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Am I blue?Well, not me, my Windows Vista machine appears to be. New drivers apparently didn't help. Bluescreened while opening a Microsoft Word document. Must have had some complicated words in it!
Of course, Windows asks me to check for a solution to the problem when it reboots. I click "Check for solution" and the dialog shows a progress meter and goes away. 'nuff said. Windows Vista Ultimate, Round 2 (New Drivers again)I did finally get my PC up and running mostly satisfactorily with Vista Ultimate eventually. I finally gave up the ghost trying to get the internal Sigmatel sound card to work consistently and successfully and instead just bought a Creative Soundblaster Live! USB sound adapter that I knew had Vista drivers already. I had no more sound problems after I got that installed and configured. I disabled the Sigmatel hardware in the Device Manager; hopefully it stays that way.
The Xbox360 is configured successfully and I've been watching TV over it for the past couple days. It's hiccuped (aka dropped the connection) a couple times, but very rarely. Much better overall then the Linksys Media Extender and MCE2005 configuration I had before. I do find the new Media Center menu and user experience in Vista significantly better than the old one.
I'm still bluescreening about once a day though as of today (8 days of running Vista). The crash message is no help. "Your machine recovered from a serious problem. Event: BlueScreen". No solutions to be found when I click the button to check.
NVidia did release new WHQL certified drivers for Vista on Tuesday, so I upgraded to those. We'll see if that helps. I expect it might, but only time will tell.
Bad luck with Cingular Blackberry Pearl tooI've had months of problems with non-Cingular branded phones running on their network (connectivity issues, phone calls not ever ringing, etc.) Before I switched networks completely (I've been on AT&T/Cingular/AT&T for over ten years now), I figured I will give them one last chance and I bought the Cingular-branded Blackberry Pearl. A friend running it on T-mo's network recommended it to me and it meets enough of my criteria to give it a shot.
So on late Saturday afternoon, I head to the Redmond Town Center Cingular store and picked one up.
New Plan for You!
That's where the trouble began. The guy behind the counter was quick (he gets points for that), but changed my plan without asking me if I wanted it. Actually, i think he forced 2 more years on me without asking (which i was ok with -- assuming I can get back to no committment if I return the phone within their 30 day return policy) and he upgraded my data plan from the $14.99/mo I pay now to a $39.99/mo. It's usually easier to deal with their phone support people with plan issues (they've always been really good when I'd had to call them), so I didn't sweat it. I got the new Pearl still in its box and planned to keep using my old phone until I got home later.
No Call for You!
I walked out of the store catch back up with my friends for dinner. I took out my old phone and tried to call them. I ended up in a Cingular voice activation menu instead wanting to activate a new service. Fun. So I went through their various menus to all the right options for extending my 2 year committment, etc and was told "The phone number you are using has already been activated for a plan. Please enter a different number." Great... There was no option for a human in the menus and punching 0 0 0 0 got me nowhere. Back to the store I went (of course now getting close to the time I was supposed to meet friends who now could not contact me!)
The guy was equally useless telling me that I just had to wait because their servers were on the east coast and sometimes they ran processing jobs this time of night (8pm on a Saturday?) that slowed things down. I can't believe people still fall for that crap OR, even if it is true, I can't believe that it could happen that way for the largest cell phone carrier in the U.S. still these days. Scary. The second guy behind the counter backed him him, so not much I could do. I borrowed their phone to call my friends and went back to waiting for it to work.
Back at home after dinner (now 75+ minutes from this starting), the phone still would not dial out without getting that Cingular menu. I could send and receive text messages and could receive phone calls, but no dialing out for me. Lame. So I called Cingular's 1-888 number. After 10 mins on the phone with a nice woman there and a phone reboot, the calling issue was fixed and my OLD phone was back to the state it was before I walked into the Cingular store. I also removed the upgrade to my data plan that he added during that call.
Configuring the Pearl
I spent an hour or so trying to get the new Pearl desktop PC sync software to see the contacts from my Hotmail account in Outlook 2007. That was an equally frustrating experience. They could both see Outlook and it looked like I could do it, but it wouldn't quite connect up.
It was time to head out for the night so swapped back to my old phone and let the Pearl sit for the night.
Configuring the Pearl, Round 2
Later on I figured out a way to work around the Outlook, Hotmail, Blackberry Desktop Manager connectivity problem by just manually making a local copy of all my contacts in an Outlook folder. Lame and not going to work for me long term, but it at least made the phone usuable as now it had my contacts in it.
It has this funky "QWERTY-lite" keyboard that I couldn't figure out at first. It took me a while to get the hang of how to send a text message.
I plugged in my Bluetooth USB adapter on my Vista machine. Vista noticed and configured the Bluetooth OK and I could pair the phone and the PC just fine, but no luck getting the Blackberry Desktop Manager to see the Bluetooth connection.
I also couldn't figure out the keystroke to lock the keyboard. Even the manual doesn't talk about it. There is an icon you can click for it, but it's weird that it's not a button or combo of buttons like almost every other phone in the world. I did get it mapped to the key on the left side of the phone, so that works well enough.
Configuring with Cingular, Round 2
I could not figure out what I selected on the phone to browse the Internet. I kept getting an error that says "Data connection refused." when I booted the phone and the little globe icon that the manual says to click didn't exist. I flipped my SIM card back to my old phone and the network still worked fine there. Another Pearl config problem, joy. So I called Cingular support again.
The woman I spoke with was very friendly and did a serious effort of trying to fix the problem. She sent several config messages to the phone, we rebooted it, etc, no luck. She asked to put me on hold and then went to research the issue (with other folks there I think) and then came back with some new settings to try, but still no luck. Finally, she gave up and said I need to talk to the next tier up of hardware support ("ANS Department"), but that they were closed until Monday so call back then. (This was now Sunday night.) So I could make calls and text message, but I couldn't actually access the Internet or email from a Blackberry. That just seemed wrong.
Configuring with Cingular, Round 3... err not
So I let it be for the week and went back to my old phone. I didn't get a chance to call Cingular's support when I was in my office this week and kept forgetting to bring the phone into the office anyway.
The next Sunday (today) I picked it up again after having more frustration with phone calls on my old phone. This time I did some more Internet research to figure out that I'm pretty sure I need a special Blackberry data plan for the phone, not the generic MediaNET data package you get for every other phone. (Thank you HowardForums!)
So I called Cingular's 1-888 number again. I tried three or four different routes through their phone menu system (Support->Wireless Email/Internet, Support->Devices, Sales, etc) -- all of which got me to a "Sorry, we're closed." message -- UNBELIEVABLE. I forgot that Cingular was a Southern company (based in Atlanta) and that many things are closed in the South on Sundays. I remember having this issue with Cingular before and being incredibly frustrated that I could not use their product during the day on a Sunday, yet they had no one there to support it. So screwed again until Monday [which means I've really got to remember to call them during the week this time. bleh.]
Configuring with Cingular, Round 4
As a last ditch, I called the Cingular retail store where I bought the phone and explained the problem. The guy there was able to concur that the missing data plan was likely the issue, tell me what my plan options were, what I would gain/lose from my current plan, what the cost was, and get it configured for me over the phone. He told me to wait 5 minutes, then power off and on my phone. I should be good to go then.
So after the five minute window - waiting for which started this post :) - voila! my Blackberry was finally up and running with the ability to make phone calls, send text messages and now access the Internet.
Amazing. It only took 8 days and the above steps. Sadly, Vista was almost easier to get running; at least the Internet was open on Sundays.
Configuring the Pearl, Round 3
Now I've added my Hotmail and Gmail accounts to the Pearl. We'll see if they actually work as email correctly or not. I don't have my hopes up.
The Phone Itself
I will say that as I start to get over using the weird 'QWERTY-like' keyboard, I do overall like the feel of the phone.
If I can get email to work like I want, I should be pretty content for a while on it. We'll see.
Windows Vista Ultimate... guess it's still WindowsI took the leap this weekend and upgraded my Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Rollup 2 PC to Windows Vista Ultimate. (At least they've made the product names shorter!)
Most people never actually install Windows; it just comes installed on their PC. However, being the geek I am, I've reinstalled XP countless times. I will say that overall the Vista install is MUCH improved. It "feels" faster. I'm not sure it actually is, but they did a better job of breaking it up into steps so it seems to go more quickly. It also picked up most of my hardware drivers without my assistance which was a nice change.
Devices it didn't know:
- My internal sound card (still haven't figured out what it is)
- Epson Perfection 3490 Scanner
- Motorola DVT-6412 DCT Cable Set-Top Box (no surprise there)
It actually auto configured the Internet through my router nicely as well (wired, not wireless.)
Of course it is still Windows... two hours in I got my first BSOD (blue screen of death.) You'd think they'd have at least changed the color if they were going to keep that "feature."
Live among the Seattle blue skies... For some reason I found the photo for this condo for sale at the new Cosmopolitan in downtown Seattle to be pretty funny.
Maybe it's the fact that this is located at 8th and Virginia -- already a pretty tall building area, soon to be even taller and more crowded with buildings -- yet this photo/rendering gives it a more tranquil feel.
Not only will they rid the sky of Seattle gray weather, they will also demolish all other buildings and landscape in the area to make sure you're experience is a pure solitude amidst a quiet, barren wasteland.
All this can be yours for only $700k today! Redfin Launches Real Estate E-Commerce Service for Southern CaliforniaRedfin launched our biggest market expansion in company history today, lighting up nearly all of Southern California at once.
Some posts from around the web:
New favorite site maintenance page...Just got this message trying to connect to flickr.com:
Flickr is having a massage.For updates, please check the Flickr Blog |
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