Should I use the sound of a 12 gauge shotgun for my phone ringtone? (Right now it's the song "Hakuoh Academy" from the Mouretsu Pirates OST.)

UPDATE: How about a cat mew?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 03:27 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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I really like my Droid DNA from Verizon, except for one thing. If it lost signal it wouldn't reacquire it. The only reasonable way to get it back was to reboot the phone, and I had gotten into the habit of checking the phone many times per day to see if that was necessary. Sometimes I had to reboot as many as a dozen times in a single day.

That isn't supposed to be necessary. When the phone loses the cell it's supposed to try to reacquire it. There are a number of different strategies involved which balance power consumption against the obvious need to reacquire. (I know about this stuff; I used to work on that firmware.) But that stuff wasn't working.

Yesterday they rolled out a firmware update, and that bug appears to be fixed. Just now I turned the phone on, and it said it wasn't connected, and then it reconnected even as I was watching.

Since that was my only objection, I now heartily recommend the Verizon Droid DNA. It is genuinely awesome in every other way. When I was a kid, and telephones had rotary dials (touch tone was introduced when I was in 5th grade) I never thought I'd live to see something like this.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 11:18 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 Cell phones have literally changed the concept of calling a person, instead of a place.

Posted by: Mauser at April 16, 2013 02:03 PM (cZPoz)

2 I would probably have gone for the Droid DNA (or the Butterfly, the international version) if they'd bothered to launch it in Australia.    Great hardware specs and great industrial design.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 17, 2013 06:01 PM (PiXy!)

3 Can you get it without a contract?

Posted by: muon at April 17, 2013 07:58 PM (jFJid)

4 It would cost a lot. The phone companies subsidize the handsets they sell; that's why you have to sign a contract for a fixed period of time, with a penalty if you stop early.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 17, 2013 08:35 PM (+rSRq)

5 Yep.  The one place I know that was selling the Droid DNA / Butterfly in Australia was asking A$829 (US$829... near enough), and now they're out of stock.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 19, 2013 01:16 AM (PiXy!)

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Ever hear of OnTrac?

Newegg is using them to deliver my most recent order. I have no idea who they are, or what they do, but they seem to be trying to set themselves up as an alternative to UPS and Fedex, and good luck to them. It ain't gonna be easy to compete in that market.

They have the same kind of online order tracking as the other two, which isn't cheap, but is appreciated. As they often do, Newegg split my order into three parts and shipped them from three different facilities. Two are coming up from California, via OnTrac, supposedly to deliver tomorrow some time.

The other one is coming from Louisville, via UPS, also delivering tomorrow. I wonder who will show up first? (That suggests to me that OnTrac doesn't have full national coverage yet.)

UPDATE:

OnTrac is the leader in regional overnight package delivery service within California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado and Idaho.

No mention of Kentucky there, which explains UPS doing the third one.

UPDATE: I tell you; it's gonna be hard for me to come up with stuff to blog about this season. Nothing fresh about anime until the first episode of Railgun shows up this weekend.

I suppose I could do another Fairy Tail cheesecake post.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 12:50 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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I guess it really is the twenty-first century after all.

I just had a doctor appointment and got all my prescriptions renewed. She sent all of them to my pharmacy electronically, so we drove to the pharmacy. They had arrived but weren't filled yet, so we sat in the waiting area, until they sent a text message to my phone telling me the prescriptions were filled. Then I stood in line to pick them up.

They couldn't just wave to me, "Yoohoo! Steve! Your prescriptions are done!" They had to send me a text message. Welcome to the future, where even communications within hailing range are handled electronically.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 02:59 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 Just be glad you don't have the implants yet.  Getting a text message directly into your brain that your migraine prescription is ready can be a real killer...

Posted by: Siergen at April 03, 2013 04:04 PM (Ao4Kw)

2

Getting a text message directly into your brain that your migraine prescription is ready can be a real killer...

I do not know if that deserves a rimshot or a sad trombone...

Posted by: cxt217 at April 03, 2013 06:53 PM (6/RCS)

3 Even better, a presidential text message.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 03, 2013 07:01 PM (RqRa5)

4 I had the same experience today, the doc said he'd upload it. I think it sucks enormously. Firstly, there's absolutely nothing you can do about any error. If they lose your prescription, it's over. Secondly, you have to decide which pharmacy it is. With a recular prescription you can choose the one that's convenient depending on where you are when you get around to filling it.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 03, 2013 07:44 PM (RqRa5)

5 My wife and I used to IM each other while we were in the same room.  Still do, on the odd occasion that we are both using AIM ( participating in an RPG together, largely ).  We were doing this before it was cool. 

Posted by: metaphysician at April 03, 2013 07:59 PM (3GCAl)

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Spring is sprung, de flowers riz,
I wonder where de boidies is?

UPDATE: Could be worse. Could be Wichita.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 11:47 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Lots of construction sound around here this week. The owner has decided to replace the roof on several of the buildings in the complex, including mine. He hired a company to do it, and they've got a front loader with an extensible arm that they're using to lift the new roofing material up on top of the three-story building, and to bring down the old roofing material after the carpenters strip it off.

It's been getting dumped into a big steel dumpster and there's a sign on the side that says they're going to recycle it. I can't figure out how. What in heck do you use old roofing for? How do you recycle it? What does it become?

UPDATE: They're working directly over me now, and every once in a while a piece of debris falls past my window. It's kind of weird. Feels like a Monty Python sketch, except that no person has gone by yet (thank goodness).

I don't expect that; these guys are wearing safety lines, and anyway they're being careful.

One thing I'm not going to do is go out on my deck, stick my head out, and look up.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 09:36 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Did somebody order some geese?

It's annoying having them around, partly because they're so loud. When a flock like this decides to visit, they're constantly honking and hooting. And they leave a lot of shit around.

But at least they don't tend to do that in just one place. It tends to be evenly distributed all over the place, and it acts like fertilizer resulting in nice green lawn in the summer. So I can't complain too much.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 11:11 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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My Verizon Droid DNA keeps surprising me. One morning about a month ago I got wakened by sound announcing the arrival of an Amber Alert.

And just now my phone startled me with a different audio alert. I looked at its screen, and it turns out that Verizon just rolled out a firmware update. Took about ten minutes to download and install, but I admit I was nervous. If something had gone wrong, it would become a brick.

I keep it near me nearly all the time. It's in my pocket during the day and it sits on my bed next to my pillow at night. It's there just in case I have another stroke, or if I'm walking around and lose my balance and fall, so that I have a way of summoning help. And it does lend me a bit of comfort because of that, but if it got bricked it wouldn't be there for me any more.

I am mostly pretty happy with it, but I do have one significant complaint: if it loses service it never spontaneously reconnects. I have to reboot it. I hope that was fixed with this firmware update.

My experience, oddly, is that I have that problem on Friday afternoons nearly every week, and only rarely any other time. I live about a quarter of a mile from a major highway (Oregon 217) and I imagine it's the result of "cell breathing".

UPDATE: That Wikipedia article about cell breathing makes it sound like something that's done deliberately. That's not the case. It is, rather, an emergent result of the way that CDMA handles power control. Ideally if you lose connection because your cell shrunk, you're supposed to do an idle handoff to a neighboring cell, but I think that isn't working for me.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 09:43 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I think it's going to come early this year. Don reports that he's seen trees blooming already. None of our trees are doing that, yet, but a few days ago I saw a flock of Chickadees, and usually they wouldn't be back here for at least another month.

And the geese around here are getting excited. There are two pairs which have been hanging out in our yard, and they've been fighting each other. Every once in a while I hear a major racket out in the yard, and one pair will have their necks extended, honking like mad at the other pair. Eventually one or both will charge and chase the other, and sometimes the other runs away and sometimes they fight.

One poor duck got run over. She was ignoring the geese but managed to end up in the way, and one of the geese ran right over her on a charge. By the way, it's amazing just how fast they can run.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 10:18 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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A skunk has either died or gotten angry near here. The smell isn't very strong yet, but I fear for the worse.

Skunks aren't very common around here, based on my unscientific sampling of how many I've smelled. They used to be a lot more common in San Diego, which surprises me. I'd have thought they'd have preferred Oregon forests to San Diego grasslands, but what do I know?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 02:03 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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