tsuehpsyde.com

Ever since I got my iPhone, I’ve been ready to jailbreak it wide open. Before I go further, let me take a few steps back…

When you get an iPhone, Apple locks it down so you can’t get in there and fiddle with things. Even though iPhone OS is built on OS X, which comes with a terminal and an SSH client, you don’t get that in the iPhone. Something that’s touted as being very “desktop like” with it’s desktop-like browser and such, you can’t use a terminal. Presumably so you can’t hack the phone open to install new firmware, bypass the carrier lock, etc. Not that it’s stopped anyone from doing it, but I can only assume that’s why you get no terminal out-of-the-box on it.

Now, you can do what’s called “Jailbreak” your phone. This breaks it “free” from the “jail”, or “Apple death grip” on the phone. What does this let you do? Well for starters, you get a terminal, but you also can use a modified version of apt (the package manager Debian and all other variants, such as Ubuntu use) to install your own, unapproved, 3rd party apps. Like game emulators (emulators are banned from the App Store), for example.

Also, once you jailbreak the phone, you can install a package (currently ultrasn0w, previously yellowsn0w) on the phone that “unlocks” it. This lets you use any carrier you want (as far as I know, here in the US, that means you can use T-Mobile instead of AT&T…not sure of any other providers on the same platform, albeit T-Mobile’s 3G is on a different frequency so you can’t use 3G with them), so again, this is another reason they lock it down, so you can’t do that. However, once you’re in, you can fiddle around as you please.

Back to my 1st paragraph. I’ve been looking forward to jailbreaking my phone, but at this point, I’m not sure I need to anymore. Why? Well, it comes around to the guys who do the jailbreaking. I won’t link to their site for sheer laziness, but they’re called the “iPhone Dev Team”, which is just an awesome name altogether. Working with George Hotz (geohot, as it were), who was the 1st person to ever unlock an iPhone, they figured out how to crack open the iPhone 3GS. Gotta give them credit, that’s pretty awesome. I don’t have the time or patience to learn everything they’ve learned to get that far, but I’m sure it’s good fun and would be enjoyable to do if I had the time to hack on it and risk bricking phones. But, I do want SSH on my iPhone. It’s really the only reason I want to break it open, since I didn’t want to “pay” for an open and free standard. You can buy SSH applications in the App Store, but they cost $$$. The prospect of emulators seems cool, but I question how well they’d play since they weren’t designed specifically for the platform. Still, it could be great fun. Sadly, they’re waiting to release the jailbreak so that more people can have it available to them (since the new iPhone has extra security measures, which means once they fix the hack, all new phones can’t use it due to some certificate signing constraints).

Well, I went to get my oil changed here on Tuesday at the dealer (paying the “Dealer Tax” for now while I still have a CPO with Volvo) and I forgot/lost/misplaced my coupon for like $15 off the price of the oil change. I remembered the coupon when I saw him write up my ticket, and I ran out to my car to get it. Puzzled, I couldn’t find it and assumed I must have left it at the apartment. Fantastic. I asked him about it and he claims ignorance on the issue, so I’m screwed paying full price. Great. I printed the thing out days in advance and I swore I put it in the car as to not forget it. Yargh.

So as I sit in the waiting room, I’m thinking of how to get into my TWC webmail to get this coupon out to save me my money. At this point, the car is in the shop so even if it’s in there, there’s no finding it now. I was going to IM a friend to SSH into my server and get me the password, but AIM wasn’t working properly (fixed it later), so I was on my own. I realized I would save more than $5 (didn’t know it was $15 at the time), so I just caved and bought iSSH from the App Store. It had the best reviews of all the available apps (the lack of a free app is rather irritating), they had JUST released a new version of the app on Monday which added support for things I needed, like non-standard ports, etc, and the developer(s) for it have a group on Google which is somewhat active and they reply to pretty much everything.

So I login via my newly purchased SSH client (based on PuTTy, apparently) get the password, copy it into my email, login, find the email, and show the service manager. Saved myself $15, so I saved $15, but paid $5 for an app I sorta wanted, but was trying to avoid paying for (what can I say, I’m cheap). I was pretty happy with myself until I hit a “Doh!” moment driving to work when I realized I had some friends in the car and tossed stuff in the trunk. I did in fact check the trunk before sending off my car to be worked on, but I only quickly looked over it. Upon further inspection, I found it farther back. Grrrrrr. Figures.

Still, I’m only out the price of the app, which I sorta wanted to buy anyway but couldn’t justify. And by the time I bought the app, it was already do or die. I would have lost the $15 anyway had I not done it. The app is great, btw. Very fast and responsive, and there’s already an update submitted for the app to include the Copy and Paste API from iPhone OS 3.0, which will be really, really cool. Not to mention this app also has VNC and X11 support, so for $5, you get a LOT of great remote administration functionality, all of which I can use.

So, to swing back full circle, what’s the point? The point is, I now have my SSH application I wanted. I’ve used the terminal on a jailbroken iPhone 3G with OS 3.0, and while it works, I can honestly say it’s nowhere near as polished as iSSH. I also used the 99 cent SSH client on another phone and again, worked but wasn’t that great. The jailbroken one even had some crazy screen-flipping going on where it worked upside down, but landscaped fine. Kinda strange. iSSH also has some keys you need that aren’t part of the keyboard API like tab, esc, ctrl, and so on. Still, that said, a physical console with apt would be nice…

However, in all honesty, I enjoy Apple products for the support. Heck, I have AppleCare on both my iPhone and on my Mac. I also signed up for MobileMe to try it out (there are cheaper alternatives for the disk storage, like dropbox, but I only really want it for contact/calendar syncing and the remote iPhone services), but I dunno if I’ll be keeping that or not. Still, I enjoy being able to take my products in and just say “It’s not working, fix it.”. I can’t think of many things I’ve bought over the years where you can get this kind of service. Usually it’s a whole fiasco to even attempt to get a replacement on faulty hardware. It’s just nice not having to worry about it, and quite frankly, I find the interface for all Apple products very intuitive and genuinely enjoyable to use. The iPhone is no exception. If I jailbreak, I’ll be losing support (unless I do a restore on the phone before taking it in, which is easy enough). But I’ve read about lots of stability issues with 3rd party apps (no surprise), as well as the fact that if I do jailbreak my phone, I then have to start babysitting it. I have to watch for updates, be careful about syncing to iTunes when new updates are out to avoid any upgrades on top of the hacked phone so it’s not broken, which means if any security bugs are fixed, my phone is vulnerable in the meantime, etc.

I hate to say it, but I think I’m starting to get a little too old to deal with the “arrows in the ass” from pioneering my own path, as my father once put it. It’s fun, but I question whether I want to do this on something I require to use daily (cell phone has been and probably always will be my only phone). I used to do it more like 4-5 years ago and even before that because I couldn’t afford much, and my inquisitive mind demanded I tinker. Now, I’m better off, but still paying down credit cards (I can’t wait until I can say that I’m done with them, hopefully by year’s end). So really, I can’t afford to bork my phone of my own doing at this point, and I don’t believe in/support getting a company to replace something you break because of what you did when it violates the AUP/EUA and/or voids the warranty. I dunno, I’ve just never been a fan of “sticking it to the man”, even when I was barely making ends meet. Some people live for that kinda stuff, I dunno. Call me weird.

So the question remains, will I jailbreak my phone? I’m leaning towards probably not. I may do it just to check it out, see what apps are available, see how the terminal is, and so on. But I’ve also been reading that some apps in Cydia/Icy (the apt ports) are actually pay to use as well. Well that sorta ruins the point, doesn’t it? Also, I have no desire to “unlock” my phone either. I have a 2 year contract with Ma Bell, and I plan to ride that out fully. So short of emulators or some cool free apps that aren’t supported (or themes, that’s kinda cool to do), I’m not sure if it’s worth it to ditch my nice, supported iPhone.

Time will tell.

tsuehpsyde Personal

Well, I’ve had my new phone (and carrier) for a week now. So what do I think after a week of my new combo that I’m stuck with for the next two years?

Well, so far, still lovin’ it. The web interface used by AT&T is a lot nicer than the one Sprint uses. That said, I think the splash screen could be better (why split the voice/data into two different tabs? There’s plenty of room to put both up together…), but all in all it’s a definite improvement. I can alias phone numbers inside my account, so instead of looking at usage with tons of numbers and only recognizing one or two numbers, I can now quickly see who all I’ve talked to. Makes auditing your bill a LOT easier.

Also worth noting, now that I’m on AT&T, most of the people I talk to are also on AT&T, so my used mins are barely getting used. Most everyone in my office uses AT&T. Mainly for iPhones, but some people use AT&T with normal phones since they’re anti-iphone (like Nate). Barbara is on AT&T, so I can talk to her whenever I want as well. In addition, CellularOne got bought out by AT&T, so everyone with cell phones back in Greenville uses AT&T (for the most part). I mean, anyone from my generation doesn’t own a house phone. Cellular coverage nowadays (in most areas, back in Greenville it’s kinda sketch) is so good that you don’t need a home phone. I mean, I know I haven’t ever had a landline phone since I moved out on my own. Even if I did, I’d still use VoIP, so I’d be cheating anyway. So basically, if my friends have an AT&T cell, I can basically call them whenever I want. I had free Sprint-to-Sprint before, but seriously, I only had one friend that worked with. Now, I’m like surrounded with people I can call for free. It’s really nice. So my roll over mins should get ridiculous in a few months.

That said, I’m a bit perplexed as to why AT&T has rollover minutes, but NOT rollover texts. I mean come on, seriously? It’s bad enough AT&T tries to shoehorn you into the $15 text plan (no $10 plan? lame) and that when the iPhone first came out, the data plan cost $20/mo and 200 texts were free, and now with 3G/3GS it’s $30/mo for data and $5 for 200 texts. Now, I usually use <200 txts a month (I checked my usage on Sprint before the big switch), but I do bump over a little bit now and then. And this was on Sprint with UNLIMITED texts. Plus it just rubs me the wrong way since text msgs cost the carrier nothing to transmit (part of the network infrastructure that has to be there, texts or not) and they charge us money. But if you're going to rollover mins, why not texts? This is seriously my only real gripe so far, and I'd be pretty smitten if AT&T would do this.

Another cool thing about AT&T was, when I signed up for their online portal, they immediately asked if I wanted to do e-bills (yes! I hate paperwork), so I set that up. I mean, my experience with their user portal has been pretty good. Their App Store application for account management works okay, but it's really, really slow. Slower than it should be, that's for sure. So I just manage it via my normal computers.

As for the AT&T store itself, I hadn't been to that until sometime this past week. I needed to get an iGo charger tip so I could have a charger at my desk. While I did have to wait awhile to get serviced, once I did, the girl was very nice and personable. Then, I went back a few days later to find something out. You see, when Barbara got her iPhone 3G last summer, the AT&T rep in the mall said that she had to "add GPS" to her account. I didn't think much about it until I read that if you paid AT&T for GPS, you were paying for their turn-by-turn application. Now that didn't come out for the iPhone until this past week. So I went to ask if they had been falsely charging her for GPS (something that gets Jim pretty upset quickly...not a fan of people ripping off customers). The rep I talked to told me that they must have been mistaken, and that it wasn't even possible to add it to the account before that day. I talked to Barbara and confirmed that they had not been charging her (whew). Even then, the guy I talked to was nice. So far, so good with AT&T.

Now, the phone. What do I think of it? I love it! It's so much more responsive than my old phone was (Treo 700wx), and is just so much more functional. The lack of MMS (which is AT&T's fault, boooo) is sort of a bummer, but it'll be here before too long I have a feeling. The Apps make the phone so amazing, it's really hard to describe. It's so useful for so many things, it's just quite astounding. The oleophobic coating on the screen definitely helps too (compared to the 3G phones I've used). Update: Use iPhoto to yank these out! iTunes woulda made more sense, in my opinion. My only real gripe at this point is I haven’t figured out how to get videos off of my phone in their raw .mov format. I uploaded a test video to YouTube yesterday, and it’s decent quality, but the video itself prior to the phone compressing/sending it to youtube is better. Also, I see people taking the raw files off and uploading those. Not sure if I’m missing something, but there’s nothing in iTunes. The pains of using a proprietary platform in both hardware and software. Still that aside, I have yet to have any sort of reliability issues (and I’m on page 4 with apps). And I’m still having “fun” with my phone. The contacts are very intelligent (even though I had to port my stuff over by hand, ugh, you suck WinMo). It auto-created my contact in the phone, so it auto fills out stuff on web forms for me, which is nice. Also, if I tie an email addy to a contact, it auto fills that as I start typing to to send emails (regardless if it’s web or in-phone app).

Although, a big failure I see so far on the phone is something missing from the search/spotlight feature. You can’t start searching for a phone # to see who it belongs to. THIS, imo is a BIG failure. My freakin’ 3 year old Treo did this without issue, and it couldn’t do crap in comparison. To find a number on this phone, I call the # and see if a contact pops up. Seriously Apple? This is a pretty awful “swing and a miss” on usability on your end. Considering you search email content, you can’t search through contacts? Oh, but you did find the time/resources to rename the phone from “iPhone 3G S” to “iPhone 3GS”. As much as I prefer the new name, it is kinda silly.

Still, I love the phone. I’m paying the exact same monthly charge I was on Sprint, but now I have way more free minutes and a far better phone. I’m not paying for a warranty anymore monthly (since no one offers a good one, that includes SquareTrade), but since I pay for txts now, it’s a wash. I did buy an AppleCare just in case, since I’ll have the phone for 2 years and I’m not worried about dropping/losing it as much as I am the phone just crapping itself.

So in summary, after the honeymoon period, am I still happy with AT&T and my iPhone? Absolutely. I still want a GSM Palm Pre to play with once they release them (assuming they’re not carrier locked, they’ll be coming from Europe), but even then, I think I made the better choice of the two. I’m curious to see how Palm Pre improves in the next year or two. The lack of an open SDK right now is a failure on Palm’s part, one that hopefully they’ll remedy soon. Apple needs some competition.

tsuehpsyde Personal

Update: Turns out that there IS a menu option to disable this! Whew.

Settings -> General -> Passcode Lock -> Voice Dial

Looks like Apple was ahead of me. The lock screen asking for the PIN to enter made me think that option just set the PIN. Oh well. Glad this is covered.

I just noticed something today when using my iPhone 3G S. I was curious if Voice Control worked without having to jump into the home screen directly since it works with the headset. So I took my phone out, hold down the home button, and voila, I can send it commands! But wait, technically my screen is locked with a PIN/passcode…so I try to dial a number. It works! I dug around the menus looking for some sort of toggle to enable/disable this, but no dice.

Is it me, or does this seem like a rather large security hole, bypassing the entire ‘emergency only’ calling when a phone is locked? Not only can you call numbers, but you can also call names from the user’s contact list. As convenient as this may be, I’m looking at this more as a security hole.

Sending this info around to a few blogs, see if any of the mainstream smartphone/Apple/iPhone blogs pick up on this. Probably going to call up Apple as well just to ask them for their feedback…

Edit: Sent to TiPB, MacRumors and modmyi.

Edit 2: On hold with Apple (going on 21 minutes and counting), sent into Engadget and Gizmodo as well. Just want to get the word out about it. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to know about this.

Edit 3: Just got off the phone with iPhone tech support. They sent me up to some engineer, who then agreed that it was indeed a security hole/risk (apparently they patched something similar in 2.0 with the double-click of the home button feature) and said that after he got off the phone, he was going to go get a 3G S to test out on and pass the issue up to the “Engineering Team” to see about getting it fixed. Guess we’ll see what happens.

tsuehpsyde Personal

First and foremost, before I get into the nitty gritty, I must apologize for the lack of updates here. Facebook has spoiled me, and now whenever I have some fleeting thought that I would usually post here (and then would turn into a whole page’s worth of brain dump), I simply login to Facebook and set it as my status. Then I end up posting on other peoples’ walls and such and before you know it, my desire to write online has been satisfied. Still, there’s something therapeutic about writing here….more complete in my thoughts. Anywho, onto the matter at hand…

As you may or may not know, I’ve been debating (since around January when the Pre was announced) about what I was going to do in way of a phone. To see the full scope, we have to rewind back to 2007, when the first iPhone came out. Back in ‘ye olden times’, phones were the same as they’d always been. They had a screen, and keys underneath. Fancy phones had a full QWERTY keyboard below them, and even fancier ones had sliders to reveal a full keyboard (with the top still having the number pad below the screen). Then in comes Apple and says “Buttons are lame, I command you to be a big screen!” and the iPhone was born. Now, I can’t be 100% in this statement as I say it, but I don’t recall ANY phones being ANYTHING like the iPhone when it came out. I mean, nothing. Gestures aside (which are amazing still to this day, imo), there were no phones with a big ass screen and a handful of buttons. Not even ones that slid the screen to show the keyboard or anything (like the Pre does now). No one thought to do it, and this was mainly since it was a phone first, fun gadget/gizmo second.

So they release the iPhone. Aside from the price (ouch, no subsidy on it at all), it was a 1.0 device. I remember my Mom always being adamant about avoiding anything that was “brand spankin’ new”, be it cars, computers, toys, etc. As she said, “They’re still working the kinks out. Just watch, in a year or two they’ll change something and it’ll be fine until they release something newer.”. I remember this vividly, mainly due to the fact that I was fancying a new car at the time, and it turned out there was an issue with an oil leak in the 1st year’s run, which was fixed in the second year. Same thing with other things I’ve seen over the years, and other people have also said this same saying to me as well. So I tend to avoid new devices (or large revamps, such as the new unibody macbook pros that came out recently) until a generation or two passes. Because of this, I didn’t have much of a desire to get an iPhone. I thought it was cool, but I may have still been hatin’ on Apple at this point. I didn’t buy my first Mac until early 2008, so that influenced me a bit I’m sure. Not to mention the whole price drop fiasco that happened during that time (which I laughed about, and I still think is kinda funny but hey, early adopters beware).

So they release the second generation iPhone. Now Jim has a Macbook Pro (which I’m using to publish this, actually). At the time, I was using it at work regularly as well as for random browsing or anything that I’d rather use with a Mac (like my iPods). Now this phone was thinner, faster, etc. and was now the second rev. Hotness! Literally, once this phone came out, our office was flooded with iPhones. And for months after (well into December/January) people were still buying them and changing over to AT&T or renewing their contract. I still had a long ways to go (my contract was good until May of ‘09), but man I wanted it. I held off though, as I didn’t want to pay the contract cancellation fee and I was finally getting serious about paying down my credit cards. Boring I know, but that’s where I was. I envy’d the iPhone users, but I knew that when my contract was finally up, something new would be coming out. And one thing that bothered me about the iPhone 3G was how much stuff it had in front of it that it could do, but it was kinda slow about certain things (mainly javascript heavy applications). Not to mention by this point, the iPhone-like phones are coming out in droves (big screen, <4 buttons).

Then comes the Palm Pre. I currently had a Palm Treo 700wx (which was the new hotness in early 2007 when I moved) and while it showed it's age and had it's flaws (all devices do), it was at least durable in that I only put a screen protector on it and left the outside to be abused by the elements. Now, Palm comes out with this device that's notably faster than the iPhone (no more checker boxes when scrolling a webpage, nice) which solved the one problem I had. The second was, it was coming out only on Sprint (so I could upgrade earlier), and third, it would be an open development platform (WebOS), using web standards for core functionality. The possibilities for this phone looked (and still look) very promising.

Then Palm took way too long to release the Pre. And it's still a dual 1.0 device (hardware/software). And the SDK is still not public yet, so there are only like 30 apps as of this posting. And it has build issues right now, like:

1. Battery not secure so phone reboots randomly when using slider.
2. Screen cracking (this can happen on any phone, but how sturdy is it compared to others?)
3. Heat causing the screen to wash out
4. Backlight bleeding on the bottom portion of some screens.

The software portion is pretty good, and it's been getting regular updates since it's release, but those issues alone make me nervous. Plus Sprint and Palm are both in less-than-ideal places right now. I dunno if I posted about it on here or not, but I had some pretty awful customer service experience with Sprint during my first year of my contract. Now mind you, my service here in San Antonio is fantastic on Sprint. But back in PA, my God, it's just awful. AT&T is great here in San Antonio (obviously), but PA remains to be seen. The coverage map appears to be better online, plus CellularOne was bought out last year by AT&T, and they were the largest provider in the area when I lived there (I had a phone with them from 2000-2006). So I have hope that an iPhone will have better coverage in PA when I'm there to see family.

So, we see Palm finally release the phone they showed us in January (and shoulda released in Feb/March, imo), then 3 days later, Apple announces their iPhone 3G S. The speed issues from before are now gone (thanks to the same processor as the Pre), a newer version of the iPhone OS is out (which speeds up even the regular 3G phones tremendously), and of course no build issues with the phone (not much to go wrong, you only have like 5 buttons max, a headphone jack and a SIM card slot). And the screen is bigger on the iPhone, even if the Pre has the same resolution (which means a better dot pitch than the iPhone). Also, the iPhone can record video on this version (officially), while the Pre cannot. Oh, and Apple has 50,000 apps to choose from, lots of which are simply amazing. And the Pre has 30, and no open SDK yet. Sorry, but that's a huge failure on Palm's part, imo.

Price wise, it's about the same. A plan with 450 mins + data + unlimited texts costs $70 on Sprint, and on AT&T it costs $75 with 200 text msgs (if you text more than me, then it'll cost you $10 or $15 more). For me, the price difference is almost nill. Not to mention, my contract is paid out, so I'm not getting any returns in the form of a new phone (yes, they raise your prices to subsidize that new awesome phone you *must* have). Price wise, the Pre is $199 and the iPhone is $199. The iPhone has 2x the storage and way more apps, is the same speed (in tests it's showing a bit faster, but the Pre is faster other times as well, but on the whole, the iPhone is the big winner), and doesn't have any silly Mail-In Rebates to deal with.

So, after all the above was flying around in my head, I finally splurged on an iPhone 3G S. The one thing I was worried about mostly (porting over my #) went off without a hitch. That was another reason I liked the Pre, but really, that wasn't a good reason now that I'm looking back at it. Porting a number to a new provider is SO much easier than I remember it when they first started doing it.

I must say, holy CRAP this phone is SO MUCH BETTER than my Treo. Goodness. It fits in my pocket so much better (way thinner), the screen is so much more crisp and clear (I liked having a touch screen on the Treo, which is why I love the iPhone/Pre), and the apps are just amazing. All of the new features are really cool (voice control is great for when you're driving or feeling lazy, the compass + Maps is really slick), but if you're reading this, you probably know what they are.

Any gripes at this point? Not really. The only things that irk me a bit are:
1. Paying for text msgs. Seriously? That's kinda lame, AT&T. It costs you $0 to transmit them, yet you charge a pretty exorbitant price for them. For those that don't know, it's 200 for $5, 1500 for $15, or unlimited for $20. Mind you, I only use 130-200 txts a month (I checked my Sprint usage), so it doesn't hurt me, but I have a feeling MMS may push that usage up. Speaking of MMS...
2. AT&T doesn't support MMS on the iPhone right now. Seriously? That's so ludicrous I won't even go into it. Just know that AT&T has the tech, but they're holding out for some silly reason. They don't support tethering yet either, but meh, I only tether when I travel and now that I have an iPhone, I can do most stuff I would do in an airport on my phone (AIM, read news, etc).
3. I question the accuracy of the compass on the phone. Sometimes it seems spot on, other times it's a little off. I've had to recalibrate it a few times, but still. I just expected it to be a bit more accurate without having to fiddle with it.
4. No front-facing camera for iChat like was rumored. This was a feature that I was really looking forward to. Sadly, no dice. Maybe next year.

So that's that. I finally chose, and I now have the latest-and-greatest iPhone to date (until next June, when the next new hotness hits the streets). I think this phone will hold me out through the next iPhone release so I can get the next one in 2 years (which by then, hopefully we will have more provider options).

Speaking of holding out, I have to rant about this a bit, because really, this is rather aggravating to hear people complain about it.

Okay, so we have people who bought the 1st gen iPhone. Then, they iPhone 3G came out, they upgraded to it for $199 (or $299) and had 2 phones. This was only the case because the first phone was not subsidized. You were paying for a contract with AT&T, but it was probably month-to-month, or even if it was a 2 year dealie, you had a ‘phone upgrade’ credit in your account since it was never used. So they upgrade to the 3G and get a new fancy phone for the same price as everyone else. Now the 3G S comes out, the same people want to upgrade again, but are amazed they have to pay $399/$499 (if they’ve had the phone a year). IT’S PRETTY SIMPLE PEOPLE. You get a cheaper phone for agreeing to a contract with the cell company. They get X dollars out of you, so in return, you get an ‘advance’ on your money for a phone. Why would they do this every year, people? It’s a 2 year contract, one you signed into I might add.

People are just amazing. I’ve heard all sorts of complains about how they’re a “good customer” and a “repeat” customer. Just silence the nonsense. You probably only signed up to AT&T for the iPhone, so they’ve only known you for 2 years max, you paid full price for one phone (mind you, most of that money goes to Apple, not AT&T), then you paid again for a subsidized phone (cost them more money up front). It’s not like you’ve bought 20 phones over 20 years here. Half way fulfilling your contract doesn’t make you an awesome customer, people. Nor does it mean you’re owed anything. Ugh, just get over it. You won’t DIE if you don’t have the latest and greatest. Trust me, it’s an expensive endeavor in the tech field.

And with that, I’m done. I’ll try my best to keep this updated when I think of things. But yeah, Facebook has sucked me in. Hopefully now that I have a phone with a decent camera, I can start posting more pics/vids as well.

tsuehpsyde Personal

http://www.swedespeed.com/news/publish/Volvo_News/article_1481.html

Makes me sad. The car I love so much is officially done. They are now ramping up for the “new” S60 which will have a dual clutch automated manual gearbox, which will be nice, but the engine is going to be completely different. The 2.xL 5 cylinder from Volvo is such a staple and such a worthy engine, it makes me sad to see Ford changing it around (I believe it’s going to have some N/A V6 in it IIRC). The new S60 will also have direct injected turbo power as well to boost up some power, but meh, we’ll see how it goes. It’s also supposed to have a glass roof (safety? hmm?).

We’ll see what lies ahead. In the meantime, I’ll keep enjoying my T5.

tsuehpsyde Personal

Sent Here

Mr. Obama,

I know that you have said you will take a backseat to no one in your fight for network neutrality. I believe this stance is vital to the future of our society, as The Internet has made a huge impact of everyone’s day to day lives, and some people more so (such as myself, who works for a hosting company).

I strongly believe in net neutrality, which is one of many reason I voted for you this past fall and was happy to see you put in office to help out this economy.

That said, I believe the Telecom Giants are weaseling around the government’s stance and imposing “caps” on users’ transfer. Instead of slowing down our ability to communicate or share data, they’re going to stop us all together.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Time-Warner-Cable-Expands-Metered-Billing-101655

You’ll notice that they are doing this in markets where there is no competition such as FiOS available. This smells of monopoly and, as more of these telecoms work together to impose the same caps, they’re basically sneaking around net neutrality and trying to snuff out it’s competition, videos online (legitimate videos, such as Hulu or TV.com).

When we go from a possible 94.5GB of data per day to only 40GB for the entire month, there’s a serious problem. A VERY serious problem. We are being told we can now only use roughly 3% of what we were once allowed to use. That is simply outrageous. Even the 250GB limit imposed by Comcast is not remotely fair. Just like net neutrality is a fight to keep things how they have been, so is this. These caps have not existed until recently, and they only started AFTER net neutrality was decided on by the government.

Please Mr. President, stand up for what’s right and don’t let these large corporations stomp out the freedom of the internet that it was so crucially founded on.

Regards,
-James Bair

As outlined above, be sure to read here. I don’t get fired up about much, but this is ridiculous. As far as I’m concerned, the telecoms are abusing their ability to do whatever they want on a platform that they grew and flourished from by using us as customers. And now that they’re big enough, they’re price fixing something that’s become vital to our society. And I don’t mean that in an unhealthy way either. This isn’t about WoW, this isn’t about video games. This if far greater. Look at how quickly problems in other countries spread on the internet. When Big Business tries to snuff out or silence anything, it burns like wildfire across the internet. And now that online videos are posing a threat to cable providers’ TV revenues, they’re starting to choke off the internet where they can. And since they got their goods slapped for cutting of BitTorrent (which is completely legit traffic Big Business, read up on it), they’re deciding to do this. And it’s growing. And the companies are doing it together, and there are no other alternatives.

As far as I’m concerned, the companies had a cold-war of sorts on broadband throughput, didn’t upgrade their equipment, and now are using that as an excuse to cap FAR BEYOND any sort of reasonable level. I’d be happy with a 50% cap. But if we used HALF of what we are allowed to use now (if they don’t call you up and tell you to knock it off based on mystery numbers), we’d be at around 1400GB. But instead we get 40GB? Seriously? Even at the “pro” 100GB limit, that’s somewhere around 3%. We are being told we can only use 3% of what we could before.

This is outrageous and I plan to stand up and do what I can where I can. Sadly, San Antonio has two options: AT&T (crappy DSL with a contract, who is also looking at metering) and TimeWarner (who I have loved up until now).

This will be interesting.

Update: It appears someone has created a site specifically to fight this. I’m doubtful we will be able to stop them (as the end users), but it’s worth a shot.

http://stoptwc.info/

tsuehpsyde Personal

For some reason, I am unable to load tirerack.com from work. I get a message basically saying it’s down, and going to links (given to me by Mark) say 403 forbidden. My guess? Their CDN is broken. I say that since it works for Mark and works for me from home, but at work, no dice.

Now, there’s always been a way around this. SSH -L lets you forward local ports on your machine to remote ports on the server (or whatever you’re connecting to that’s running sshd). Problem is, you have to run a SQUID proxy on the other side if you’re intending to use this SSH forwarding to “tunnel” your HTTP requests from one location to another. The benefits of tunneling?

- Encrypts all HTTP data over SSH via OpenSSL (so no sniffing anything, this is great for when you’re on the road using WiFi)
- Bypasses any “web filters” a local network would have (if you have them)
- Makes the server you connect to the source for all requests (so your IP shows up as your home IP)

But running a squid proxy locally and having to maintain it for occasional forwarding of HTTP requests over SSH is kind of a pain. Sure you set it up and forget about it, but I like keeping as few services running on my servers as possible. Well, at some point. -D was introduced and it automagically forwards traffic from the locally bound port to the server, and the protocol is used to determine where to connect to. It supports SOCKS, and in doing so, ssh acts as a SOCKS server.

This means you basically login via SSH to any Linux server and you can browse the web 100% securely over an unsecure network, without a need for a SQUID proxy on the other end. Neat! Not to mention anything that supports SOCKS 4/5 can use it (such as AIM via Pidgin, which is unencrypted unless you use the OTR plugin), so that’s another way to easily encrypt plaintext data and send it to a secure network. Then, whenever you logout of the server, the forwarding drops and you’re done. Considering I already use sshfs to mount my files from home to work, I may just background/screen a -D session as well to browse over.

tsuehpsyde Personal, Software, Work

As you may or may not know, with Gentoo you have two options for how to install your kernels (and of course a handful of Sources to choose from as well).

1. Use genkernel to automate the process for you.
2. Compile it by hand.

I go with #2 for a handful of reasons. First and foremost, I need certain kernel arguments set for my kernel, such as a 1000HZ kernel. I’m not sure about now, but back when I started using Gentoo forever ago, there was no way to specify that type of argument. Also, genkernel requires an initrd and uses tons of modules (it compiles everything), whereas a custom compiled one will only compile in what you tell it to. I compile no modules into my kernels (mainly for security), and I strip out everything I don’t need to keep my kernel light weight, since I run gameservers on Gentoo.

That said, upgrading the kernel is sort of a pain in the rear. It’s not too bad, but compared to how every other distro does it (Red Hat, Debian, and their various forks), having to do it by hand is pretty lame.

So, I came up with this:
kernel_upgrade.sh

It’s pretty specific to my needs (only does 32-bit x86 with grub), but it’s GPL’d so anyone can hack on it to do what they want. It basically takes your current kernel config, migrates it over to the new kernel version, builds it, installs it and generates a new grub.conf dynamically and orders them from newest to oldest (note that menu.lst points to grub.conf in Gentoo).

It’s written in bash (yeah, I know) but it’s my largest “little” script to date. I like it. =) It just automated something that I didn’t enjoy doing anymore. On the plus side, the maintenance I have to do to keep my server running for SourceKills is becoming easier and easier.

Let me know what you think. =)

tsuehpsyde Personal, Software

I read this on a blog I frequent (which is in my Noteworthy Blogs links on the right over there), and it’s a good saying. I really think it should be posted above the door to my apartment to remind me what’s outside of my controlled living space (well, controlled when the neighbor above me isn’t a tool). If not that, I’ve always wanted to put “Perspective” in nice, big legible writing above the exit to my home, in multiple languages if possible. I think it’s very important to keep things in perspective. I think most people forget to do this, or simply don’t know to. By this I mean, sure, work may seem painful today (maybe you don’t like doing documentation and you have to do it all week), but think about those who’ve lost their jobs in the last 6 months. Think about those in other countries walking miles just to get water. Think about those who have less than you. Puts things in a different perspective, doesn’t it? I don’t always remember this mantra, but I try to. Luckily I really enjoy my job for the most part (there’s always days that will be rough), and the way things are going for most of the people right now, I feel blessed with what I have.

So what’s new. Lots of things…when I forget to update my blog (which being busy tends to do to you), it’s hard to remember all the little things I wanted to tell everyone (all 3 of you, heh). It’s also some-what frustrating, since I’ll think of something on my way to work and think “Oh! I should blog about that. I bet I can write something about that somewhat interesting.”, then I forget, and off into the abyss it goes. I’m learning to live with “letting things go”….mainly the stuff that doesn’t matter. One of the things I was going to bring up was how without fail, every month at the end of the month, my radar detector goes nuts on any roads I drive, but the 1st two weeks of the month, I can pass tons of cops without their radar guns being on. No quotas, my foot.

I don’t believe I’ve blogged about this, but if I have, bear with me. So, for Thanksgiving, I went back to PA (I tend to call it home, but I really feel like I have two homes now) to see family and friends. It was either that or Christmas, and I just felt like Thanksgiving would be better. Also, Barbara wanted to see her sister who lives a few hours west of my family in Ohio, so we decided to make it a trip. A road trip, to be precise.

Speaking of Barbara, I’m going to go ahead and call her out. She refuses to register on my blog and post a comment. She’s apparently afraid of the internets, or something. She reads it (and will read this, hi honey! ), but refuses to comment. Something about having something to say about everything, but I’m guessing it’s not all good. She tells me to “get over it” a lot when referring to my blog. I post in my blog *to* get over it. She’ll figure that out eventually. <3

Anyway, back to the story. I'm happy to say that the Volvo (who's name is Patti, in case you were wondering, doubt you were) did fantastic on the road trip. Not a single problem. As a matter of fact, it seemed more in it's element cutting through the snow up north than on the snow-free roads of Texas. Barbara was amazed at my fearless driving through the snow and ice, which I chalked up to a lot of "no big deal", and all around we had a really good time. It was good to see snow again....first time in over 2 years. I missed it. I obviously go to see family, and my family actually didn't know I was on my way. Hence the lack of any blog posts about going up...my sister/Dad/who knows else reads this, so I wanted to sneak under the radar. My grandma knew, since I didn't want to show up and no one to be home, but she apparently told both of my cousins, one of who spilled the beans to my aunt. So much for secrets. But most of the people I wanted to surprise were surprised, including my Mom's Dad. That was classic...he had called the day before I got there to bust my chops about my team losing in the playoffs, and I showed up at my grandparents' house and, as usual, the old man was passed out in his chair taking a nap. I swiftly and quietly walked over to his chair, kicked his shoe to wake him up, and addressed him with "So I hear some *$%R#%$ called my phone, leaving a voicemail about my team losing?!??!". He laughed and was glad to see me. Cussed out my grandma for not tellin' him I was coming. Good times. I also surprised my Mom by showing up with my sister, and my Mom thought I was Tim, my sister's boyfriend. I gave her what-for on that one. Also while I was there, I was able to see my Grandma Bair, who I love dearly and hadn't seen in God knows how long. She had recently been moved into assisted living because she fell while doing stuff around the house and had to be run to the hospital and wasn't wearing her medical emergency thing to call for help. When I went to see her, she didn't immediately recognize me, which was a bit disheartening, but she picked up who I was after my sister told her who I was. But we got to visit for a bit, and I came back again the next day while I was there and introduced her to Barbara and visited a little more before leaving back for Texas. Got a few pics too. I also got to meet up with a few friends like Brian and Steph while I was home, enjoyed some chicken waaaaangs and burrrrr, and just caught up for a good couple of hours. Now I see how and why old people do it.

Fast forward to last month. I got the phone call that I knew I would get one day, but was dreading regardless of the reality of the situation. on January 23, 2009 at 6:40 A.M. EST, my grandmother, Mariam E. Bair, passed away. She was 86 years and 10 months old. I got the call pretty early, but my Dad was good enough to not call the second he found out due to the time differences. I booked a flight that day and flew out the next morning. I saw lots of family, including my Aunt who paid to help me get braces, God bless her, as well as my Mom, Dad, their significant others, and my sister/grandparents on my Mom's side, and of course my friends as well. I won't go into the full details, but my Grandma hadn't been doing too well. She was having some issues with her health and her memory when I saw her, and she had some issues the morning of the 26th. They ran her to UPMC Horizon in Greenville, but there wasn't anything they could do. It was her time to go. I take some comfort in knowing she's with my Grandfather David S. Bair (from whom I get my middle name), and that she's doing better now.

For those of you reading this blog that don't know my Grandmother, let me let you in on the person you were so unfortunate to not have met. She was the sweetest, and I do mean sweetest, lady/woman I have ever met in my entire life. I hate to say it, but they just "don't make them like that, anymore". She was always concerned about how other people were doing, would always have the nicest compliments for me and my dates to any high school dances (I was always handsome, my dates were always beautiful), I only heard her cuss maybe two times, both of which I don't think she realized I heard, and she was an amazing cook. She made the best damn chocolate chip cookies I've ever ate, and sadly I don't think anyone can make them like she did. Small, yet crisp, not burnt, which a very distinct flavor. They were, and still are, my favorite. Even if I never get them again, I'll forever remember those little treats. She also always had snacks for me and my sister when we were little. She always told my Grandpa "Dave, you can have one." in reference to me or my sister's cookies. Yeah, that never quite happened. She would walk out or turn around, and he would grab another. Looking back, it's even cooler, but I still thought it was funny, even as a youngin'. And she never wanted to inconvenience anyone on her behalf over anything, ever. She was very stubborn about this. Just about the only thing she would let me do was tend to her yard in the fall to rake up the leaves, which was an all-day ordeal considering how many trees they had there. But she made sure I had plenty of cold ice water (which she kept in her fridge in glass containers, I loved her style about drinks and old style containers) and if I recall correctly, gave me money for it even though she wasn't supposed to. That's just the kind of person she was. I'm amazed she let my mother get her mail for her later on, because stuff like that was just "out of the question" since it was inconveniencing someone on her behalf.

The funeral was well done, although the pastor presiding over said her age wrong a few times. I wanted to throw something at him for not at least getting that right, but I assume I was just a little touchy at the moment. Probably good I didn't have my Bible on me, or it would have become "Alive and Active" as Barbara likes to say. I was surprised how many people at the funeral knew the prayer the pastor started (forget which one it was to be honest, I've never been good at the rituals from Christianity, Catholic or otherwise). I was also surprised to see a lot of familiar faces, as well as some faces I had only heard about but never met. Heard stories about both my grandma and my grandpa, and I also met one of my grandma's really good friends who I had heard lots about. I also heard some great stories from my aunt about my grandmother that I had not heard before, such as her telling her daughter, my aunt, that she had better find something to do outside of the kitchen because she could "burn water" apparently (for clueless guys, that means she can't cook).

I would like to say the trip back home was pleasant, but it was far from. One the way up to PA, I checked in my suit as to not ruin it on the way up there. I had to connect in Houston, since there are no one way flights to Pittsburgh from San Antonio…at all….ITS REALLY ANNOYING. Sure enough, they left my damn bag in Houston. AND, they KEPT MY BAG THERE and marked it as LEFT ON PLANE. >< WHAT??!?! I call the call center and get a total prick. I'm upset, and he only escalates the matter and makes it worse. I won't get into details, but I'll just say that he was being a total prick considering I just few 1500 miles for a funeral and the idiots left my suit for the thing in Houston and were leaving it "on hand" until I called them, I called, and they had no records of it and I had no way of contacting the person who called me WHILE I WAS ON THE PLANE. >< So I go to the check counter, calmly explain to the lady that :

1. I am really upset, but I am honestly not trying to take it out on her at all.
2. I am here for a funeral.
3. My suit is in Houston.
4. I need the suit as quickly as possible.

She looks and finds out that the somehow tore off my checked luggage tag and somehow thought I left it as carry on. Funny how that works, me leaving it as checked luggage and all. Had they LET me carry it on I would have happily. But yeah, no one will let you bring a suit on the plane as your 'extra' bag. And you know how they knew it was my bag? From the piece of paper I printed out with all of my info on it...INCLUDING MY FLIGHTS AND WHERE I WAS GOING. >< Way to fail, airlines. You could have automatically sent it on the next flight to follow me, but noooooo. You see my phone # and decide to call me, while flying, and wait instead. *shakes with anger* So she pulls some strings to get them to wait for my bag and deliver it that night (my bag was schedule to come in 15 mins before they stop taking them, it actually came in 45 mins AFTER, but they still waited). At least she was sympathetic to the situation and even agreed the moves made up to that point were pretty boneheaded. I couldn't sleep thinking I wouldn't have my suit for the funeral, and around 4:30AM the next morning, the driver shows up from Pittsburgh to Greenville (Google it, it's a long drive) with my suit. God bless him. The dick on the phone said I would have to get it myself, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Then on the way home? Yeah, they lost it again. It wasn't really lost so much as left in Dallas on my connecting flight home. Yep, that's right, they left my bag behind on both flights. $%#^ing amazing. For those curious, I flew Continental on the way to Pittsburgh, the same airline that weeks later crashed into a house, and American Airlines/American Eagle on the way back to San Antonio. I fully plan to never use either of them ever again if I can help it. I would have gone Southwest (who's always done me right), but they wanted like 3x what I paid to get there and quite frankly, I couldn't have afforded it. But considering that I paid money for them to lose my bags when Southwest doesn’t charge to check bags and they didn’t lose mine when flying out to California, I may just bite the bullet next time for the peace of mind. Sheesh.

The reason I write this, I guess, is to share with everyone that I haven’t already shared with/told about. It’s not easy to directly talk about because it brings back some strong emotions. The same emotions coming up as I write this….luckily, the keyboard can keep up with my brain (or my hands can, at least), whereas trying to write this out by hand or talk to people almost becomes draining. My thoughts run too fast for any medium besides my keyboard to capture. And people tend to point out how fast and accurate I type, as well as how fast I correct mistakes…the new guy in our department said something this morning about it actually. I never think about it until someone points it out. My mother has always been impressed….Idunno, I type really loud, but I’m mostly self taught and can type >120WPM last I checked I believe. Pretty ridiculous.

And apparently by putting a > in this text box, I broke the “Word count:” function of the editor in Wordpress. Awesome. The number jumped around, then stopped. Now it’s counting again as I type this, but it’s only saying 583 words. Haha, yeah right.

And on a more uplifting comment, I’ve been riding my bike I got back in December a lot more. I actually just got back from a ride a few hours ago around my local neighborhood (yep, on a Friday night, party animal!) and I feel great. I’m definitely building up my leg muscles. I also had to re-adjust my trip meter thing as it was misaligned, probably from one of my few spills recently (one from my lace getting into the spoke, another from cars parked too close to the sidewalk with nowhere to go and not being used to clips yet). Either way, I feel useful for fixing it on my own. Hoping to go out on a ride this Sunday. Hoping to keep the riding going so I can work on losing the belly and hopefully go for a big ride this summer. Who knows.

Well that’s about it for now. The only other thing I wanted to say was “Texans, please learn how to drive in the rain. Seriously, it’s not that bad. It’s only rain. Slow down, please. I’m tired of seeing wrecks on my 12 minute drive to work every time it rains. If you keep this up, I’m going to get cars with X’s over them and start stamping them on the outside when I see accidents from the rain. Stop it.”.

tsuehpsyde Personal

I’m sure you were all DYING to comment on my blog. Either way, su – root (clever name, lol) brought it to my attention that my over zealous security refinements locked people out of commenting. It stopped two spam registrations from posting (which is interesting that spam bots registered, that’s new to me), but I think I blocked a few people trying to post comments.

Either way, it should be fixed now. I’ll probably write another blog post here sometime this weekend recapping what’s going on, since a lot has happened as of late.

tsuehpsyde Personal