Phone on Evan Hoffman

Frustrations with the iPhone, from an Apple admirer

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:44:46 +0000

I got my first “smart” phone, a BlackBerry Pearl, in 2007. I got it from LetsTalk.com for $0.00 with a 2-year AT&T contract. It was EDGE-only - no 3G - and certainly had a lot of problems, but I loved it. At some point the ball fell out of it and it became unusable. The iPhone 3G was out by that time and I ended up getting my wife an iPhone 3G for Mother’s Day in 2009 and one for myself a few weeks later. I pretty much fell in love with the iPhone, and my concern about the on-screen keyboard was negated by having a real web browser after suffering with Blackberry’s for so long. And 3G was an amazing step up from EDGE speeds.

After switching back to Cablevision, FiOS users can't call us.

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 12:39:02 +0000

So we switched back to Cablevision and it went pretty well, but apparently Verizon users can’t call our house number (ported from Verizon to Cablevision). Verizon users have to call from their mobiles in order to complete the call. I’m guessing that Verizon hasn’t updated their systems to indicate that they no longer “own” our number and is trying to route the call inside their network. Sucks because I can’t imagine Verizon jumping to help fix this since I’m not their customer anymore.

Looking into modernizing our office phone system

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:02:29 +0000

I’m researching replacing our current office phone system with a modern one. Currently we have a pretty old system (not managed by my department): POTS lines into an old PBX, old Toshiba DKT2010 handsets, lousy voicemail, and no direct-dial to each desk. You have to call in, talk to the receptionist, and get transferred. We also have no caller ID, and when you move from desk A to desk B, your extension changes from 305 to 309 (or whatever) - your extension is not bound to the phone, but to the jack. In addition to being retarded, this means your business cards now have the wrong extension on them

FiOS Ping Test

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:07:14 +0000

Ran a ping test at pingtest.net today. Overall I can’t find fault with the FiOS service so far. Port 80 and 443 are open and I have them forwarded to my Linux box so I can actually run a webserver in my basement. I’m debating moving this domain over to my own linux box, since it’s super low traffic, but I probably won’t.

Only (minor) problems with FiOS are:

I used to love my BlackBerry Pearl

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:19:42 +0000

I got my phone in April 2007 from LetsTalk.com. I got a good deal – a BlackBerry Pearl and 2 Motorola RAZR V3rs for… free. No rebates or anything, totally free. LetsTalk screwed up the account creation but I got that straightened out with Cingular.

The BlackBerry served me pretty well until around September 2008 when the trackball got so gunked up I couldn’t use it. I keep my phone in my pants pocket and not in some protective case, so I guess the lint and finger grease got to be too much. I dealt with it like this for a couple of weeks until I decided to try cleaning the ball. It’s pretty easy to remove the clip and take the whole apparatus out, and it was indeed very gunky in there. I went at it with a can of air (computer dusting stuff), a Q-tip and some rubbing alcohol. I got all the gunk off, put it all back together and it was pretty good for about a week or two. Then it was back to its old self - spinning the trackball didn’t do anything and I couldn’t navigate menus or use almost any of the features of the phone. Plus - this is the best part - the plastic clip that kept the trackball apparatus in place had apparently lost tension or something and would pop off, and by the end of 2008 the trackball had fallen out completely and is now lost to the ages.