The ScooterBlog

This is a quick not thought out post … if I ramble, you’re just gonna have to like it!

I’m not afraid to say that I love my Tablet PC setup as a work machine! While I don’t own the fastest machine, I certainly feel like I own one of the most versatile ones here, and one that can do a wealth of things. Here’s the rundown:

• Vista - Microsoft finally got it right with Vista and Tablet machines, as the support for these and everything they’re capable of is built right into the operating system. No more holding out for a “Tablet PC Version” that you may not even be able to buy separately without loading a lot of crap onto the machine with it, you can install Vista fresh and know that you are up and running right away, using your machine as it was intended to be used.
• Handwriting - My handwriting, basically, SUCKS. If you expect to read something I write, you’re a brave soul. So, when you see that you can do writing with this Tablet machine, and that it does recognition, I was skeptical. Was it really going to detect my horrid writing? It actually does, and combining it with OneNote 2007 makes for a great note taking solution.
• Versatility - With Virtual PC 2007, which runs surprisingly well on this machine, I’m able to do my work in some work programs that Vista doesn’t support yet, and amazingly, it runs very well! I’m using a VM with Windows XP Pro, and 256 MB of RAM allocated to it, and it’s running especially well. The only thing I can’t seem to get this to do yet is run LanDesk for very much over a cellular connection, but I can’t ask the world of it (a guide on sharing an AirCard connection is forthcoming).

These are just a few reasons. There will be more as I find out more cool things to do with this machine, trust me!

Two quickies from the coffers …

First, the deal … Micro Center has 360 Wireless Controllers for $20 today. You have four hours left, go shopping young grasshopper!

And, for the pic …. hot models and iPods DO mix! http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=71817

So I guess this diet I’m doing with Danielle is paying some dividends. I bought a scale yesterday and found that in the last month or so while I’ve been doing this South beach diet, I’ve lost 20 pounds!

I guess I have been doing something right since starting this out, and what they say about it training your body not to needs carbs is so true. Where before, I could eat something sugary and would want more of it, now if I even eat a little too much sugar in something, my stomach gets upset, as if to say “WTF?!”. Since that hopefully means that my body is properly using proteins and fats as energy, and I’m not overly tired, that has to be good for the health.

So here’s hoping to this continuing and getting my weight down to 250 (It’s 269 right now) … and here’s hoping I can enjoy that Bawls even more on a cheat day!

If TV station can have their own SnowBlog, then I can have mine too!

Tuesday Morning: Wake up and go to work like normal … except waking up at 6 AM is never normal for me. It did work though, and my normal 20 minute drive to work was actually 40. Still, not bad compared to last week, when the 20 minute drive home was more like 2 hours and 15 minutes! Work was brisk, and in a bit of wonderful news, our work was closed at 2 PM. Grant you, every school with 200 miles of here had closed as a preemptive strike, probably not the worst thing ever. Got some medicine, got home at the same time Danielle did (her work closed at 3), and just bunkered in for the rest of the evening. This day ends here, except for my continued jealousy at all the kinds in Columbus enjoying their fourth day off in two weeks (but only 2 for good snowy reasons … WIMPS!)

Wednesday Morning: After 8 inches of snow, and an afternoon and evening full of sleet and freezing rain, the fun job came to get to work. Danielle somehow managed to get her Malibu with traction control out of her buried parking spot. I wasn’t so lucky! So, she drove me to work and I ended up getting a ride home at 5 from a co-worker. All in all, it could have been a lot worse. No jealousy today for anyone off of school, this is the kind of day snow days were invented for!

When I got home, I figured that I should dig out my car. I  began to dig myself about 6 PM, and after we checked with the VP of our association about where we could park (which was anywhere, provided it didn’t block anyone in or block a fire lane), I began, but by the time I was done, there were four of us working on my car and the van next to me. My car was easy with front wheel drive … make a path, one quick push, gun it, and I was out. The van next to me though, was an old rear wheel drive beast. That took a clear path, and all four of us pushing to get it freed up, but we did it. Made our parking arrangements, and that was that.

Thursday Morning: Took my car back out without issues, had a slow drive because it was one below zero outside, and had a normal work day. It’s worth pointing out that this blows up my previous theory on school closings … I thought Columbus Public Schools (wimps!) closed at one degree and opened at two degrees (please insert stupid administrator sarcasm HERE), but it was minus-one and the schools were open (yay!), and I was at work the same, normal day outside of the cold weather and continued parking fun at our complex.

(In unrelated news, I normally would give Stephen a much harder time for moving to my old neighborhood, Williamsburg, much less the same street I used to live on, David Court, but one of the garages at his OLD residence caved in through the snow and crushed four cars. I guess it’s not so bad after all)

The FCC web site on the ability to port your phone number from one service to another indicates that in most cases, you can port your number from wireless to wired. Furthermore, if the web site you visit tells you that your phone number is portable with Vonage, you take them at your word. Then, when they can’t port it and give you the runaround for not doing it, it’s not Vonage’s fault for not complying with both the FCC rules and their own promises. Well, that’s the situation as it stands now.

On January 31st, I bought a basic PC from Micro Center for my fiancee’s parents and signed up to move my 513 phone number to Vonage (I will withhold the number as I do not wish to get personal calls at it. Other blogs or sites interested may contact me at vonageissues@sav2880.net to get it for validity). I signed up for Vonage, sent in a request to have my number ported, CHOSE T-Mobile as the carrier to use (this will be important later), gave them my number, and even verified on their web site that my number did qualify to be ported to Vonage. In fact, their web state did (and still does) state that I can keep “your current telephone number”

So, I signed the contract, got the PC, set it up, and set up my Vonage phone and waited for the confirmation that my phone would be ported, as it seemed there would be no issues at hand. Then, this afternoon at 3 PM, I got the message that the request to port my number had been cancelled, the reason was as follows:

“The reason we can not transfer your number to Vonage is because Vonage and our partner carriers are unable to transfer wireless numbers in your area to our service at this time.”

Sounds rather inconsistent with what Vonage has been promising through their web site, including offering T-Mobile as a phone provider option to port from.

Upon calling them this evening, the word that they said is that they were unable to transfer wireless numbers. When I brought the info to them that their web site said, they said that they could not transfer T-Mobile numbers at all, inconsistent with their web site on two levels.

Upon escaling the call to a supervisor (Employee Number 12167 … name withheld, as she was cordial), she repeated the same line that they could not transfer wireless numbers. When presented with the FCC mandate on number portability within the same area (and I was porting a 513 number, and my address was consistent with both services), she continued to repeat the same line. Their only out was that they may be able to port the number in the future, and I received the same line as before when I said that the fact she is asking me to keep a $40 a month cell phone to accomodate that they could not port my phone as a hardship and breach of contract, it didn’t get anywhere.

I will be calling Vonage back tomorrow and getting more names and employee numbers. They will be posted here. Every bit of information will be linked to this blog post as I am going to fight Vonage to get the number ported or get out of my contract due to misinformation. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

In the course of the entire phone call, I did not get a ticket number that they said I had been assigned. Trust me, I’ll be getting one of those too.

Oh, and the virtual number isn’t ringing on my phone box. I’ll have to get them to troubleshoot that too.

Stephen: “The Super Bowl should really just be a scrimmage between the Bengals’ Orange Team and their Black Team” Nate gets an assist somewhere in there.

Me: “By Orange, do you mean home team or jumpsuits?”

The game was okay (one of the uglier games played in awhile), Stephen wanted no one to win (Tennessee QB versus Florida QB, his worst nightmate), but hanging out was a lot of fun, and I managed to get home with Danielle before midnight, and before the temperature had dropped to zero (it was a balmy four when we got home).

Short post, not much more to say on it, long work day, blech!

My last post, I had promised that my Tablet PC would get the Windows Vista treatment, and it did. But there were definite peaks and valley’s in the process.

The first attempt was seemingly a smart idea … upgrade the XP Tablet PC edition to Vista Business. In a word, it was a complete unmitigated disaster. Programs didn’t work, updates that should have taken moments took forever, and it worked horribly. Since this computer is two years old (plus), and crashed early and often. It took one night of toiling with it horribly to realize that this wasn’t the way to go.

So, after backing up anything worth keeping, the new task was to build the Vista system from scratch. In the beginning, it worked perfectly, loaded almost all of the needed drivers and worked great, and then, loading one driver from Windows XP caused the entire installation to blue screen out, even in Safe Mode! A thankful “System Restore” from the installation disc (impressed with how well it worked) though got the system back and running, and after the discovery that Toshiba had posted a TON of good Windows Vista drivers in the last couple of days, the experience since then has been absolutely perfect, better and faster then Windows XP was believe it or not. Toshiba gets some serious props in their Windows Vista driver support.
Having Vista-ready apps like Office and OneNote 2007 doesn’t hurt either, as OneNote is a program I’m anxious to delve into with this being a Tablet-style box.

Over this weekend while I’m in Cincinnati, I anticipate posting a lot of information about how I got this build up and running on this particular PC, as well as tethering my 8125 (Stephen, you’ll like this part!) to my laptop to use it as a EDGE modem anywhere, including the near-impossible to find Vista drivers.