Monthly Archives: January 2007

Alltel’s Problem

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This post is also serving as a test to wordpress 2.1. I upgraded a few days ago but haven’t had a chance to utilize it yet. Not really much different. IMO – wait for 3.0

The world of wireless providers is a dark and sinister place. Hidden fees. Overages. Dropped Calls. 2 year contracts. Automatically renewing contracts when making a plan change. Hideously stupid assholes who call themselves ‘tech support’ or “customer support”. It’s got to be a tough market to get into, much less be a successful provider.

Alltel almost has it pegged. Their customer service has always been very good. Plan options are extremely affordable. For example, i added a data internet plan for my phone and it’s only $5 a month. I don’t get charged out the ass for text or picture messages. I make changes to my plan and my contract is NOT automatically renewed for an additional two years. When i “Roam”, i don’t pay any money extra for that. I can call 10 of the people closest to me from any network without even being charged.

For the most part – one must admit… Alltel has their shit together.

Then we come to it… the single most frustrating piece of this entire wireless pizza. Alltel has about as many phones to pick from as any local “big lots”. I mean seriously. It’s almost driven me to switch carriers and deal with all the bullshit from paragraph 1. They do not have any ‘cool’ or ‘innovative’ devices available. No Blackjacks. No iPhones (not that i’d want one). Their collection is stale. It’s literally horrendous. How about the cool new UTStarcom 6700 ? Hmm… sprint had that like 3 years ago and stopped selling it last year. Way to be on the ball…!

Wait… seriously the Motorola Q is coming out in March!! Hmm… apparently Verizon hasn’t had that for almost a year. GG Alltel. Just now they finally got the Razr V3m with an expandable memory card, which can be purchased in flaming gay red or Bright silver. hmm. Meh. heh. etc.

Then they take their lack of a phone selection, and they further cripple it. Alltel’s phones are all “Brew” based. Apparently this means that it is impossible to download, use, run, or even think about seeing any sort of java application on them. Can’t use Google’s new gmail app… Can’t use google maps. Can’t download java games that are steadily gaining popularity. My phone’s browser can’t even save bookmarks. Think about that. My phone can watch a full feature film (The Boondock Saints is on there, as well as all three of Vanbergs’ Heroics videos), but it can’t even save a bookmark.

Alltel, What the hell are you thinking. If you could get your shit together with phone selection and functionality, you’d be the #1 Cellular provider in this country by far. Get some new phones with the JVM, and until that time… enjoy being #5.

Super Bowl Party

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The past two years have resulted in a hosted “Super Bowl Party” at my home/apartment/current living space. I’d like to continue that Tradition this year as well, as it seemed a good time was held by all. hence, the information below…

  • What: Super bowl Party
  • Where: Castle Vanberge
  • When: Super Bowl Sunday
  • Who: Anyone reading this who knows where Castle Vanberge is and leaves a comment (food portions)
  • Why: Vanhood
  • How: Vanhood

Food / Drink: Food provided in all shapes sizes capacities, but bring your own drinks. 😛
I love everyone and everything.

Addicted

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I am genuinely addicted to the internet and/or computers. I know this because I have spend the last 2 weeks of my life changing websites, creating websites, dumping mysql, importing mysql, moving directories, breaking things, fixing things, and in general staying up too late. That’s in my SPARE time. During WORK, I spend 8 or 9 hours a day administering servers, networks, and overall I.T. related activities. This combination is clearly not normal activity for a human being.

At any rate – Here’s a recap of site related ventures:

  • I upgraded my gallery install to 2.2.1(r1). Not because I wanted to, but because I broke gallery 2.1 when i moved it into a subdirectory without deactivating any plugins. I tried for 2 days to fix it. At any rate, running the upgrade fixed it.
  • I finally got www.vanhood.com up and running. I have no idea what will become of that internet destination but at least there is a site there. After hearing jjafuller talk about Drupal, I figured i’d at least install it for awhile to see what it had to offer.
  • I moved p4p’s entire site into a subdir. Thanks to chouse@the-bob.org for re-organizing my virtual sites/dns. Now i have a much cleaner directory structure.
  • www.theScionTC.com is hopefully getting a new breath of life

I hate… the effing internet

Follow up…

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A couple more changes to the site. A faint blueish grayish background for the sidebar, an about page, and I also posted my very first blog (straight up html) here: www.palmerforpresident.com/old (clean urls in wordpress rock). There is also a link to that web log at the bottom of my archives (see header nav). I didn’t even know i still had that. It was a wierd surprise to find it…

My first web log dated back to July of 2003. So, i’ve technically been keeping a “web log” for approximately 5 years. It is actually pretty embarrasing to read. I’m definitely not the same person now that I was 5 years ago. But, at the same time it made me feel appreciative of my life. That original website journal chronicles through the most dismal time in my life. I hated my job. I was very lonely. The real world hit me with harsh reality and I had realized i was nowhere near an adult yet. I missed college because most of my friends and brother were still there. The only thing i really had to look forward to during that timeframe was weekend trips to Mulligan’s. Aye. wierd times indeed.

Site Changes

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This week I have been hell bent on adding some functionality to the website and making some other small design changes. It started with implementing google search, and has just spun out of control. to the tune of literally over 10 hours of work. A numbered breakdown:

  1. Implemented google search function using a static html page. search is awesome, but yuck for me using static html.
  2. Removed links to squarehalo and glaven. both dot org.
  3. I cleaned up about 15 or 16 coding ‘errors’ and/or bugs. My site is now apparently valid xhtml.Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional
  4. Added an entire archive page to just list out all my monthly archives (top nav bar). The listing of monthly archives on the main page was starting to own my sidebar.
  5. Changed ‘monthly archives’ on the sidebar to now be ‘recent posts’ which displays the 15 most recent blog entries.
  6. Extended the google search function. it now pipes into a real wordpress page using .htaccess url rewriting. *thanks jja. what a hack that static html page was.
  7. *edit* Some simple CSS tweaks. Slight color change. Borders. Underline hover.
  8. Fixed Google search IE bug (finally..!) I wrote the google code into a php function that is then called by the sidebar. Versus just pasting the google code into the sidebar.php file. Then also styled the table with a CSS entry and took out some of the html style.
  9. Upgraded to WordPress 2.0.6

now can somebody seriously tell me how to put an image in your post and have the text wrap around it instead of showing up below it? nm i might have figured it out.

Respect the Link

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I consider being ‘linked’ in somebody else’s blog or website a sign of respect. Linking somebody is an acknowledgment that another is worthy of your recommendation. If you link somebody, you ‘vouch’ for them in a sense. It’s a kind gesture, worthy of honor. But, it is not unconditional. If I show somebody respect, I would expect to be held in the same regard and have the same respect shown to me. If not, i can only assume we are nemesis.

Given that. A few links have been removed from my site:
glaven.org
squarehalo.org
Vanbergs.wordpress.com will have a grace period due to site overhaul.

I encourage all to review their links. Carefully consider who is / is not linked on your website. It shows constitution, and should not be taken lightly!