS subjects, but that gives me a good understanding of what actually happens in a device.  This is especially important when programming for a microcontroller, where resources are limited.

So I struggle with C++.  C#, no problem, I look forward to future C# projects.  I've got my C++ Bible, The C++ Programming Language by Stroustrup, and I read it daily.  I'm sure my skills will improve as I continue to learn and use C++ more.

Anyway, I use Visual Studio 2008.  Here's my setup.  I've found that I like light text on a dark background.  I use the Ragnarok Blue color scheme from this page.  It's easier on the eyes, but I found I had to make the font size smaller.

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Tools I can't live (or work) without

There are some things that I have installed that I have to have now.  Let me enlighten you about my environment.  Step into my digital world:

The Machine:

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I use Vista on a Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad T60.  A lot of people dog Vista (at work here, anyway).  I am willing to live with its shortcomings in order to put up with the benefits.

The Desktop:

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I like my desktop clean and uncluttered.  No icons, no folders, no shortcuts, just some sidebar gadgets placed on the desktop.  You may notice that I have some tabs at the top of the left monitor, I'll get to that later.  Yes, that is a Mac wallpaper.  I use Display Fusion to make the wallpaper span both monitors, because I think that looks cleaner.  My desktop is quiet place, a serene place.

The Tabs:

The tabs are part of Object Desktop's ObjectDock Plus.  I use two docks, a tabbed one at the top and a hiding launcher at the bottom:

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The tabbed dock at the top is fully customizable, you can add whatever tabs and whichever shortcuts you want.  They make starting commonly-used programs a breeze and add some nice eye candy.

The Switcher:

I use Bao's Switcher for Vista Aero a lot.  I find it much easier to use on multiple monitors and with many windows than the standard taskbar that ships with Vista:

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Boom! Iconified, tiled windows!  It puts each application on the monitor it is open on.  I have been looking for this on a PC for quite some time now. 

The Music:

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I use iTunes.  It's medeocre, as far as media players go, but it supports my iPod Touch, so I live with it.  I wish there was some way I import song data like I can with the competition's product.

In an effort to easify things...

I found this this tool on Scott Hanselman's Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows (that sounds like the latest ATHF movie title).  So I am posting this post from Windows Live Writer, and I want to see if it works well.  I like Blogger better than Wordpress, even though I was initially swayed by Word 2007's better native support for Wordpress (it couldn't post images to Blogger).

At any rate, the Windows Live Writer looks nice, and uses a familiar Vista-ish interface:

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Now there's a paradox for you...

First Post

Welcome to my blog! This will be my place for nerdly observances and information for me. So think of it as a window into my life, and stop by from time to time to see what's going on.