iPhone, I hope you don't miss AT&T

Image via Wikipedia

I've been an AT&T wireless customer on and off for well over a decade, and for the last couple of years I've "enjoyed" my first-generation iPhone with AT&T service. Also within the last couple of years, a company named Cricket wireless began advertising in my area for a much less expensive cellular service, and I promised myself that after my contract with AT&T ended, I'd consider looking into them.

Image by Cricket Nation via Flickr

A few encounters with Cricket's in-store and phone customer service, and I was sold. I can sum up my Cricket wireless customer service experience as "quick, polite and up-front service with a sales-orientation that's not based on gimmicks or crazy fees." I've also been impressed with the voice quality of Cricket's service as I've experienced fewer dropped calls than with AT&T. For $45 a month I receive unlimited text, messaging, and voice calls. The Cricket $45 plan saves me at least $60 a month or $600 a year over AT&T's plan, and it is perfect for person like me who stays in my calling region (Texas) a majority of the time.

Here's the pseudo-sad part. I'll have to admit that at first I did miss using my iPhone, but after a few days I realized that when I was on the iPhone I really wasn't paying attention to it most of the time. As a "temporary" replacement, I've been using an older 6700 windows mobile phone (as Cricket supports CDMA (PCS) and not the GSM network found in the iPhone). The 6700 phone is okay, but it's no thriller. I'm hoping to get a new HTC Diamond as my Cricket phone and will also carry my iPhone around in my briefcase, so I can continue using my iPhone's apps, internet browser, and music. We'll see how it goes, but for now, I'm thrilled with cutting my cell phone service bill more than half. Good riddance AT&T.

Mac and PC, it's time to get along

While this is nothing new for an IT department, as a personal user I recently found a sweet spot when computing in Mac OS X Leopard or Windows Vista .

To make this short story shorter, I use both operating systems for work and was getting fed up of having to reboot into Mac to access my email, documents, contacts and music library. Side note: I tried running Windows in VMWare Fusion and Parallels but missed the speed of running Mac or Windows native. So I've adopted a few new applications to be able to work in Mac or Windows without having to reboot.

Email & Contacts: I migrated from Apple Mail to Mozilla Thunderbird 3 for both email and contacts. Thunderbird works on both Mac and Windows, and I've set it up to share the same email folder/information. I chose Thunderbird 3 (over version 2) as it can use my Apple address book.

Email conversion: Emailchemy (Windows, Mac, Linux). Converted my 4GB of mail (10 years) in under an hour to the Thunderbird/Mozilla format.

Music: iTunes. While I chose not to share the same iTunes library, I do have Windows set up to use the same iTunes folder that my Mac uses.

Documents and other files: MacDrive (Windows) allows me to use (read/write) any file on my Mac partition (HFS formatted). Tip: Always allow your operating system to shut down correctly. If it does not, reboot into the operating system and then shut down again.

The upshot: While I still occasionally reboot, it's definitely more enjoyable to have to do it less, and being able to boot into Mac or Windows and use my essential information is priceless. Mac and PC, it's time to get along.

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Why I'm buying but not upgrading to Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard

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Just a few years ago, I upgraded to MacOS X Leopard (10.5), a major upgrade from Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) with an improved user interface and features. Around the same time, I had also upgraded from XP to Vista as the upgrade came free with my tablet PC.

While the blogosphere and media have covered plenty of problems with Vista, earlier versions of MacOS X leopard had a handful of problems too. Some were bugs that would later be worked out in updates, and some problems were due to a lack of software updates/drivers from third-party manufacturers. For example, one of the most annoying problems that I had on the MacOS X Leopard side, was that HP did not release updated drivers for my professional printer until 6 months had passed since Leopard was released. There were also weird connectivity problems with my wireless Internet as well as program crashes, none of which I had in Tiger. Although these annoyances were painful at times, none of these seemed to be as bad as some of the problems that I had in Windows Vista.

Image by Victor Svensson via Flickr

My point is this: I won't be upgrading my operating systems right away, but I will buy now and play later to take advantage of some awesome pricing and to avoid any of these silly upgrade problems as my Mac and Windows installs are running just fine now (whew, knock on some bytes for me). Apple is offering a sweet $29 upgrade to Snow Leopard that I will gladly take, and Microsoft is offering a decent $50 upgrade from Vista to 7.

Are you planning to upgrade and use Windows 7 or Snow Leopard right away as your main OS? Did you experience any problems with the last major upgrade?

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No more 24-hour coffee and WIFI continued...

Thanks to a tip from a friend on Facebook, I now have a new mission, i.e. to visit Mi Tierra - restaurant and bakery. As I have "feasted" there more than a few times, I'm not sure that it would be the best place for some prolongued writing, but for an hour or two, it could be very hip :)

Two things on Mi Tierra's website intro gives me hope for my 24-hour upcoming adventure:

1) "We never close"



2) "Anytime"



Post to follow after the visit,
Jump to Mi Tierra's website here

No more 24-hour coffee and WIFI

A little while back, the Starbucks (SB) located in San Antonio's Quarry became 24 hours, just perfect for that late night Skinny Vanilla Latte and some laptop time or a good book. I can't tell you how many times I went there at midnight, 1 or 2 a.m. to do some work or finish an upcoming project.

But no more. Due to this fabulous recession and a cited lack of demand (according to my favorite Quarry barista), the Quarry Starbucks has regular hours. I'd say that this makes a lot of sense given our economic times except for the fact that Starbucks also opened up another location (in the last few months) less than 2 blocks away, and there's another 2 more blocks away. 

In my internet search for a 24-hour coffee shop in San Antonio, I came across Jim's Cafe and Coffee Bar, a part of the Jim's family of restaurants. Great right? 24 hours - check. Coffee - check. WIFI - NO! Perhaps there's a business opportunity here for a good, relatively inexpensive 24 hour coffee shop that is centrally located in San Antonio. If you know of one, I'd love to hear about it.

I just find some of these "educated" ideas a bit silly

Op-Ed Contributor - Five Ways to Fix America’s Schools - NYTimes.com

I applaud Mr. Levy of the New York Times for his willingness to discuss education reform, but I just find some of his ideas a little too silly. He presents 5 ways to improve education, a neat commentary and quick read for discussion. Let's take idea #1:

Raise the age of compulsory education. Twenty-six states require children to attend school until age 16, the rest until 17 or 18, but we should ensure that all children stay in school until age 19.

Okay, so we raise the age of compulsory education to 19, but why? This is not only going to end up increasing class sizes over time but will also offer little added benefit for students compared to local tax increases that we are all sure to see.

#2 And for those who graduate from high school early: they would receive, each year until they turn 19, a scholarship equal to their state’s per pupil spending. In New York, that could be nearly $15,000 per year.

$15,000! Okay, now I'm moving to New York and going back to high school. On a serious note, this idea has some merit as long as the students have performed well, i.e. A's and B's, and use the scholarship during the year exempted. While I'm not sure that the latter is a requirement of the scholarship, it should be.

(To continue reading the full article click here)

Back!

Wow, it's been a busy semester, and I'm thankful to have taught and learned with such wonderful students. I'm also thankful for this little upcoming break. I've been looking forward to some blogging time and writing time (for my never-ending story, a.k.a. dissertation). I've got some interesting upcoming posts with a special one set to launch in a few days after Apple's WWDC (you'll soon see why I posted after the event, and if you're a Mac fan interested in netbooks and tablets, you won't want to miss this post).

My best,

Bernard