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surprisingly positive customer experience
Apr. 21st, 2008 02:27 pmOver the weekend, my phone suddenly decided that it could no longer register on Vodafone's network. Thinking that this might be a continuation of the other hardware failures my phone has had, I figured I'd try the SIM in another phone. I tried two different phones, and both refused to even unlock the SIM, from which I concluded that the problem was with the SIM itself. I called Vodafone at about 9:30 this morning, and the customer service line rang out, which was on par with my expectations; I tried again later on, and this time got through to a customer service rep, who in a very short space of time confirmed that I could get a new SIM by going to my nearest Vodafone shop and telling them I needed one. He didn't have a useful explanation as to why the old SIM had died, but I wasn't expecting one anyway. And so I visited the local Vodafone store, and five minutes later I was connected to Vodafone's network once more. No charge, no hassle. Frankly, I'm quite stunned.
phone: fixed
Mar. 11th, 2008 11:19 pmAfter a recent night of revelry I woke up to discover that my phone was apparently dead. Poking the power button elicited a brief lighting-up, but neither plugging it into the charger nor hooking it to a USB port caused any further activity.( The Saga Continues... )
So, in summary: I rock. FoneShop rocks. FoneMenders and Vodafone both suck.
So, in summary: I rock. FoneShop rocks. FoneMenders and Vodafone both suck.
also, nigerian spam: now available by SMS!
May. 8th, 2007 12:12 amThis appeared on my phone today:
From: +2348052970429The country code (+234) is Nigeria. I'm assuming the rest of the number is a premium-rate SMS service with the fund$$ going to the scammer.
To: waider's phone
Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 13:45:45 (IST)
Sir i wanted to remind you of Joe the accountant he has been workin with us diligently for over a year without salary increase.i think he deserves it
Switzerland: technology fails me
Feb. 5th, 2007 09:20 pm- laptop decided it didn't like the local power source (or something) and refused to either power up on mains or recharge itself. It's fine now, although I suspect the battery may be roached.
- phone and digicam ran out of power, the latter at an inopportune moment leaving me to take a bunch of photos on the former. The former only ran out of power when one of my travelling companions borrowed my "Irish plug to freakish foreign power socket" adapter overnight on the one night when I actually needed a recharge; fortunately, the phone spent an hour and a half beeping plaintively in lieu of actually shutting down and ran out of power right as I was boarding the flight home.
- Vodafone's picture album service appears to be broken again, meaning my cheapskate Flickr gateway isn't working right now.
- the phone's email client choked on one particular message, by which I mean the entire phone OS appeared to reboot. This was repeatable, too. I can't see anything wrong with the message now that I can look at it in a real client, so I can only assume shoddy coding in the client itself.
- phone and digicam ran out of power, the latter at an inopportune moment leaving me to take a bunch of photos on the former. The former only ran out of power when one of my travelling companions borrowed my "Irish plug to freakish foreign power socket" adapter overnight on the one night when I actually needed a recharge; fortunately, the phone spent an hour and a half beeping plaintively in lieu of actually shutting down and ran out of power right as I was boarding the flight home.
- Vodafone's picture album service appears to be broken again, meaning my cheapskate Flickr gateway isn't working right now.
- the phone's email client choked on one particular message, by which I mean the entire phone OS appeared to reboot. This was repeatable, too. I can't see anything wrong with the message now that I can look at it in a real client, so I can only assume shoddy coding in the client itself.
Screw you, CSI, Jack Bauer, etc. etc.
Dec. 5th, 2006 01:35 pmfrom the currently running story regarding the missing c|net editor:
A cell phone tower received a signal from one of the family's cell phones at about 1:30 a.m. on Sunday near Glendale, but officials say the signal is only an indicator the family could have been within 26 miles of Glendale at that time.(Yes, yes, I know. Urban vs. rural cell density, plus triangulation, plus hand-offs, plus live signal vs. historical, yadda yadda)
nerd whine
May. 13th, 2006 10:02 amSo my phone can send email, which is nice. And it's real SMTP-over-whatever email as opposed to some crappy SMS-to-mail gateway, which is also nice. And I recently accidentally discovered that I can insert a linebreak by holding down the 0 key. Excellent. Except that apparently just inserts a carriage return with no linebreak. What is this, a Macintosh?
another crappy movie clip
May. 9th, 2006 10:09 pmThere's an odd new sculpture down in the waterfront park near Sandycove (approximately here[1]) which looks like a small cluster of boulders. It showed up some time earlier this year, if I recall correctly, and initially I thought it had been vandalised by local graffiti artists using fluorescent paints. Then I noticed one day that the colours disappeared and reappeared, and since then I've been meaning to go and take a video clip of it. However, I feel very self-concious (by which I mean stupid) holding my phone up to do this, so the clip I took this evening isn't very good. It's apparently some sort of James Joyce thing, since there are words from Joyce scrawled across its surface that are only properly visible when the lights come on, and the lights themselves are inside the sculpture. There's a closed-circuit camera nearby, which I presume is intended as a vandalism deterrent. Anyway, here's the clip in that horrible MP4 variant known as 3gp. I know that mplayer at least will play these, and probably quicktime.
[1] Slack. There is no maps.google.ie.
[1] Slack. There is no maps.google.ie.
loose ends
Jan. 30th, 2006 12:20 am- I ended up nuking all the comments on the post that referred to gentoo, since there's apparently no way of saying, "ok, no more comments here" - you can freeze an individual subthread, but not the main thread. And when I said, "I don't want a distro war on my livejournal", it was apparently read as "let me tell you why I use My Favourite Distro". Thanks, yo. Read the goddamn instructions before posting.
- More like/dislike for the Motophone: iTap text input is like T9, only much, much better. On the other hand, the phone's clock is in the Dumbest. Place. Evar: when you've the keypad locked, pressing a button to light up the display so you can check the time causes a "helpful" How To Unlock This Phone window to pop up. On top of the clock.
new phone, one week on
Jan. 25th, 2006 09:40 pmI got a Motorola E770v last week as a cheapy upgrade from my Sagem MyV55. Both phones are Vodafone-specific variants of mainstream phones, of which more below. My main requirements for the upgrade included bluetooth, better than GSM connectivity (i.e. 2.5 or 3G), and no Nokias unless absolutely necessary. Here's what I like about the Motorola:
- not just a digital camera, not just a video camera, but a camera with two lenses - one facing the phone user and one facing in the opposite direction. You can't use both to get picture-in-picture, mind.
- Java engine has full access to phone's features - this is something my old phone lacked, and it SUCKS.
- The power/data connector is a standard miniUSB. Plug it into a laptop and it starts charging. It's got a software switch to swap between CDC ACM modem and a USB drive.
- Music player which plays MP3 files and can be loaded via the aforementioned USB drive
- Curiously useful multitasking: you can use the 3G connection at the same time as you're on a voice call.
- The USB connection is flaky. Sometimes it doesn't work, and the only way to make it work is to power-cycle the phone.
- There's no automatic keypad lock. There's an automatic phone lock but it requires you to enter a passcode to unlock.
- The music player can't be backgrounded in any way, to the extent that you can't lock the keypad while the music player is running.
- It's a custom build for Vodafone, like the MyV55, meaning that I'm pretty much guaranteed unable to get any firmware upgrades for it, like, ever.
Bono on my cellphone
Dec. 6th, 2005 10:12 pmAfter being captured on a cheap mic, compressed down to somewhere under 9600 bps using voice-oriented filters and what not, passed across the Atlantic and recorded on the cheapest voicemail system money can buy, U2 sounded a bit naff, but I was still able to recognise "Sunday Bloody Sunday".
Thanks for the call,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
waidesworld. This is why my phone stays in the other room overnight.
Thanks for the call,
waidesworld. This is why my phone stays in the other room overnight.Words I have "taught" my phone since it last got wiped:
crap, ballina, btw, azerbijan, bastard, charlton, barbie, ardsallagh, fucking, fellah, fecking, ennis, delicatessen, domesticity, eircom, dalkey, damn, geary, hurrah, liam, knackered, laoghaire, nowt, michaeli, nuff, snork, superchick, shite, shannon, smartarse, snooker, stanislaw, pfo, sftp, reggae, wtf, yay, waider, yum, wahey, waaah, yerself, woah.
anyone who's talked to me on instant messenger will recognise a certain waiderly flavour to that list.
crap, ballina, btw, azerbijan, bastard, charlton, barbie, ardsallagh, fucking, fellah, fecking, ennis, delicatessen, domesticity, eircom, dalkey, damn, geary, hurrah, liam, knackered, laoghaire, nowt, michaeli, nuff, snork, superchick, shite, shannon, smartarse, snooker, stanislaw, pfo, sftp, reggae, wtf, yay, waider, yum, wahey, waaah, yerself, woah.
anyone who's talked to me on instant messenger will recognise a certain waiderly flavour to that list.
other minor newsicles
Aug. 7th, 2005 01:39 am- as usual, the sore throat/feverishness has more-or-less passed to make way for the GIANT RIVERS OF SNOT. Hurrah for nasal biodefences.
- I did, in fact, go to the trouble of transferring the phone noise from That Pilot That Noone Has, Because It's Illegal onto my phone. Remains to be seen if I actually keep it there in favour of my "classic 60's ringer noise", known to my phone as "Dring".
- I still haven't decided if it's gotten suddenly cold, or if it's just my body screwing around due to aforementioned illness. The weatherman says hot and humid weather on the way, though. I can go sauna outside, maybe. Whee!
