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I’ve not done too many “grab-bag” type posts here, since usually I have lots to say about any given topic (some say I can out-Dvorak Dvorak). I’ve now collected a few things that aren’t worth their own posts, so you get a bunch of odds and ends that don’t necessarily go together.

Windows Vista, yet again
It’s now been something like a year that I’ve been using Vista (or attempting to do so). However, for my new netbook, I decided to get a Bluetooth transceiver, so that I could use Skype, mice and other gadgets without needing cables. Suffice to say, the major discovery that I’ve made is that in 2008, Vista’s Bluetooth stack is worse than the one that my 2003-era Nokia dumbphone sported. Basic telephony requires third-party drivers (which of course, I do not have, seeing as Bluetooth has a few standard profiles and basic telephony is one of them). A Microsoft-made mouse is only partially supported. The third party software that comes with the transceiver – called Bluesoliel – seems to have been written by someone that: (a) never had to use it; and, (b) never read any UI guidelines for any OS ever. I wish you good luck to force it to search for something, since apparently, you’re expected to memorize the Bluetooth ID of every device you have in order to make it find new devices. If this is the very best that Microsoft – and its “valued OEM partners” – can come up with after a half-decade of programming Vista, the future is very bleak for end-users.

Resume
I decided to take the advice of several people both via comments and via email, and decided that I will redo my resume in Open Office; it’s only fair that I give it as much time and effort as I gave my resume in Microsoft Office. So thank you to those of you who suggested so. Now those of you so kind as to email me  get the pleasure of looking over and comparing the versions…

Fring for the iPhone
I love Fring. It’s the only application other than Skype that talks to Skype’s network natively (that I’m aware of). While I’m share the concerns that many people have with Skype – not least the fact that the Chinese are overhearing all the chit-chat about my work, school applications and other such important things – it’s a simple program that does one thing reasonably well. I like it, and my folks use it, so it’s become a standard around the family. After I ran into Bluetooth-ical difficulties while talking on Skype (see above), I switched to using my Fring for the iPhone for the rest of the conversation and it flowed much better. There is a slightly delay, but overall voice quality sounded good to me. Certainly, it makes clear that the iPhone is a good platform for Fring-like VoIP apps. I’m sure like almost all other iPhone OS 2.x first and third applications there are instabilities and I’ll discover them as I go on, but if you were on the fence about spending your $0.00, well… it’s worth it.

Windows monoculture = computer illiteracy
One of the best, most enlightening comments about the problem with the Windows monoculture is here. While there is a good argument to be made that computers are much more complicated beasts than washing machines, DVD players or any other tool, I would respond with the car analogy. A car is a tremendously complicated item, with thousands of parts that have to work flawlessly and hundreds of settings that need to be set perfectly in order to move efficiently and effectively. However, put someone who has only ever driven sedans into a van, and they will be able to operate it – and reasonably well. One becomes car-literate, not “Ford Taurus-literate”. Sadly, it seems more and more, people are becoming “Windows + Office literate” not “computer-literate”. (By the way – the same principle applies to food stocks and crops.)

Washington DC transport
WMATA’s continuing quest to screw up commutes reached a nadir last Friday for me. My train caught fire and had to travel back to the previous station. On that positive note, the Washington Post notes that you can expect your commute to get worse, since somehow in DC traffic planners’ heads, it makes sense that to make commutes easier, one should increase congestion. Yeah, not sure how that works… This is doubly aggravating when one realizes that for a relative pittance, one can travel the length of NYC at any time of the day or night, whilst no amount of money can do the same in DC. (Fun fact: were I to live in NYC roughly the same distance from Manhattan as I do from my house to my work place now, I’d pay a third of my DC commute costs – and I’d get there more reliably around the clock.)

Wow. I thought I’d seen it all.

I’ve not bought or helped set up a new Windows computer in a very long time. So I’m slightly behind the times on finding malware and crapware (and quite frankly, crapware is malware by another name, so I’m simply going to refer to it all as malware) that HP and other computer manufacturers try to “offer”. Here’s where I’ve seen malware hiding to ensure that it starts up:

• The Windows registry (this is a pretty obvious place).
• The Windows startup folder (also depressingly obvious).
• As a service (less obvious, but since Microsoft and legitimate services, like anti-virus programs provide a description, it’s pretty easy to spot).
• The Win.ini and System.ini files – from way back when (less obvious, but an old timer like me would know about it).
• As a login or startup script (quite clever, since it’s never clear what Windows is doing while it is “preparing your desktop”).

However, today I was introduced to a new place to store malware, and I must say, I’m both impressed with the ingenuity of it, and angry that it was done this way. Mainly the latter, some of the former.

HP decided to include “Internet Offers”. Of course, any sensibly designed program would notice that the computer was already connected to the internet and bugger off. HP, being HP, has no quality control, and is probably paid a commission for installing malware and for every signup that the malware brought in to the service provider.

So they decided to make it impossible to find. How do you do that on Vista? Well, pretty simple. You find the most difficult to understand, most worthless piece of crap program that comes with Vista, and put it there.

Yes, the Task Scheduler.

So after I spent hours scouring through the bowels of the registry, the services list and miscellaneous startup bits, I found myself trying to comprehend the New! Improved! Impossible to Understand! Task Scheduler. And sure enough, buried under layers of folders called “Microsoft”, I found… “HP Internet Offers”!

For that reason alone, I’ve ruled out buying a HP 2133 and changed my tune on buying HP. They may make decent computers – sorry, they used to make decent computers – but thanks to the Carla “screw our customers” Fiorina mentality that now pervades every HP department, I can’t recommend an HP to anyone in good conscience.

Screw you HP.

(And now, to install Ubuntu via Wubi…)

A while back, I went to get a Virginia driver’s licence. The procedure for foreigners is slightly different than that of Americans, but given a decent person on the counter, the effective difference is minimal – one extra document, in fact.

Of course, given my luck, I not only didn’t get a decent person, I also got a cranky Indian lady.

Now one thing about Indians – almost all of them, and I say this as one – is that power gets to the head. The slightest say in the affairs of another person is sufficient to trigger glee and is, in my humble Indian opinion, the root cause of the corruption that is endemic back at home. Thus, while I wished and wished during the hour I waited to be served that I would have any of them other 15 people up and serving customers, I had the fortune of getting the one person I wished not to get. This was off to a great start.

After an exhausting process of looking through my identity papers and verifying that I was eligible for a licence – over the age of 15 years and six months, check; lives in Virginia, check – I was told that my papers were not sufficient. I was unable, in this case, to prove that I was the person whose passport it was. After staring in disbelief at her insistence that a letter from the US State Department was trumped by state law and going over the lists, we concluded that my long expired work authorization permit was sufficient, I got the card from home. (I should also add that the document insisted that only currently valid work permits were acceptable ID.)

I was again stuck with the same cranky Indian lady. This time, she discovered that my proof of residency was not sufficient, since it had to be within two months; I presented a utility bill that was issued precisely two months and three days and the three days were the cause of the problem. I had anticipated this and pulled out a notarized copy of my lease. She refused to accept it because it was not – and I quote – “the usual form of residency we accept”. In the end, her plaintive mews were trumped by my showing her that a lease was a valid way of proving I lived in Virginia – from a piece of paper she had used to deny me my licence to begin with.

On that livid note, she angrily proclaimed that she was just doing her job, and not trying to harass me.

Really?

I wonder what gave her that idea.

However, triumphantly, I proceeded with my application. Until – and here it takes a turn into the surreal – she looks at my application as she is entering into the computer and the following conversation ensues:

Her: “You have misentered this information!”
Me: “What information have I misentered, ma’am?”
Her: “Your eye colour.”

I stared at the form which clearly states that my eye colour is “Black”. I look at her and politely say: “The eye colour is quite correct. As it is written in my passport and my work authorization permit.”

Her: “That is not true! Your eye colour is dark brown!”

(Here, insert a full ten seconds of confused bewilderment.)

Me: “Ma’am – perhaps the light here is strange, but my eye colour has been black since the day I was born and will be till the day I die. If you do not believe me -”
Her: “I’m not saying you are lying! You are just misinformed!”
Me: “If you disagree with this assessment, then let’s go out into the natural sunlight and you can verify my eye colour. In addition, if you enter it as dark brown, your documents will be inconsistent with every other document in existence about me. You are welcome to enter it as you feel fit.”
Her: “I’m just telling you, your eye colour is dark brown, it is not black. However, if you wish to put this incorrect information on your record, I am not responsible for it!”

With this biting rejoinder, she recommenced fuming and entering the information. A mere twenty minutes later (had I mentioned it was now 4.30PM – a full two hours and thirty minutes after entering the building), she was done and stiffly informed me it was too late for me to take the driving test as the center did not accept driving tests thirty minutes before closing.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should always read the fine print.

“Ma’am, perhaps this is another case of misinformation – but I notice that here it says you are open till 5.30pm today. That means I have a full thirty minutes to proceed with my driving test.”

Openly glaring at me now, she sent me on my way to get my knowledge test and driver’s test. While I was not scared about the driver’s test – where I had one of the nicest testors I have ever met – I met this prize question on the knowledge test:

“Approximately what percentage of fatal motorcycle crashes involve automobiles?”
a. 10%
b. A third.
c. 50%.
d. All.

That was the sole question I got wrong for a test I did not study for at all. However, at precisely 45 minutes after 5PM, I walked triumphantly out of the DMV, driver’s licence in hand.

Morals/take away:

1. Stay clear of cranky Indian ladies behind the desk at the DMV.
2. Always read the fine print.
3. See #1 above.

A few months ago, I went laptop shopping with a friend to a place that rhymes with Worst Guy. As it happened, a few weeks before I went to this retailer, they had been caught showing different prices on their internal and external websites, with the deliberate intent to deceive customers – so think of a conversation as follows:

Customer: I saw it for $80 on your website.
ScumSales Agent: No sir, you must have seen it for $100 and forgotten. See, here’s our website!
Customer: Huh, I could’ve sworn…

Then the customer would buy it, go home, find that the price in the store was too high, but it would be arguing over small percentage and they would feel ridiculous.

Armed with this knowledge, I printed out the list of laptops and off we went. The first store didn’t have the $849 laptop my friend was looking for in stock. The second store had it. I asked the price and was told it was $899.

$899, eh? What about this here printout that shows it as $849?

The following Q&A session followed.

1. The model was different. Then why do they have the same exact model numbers?
2. The in-store model is not part of a bundle offering. What bundle offering, exactly, since its not listed on the printout?
3. The online price was outdated. It changed in the past 45 minutes?
4. Yes, the online price has changed now. Then could you explain why it clearly states the $849 price is still showing on my internet connected tablet?
5. The online price was wrong. Well lucky us you price match the price that’s currently shown.

After this, the guy gave up and “corrected” the price as follows: “Well, I see that you’re upset by this price difference so for no additional cost we’ll give you a one year Product Replacement Plan – a $80 value!”

“The same Product Replacement Plan that we refused earlier because we intend to buy a longer, global warranty from HP?”

This went back and forth until I finally said, “Look – here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to take the laptop and go home. We’re going to call the credit card company and order a chargeback for $50+ tax. In addition to the fact we’ll get the laptop at the price your website offers it at, we’ll also bring you closer to the 1% chargebacks limit that credit card companies allow and you will loose your right to accept credit cards. Or you can price match. Take your pick.”

Suffice to say, my friend got her laptop for $849. But to think what would have happened if I didn’t know. Caveat emptor indeed.

A few days ago, my laptop’s power adapter died in rather spectacular fashion. Since my flatmate has a laptop that uses the same power adapter, I borrowed hers for a few days while I investigated my options. First off, it’s not entirely clear what adapter one is supposed to buy from HP’s website. There is a deprecated 65W adapter and a current 90W adapter. My original adapter is the 65W one, and doesn’t seem to be widely available. Even HP’s has a 6-8 week backlog. I can’t wait 6-8 weeks to have this adapter; I need it now.

So I decided to go to the laptop’s dedicated support page… and found nothing. The “accessories” page doesn’t actually have a link to the accessories compatible with the laptop. So in frustration, I decided to go to Ye Locale Microcenter and what’s this!? HP power adapters? Damn – 90W, let’s see, though.

Reading closely through the microscopic text, I don’t see my laptop listed. Then again, the power adapter has a manufacture date of 2006, so it’s possible my laptop was not widely available when the adapter was wrapped. So I discover that it is compatible with the V5105 laptop that I had previously. That adapter was compatible with the current laptop. In a roundabout fashion, I figure that the current laptop is in fact compatible with the adapter. So I pick it up, figuring, I might as well see if it works.

Then begins the real fun. After using a knife, a scissor, a can opener and finally the Wusthof knife, I finally manage to open a wide enough gap to sneak my hand in to pick out the adapter, I discover that the power cable is still inside. I push my hand – OUCH! I pull out my bleeding hand, staring amazed at how much blood is suddenly flowing out of a half inch gash on my thumb. Twenty minutes later, once the blood has stopped flooding the sink, I get to actually testing out the power adapter. So far, so good, though I’m not sure what the long term effects will be of my pumping roughly 50% more wattage into the laptop.

Meanwhile my hand is wrapped in band-aids. Which leads me to the following statement: if you are the person responsible for this atrocious packaging method, I hope one day one of your products causes you to bleed out and die in the same vein (hah!) that your products have caused untold sufferings amongst millions, if not billions, of people.

Why no, normally I’m not this angry – this is merely wrap rage.

Typed with one hand as the other is currently unusable.

Yesterday I introduced the concept of “infant mortality” in tech industry, where a certain percentage of gadgets just up and die right away – because of production problems and such. My Compaq laptop’s display is one such example; the only other example from my own life is my Dell DJ. This is that story.

A few years ago, when iTunes for Windows was still in its infancy and iPods had just got docks, I got myself a Dell Digital Jukebox. Technically, this was my second digital audio player; my first was a Rio Volt which decided to up and die without warning one day. The Dell DJ was tiny for the time and gave me 15GB of storage space in a package roughly the size of a pack of cards. It ran hours and hours on a single charge. I clocked it in across the Pacific once at roughly 40 hours or so, which somehow seemed to be a lot more than what Dell itself advertised, but suffice to say, my iPod-toting friends were jealous.

However, a large batch of hard drives used therein were faulty. These were supposed to be very, very early on in the production run, and apparently had been resolved by the time I bought mine. So imagine my shock and horror when less than three days after I got my brand new, not yet so much as scratched Dell DJ, I heard it making the dreaded clicking noise that I associated with Iomega Zip disks dying. I called Dell, was unhelpfully transferred around until someone took pity on me and decided to talk to me.

I duly received a box, put my Dell DJ in, and was rewarded two weeks later with… exactly the same unit, with a note saying they couldn’t find the defect.

Couldn’t find the defect?!  You don’t hear the “click crick click crick click crick”?

I called Dell again, again spent a long time on hold, and finally convinced them into sending me a replacement unit before I shipped out the old one, for which they put – I’m not kidding – a hold on my credit card twice the price that I paid for the unit, with all its accessories, for six weeks. (It took another call to have that hold removed.) I duly received the unit and off I went. This unit lasted about eight months until one day:

“Crick click crick click crick click crick click crick…”

I called Dell for the fourth time in a year and, while the process was a lot smoother, still got my final Dell DJ three days later than they promised.

After that experience, I swore off Dell permanently.

The tremendous irony, of course, is that today I can still pull out my Dell DJ from 2004, charge it for a couple of hours and get a half-day’s worth of play. I unfortunately don’t have any way of putting on or removing music from the unit, because the software was awful (worse than the spawn of Adobe Acrobat, Real Player and Quicktime combined), but I can still listen to the 2000 or so tracks I was fond of at the time just fine. And it works simply perfectly – no glitches, no random errors, nothing to indicate that it’s sputtering in from another age. It’s just not being used as a primary player because it doesn’t have enough space, and because I can’t sync to it.

Meanwhile, my January 2006-era 5G iPod, with a battery that is less than 18 months old, plays for about an hour today after an overnight charge, randomly shuts off in the middle of songs with a “no battery” indicator but starts right back up again showing a full charge, and glitches on anything that is VBR and above 192 KBps, which is to say, the majority of my music. But! I can sync new music on to it. And so it remains in use, even as I nostalgically remember the adventures of my first hard disk based digital audio player that has virtually none of the songs I would listen to now.

Maybe Songbird (part of my FOSS commitment for 2008) will change this sad state of affairs?

This is probably set to jinx my experience again, but I thought it was worth sharing as a follow-up to my story about my Compaq laptop failing. Naturally, these things, once they fail, fail again, right?

Anyway, I got back the laptop, reinstalled the hard drive and the RAM (I have doubled the shipping RAM) and spun up the computer. Pleased as punch there were no no obvious problems (the green line was gone), I happily continued where I had left off and installed a bunch of new applications that I had been meaning to try out, most notably LogonStudio for that extra snazzy orange nebula greeting. It looks great, especially on this screen.

After typing up a bunch of things, including that accursed post, I set the laptop to sleep – a new Windows Vista term that is a cross between the old suspend and hibernate, probably the most useful feature in Vista, actually – and went away for a while. I came back, turned it back on and whoa – what’s this?

The bottom 60% or so of the display was completely illegible, looking much what the outside looks like through a completely rain-soaked glass pane. My first instinct was driver failure. I fired up the command line and manually restarted the driver (second most useful feature of Vista). Hmm – no joy. I looked at the logs, and indeed, there was no crash to begin with. Odd, but it’s possible that I didn’t remember the command exactly from the betas.

So I sighed and restarted the computer and imagine my shock when at bootup the screen experienced the same problem.

“Uh, oh, cable snag.”

This is where my extensive exploration of laptops and laptop hinges in particular comes in handy. Once upon a time, a dear friend of mine had an Apple iBook which suffered a backlight failure. After she had procured the requisite part, I volunteered to disassemble the laptop and install the new display in her laptop. About halfway through reconstructing the notebook, I discovered that there was no physical way to get the cable connecting the motherboard to the panel untwisted and clear of the hinges without taking apart the hinge. Given a choice between destroying the cable or reassembling the hinge, I did the latter. And sure enough, it was a wise decision, as shown by what happened to my current laptop.

What the Compaq tech must have done (I wasn’t there, I can’t be sure) was to force the cable through instead of dismantling the hinges. The net result is that while the laptop was cool there was virtually no pressure on the cable. Once the heat built up and the metal of the hinges expanded, though, the pressure severed the cable.

So on Monday, the 3rd of December, I called the tech line again. After speaking with an agent with a distinctively Filipino accent (and he responded “wala na po” when I said “salamat”, so I’m sure), I signed off, sure the problem was recorded right and I would get a box on Wednesday, the 5th.
This time, HP did one better and sent me an email every time a shipping event occurred. So when the first notification arrived, I checked in and discovered that not only was the problem description wrong, but so was the serial number.

First deviation.

So I called HP tech support first thing on Tuesday morning and spoke to a rather dim-witted and mostly asleep agent who insisted that the only way that the error could be corrected was to cancel the existing service request and put in a new request. After reassuring him that it was okay to do so, I convinced him to put a note on the existing request (I had to dictate it word for word – several times!). Given this experience, I gave up trying to explain the problem and opted to toss in a note with the laptop.

Second deviation.

On Wednesday, the Washington area got dumped by its first snow! Yay! Not so yay, however, because Fedex didn’t show up. Neither before noon the next day. In fact, they barely made it to my place early enough that I could go drop the item back off with them (their cut-off is 7pm, the box arrived at 5.30pm – in rush hour, with snow on the roads).

Third deviation.

On Friday, I got a call from possibly the nicest tech support agent I’ve ever talked to, a gentleman named David. He explained that he couldn’t make out the notes on the file, could I please explain the problem. So I told him the problem, and what I thought had happened. He said, “hold on a minute”, came back 30 seconds later and told me that the problem was exactly as I suspected – the cables had been forced past the hinge by the previous tech, and once the computer got warm enough, the metal expanded, cutting the cable off. (Aha, thank you, thank you.)

He got it fixed and shipped out and I got the laptop back yesterday around noon, right after I collapsed after finishing a massive deliverable for work. Now I have to get back to the whole “cleaning up the gadgets” mess.

So what’s my line on Compaq now? Well, it really was unacceptable that the first tech just shoved the wires through without considering what would happen to the cables. I understand there is a lot of work that needs to be done, but it should have been checked throughly before making itself back to me. Instead of losing the laptop for about three days, as I did, I lost it for about seven. That’s not good, but given my experience with other companies, that’s much better. HP continues to have a really good and informative website about where my laptop is and what the estimated time of arrival is. In the past, I have also never previously been so much as emailed to tell me that they didn’t understand the problem before they sent back the exact same unit that had a problem in the first place (as what happened with my Dell DJ – ironic short story tomorrow). I got called by a knowledgeable and pleasant tech support agent who was patient with me and was willing to try out what I thought was wrong, even though it was near the end of the work day for the agent. And if it wasn’t for Fedex basically sitting on its rear for a day and a half, I would most likely have got the laptop back in three days, instead of four. I don’t hold that delay against Compaq, though.

All in all, I would say I would still buy HP/Compaq again. I may not be quite as enthusiastic about them as before, but I am still very impressed by their warranty. I, of all people, know that a certain percentage of every gadget or device suffers from “infant mortality” and dies early, and this laptop makes it only my second such case. For what it’s worth – I would still recommend HP/Compaq to you.

Let’s just hope this doesn’t happen again.

I was going to just continue with my series of getting things in order, but since this happened today (Tuesday – even though the post is queued for posting Wednesday morning), I thought I would relate the story and reschedule the other post for either later today or tomorrow.

For those of you who are not in the US, it may come as quite a shock to be introduced to the rather primitive, feudal system that serves as the mobile or cellular phone companies. Other than a handful of regional companies that service individual states or groups of state, there are four major companies, down from six when I got here in 2002. The four are AT&T Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. Since my arrival, I have seen Deutsche Telekom buy and rebrand VoiceStream as T-Mobile, AT&T be bought out and then buy out Cingular and Sprint buy out Nextel.

AT&T and T-Mobile service is provided on US-specific frequencies of GSM, Sprint and Verizon use CDMA. While in most countries, four companies would be extensive competition, the lack of standardization on a single wireless standard means essentially the average person trying to purchase cellular has only set of choices: AT&T and T-Mobile can be used interchangeably, with all the caveats of phone locking that hinder interoperability of devices in the rest of the world. Theoretically one could use a Sprint phone on a Verizon network and vice versa – but I have yet to see this happen. Thus in order to switch networks, one must generally purchase phones, unless you’re lucky enough to have your unlocked phone and open phone. I have yet to see an unlocked CDMA phone, but most GSM phones can be unlocked. Unwilling to be stuck in a SIM lock trap, I have since 2004, kept my own unlocked phone – currently a Nokia N80 internet edition. I’m quite fond of it in the way you’d be fond of an old Lada.

However, I have been over the years, systematically frustrated with my carrier, T-Mobile. At least once every six months, if not more often, T-Mobile sends a nasty letter claiming non-payment, and immediate termination or suspension of service. Of course, this is clearly the best way to treat a long-term loyal customer. Every time I get such a letter, I have the pleasure of calling T-Mobile, faxing over a copy of my bank statement showing that I have in fact paid their bloody bill on time (in fact, usually well ahead of time) and thus the problem is on their end. Begrudgingly, they accept the fact (that yet again) this time they were wrong and after telling me off about my poor billing habits, we hang up. I should also take a minute here to mention that despite requesting e-billing for just a tad over a year and being told it has been activated, I have yet to get a single e-statement.

So when I got this sort of suspension of service letter from the slum-lord style management that T-Mobile is yesterday, three years to the week I setup automatic payment, I had had enough. I called them, was told their headquarters was underwater, yelled at them until I was put through, and had the problem cleared up. Then I mentioned the phrase that all American companies despise: “What is the procedure to cancel service?”

American companies, particularly American utility and telecom companies, are like the immature brats next door: when things are going in their favour, they happily laugh and run off with your money; it’s only when the threat that “their” precious money is threatened that they start whining and pleading for you to stay. Of course, you have no say in the matter – in a country where your sole consumer protection right is to complain to a bureau that has no enforcement power and takes the statement of the company to be more truthful than the that of the consumer even when the company is caught lying publically, you can hardly expect the contracts to be written fairly. This is particularly chafing because my preference is for a prepaid system, but the US mobile phone industry is setup to essentially give you postpaid or nothing. Since my cell phone is my sole phone, nothing is not an option. Neither, really, is T-Mobile. Along with binding arbitration, false marketing and tacked on fees, you could get these wonderful letters by using an American mobile phone service. Seriously, would you accept this if you went to buy groceries and at the end of the bill discovered “Government Compliance Fee” or “State Regulatory Fees” or “Capital Expense Deference Fee”?

So I decided I would go investigate my options. It was out of the question that I would switch to a CDMA provider, seeing as they use a specific, SIM-less version of phones, forcing me purchase a newer, lesser phone. But I decided to check anyway. Given my familiarity with Nokia phones, both Series 40 and S60, I thought I would check Sprint and Verizon’s Nokia offerings. Sprint offered precisely no Nokia phones; Verizon offered none online, and one hoary old clamshell with a bulging antenna in store. I went to look at it and was horrified at the menuing system. The Series 40 platform is a very well thought out, very well designed and fast platform. Instead of being greeted with that welcoming interface, I found myself trapped in a nightmare of slow inconsistent tabbed chaos, squinting at the screen to make sense of the mess of icons and kludgy text. I asked the hovering sales clerk what on earth I was looking at and was told that this mess was the happy end product of years of customizations that ensured – and I quote – “a pleasing and consistent appearance across the entire Verizon lineup”. Pleasing? No. Consistent? After checking several other phones and finding nothing similar in the layout, but otherwise identical messes, I would have to say no.

Disappointed I went to my last “choice”, the GSM-happy, SIM-friendly, N80-compatible AT&T. We talked through the various concerns I had: I needed the minimum number of minutes ($40 for 450, versus $40 for the 1000 now), about 200 text messages (I’m paying $3 for 400 any type of messages now, they offered me a $5 200 text messages only plan), and unlimited data ($20). So for $5 more than I would be paying on T-Mobile + made-up fees and taxes, I found I could get a plan with 550 fewer minutes, no unlimited nights and weekends, 200 fewer text messages, no picture messages, and no WiFi access. Awesome! Sign me up. After completing the preliminaries and making sure that both I and the confused gentleman trying to push something called a “MOTO RAZR” understood what was going on, we got to the long list of terms and conditions. Unlike most people, I read the fine print. As I learnt from the Eighth Rule of Acquisition, “small print leads to large risk”.

Therein, I discovered a problem. There was an early termination fee of a mind-boggling $175. Are you joking? After several calls up and down the chain, it was determined that despite the fact that I would be providing my own equipment, despite the fact that I would be paying the full rate plan that includes paying back the subsidy in monthly installments and despite the law saying otherwise in the great Commonwealth of Virginia, corporate policy trumps law and I would pay $175 for the privilege of canceling my service with them, despite not getting equipment for them, which is the purpose of the fee. You can imagine what my reaction was. Despite the protests of the gentleman trying to sell me on these feudal terms, I ripped up the contract and walked out of the store, with the store manager threatening to call the cops on me for taking back a form I had filled up with my information. Naturally, no cops showed up, but I think it illustrates precisely how these phone companies think of you, their customer.

So as I sit here typing this tonight, I look and see that my phone is still displaying “T-Mobile”, sadly. The bastardized version of Deutsche Telekom here in America remains my only viable choice, in a country that prides itself on choice and competition. I considered for a while what my alternatives were, and I came up with the following:

• None.
• See above.

I compared this to the experience I’ve had in other countries – India, the Philippines, Malaysia, the Netherlands and others – where I’ve bought SIM cards and realized just how aggravating this country’s mobile phone system really is. There is no choice because the terms are the same even if the network is different, in a country that claims to have mind-boggling choices. There is no competition because there are no upstarts who can displace the reigning champion, in a country that made its reputation on the value of competition. There is no equality of treatment because you can either accept their (identical) terms or take a hike, in a country where the basic premise of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution is such equality. And heaven forbid you should try to just pay them and get on with life – how else could the dangle a guillotine over your head to point out how they are in the position of power?

I cannot help but think of two people and their writings now: Alexandre de Tocqueville and Richard Stallman. During the summer of my first year here, a good friend of mine suggested that I read “On Democracy in America” and to this date I cannot help but remember with a chill what Tocqueville wrote about being welcome to think different, but being shunned for it. And from Stallman, whom I mock and think a barrier to the healthy progress of FOSS and Linux, I am reminded of the frightening “Right to Read” which I think he might have been right about in many respects, but was wrong to attribute the blocking agent as Microsoft. The true gatekeepers of the internet and the infinite information stored there are the ISPs. As more and more access happens on the go and over the air, having open, unfettered access to the internet without ridiculous terms and limitations or threats to cut off your access means that the true menace to free (as in freedom) information are uncompetitive companies functioning as a cartel, so there are no choices.

In the meantime, of course, I await my next, inevitable letter from T-Mobile Financial informing me that I have failed to pay and face suspension of service.

Just yesterday, I blogged about being having to use my Mac for a bit, because my Compaq laptop was in the shop. Today, my laptop came back.

Let me explain this in a little more detail:

• Wednesday evening, 7pm: I mailed my laptop to HP in California.
• Friday morning, 10:30am: My laptop came back. With the display – which was faulty – replaced.

This is the most incredible technical support / customer care service I have ever seen – bar none. They paid for two-way overnight shipping before 10.30am, kept me up to date via a website, underpromised and over-delivered. My next laptop, my next desktop and my next printer, scanner and every other gadget will come from HP. In fact, if they make it, and I need it, I’ll buy it from them.

I am truly, truly awed. HP++.

(Compare to: Nokia – “go screw yourself and your warranty too”; Toshiba – “no, your international warranty doesn’t work in Asia, HAHA!”; Apple – “what 90-day warranty?”; Microsoft – “your Xbox will be back when we think it’s ready to be back, and, oh, you’re paying one way”.)

EDIT: extraneous “a” has been taken out behind the shed and shot.

I buy lots of IKEA stuff. Mainly, it’s because IKEA manufactures its things in single factories, so every piece of furniture they sell even here in the US meets European environmental standards which – unlike American federal standards – exist. Also, they are pretty darn durable. And while I can’t help but giggle at IKEA’s tax structure, I do appreciate that if something goes wrong, they make every effort to get it fixed.

That is, until now – and it may the most ridiculous problem any one could get stuck in.

My flatmate and I have a Lillberg sofa that she bought some years ago. It’s a very competent sofa that also doesn’t suffer the problem that most sofas suffer at the hands of our cats – i.e.: scratches and general destruction. However, one of the beams that supports the pillows has given up the ghost and snapped. Now here’s where everything takes a dive in to the surreal. Watch and learn:

1. IKEA does not sell replacement parts.
2. IKEA gives away, within reason, replacement parts for free during the warranty period.
3. The warranty period of this sofa line is 25 years.
4. Unfortunately, this sofa line is 40+ years old.
5. Thus we must prove that the sofa is less than 25 years old and within its warranty period.
6. For which we need a receipt. Which we don’t have.

So despite the fact that the warranty period is longer than the time I’ve spent on earth, I cannot get a replacement part for the sofa – because I can’t prove that it’s covered by warranty. And yes, we’ve offered to pay for the replacement part… no joy. For a 40cmx6cm piece of wood with four holes drilled into it.

Sigh. Ridiculous.