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This afternoon I met up with my buddy Joel and introduced him to one of my favorites, Eggspectations. Definitely fun times to catch up on life from the past few months and exchange a few laughs. When we excited though I had to smile when I saw the car converted reindeer parked near Joel. ]]> http://uvageek.net/2011/12/22/getting-in-the-spirit-of-things/feed/ 0 http://uvageek.net/2011/12/21/mobile-telecommunications-and-verizon-wireless-service-level-agreements/ http://uvageek.net/2011/12/21/mobile-telecommunications-and-verizon-wireless-service-level-agreements/#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:37:38 +0000 Dan http://uvageek.net/?p=803 This morning in the Northern Virginia area, Verizon Wireless seems to have had a hiccup in their data networks that support their mobile devices. This is the third such hiccup to effect the 4G customer base this year – something that marketing is heavily pushing and early adopters are salivating over due to the speed and technology advances that are provided.

Information regarding outage: http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/12/21/verizon-suffering-another-outage-many-3g-and-4g-customers-left-without-data-services/

It really would be nice to know when the system will come to steady state for LTE and CDMA access to be restored. While I realize that Verizon is doing its best to provide service to millions of customers, I would also hope that Verizon would be willing to provide something like “status.vzw.com” that has either a blog with entries of what network outages may be occurring on a large scale or something like Google or Amazon Web Services dashboard that shows outages related to services with additional information below.

Is this too much to ask for a multi-billion dollar industry so that individuals that rely on mobile telecommunications are able to more adequately recommend or put faith into their provider?

Linkage – http://youtu.be/pq8iyhMFLYE?hd=1

Nevertheless, last December a few days after the LTE network in Northern Virginia went live I went to my local Verizon Wireless store and bought a PanTech UML290 device outright. As an early adopter I realized that it potentially could be a bumpy road of sorts. Little did I know though that it would be a bumpy road of continual disconnects and frustration.

In January 2011 I called the Verizon Wireless help desk (note I’d called them in December as well) to discuss the issue I was seeing to ascertain as to whether it was just my modem sporadically having issues, or if it was more an enterprise issue.  While the technician did not admit to it being an enterprise wide issue, he did say that it seemed that a node I was connecting to at the nearby cell tower which was providing service was having a problem. Therefore, whenever I attempted to use the modem and it selected said node, an “at cause” event would occur.

This event would not disconnect the modem, but rather would cause it to essentially have the traffic shaped to it become negligible. In other words, I could ping other sites using ICMP, or I could perform DNS lookups, but anything that required communicating and retrieving web based resources where data packets were transferred was effectively zero. Pretty cool technology right?

So I was told that a ticket would be opened and that I would receive a ticket number that was associated with this incident. Once the ticket was opened the network engineers that work on Verizon’s network would investigate the node, physically checking the tower and replacing the component that was broken.

I have yet to receive that ticket number over a month later. Further, this issue is not isolated to just the tower near my residence but seems to be prevalent throughout the Northern Virginia area.

I’m not quite certain what Verizon is doing to correct these issues, whether it’s a software issue with the VZAccess Manager or an actual networking issues, but three months later and it’s still not allowing for connectivity greater than ten minutes (there have been some sessions that have actually lasted longer, but they’re few and far between).

Perhaps someone from Verizon Wireless will actually read this, perhaps it is just words entered on the Internet that will be disregarded.

If you’re thinking of using Verizon Wireless for it’s LTE network with lightning fast speeds, be wary that you may also be in for a bumpy road. While it’s incredible fast, it is unstable.

Maybe Verizon Wireless was lacking the funds to complete the network and figured that suckers like me would be their “investment funding” in the sense that we could get on the network but would be disconnected shortly there after and using our service fees they can use it as a cost recovery of sorts as well as a stabilization fund to fix the problems.  Seems unacceptable to me.

Well, similar to wine, if you have bad wine, you basically never want to drink it ever again. If you drink good wine, you relish in the flavour and how it can have such vibrant taste.

In high school I would go and drink Irish Crème Cappuccinos at Starbucks, not because the taste was all that great but because it contained “Irish Crème”. Boy was that a mistake that stunted my growth and kept me from being the 6’8” man that I’d hoped to be.  Okay, just kidding, but seriously, I definitely am not much of a Cappuccino kind of guy. Why ruin the goodness of a shot of espresso with perfectly good crème and sugar that could be used in a baking process for something else?

For me I stumbled into the vibrant taste of coffee this past August. I decided I was going “cold turkey” with diet coke and was just going to switch back to purely water. This feeble attempt lasted for a few weeks before I was finding myself, while incredibly clear (drinking more water always tends to make things more clear) that I was falling asleep – maybe that’s a good thing? I was however finding that in the morning without caffeine I could be a grouch (though I’m sure that some of my closer friends had other names for it ).

So after conferring with myself, I decided I would give Starbucks drip coffee a chance. Besides there was a  Starbucks drip coffee machine downstairs in the building that I worked in that was complimentary to anyone that worked there. So I gave Pike Roast a try. Not too bad, but not something that grabbed me and made me say, “Oh you’re amazing.” The flip side was that the caffeine definitely was helping me to be a little more alert and the grouchiness was fading little by little. So I moved on to Bold and found that there was definitely a love affair in the making. The only caveat – it just didn’t have the right flavour to it. But how could I justify the cost I asked myself? Even as a Starbucks Gold card holder, it was still $2 a cup and required a stop by one of the several dispensaries in the area. Further more for days when I wasn’t feeling the Bold, I did have the alternative Café Americano but still, at $2 a cup without a second job, it was going to become financially burdensome to keep up this caffeinated habit.

Perhaps I should have known that I was destined to enjoy Coffee through the enticement of the Ray Charles Starbucks card that I’d received when I bought a copy of the Ray Charles album “Genius Loves Company” (what can I say, I’m the genius and coffee is the company? ). Which further makes me laugh since whenever I go to Starbucks and hand them this card they all look at it and wonder where I had gotten such a card – primarily since it’s coming up on being seven years old and not readily available. The other typical response is that it’s the coolest or cutest card they’ve ever seen. I even had one barista try to take it when it zero’d out so to speak… yeah that didn’t happen

Anywhere, where does that leave me? Besides having to beat people away from my Ray Charles Starbucks card? Well after a little market research looking at the Tassimo coffee pots as well as the Flavia and Keurig machines I did an analysis of requirements and alternatives. Not to say that I didn’t look at all the different coffee machines out there, but I was looking for something that would be low maintenance, single serving, easy to operate under the influence of next to zero sleep. At least those were the requirements. The alternatives of course were to become more disciplined at going to bed earlier, learn to live on uber-man schedule where I sleep thirty minutes every few hours or to take up something else and after all I’ve read about smoking it just didn’t seem like a good idea

So I bit the bullet and pulled the trigger and ordered a Keurig coffee machine and a box of samples of different Kona coffee k-cups. I’ve ended up sticking with Timothy’s Kona Blend Coffee as I’m a sucker for Kona coffee having actually liked the way it smelled as a kid growing up in Hawaii.

But that’s not to say that’s the only coffee k-cups that are magnificent… I’ve definitely found a delight with what is known as “Jet Fuel” from the Coffee People. It’s a strong, dark blend with a taste that is distinct – and free of carcinogens no less which makes it all the better. Plus after taking a some to work to share with colleagues, one of them definitely seemed to think that it made the peppermint mocha mix used as an additive in their coffee that it made the peppermint taste even stronger – can you go wrong with such goodness?

Perhaps, but that’s also why I have an alternative to the Café Americano – Timothy’s Espresso blend. While it’s not a one for one replacement it comes darn close from a taste perspective. And for those late nights where you’re looking for the taste, there’s good ole Timothy’s Espresso blend decaf – sure there’s a little caffeine, but nothing that a little Kerberos documentation won’t do to push you to dream land.

So where does that leave me in the morning? Typically thinking to myself, “Decisions, decisions…” especially with the influence of the Starbucks thermos, the Panera coffee cup and the Jet Fuel conveniently edging itself toward the Keurig machine. There are definitely mornings where I’m looking for comfort and not really the kick of an after burner through Jet Fuel which leads me to the Kona or another favorite, the Nantucket Blend. Either of which provides that nice and warm flavour with a gentle nudge that wraps its arms around you and reminds you that even though it’s a jungle out there, you’ve got your emotional blanket to take with you

Needless to say I find it amazing that I still have this little Walkman and notice that it has that awesome feature of Auto Reverse. It’s times like this however that I start wondering to myself, do I have any cassette tapes that I can actually play with this fella? Last time I checked I don’t.  However, the last time that I played with this I took the batteries out so if needed in an emergency I can still use this guy to get Digital tuning on both AM and FM bands. Score!

But wait, there’s more, the Panasonic Discman with XBS or Extra Bass System also seems to be in working order and get this, it was manufactured in November 1993.  I was a mere Freshman in high school when I picked this up and used it. Talk about history that’s hard to get rid of. Granted, at the time this was cutting edge as I remember it – there was even a car kit for this device so that you could plug into an auxiliary cable and use it while in the car. How times have changed where we have Sync systems that tie into hard drives that store hours and hours of music.  I’m curious as to what’s next… Of course now the question is what to do with this stuff.

Well, it happened again, though with not quite as much glamour with a light snow storm wreaking havoc on Northern Virginia. As you can see though there’s still fun to be had, even by the little people

Fortunately the snow storm lasted all of twelve hours and left behind 1-3” depending on where you were at. Granted, with the cold temperatures that have hampered the region for the last few days, it hasn’t really melted off of everything just yet as can be seen in the photo taken earlier today.

For those looking forward to more snow, fear not, the snow daemon process is primed and started. Ready your shovels and snow blowers!

Shortened links have always posed a threat in the world of cyber security.  It saddens me that I see an article entitled “New Virus: Watch Out for Goo.gl Links on Twitter” posted to LifeHacker.com regarding goo.gl, Google’s link shortening system that is leverage for Google Maps and as an extension to shorten links through the Chrome browser, or you can just go to the web browser.

Such short links are used all the time in Twitter, Facebook and other means so as to allow users to paste a link that is not obnoxiously long or that might run over a carriage break causing the link to break.

While the former may seem like something that is understandable so as to not overtake an e-mail message or a tweet, some individuals might wonder about the latter.  For individuals that don’t quite understand how to concatenate a URL it might seem daunting when the link is clicked and IE/Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Opera is opened and nothing renders except for a Page Not Found error.

Further, why is it that everyone is suddenly in a tizzy that goo.gl may be spawning viruses. I think I’ve seen this story for TinyURL, Bit.ly, and a half dozen other link shorteners.

Bottom line, practice responsible use of the Internet. I remember several years ago an employer stating that they had an acceptable use policy that employees needed to follow. How is that suddenly got skipped for home users? Do we need a certification to use the Internet these days?

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