The Raging Tech

Christmas 2007 Survived!

Aside from the stomach ache I got from eating way too much food at Christmas dinner, Christmas 2007 has been pretty good. I wanted to post pictures to brag about what I gave and what I received, but my camera phone got smashed! It works, but not very well. The inner screen on my LG VX9900 (Verizon enV) got smushed in my pocket when I fell, and my replacement should be in the mail tomorrow.

So here’s a breakdown (Part 1) of what I gave:

• Dad - Relational Technologies fleece blanket. In my defense, yes, it was free from the conference I went to, but he is in a nursing home and can’t use his limbs or speak plainly, so he’s hard to shop for.
• Mom - Diamond stud earrings from Zales. She nearly lost the back of one within about five minutes of trying to put them on. Several crazy minutes later, she had them on.
• Sister - iPod Shuffle and $15 iTunes gift card.

I also stuffed our stockings with miscellaneous schwag from the vendors at UNC CAUSE. Mom seemed to like her mini computer mouse from Time Warner Business Class.

Since Dad can’t speak plainly anymore, I thought it would be a good idea to give a gift to Mom from him. So I found an mp3 of my Dad singing “You are My Sunshine” to my Mom a few years back, and I burned it to an audio CD and labeled it “To: Mom From: Dad, Merry Christmas!” and played it for her this morning. She started to cry - I hate to see her cry. I thought I had made her upset, but she really did like it.

Holiday Gift Ideas

I’ve got a few top picks for gift ideas this holiday season, and because this is my blog and there’s not a darn thing you can do about it, I’m going to share them with you!

Everyone loves a time-tested favorite, and they’re usually the safe way to go when you’ve got someone you’re unsure what to get. You might want to avoid cliche gifts that the person has expressed time and time again that they despise. For example, fruit cake. I hate fruit cake, so please don’t get me any. I enjoy cologne, socks, dress clothes for work, gift cards, and cash from the people who don’t know what I want. For a woman, you might try similar items (maybe perfume instead of cologne) because most of those are pretty unisex. Be careful that your gifts don’t portray an offensive message: for example, if you know someone with a weight problem, don’t buy them Slim Fast.

Gift baskets are an excellent way to be a safe gift-giver and a customized gift basket can show thoughtfulness. The basket can be filled with gourmet foods, baby items, items with a theme such as items from Texas. You could get gift baskets with men’s items or Christmas gift baskets for women. A personal favorite of mine would be a basket full of chocolate stuff, but since I’m diabetic, it has to be sugar-free chocolate.

For those closer to you, you probably already know when they drop hints if they are eye-balling something special. This season’s holiday hits will likely include: The new Verizon  LGVX 10000 iPhone-wannabe phone, Apple iPod Touch, Apple iPhone, the new iMac, HD-DVD players, X-Box 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii & DS Lite, HDTVs, and the usual huge assortment of digital cameras and mp3 players.

When you go out shopping, check sites like Google Product Search to try and get the best prices. Do your research online, find the best price, and then go out to the store and see the item in person before you purchase online.

Peace in the Media Services

Finally — it’s October, almost 8 months since we started having serious issues with Mediacom at our new place. For the uninitiated — we had problems with our cable company, Mediacom, where we couldn’t watch our TV and use the internet at the same time. We were finally told the only way to obtain the quality of service we were expecting was to get a second line put in to the house.  We ditched their TV service and switched to Dish Network with an awesome HD package and a DVR (sort of like a TiVo). When we did that, we tried to get Verizon DSL, but failed. So we went back to cable internet. And we only had it for about three days before it died. Completely. The wait time to get a tech out to fix it? 6 weeks. Completely unacceptable! Eventually, we were able to cancel our cable and get the DSL.  I haven’t looked back for a moment with any regret.

Now we have silly “problems,” like trying to manage the space on our measly 250 gig DVR by deciding what shows get to stay, and which ones have to go. I’ve been recording Star Trek: Enterprise in HD, which comes on everyday, multiple times a day. But I’m watching them and deleting them to free up space. I did figure out I can just protect what I don’t want it to overwrite and it will automatically delete unprotected things to make room.

Our DSL is fast, and I haven’t had any problems with it (knock on wood) and zero days of downtime! They don’t seem to throttle our bandwidth when we push its limits with BitTorrent downloads, and there aren’t many ports blocked off. We opted for the wireless DSL router, which saved any sort of configuration hassle to get it up and running. We can even connect to it with our Nintendo DS handhelds and play people online in Mario Kart! The Wii also connects to it, which is cool because it lets us play YouTube videos on the big screen.

I went over to my friend Nathan’s last night. He had purchased an HD-DVD player and twelve HD-DVDs (I presume on credit; that’s a heck of a lot to shell out at once). We watched “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” and “Scorpion King” on his roommate’s 61″ plasma tv with some sort of awesome surround sound system.  I say I’m impressed, because I am, but probably less so than I would be if I didn’t own my own big screen with HD satellite programming.

All in all, it’s nice to have all that, even if it is just “stuff.”

How Do You Solve a Problem like Verizon?

Verizon’s given me a lot of pains lately. There aren’t a whole lot of options around here in the mountains for cell phone providers, pretty much everyone has Verizon. Which has me on two angles: reception, and that dang Verizon IN. I can get way better reception almost anywhere with Verizon because they own all the towers in the area. And since everyone actually has Verizon, most of my calls are free.

The last few phones I’ve had have been neat, but lacking in features from the original factory specs. This is because Verizon has programmers that write their own firmware for the phone, making sure that if you get the phone from Verizon, and you want it to rontinue working on Verizon, you’re going to have to shell out for all those nifty features via their Get It Now and VZNavigator softwares, when some of that functionality should be built into the phone.

Notably, the last few cell phones I’ve had from Verizon were able to do DUN (dial-up networking) over a USB cable connected to my laptop. They recently told me over the phone that you had to add a $60 / month data plan to your current plan if you wanted to do tethered networking.

After checking a few message boards *cough* http://www.howardforums.com/ *cough* I was able to find the correct directions for getting on. Unfortunately, in my area the EVDO service pretty much doesn’t exist, which limited my connection to somewhere around 14.4 kbps (imagine early, prehistoric dial-up speed) which essentially renders the internet useless for most of my applications. Thankfully our cable service provider will be installing our cable internet on Friday.

Speaking of cable - the whole reason we are having to go back to cable for our internet is that I had a web order and a confirmation number and everything, and we were supposedly waiting on DSL to arrive in the mail, and Verizon never notified us that the computer cancelled our order because the circuitry in our area was overloaded.  The best part is, I found this out after I had already gotten our cable disconnected and satellite installed.

So Verizon, be ware, you are officially on the Raging Tech’s poop-list, somewhere betwixt Mediacom and the current state of the United States government and electoral colleges.