Sunday, July 26, 2009

T-Mobile Removes Support For T-Mobile VPN on G1

For most of 2009, I've been happily using my T-Mobile VPN service on my new phone, however as of this month T-Mobile has decided to BLOCK my device from their end based solely on the manufacturer of the unit, UNLESS I pay another $25 a month on top of the $20/month I'm already paying for Internet access. I think a 125% increase in my Internet access cost is absolutely ridiculous. Nothing has changed except they decided that if you own a G1 you must be dumb enough to pay more than double for your Internet.

I've just confirmed with technical support that T-Mobile has decided that ONLY if you have a G1 (or a Dev1 in my case), you MUST pay for the dedicated $25/month plan for JUST that device (in addition to your existing data plan that your *other* devices use). I already pay for a data plan that I use between my pcmcia adapter, my Motorola phones (Z8 and V3) and (until now) my G1. As a developer, having Internet access is more or less a requirement, and being able to connect to the Internet while mobile has become a natural extension of my work week.

T-Mobile's own documentation encourages you to use VPNs to protect your data, but if you get their service designed to support VPNs, you may one day be screwed by them when they decide that they didn't mean on *that* device, only on the others.

This is total bullshit by T-Mobile. I've been a loyal and happy customer of theirs for many years and to suddenly screw me like this is ridiculous. Please take your collective heads out of your asses and realize that it's customers like myself that drive dozens of new customers your way each year as WE are the ones consulted by friends and family as to what carrier and product to purchase.

TMobile VPN and the G1

I've been using my Android Dev-1 phone on T-Mobile for a while now. I've had the T-Mobile VPN service which is useful if you need to do non-trivial connectivity things with firewalls and VPN software. For some reason, in the past few days when I try to go online, I get a blocking web page that simply says "Your data plan is not compatible with the G1" and then tries to sell me an "upgrade".

I checked my APN settings and they're all correct, I'm going to see if my Internet still works in my other phones, or if all my mobile Internet is broken. I'm going to be pissed if T-Mobile is playing shenanigans with the G1.

Update:

I checked with my Motorola Rizr Z8 and Internet works just fine. That means T-Mobile has done something "special" for G1 phones. Yeah, that's bullshit.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Bottomless Well and Prius Owners

There's a great book called The Bottomless Well, appropriately subtitled "The Twilight of Fuel, The Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out Of Energy".

This great article about hybrid owners driving more and getting more tickets dovetails nicely with the book's premise.

The firm looked at several common use categories used by insurers—including "pleasure use" (everyday driving) and "high commute" (commuting more than 15 miles a day). The long commuters traveled about the same distance whether they drove a hybrid or not, but the everyday drivers of hybrids drove about 25 percent (2,000 miles) farther than those of non-hybrids—largely offsetting any petroleum savings.


A real killer is the 65% higher moving violation rate per mile driven. Sorry, but in Los Angeles, it's hard to think of prius owners as much more than smug cocksuckers.

History has shown that for every technological move that increases efficiency, consumption goes up, not down. People are willing to spend a certain amount of their budget (be it money, or perceived eco-impact, or whatever.) on certain things, and if you make it cheaper, they just use more.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Pelikan souverän m420

I really need to stop reading the reviews of pens over at Fountain Pen Network. It's killing me. The Pelikan Souverän m420 is beautiful, but damn why does it have to be so expensive.

pelikan-souveran-m420-fountain-pen

I really need to look at the more economical series, like the m215. It's very modern and sleek, plus it costs about a quarter of the 420.

pelikan-m215-fountain-pen

Maybe I'm becoming a Pelikan fanboy. I hope not.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Water plant tour

wpid-1240333272216.jpg

A field trip to the water plant included some "big truck" time.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

USUK means penis too

You learn something new every day and I had no idea that USUK (i.e., you suck), also means penis in Inuit.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Souveran M800 Demonstrator

[caption id="attachment_219" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Photo of the Pelikan M800 Demonstrator with cap off"]Photo of the Pelikan M800 Demonstrator with cap off[/caption] I want this pen so badly. The sad thing is that it is a special/limited edition so eventually it will sell out. $350 is a lot to pay for a pen though.
With luck, I'll have some spending cash later in the year and they'll still be available.

It comes in two editions, one with engraving and one without. I think I like the non-engraved one better, but it's a real close call. The engraved one is far more 'demonstrator-ish'. I don't think I'll be using it for demonstrating as much as just writing when I'm feeling particularly technical.

On the other hand, my birthday is coming up... hint, hint. I do think I'm not pushing myself hard enough, I've found too much time to spend lusting after pens. The Pelikano Jr., however, is an awesome every day writer and knock-about pen. Highly recommended.

Pelikan Pens - Souveran M800 Demonstrator 964114.

Man Dies in Vat of Chocolate

Does this candy taste strange to you?

(New Jersey) FDA monitors chocolate factory after death. One day after a worker at a Camden factory fell to his death in a vat of chocolate, federal authorities were at the facility on July 9 to make sure the company did not ship chocolate that had come into contact with the victim. The company, Lyons & Sons, had not shipped the chocolate the victim fell into, and will allow Food and Drug Administration officials to monitor its destruction, said an FDA spokeswoman.

On July 8, a man fell from a nine-foot platform as he tossed blocks of cocoa extract into a 120-degree tank that was mixing and melting the material into Hershey’s chocolate, authorities said. Inside the vat, he was hit with a mechanical paddle, and rescue attempts were unsuccessful.


At least they're destroying the chocolate. Upton Sinclair would be happy.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Heroes Of Newerth, Linux Games Rock

I recently tried the beta of Heroes Of Newerth and it was very fun. Not being a Warcraft 3 player I was completely confused by the mechanics and gameplay, but I was able to go a few rounds online.

The best part, hoewver, is that they are developing a native Linux, Mac and PC version. Other than some configuration glitches, on one quirky machine (three heads, 5760x1200), it ran just fine on the two systems I tried.

I hope this bodes well for Linux gaming in the future.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Eclipse Ganymede Cannot connect to keystore.

If you're using eclipse and find yourself getting the following errors:

Cannot connect to keystore.
java.io.IOException: This trust engine is read only.


It's probably related to certificate installs (such as that needed to complete the AWS Toolkit for Eclipse install).

After doing that, try running keytool -list, if you get an IOException about an invalid keystore, then delete ~/.keystore
The fix is easy, don't use the ganymede-SDK distribution, start with the jee distribution.

Here's what I tried that didn't work:

Run sudo update-alternatives --all and make sure you pick all the same sun jvm alternatives for your JDK toolchain. I had a few of mine mismatched because I upgraded from Ubuntu 6.04 to 8.04 to Jaunty.

That didn't solve the problem, so I tried moving my ~/.eclipse directory out of the way. No dice. Next, I moved my workspace's .metadata directory aside. That didn't do it either.

I then tried purging any non-sun jvms, then running with both java-5 and java-6 jvms using new workspaces. Everything produced the same error message.

What finally worked: discarding the eclipse-SDK distribution and using the eclipse-jee distribution. Something is definitely screwy with the SDK one.