Yes indeedy a test of email blogging. This being stage 1 - emailing from my Yahoo! account.
Stage 2 will be from the (new) mobile phone when I get it.
Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail
Monday, October 31, 2005
Those Stupid Folks at the Link
So at the Last Minute it came to my attention that my luverly new mobile phone and stonkingly tidy pricing plan was based upon a lie - a LIE I tell you!
The so called 'Passport' package available on Vodafone tariffs cannot actually work with the USA as I was confidently led to believe by the Link man.
Result is that I need to find a new phone/contract. I was lucky that this all came to light just minutes before the 14 day cool-off period (although that would not have stopped me from kicking up a god-awful fuss at the shop).
I have now spent many hours studying mobile phone magazines and T3/Stuff reviews (not such a hardship really) in order to track down that elusive Ideal Package.
Having been tempted by the new super snazzy Orange SPV5000 AKA T-Mobile MDA Pro AKA O2 XDA Exec, I decided it was just too expensive to justify and the more realistic but equally impressive Nokia 6680 was up to the job.
This then leaves me with the package side of things.
My wish list is:
>300 inclusive minutes
>100 inclusive texts/video MMS/photo MMS
<25p calls to USA
>10MB data on 3G
12 month contract
all for <£25
Alas it would seem that the original Vodafone package was in fact an amazingly good deal, giving me 500 minutes call-time to all networks at all times and 150 texts. Additionally I had free video calls for three months and inclusive video and photo MMS's.
The USA call charges may be a moot point now as I have found some promising websites offering very cheap international calls from mobiles. Also the original plan to do a lot of web surfing may not be realistic, especially when BT pulls their finger out and the landline broadband finally arrives. As long as I can IM and send/rx SMTP/POP3 emails from my phone then all is good.
The search continues...but the solution nears.
The so called 'Passport' package available on Vodafone tariffs cannot actually work with the USA as I was confidently led to believe by the Link man.
Result is that I need to find a new phone/contract. I was lucky that this all came to light just minutes before the 14 day cool-off period (although that would not have stopped me from kicking up a god-awful fuss at the shop).
I have now spent many hours studying mobile phone magazines and T3/Stuff reviews (not such a hardship really) in order to track down that elusive Ideal Package.
Having been tempted by the new super snazzy Orange SPV5000 AKA T-Mobile MDA Pro AKA O2 XDA Exec, I decided it was just too expensive to justify and the more realistic but equally impressive Nokia 6680 was up to the job.
This then leaves me with the package side of things.
My wish list is:
>300 inclusive minutes
>100 inclusive texts/video MMS/photo MMS
<25p calls to USA
>10MB data on 3G
12 month contract
all for <£25
Alas it would seem that the original Vodafone package was in fact an amazingly good deal, giving me 500 minutes call-time to all networks at all times and 150 texts. Additionally I had free video calls for three months and inclusive video and photo MMS's.
The USA call charges may be a moot point now as I have found some promising websites offering very cheap international calls from mobiles. Also the original plan to do a lot of web surfing may not be realistic, especially when BT pulls their finger out and the landline broadband finally arrives. As long as I can IM and send/rx SMTP/POP3 emails from my phone then all is good.
The search continues...but the solution nears.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Back in the swing of things
So I'm slowly piecing together all the necessary items that are needed for modern living. The car now has insurance, tax and a surprisingly easy to achieve MoT. All that was needed there was half an hour with a soldering iron and the dashboard apart in order to fix a non-working fog-light. Just need an excuse to drive now.
When I visited the village post office to buy the road tax I told the man that the car had been laid-up for ten months while I was Stateside. He then told me that he thought he knew my car as he believed he had seen it around the area...hmmmm....
Unexpectedly I ended up with a brand new and very snazzy mobile phone. Had a few problems logging onto the Vodafone website to check my billing. Their website was playing up and when I reverted to the dial-up-and-speak-to-a-representative method I was thrilled to be greeted with the recorded message "did you know that you can now access all your billing via our website". Numpties.
When I visited the village post office to buy the road tax I told the man that the car had been laid-up for ten months while I was Stateside. He then told me that he thought he knew my car as he believed he had seen it around the area...hmmmm....
Unexpectedly I ended up with a brand new and very snazzy mobile phone. Had a few problems logging onto the Vodafone website to check my billing. Their website was playing up and when I reverted to the dial-up-and-speak-to-a-representative method I was thrilled to be greeted with the recorded message "did you know that you can now access all your billing via our website". Numpties.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Back in Starbucks
This is Starbucks revisited, only this time I find myself teleported to England. Chelmsford in fact. Not quite sure how I got here as just over a week ago I was enjoying the sun in San Pedro and only a few days ago I was chomping on a superb bacon sarnie in the Blue Angel in Tahoe. But the sun is out here and it's great to see the family :) Once broadband is up and running at 'the digs' I can be back in contact with SF!
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Tech marches on
We all know that as soon as you take the plunge and buy that spangly new gadget, that it will in all likelihood be immediately (a) replaced by an updated model (b) no longer be supported or (c) become obsolete. With this in mind I decided I would be forever waiting for that 'ideal' iPod and so with only a couple of days remaining in the USA I headed to the Apple centre on Powell St. and grabbed me a splendid 60GB iPod.
I had spent some many days culling my AAC collection to fit onto 60GB and iTunes took almost as long to sync my music catalogue onto its slow HDD but by the end I had a fine new system. I wasn't even too upset to find out just hours later that a smaller, larger capacity video iPod is expected to be announced this week, despite my frantic Googling to that effeect before my purchase. Oh well, I knew the score.
I had spent some many days culling my AAC collection to fit onto 60GB and iTunes took almost as long to sync my music catalogue onto its slow HDD but by the end I had a fine new system. I wasn't even too upset to find out just hours later that a smaller, larger capacity video iPod is expected to be announced this week, despite my frantic Googling to that effeect before my purchase. Oh well, I knew the score.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Freebies for today's students
This is great! Wish I was a student again. These modern kids have got it so good. I'm sitting on the wall at Snodgrass Hall at the University of Hastings College of the Law. They have WiFi (naturally) out here in the courtyard and also free beer. I am of course partaking in both free WiFi AND free beer ;) Am also in touch with CD on AIM telling her to hurry up and get out of class or I will drink her beer too...
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
San Francisco in Panavision
After three months on-and-off in the city, I finally got to see the Coit Tower closer than from the ferry terminal.The Muni journey was put to good use with an informative pocast from Sparkletack. This concise Coit Tower hstory lesson saw us as far as the turntable at Powell where we hopped directly onto the cable-car and trundled to Washington Square.
Having spent a chunk of the morning at the gym and not wanting to expend any more effort on using our legs, we had planned to take the bus to the Tower itself at this stage, except this was the point where things went a little pear-shaped.
After a twenty minute wait we began to wonder if we were standing in the right spot after all and as we crossed the road to investigate the alternative bus-stop we watched our bus pass through out of reach on the original side of the road.
Unable to spare another twenty minutes we decided to put our laziness to one side and walk. This was a good decision as the steep walk to the tower itself affords some fine views and as it turned out not was too much effort after all.
Once at the tower paid our $7.50 access and took the short and rattly elevator ride to the top. The wind was blowing a gale (as I imagine it must do a lot up there) but thanks to the glass which now covers the 'windows' it didn't bother us. The Coit Tower may not have a revolving restaurant up top but the views are still the best in town.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)