Zibblog

Lately, I’ve been unhappy with my AT&T cell phone plan since I keep running over on minutes, so I decided to go online and find a better rate plan. After browsing the Cingular site, I found the plan that I wanted but could find no way of switching the plan without selecting a new phone. I was perfectly happy with my old phone, so I decided to give them a call and see what I could do.

The answer was absolutely nothing. It turns out that if you were an AT&T customer, you can only choose an AT&T plan (which are kind of crap in comparison). All of this makes sense if you assume that they want you to switch to Cingular. Anyway, once I came to terms with the fact that I “had” to get a new cell phone, I decided to get a cool looking cell phone. It also turns out that nobody makes cheap cool looking cell phones, so after some looking around, I ended up with what Motorola refers to as the RAZR BLK (it turns out that many people consider spelling the word BLK to be really, really cool). Anyway, it actually seems to be a pretty good phone. I’m not a huge fan of flip open phones, but I can appreciate something only half an inch thick.

On one of my machines at work, I run Norton Antivirus. Norton is very diligent about making sure that my computer is protected from all sorts of worms and viruses, which seems to include the product I work on. Whenever I start the server, I see the dialog pictured here. It now serves the purpose of letting me know when the server is up and ready.

I realized that my latest addiction was HDTV when it dawned on me that I was watching an equestrian sports show and about the only reason I could come up with in my head was “it looks nice in HD”. However, I will not apologize for watching a Chicago / Earth, Wind, and Fire concert on INHD. There is nothing wrong with a man liking Chicago as long as it is not late Chicago.

Rus once noted that people like blog entries with pictures, so I figured I’d post the pictures of the new desk and plasma tv that I took to send to my parents. I am able to post these because my cable modem was delivered today. After a conversation with comcast tech support who informed me that I couldn’t have any device between my computer and the cable modem (in my case, my airport extreme), I was able to get everything configured and my tivo was able to stop informing me that I really needed to make a daily call.

Last weekend was the big move from the old to the new apartment. Di had moved the previous weekend, and I had to be moved out of the apartment by the end of the day. After a trip to SFO at midnight to pick up Leslie, I got back to the apartment at 2 AM to finish packing. I got about 4 hours sleep and had most of the apartment except for the kitchen packed up by 9 when I went to get the uhaul, which played the role of an oversized dolly. It also served as recreation because everyone seemed to enjoy riding around my apartment complex holding onto the back. JB, Mike, Eric, Rus, Jake, and even Gregg (for an hour or so) came over to help me move and I was returning the uhaul at 1 in the afternoon.

At this point, I told the moving crew how to get to a local pizza place that I had been meaning to try: J.T. McHart’s Pizza Restaurant. By the time I got there, everyone had sat down and the pizza had arrived. At some point, I decided that we were pretty much done, so I got up to pay the bill and we left a little bit later. Fast forward to Monday at work when Mike comes by my cube to ask for the money for the pizza. I was told that they paid for the pizza when they arrived and no one seemed to have told the people working the counter when I asked to pay the bill. I paid Mike back and went there after work to try and sort the whole thing out. After working through the whole explanation, the manager took my phone number and said he’d call me once he sorted the whole thing out. In the end, Mike paid about $65, I paid a little more with tip, and I ended up with $80 in gift certificates. The pizza was pretty good and I appreciated how helpful they were in resolving the payment issue, so if you are ever in Cupertino looking for pizza, give them a try.