Phi points to an article about how the outsourcing-to-China business is on a downturn:

Where once low-tech factories and scant wages were welcomed in a China eager to escape isolation and poverty, workers are now demanding a bigger share of the profits. The government, meanwhile, is pushing foreign companies to make investments in areas it believes will create greater wealth for China, like high technology.

Many companies are striving to stay profitable by shifting factories to cheaper areas farther inland or to other developing countries, and a few are even resuming production in the West. {…}

“I have 15 major clients. My job is to give the best advice I can give. I tell it like it is. I tell them, put your helmet on, it’s going to get ugly,” said {outsourcing advisor Rick} Goodwin, who says dissatisfied workers and hard-to-predict exchange rates are his top worries.

A while back I wrote a post that I cannot find (maybe it was on another blog) regarding the outsourcing of IT work. The perception among many is that with manufacturing gone (it isn’t, though granted it’s certainly not what it used to be) the next logical step is for us to lose the IT jobs because, after all, the Indians and Chinese are willing to do it for cheaper! I wouldn’t say that the threat is not there, but one of there were and are some flaws in the assumptions that underly it. One of the assumptions is that they will get to do anything that they can do cheaper there than we can do here. Another assumption is that this is something that will continue in perpetuity (or until something is done).

The problem with the first assumption is that they don’t just have to be cheaper. They have to be a lot cheaper. Every experience I have had that has involved outsourced talent in India, China, or Russia has reinforced this notion. It’s a heck of a lot easier to build stuff here. For a lot of jobs, it can require multiple people to do the same job that one person can do over here. And because of cultural and language differences, they’re less likely to get it right. Now, oftentimes despite all of these things it can still be cheaper and better (from the company’s point of view) to do things over there than over here. And the margin does not need to be as much when it comes to low-skill jobs like manufacturing (though shipping can be an issue, depending on what is being built and shipped). It’s important to keep in mind, however, that if they can build it here for $5 and there for $4, we’ve got a really good chance.

The problems with the second assumption applies particularly to high-skill workers but also to low-skill ones and definitely to the governments of those countries. They don’t want to be our errand boys forever. They don’t want to work for pennies on the dollar forever. Right now they are willing to do these things because they have to. However, as these countries get more wealthy, they’re going to start to be less willing to. As their citizenry gets more educated, they’re going to want to design their own stuff. They’re going to want to build the stuff that they design. And they’re going to want to own the company that makes the profits from the stuff they design and build. And as they start more and more of their own companies, their labor and manufacturing capacity diminishes and they have to start charging more. This is particularly true in the high-skill realm where it costs a lot of money to educated a relatively small portion of the population with the intelligence required to do the work and do it well. But even with manufacturing, they have to get the infrastructure in place and build the plants and round up the people.

Granted, China has a lot of excess capacity and it may take a long time before they officially start running short on people. But the factories don’t magically appear and as they have difficulty keeping up the prices they will be able to command will also go up and the difference between how much it costs American companies to build something over here and over there will become less startling. That’s if they don’t start leaving China for other countries, which will then often undergo the same pressures and transformations. I’m not suggesting the jobs are going to start marching right back to the States. Most of those that are gone will stay gone. But over time, I expect less of the new jobs to leave.

That’s not to say that it won’t be a rough transition or that everything is just going to be hunky-dory. Nor is it meant as an argument against trade restrictions that would make it more difficult to buy things in China. I lean against them, but there are arguments in favor of them not really discussed in this post. That’s my way of saying that I don’t want to make this about whether free trade is, in the aggregate, a good or bad thing. All of the above can be entirely true and it may still be a bad idea.

The main point I am making is that a lot of people seem to be of the mind that of the mind that China will be able to have its cake and eat it, too. They’ll be able to be this new hyperpower that runs our errands while paying its workers pennies on the dollar. Success in a country breeds expectations among its people. It’s what happened in Europe; it’s what happened in Japan; it’s what happened in the United States. They’ll demand better pay or better services from their government in order to bring their lifestyles - and hence their wages - more in line with the first world’s.

A lot of folks have been rolling their eyes at the recent proposal in San Francisco to ban pet sales in city limits. Just another example of the nanny state and big government trampling on our liberties. As far as libertarian thought goes, this response makes a great deal of sense. But ED Kain links to (and expands upon) a pretty good counterargument:

No one need suggest that a kitten’s life is morally equivalent to a human’s to observe that something is terribly wrong when we casually dispose of one much as we would the butane in a Bic lighter: that is the mark of a callow society, a cruel society. It does not speak well for us that we kill millions of sentient, sensitive animals every year through grotesque, painful methods such as gassing and heart-sticking. Pet stores are one of the main reasons we do this.

The author, Claire Berlinsky, goes a step further than I would in supporting the ban of pet shops everywhere. I’ll get into why I am not on board with that idea later.

If one does not accept government intervention for the welfare of animals under any circumstances because animals are no more than property, there isn’t much that can be said to convince you. But for the rest of us, pet shops represent a real problem for the welfare of animals even if we don’t find the sale of living creatures distasteful (which I don’t) or oppose the captivity of creatures to the whims of measly humans (ditto).

Pet shops, by virtue of their trade, make it their business to sell pets. That means convincing people that they want pets. The problem is that while someone can change their mind after buying an iPhone and be left with nothing left than a hunk of plastic that they don’t want to use, someone that changes their mind after buying a pet has a living, breathing creature to care for. This is inherently more problematic. Even if they return it (if they can), if they got a puppy they have put the animal in a position where it is less likely to be adopted in the future (”So someone else didn’t want this animal, so why should I take it?” and “Oh, well I was hoping for a puppy under 12 weeks for training purposes”).

Further, unlike with other things that we prohibit the sale of, such as narcotics, we are not denying most people that genuinely want the product the ability to get it. You want a dog? You can still get one! You just have to go to the pound! They’re being put to death because not enough people want them and not just dogs that have something wrong with them. So the usual fears about a deathly black market don’t really apply so much. The number of people so dead-set on a purebread puppy that they would be willing to break the law and enter into a black market is relatively small. It’s mostly just a preference. And an availability. And that the most obvious answer to the question of where you get a pet is a pet store.

One of the counterarguments I am hearing is that a society that eats meat cannot care about animal welfare. Usually tossed in are the profound insights that we tend to treat different animals differently. Some suggest that our choice of dogs and cats to be family friends is a random accident or at least a subjective choice with no particular value.

To me, though, there is no inconsistency inherent with treating different animals differently. People, in the aggregate, have basically made different arrangements with different animals. And with arrangements come relationships. Dogs and cats were not chosen as housepets by random or cause they’re just cuter than the rest. Our relationship evolved from the fact that dogs and cats have something specific to offer us. Dogs and cats are smart enough to be useful (herding sheep, catching rodants) but dumb enough to, in the aggregate, be controlled. For that matter, horses proved themselves useful for riding. And so we put them to work and became fond of them. This is pretty natural and it takes something external, like a religious prohibition or a lack of available animals, for this kind of relationship not to develop. And besides all that, to the extent that we use them solely for companionship, they’re particularly useful for that, too! They’re the right size and have the right temperament.

Other animals, though, are primarily useful only insofar as we eat them. So while we can form a relationship with a dog or cat based on what they do for us around the house (they make excellent vacuum cleaners) and the convenient companionship they provide, we form relationships with cows based on how tasty they are (or how tasty their milk is). Because they have no other use to us, it’s hard to look at them any other way. They’re too dumb to be useful in another capacity. They’re too big to be kept in the house. I don’t know how smart chickens are, but they’re not entirely convenient to have in the house the way a dog or cat is. From what I understand, pigs are smart and are domesticatable, but their size and the habits they form make them inferior pets to dogs, so they’re applying for a job that has been filled by the most qualified applicant.

So we have a relationship with dogs and cats that is particular. We will hold them hostage, but we will also feed them. We will feed them food they disfavor compared to the food we eat, but we will give them shelter. We will treat them in a lot of ways that they do not understand, but we’ve worked it out that so long as we rub their tummy, they’re happy. Not having owned any cats nor desiring to, I don’t have as many insights to our precise relationship with them, but I assume that there is something similarly worthwhile about them.

It seems to me that adding (in the aggregate) to that arrangement that we will take minimal efforts to see that fewer of them are needlessly killed is not particularly unreasonable.

Above I said that I would not go as far as Ms. Berlinsky. Here’s why: sometimes people really do need to buy a pet. Some people really have their heart set on a particular breed and getting a mutt from the pound is not an acceptable substitute. I would prefer the government not prevent that from ever happening. I think as long as we make sure that’s what they want, we can push the fence-sitters to the pound. But even if we don’t want to accommodate those, there are some that need need purebreds or dogs with traceable lineage. If the dog is being trained for a very specific task, some breeds are better than others. If a police department is going to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars training a drug-sniffing dog, they are going to want that dog to be of the right breed (or make sure that it doesn’t have particular other breeds in him or her) before they do so and that is not unreasonable. There are also people, like the President of the United States, that need hypoallergenic pets.

I am hoping that Clancy and I will be getting a new dog in the next month or two. I have a natural preference for mutts over purebreds and so I would probably go to the pound in any event, but things that would push me in that direction and away from breeders are good steps. Making purchasing a bred dog less convenient, for instance, or more costly. As it stands, I may well get a for-sale dog if the local pound doesn’t have what I want. I am not above such selfishness simply because I want a dog of a certain size and a certain age. Probably not because of my preference for mutts as well as having the point hammered into my head by my ex-girlfriend the former dog trainer (Julianne), but in a better world it wouldn’t even be a close call or something that I would consider.

So what to do? My preference would be to tax the hell out of purebreds (and use the money to take care of the mutts at the pound). At least try it and see how it goes. I have no illusions that there won’t be a fair number of unreported sales, but they’ll have a harder time setting up shop at the mall or widely advertising their services. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. But I think it’s worth a shot.

Megan McArdle writes about a new breed of debt collectors:

The last decade or so has given rise to a new version of an old phenomenon: the bottom feeding debt buyer. It’s often thought of as being linked to the bad economy, and perhaps it is, a little bit–businesses in trouble are probably more willing to look to their old collections as a source of revenue. But it’s also a result of increasing improvements in computer technology. It’s easier to aggregate very small amounts–say, hundreds of unpaid co-pays from a doctor’s office. Those debts can be unloaded at pennies on the dollar to firms which then use the interwebs to find their victims debtors and dun them for cash.

Often these firms don’t bother with the abusive high-pressure tactics that are used for large sums–the hourly wage on collecting $29.99 just isn’t a good use of resources. But that’s small comfort, because instead, they file blizzards of lawsuits against people who they can’t find, resulting in default judgements against someone who may not owe the money, or may not realize they owe. And those hundreds of aggregated small debts hit the credit reports of people who probably didn’t intend to skip out on a $15.87 termination fee when they canceled some utility, but now can’t get a car loan because there’s a black mark on their credit.

We’ve been getting calls lately from a debt collector. To be more precise, Clancy has. She doesn’t answer the phone when she doesn’t recognize the number, but I answered once when I was working on her phone. There wasn’t even a live voice on the other side of the line. Just a recording saying something to the effect of “The law requires us to notify you that we are a debt collector. Please stay on the line for the next available representative.”

I did not stay on the line. My thinking at the time was that there was no way that it was legitimately a debt collector calling for Clancy because she almost never gave out that number to anybody. She almost never gets calls on it from anyone that isn’t family or her work. How would they have that number? Neither when I picked up nor when we let it go to voicemail did they ever identify who they were trying to collect the debt from. Or for, which is also important because we’re pretty sure we don’t owe anybody money (except for her student loans) Most likely, I reasoned, it was someone that had a wrong number.

Then I thought of a possibility where it might not be a wrong number. It would be possible, for instance, that she put her cell phone down as a backup number and that they tried calling our line in either Estacado or Cascadia and since that was disconnected, they reverted to using her cell. When I gave Clancy her new phone, I took over her old one. Next time I will stay on the line just to confirm that they’re looking for someone else. And, of course, they haven’t called since. We’ve been holding on to that phone number just so that I can take the dang calls that wouldn’t stop coming before but haven’t come in a month. So apparently I am going to have to call them about a debt we don’t think we have from parties unknown.

Several years ago I got some mail about some money I allegedly owed what it looked like was the phone company. I called the number and dealt with a young woman that was incapable of doing anything but reading from a script. Any time I asked so much as who the debt was owed to she would read the part of the script accusing me of being unwilling to pay and outlining the repercussions of failing to pay. At some point during the conversation, I noticed that my name wasn’t even on the letter. So I asked who owed the money. She actually had the gumption to claim that was confidential information and that she couldn’t tell me and that if I refused to pay the money the repercussions would be…

I finally asked to speak to her supervisor, who was less stingy with the information. Though he was not willing to tell me who I owed the debt to or who I was supposed to be, he was willing to tell me what the debt was for. Apparently, someone was willing to pay $80 for a dress catalog. That was all I needed to know in order to know that the debt was absolutely not mine. As he explained the repercussions of what would happen if I did not pay the debt, I hung up.

More from McArdle.

I purchased an item on eBay a while back and the vendor has been really great. There was a problem with what they sent me and we’ve been going back and forth on it for a while now. They’ve been very receptive and most of the misunderstandings causing the delay have been on my end.

In another case, I ordered a product. It took longer than expected to get here, but I can’t say that they did anything wrong exactly. They just weren’t as upfront about everything as I might have liked. But they offer a product at a good price and I don’t want to hurt them.

The result: Both get the same feedback ratings.

eBay works on a 5-star systems. The problem is that if you give a seller anything less than five stars, it counts as negative feedback and makes things more difficult for them. So it makes me really reluctant to leave feedback saying “Oh, well they were not great but they were not bad either.” The only thing I can do is just not leave feedback at all. If this is going to be the case, they really should just have a Yes/No on whether or not I would do business with them in the future. There are probably cases where someone has tarred a seller that they generally liked.

But more than anything, I want to be able to actively endorse the first seller. I want to actively endorse another seller from whom I have bought a number of things. I want to give them a special gold star. I want other buyers to know that if there is any problem, they will take care of you. I could put something in the textbox, though they would probably not want everyone to know that they sold a defective product where further action was required. In my mind, that’s no big deal as long as it is made right in the end (if it’s something I am really concerned about, I’ll just get it from eBay or Amazon). But some people expect more from eBay than I do.

That brings me to another complaint, which is that if I leave feedback, I have to leave something in the text box. Sometimes I don’t have a whole lot to say. “They met expectations”? “They sent me the item within a reasonable time frame”? I wish I could just leave that blank because as with the stars anything that isn’t glowing is kinda negative. You should see the feedback they leave for me. All I did was buy the product and pay them, for goodness sake. I would prefer it if the feedback actually meant something. Like in the first case if they had said something like “Buyer very patient with product problem” or something. Instead, those folks left feedback before I even got the item saying “GREAT BUYER!! HOPE TO DO BUSINESS AGAIN!!” or somesuch.

It’s like the feedback system is designed to be as unhelpful as possible. Not even in the sense of covering for bad sellers because eBay is pretty anal about that from what I understand (hence, 4 of 5 stars hurting sellers). Just in the sense of not being able to tell if a buyer is really any good or not. Contrast this with Newegg, where people leave all kinds of reviews of products. There I can see what the negative reviews are (which no one is afraid to leave) and look for patterns and potential problems. For eBay this could mean that “Oh, well they’re not particularly fast on shipping. I can deal with that.” or deciding to move on without their rates being jacked up by eBay for someone leaving negative feedback.

Inflation happens, but it’s truly astonishing what has happened to soft drink prices over the last decade or so. I suppose these things stand out more to me than many others because I live in a world of technology where things tend to get cheaper rather than more expensive over time. But if you look at other food items, it doesn’t seem like they’ve gone up nearly as much as soft drinks.

I remember bottles reached 99 cents. This was significant because it marked the first time that soft drinks were cheaper from a vending machine than a convenience store. Once you accounted for sales tax, anyway. I thought that it was this bizarre anomaly that wouldn’t last. The reason, it seemed to me, was simply that the vending machine people like the nice round $1 and would be slower to move it up from $1 to $1.25 than they were from 75 cents to a dollar. But it’s more or less been that way ever since. I guess the vending machines are cheap enough to maintain that they don’t have to charge as much to make a profit. In fact, the disparity has increased. Soft drink prices in convenience stores seem to be around $1.70 or $1.80 most places I look.

One thing that’s been happening more recently, though, is a lot more variance among different brands. It used to be that Coke’s lineup and Pepsi’s lineup would be similarly priced and no matter what you got a bottle of you were paying about the same amount. The first big exception I remember to this was back when Mountain Dew had the Pitch Black flavor that sold abysmally. By the end there, the local convenience store on my way home in Deseret was selling those three for a dollar. It was tough to decide whether or not the price break was worth drinking that awful, awful drink. At first it was, but quickly became wasn’t.

Some of the local convenience stores have been selling the Pepsi Throwbacks at a significantly reduced price. Usually about $1 to $1.79 for the regular Pepsi and Mountain Dew. Unfortunately, I don’t like Pepsi of either variant from a bottle and I find the sugar Mountain Dew to be utterly inferior to the corn syrup stuff. The real steal right now for Mountain Dew fans is Vault. Vault would be Coke’s answer to the product. It’s not as good as Mountain Dew, but isn’t so bad and only costs a whopping 80 cents a bottle out here. I had initially assumed that the low pricing meant that Vault was being discontinued. Vault is Coke’s third try (that I am aware of) at unseating Mountain Dew, intermittently trying with Mello Yello and once a product called Surge.

But they keep making the stuff and selling the Vault stuff. Maybe they figure that if they can just get people to try it that they will realize that it tastes pretty good. Maybe they’re armed with blind taste tests giving them this idea. Honestly, I consider straight Mountain Dew and Vault to be comparable in quality, but I think Vault gets a grading curve because I don’t get it all that often and if I was stuck on a desert island there’s no doubt which I would prefer. What Coke needs to do next time around, if Vault doesn’t make it, is contract out the formula for Kroger’s Big K Citrus Drop product. That stuff is goooood. That it’s a house brand and cheaper is just icing on the cake. I would pay full price for it. This is in stark contrast to any of the other house brand options out there (Mountain Breeze, Mountain Lion, Mountain Lightning, etc…), most of which taste like flattened or watered down Mountain Dew.

We are actually pretty well stocked with soft drink cans. Outside of convenience stores, I’ve become a real bargain shopper for soft drinks at Safeway. They often have buy-two-get-two-free deals or buy-one-get-subsequent-cases-cheaper deals. So whenever they have those, I go crazy. They are encouraging you to buy as many as possible and I comply. It’s not like it’s going to waste. The result is that I keep some half-dozen flavors of stuff in the fridge. I used to try to avoid keeping anything more than one or two cans in the fridge for fear that I would just keep drinking, but I seem to have developed a natural stop-point where after I drink one I don’t want another one for a while. Sometimes I don’t want to drink a whole can at once. I’ve decided that given the cheapness and the fact that unhealthy food is no more wasted dumped into the sink than dumped into my mouth that I can poor out can remainders.

And on one last thing when it comes to soft drink prices, it is enormously irritating how cheap they make those 1-liter bottles. At the local truck stop, they’re only 10 cents more than a 20oz drink. Ten cents. What really had my head exploding was when they were cheaper. I was not as good then as I am now about just throwing away what I don’t want. So I would end up paying more to get less and would get quite irritated with that. Beyond which, those bottles are inconvenient on the whole due to their size. That’s less a factor for me now because I’m driving Clancy’s car which does not have cupholders able to accept a bottle of any size. I think it came out right before that was an absolute necessity.

One of the difficult decisions I had to make when going with Verizon is what phone to get. I have been a Windows Mobile user for quite some time. I really just stumbled upon it through chance and circumstance. But I quickly found out how it worked, found the software that I wanted to use for it, and never looked back. That’s not to say that I ever thought Windows Mobile was perfect. It was inconsistent and not ultra-intuitive. I had to install third-party applications for things that should have been native to the OS.

But when it comes to technology, I have a conservative soul and stick to what has always worked for me. I don’t like it when software-makers do massive revamps. They typically add features I like, but they change what I have always been delightfully accustomed to. And so it was with Windows Mobile. Windows Phone 7, WM6’s successor, is a massive revamp. None of the WM6 software will be compatible. Features I’ve come to rely on with WinMo will no longer be there, including multitasking and cut and paste. The unparalleled customizability of WM was explicitly dropped. In other words, they took half the reasons I will never own an iPhone and inserted it into their OS.

Because of this, I am left to find another OS. I didn’t think this would be that big of a deal as I thought of all of the things that I don’t like about Windows Mobile and thought that maybe Android, Symbian, or the Blackberry OS might not have these limitation. I was particularly interested in Symbian and Android, but it appears that Symbian is being gradually retired as well as its primary benefactor and owner, Nokia, starts looking for alternatives. It was looking at the alternatives that made me realize all that Windows Mobile could do and that I took for granted. I was relatively sure that I was going to migrate to Android for my next phone, but to my relative shock I discovered that Android can’t do a lot of things that Windows Mobile can do and has been able to do since at least 2003.

When it comes to smartphones, I have pretty specific needs. The biggest thing is what I call The Walkman Test. Basically, I want to be able to play music and videos without the device ever having to leave my pocket or holster. That means I need to reprogram the buttons both within the OS and within the media player. What I do now is set the volume buttons to open and start playing media. My main concern with Android is that it would not be able to do this. I was also concerned that, unlike with Windows Mobile, I might not be able to redirect all audio (and not just phone calls) to a Bluetooth phone headset. Any OS will let you use a Bluetooth stereo headset, but not necessarily pipe all audio to a headset designed mostly for phone use. Even Windows Mobile makes this a challenge.

I still don’t know the degree to which I can customize buttons on Android so that it can pass The Walkman Test. I asked some Android forums the question and got zero answers and a few “Why would anyone want to do that?” questions (which is usually a sign that it can’t). But I discovered along the way something more damning: Android can barely play my videos at all. I mean, it can play videos and there are tools to convert the videos into something that Android can play, but I don’t want to have to convert a video any time I want it to play on my phone. There are precisely two video players for Android that can play standard AVI files and both are crude and reports say that the video play is choppy (and one of them is in Chinese). This is in stark contrast to Windows Mobile, where there are at least two players that can play any type of video.

Perhaps more disconcerting is that the make-up of Android makes it so that it’s unlikely that any players will be coming out any time soon. I don’t know the technical details, but the folks from CorePlayer (the makers of both of the great Windows Mobile players) have said that they are trying but the Android OS is not at all conducive to third-party apps getting the kind of direct access to the hardware to smoothly play videos. I’m guessing that’s why the video on the players that do exist is so choppy. Android has to act as an intermediary of some sort and that bogs everything down. DivX, which also has a player for Windows Mobile, has flat-out announced that it is giving up on an Android player until Android changes its specs.

I have to believe that at some point Android will get it right. What I find fascinating is that I talk to Android users about this and they simply don’t understand why this is a problem. What’s so bad about converting videos? External video types can really drain the battery so it’s a good thing this option is not available to use (the same rationale that Apple defenders use for the complete lack of Flash support). Well, I’d like to make that decision for myself. I also get questions about why it’s such a big deal to have to pull the player out every time you want to stop or start a video. It makes me want to yell “Because this is what I want to do!” and I get agitated that everyone acts like it’s such an unreasonable request when Windows Mobile has been doing it for seven years.

I guess a lot of it just comes down to what someone wants from an OS. Which is what makes questions like “What is the best smartphone OS” ultimately dumb questions. I fail to see what the big deal is behind what the iPhone’s OS can do. I don’t understand how a sleek OS is worth not being able to install any application that Apple doesn’t want you to install (or having to go to war with your phone to do so). When people say “I love the iPhone because it can do x,” I am inclined to look at those people just as blankly as they look at me when I say that I like Windows Mobile because I can do y, which no other current OS can seem to do.”

Incidentally, I got a Windows Mobile phone and absolutely love it. It’s probably the last WM phone I will buy since it’s a dead platform. I am just hoping that Android can get its act together between now and then. Or maybe Windows Phone 7.1 (which, to its credit, will be able to play my video files right out of the box) will be a little less iPhoney. I’m feeling a little more anti-iPhone than usual. Not because the iPhone is a bad device, but because it was successful for all the wrong reasons. It demonstrated all of the things that a PDA OS can be successful without. And so Palm and Microsoft follow suit, throwing things like free-flowing software support out the window (no pun intended) and essentially dumbing the phones down. Making them easier to use, but making it harder to do anything outside the sandbox.

There’s one for sale on 1saleaday for $30. It’s a good little MP3 player. My only two complaints are that it doesn’t handle folders, (so you’d better have your MP3s tagged the way you want them) and it’s audio jack comes out of the bottom rather than the top. The battery life is extraordinary when in stand-by mode (and not bad otherwise). I lost mine for a few weeks and it still had 40% battery when I found it. In addition to the 4GB native drive, you can also stick an SDHC in there. Audio qualify is good, I think, though my hearing isn’t great. Oh, and don’t expect much out of the video. You have to convert everything to a bloated format to watch anything.

Via McArdle, this ad on Craigslist:

One very attractive male is offering his bedroom to an attractive female for the summer. No pressure or anything creepy. We can meet for drinks to discuss and make sure there’s mutual attraction.

I am fit, attractive, and under 30. Contact me for details, serious offer here.

No pressure, but mutual attraction required. Ooookay.

I think what’s particularly disconcerting - creepy - about this is not that he’s asking for sex in exchange for housing. Prostitution is nothing new, for sure. Rather, it’s the sort of passive-aggressive appeal. I mean passive-aggressive in the sense that it is passive and aggressive and not so much because it’s passive-aggressive in the snippy sort of way we think of the word. I mean, if he just came out and said what he was after, that would be one thing. Instead, he sort of wants to passively force it to happen. Of course, that’s one way to avoid going to jail for solicitation, I suppose. Whatever the utilitarian reasons for the tone of his appeal, it sort of feels like the guy that can’t quite ask the girl out and so keeps making “joking” comments to do so as indirectly as absolutely possible. Except that instead of avoiding the cops he would be trying to avoid rejection. Meanwhile, everyone in the room cringes every time he speaks.

I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion my frustration with AT&T’s new policy requiring smartphone users to have data plans. Though I am perfectly happy with my data plan and don’t look to downgrade anytime soon, I very much like the flexibility to do so and mostly just resent not having a choice in the matter.

Following up on a lead that I got a while back, I actually discovered a loophole. I can, in fact, use a smartphone without a data plan under certain circumstances. I tested it with my existing AT&T SIM card and it worked perfectly. No data plan was added.

AT&T adds the data plan when it registers a smartphone on its network. If it doesn’t register the smartphone, it can’t add a data plan. All of this made sense when a few Nokia smartphone users said that they were not affected by the policy change. AT&T does not offer Nokia smartphones (or, if it does, offers a very limited selection). So the thought occurred to me that perhaps if I got a Motorola Milestone (the GSM Droid) perhaps a data plan would not be added. The question is how extensive AT&T’s database is and how many kinds of phones it keeps track of.

As luck would have it, my new Verizon phone is a worldphone, which means that it is CDMA like all of Verizon’s phones, but it also has a SIM card slot. So I unlocked the phone, popped in my AT&T SIM card, and… no data plan added. It did not recognize the phone at all! This is despite the fact that it is the Verizon variant of a model that AT&T definitely offers. The difference between my Touch Pro 2 and AT&T’s Tilt 2 is one extra button and CDMA capability. That’s it. But that’s enough. All indications are that AT&T’s database is really quite limited.

The only question is whether or not I can add an appropriate data plan to it. Different phones have different options based on capability and it assumes that my phone is a dumb phone. However, it gives you the option to identify your phone. So theoretically, if I want to add a data plan I can simply tell the system it’s a Tilt 2. I suspect that if you tried to tell it a Tilt 2 was a dumb phone that it would figure out that you’re full of it. But I don’t think the reverse is true. And then, if I want to cancel my plan, I can go back and tell it that it’s a basement Motorola model or something. Maybe.

I haven’t figured everything out. It’s possible that my phone is an exception because of my specific account, but I don’t think so. It can’t add the data plan if it doesn’t recognize the phone. The second thing I am unsure of is if I ever identify it as a Tilt 2 whether or not I can then identify it as something else. I don’t see why not. As long as the phone itself isn’t correcting me, I think that AT&T is going to give me latitude.

All of this is something of a moot point since (a) I love my data plan, (b) AT&T is revising their data plan structure to allow for a cheaper low-bandwidth option, and (c) I’m with Verizon anyway. However, it’s something I am definitely going to keep in mind when/if AT&T makes its way to Callie. One of the reasons I got the phone I did was that I could take it back to AT&T (or Frontier Wireless) if I ever decided that I wanted to.

This was written a few weeks ago, though never sent. Mostly, I guess, I needed to blow off steam. Since then, I signed a two-year contract with Verizon making my doing business with AT&T in the future considerably less likely.

—-

Dear AT&T,

I have been a customer of AT&T Wireless and its predecessors for twelve years or so. I got a phone with a company called ColCall that became part of Cingular and when I was living in Deseret I was with Skyline Mobile, which was part of the AT&T network.

I have temporarily relocated to Callie, Arapaho, where you don’t yet provide coverage though you will soon be taking over the local Galaxy Mobile. When you had to cut off my data plan, I understood because it wasn’t fair to you to have to pay for the local towers while I get situated. So satisfied have I been with AT&T that I was going to bide my time with a local provider and switch to AT&T as soon as you arrived. Until recently, you have always done right by me.

However, late last year you enacted a policy requiring that smartphone users get a data plan. Until I got a data plan last year, I had always used my smartphone the same way that I used my PDA before it except with a phone attached so I have one less thing to remember before I head out the door. I did enjoy having the data plan while I had it, but I always appreciated the fact that if I needed to save money I could always go back to doing what I did before.

Though I guess I am currently grandfathered in, from what I understand I can never upgrade or replace my phone without signing up for a data plan that I am not sure I will need. This is a slap in the face from a company that I had come to expect more from and a company that I have defended and proselytized for in the face of some recent bad publicity. One of the things I have always appreciated about AT&T is that (unless I am under contract) my phone was my business. When Verizon told me that I could not have a data phone without a data plan regardless of contract, I told them I would just wait for AT&T (or until I relocated back into AT&T’s coverage area) because they would not do that.

You’ve made me eat those words and have made me question a lot of what I thought was the freedom of doing business with AT&T. My options in Callie while I am here are limited, so I’ll be honest and say that you may well retain my business. However, you have lost my loyalty.

Sincerely,

Will Truman
Callie, AO

A little while ago, the author of another blog (I can’t remember which one) commented on the irony that the company that initialized its name to get rid of the word “Fried” would be offering something like the Double Down. That left me scratching my head because I had thought that KFC had shortened its name not because of the word “Fried” but because of the word “Kentucky.” They were worried about it being considered too regionalized (which I considered silly, but there you go). Turns out that we were both right and we were both wrong.

He was right that the official reason they gave was the ford “Fried”. I was right because the real problem was indeed the word “Kentucky”. However, it wasn’t regionalization as I had though. Rather, it’s that the Commonwealth of Kentucky wanted a cut:

In 1990, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, mired in debt, took the unusual step of trademarking their name. Henceforth, anyone using the word “Kentucky” for business reasons - inside or outside the state - would have to obtain permission and pay a licening fee to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

The result was that Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC and more:

Kentucky Fried Chicken were not the only ones who bravely refused to knuckle under. The name of the most famous horse race in North America, held every year at Churchill Downs, was changed from the “Kentucky Derby” to “The Run for the Roses” for similar reasons; many seed and nursery outfits that had previously offered Kentucky Bluegrass switched to a product known as “Shenendoah Bluegrass” instead; and Neil Diamond’s song “Kentucky Woman” was dropped from the radio playlists at his request, as the licensing fees he was obligated to pay the Commonwealth of Kentucky exceeded the performance royalties he was receiving for the airplay.

I’ve often wondered if states were allowed to do this. I was actually thinking less of the state’s name and more the state’s flag. I figured that they could because state-run universities trademark their name and logo. I began to wonder if the current copyright mentality had been in place at the founding it the use of the stars and stripes would require paying a royalty to the government.

Memo to Mozilla,

It’s great that you’re doing all of this legwork about how to improve Firefox. I have an alternate proposal: before worrying about improving, fix whatever the heck is wrong with it! It’s finally reached the point that I can barely recommend Firefox to anyone anymore. It’s not like it used to be with few other options. Internet Explorer has suddenly become a pretty good browser. Google Chrome is pretty cool, too, and is expanding it’s plug-ins at a pretty rapid clip. Meanwhile, it’s gotten to the point that if my computer has stopped responding with reasonable diligence, closing Firefox is the first thing I do and it fixes the problem 90% of the time. Even right now, with only 14 tabs open and a window I opened just a few hours ago (and no instances of Adobe Flash open), you are taking up 65% of my CPU usage and nearly a gigabyte of RAM. I know I type fast, but I do not type that fast. This is unacceptable. It did not used to be this way.

—-

Memo to Plantronics,

Your Explorer 330 Bluetooth headset is the best Bluetooth headset the market has seen before or sense. Why, oh, why, did you stop making it?

—-

Memo to Verizon,

Just because I am now your customer does not mean I have decided to stop hating you.

—-

Memo to Garmin GPS Maker,

I wish you would allow me to set View Map as a default. Instead, you put up a screen asking if I want to View Map or Find Route. It’s a fair question. Sometimes I do want to Find Route and other times I just want to View Map. However, if I want to Find Route I can hit the screen an extra time to get to that menu. Really. I can. It’s not likely to create any greater a safety risk because if I am going to find a route I am going to be focused on the GPS anyway. Anyway, while sometimes I want to Find Route and sometimes I want to View Map, I never want the device to simply ask the question indefinitely. At the very least, switch to the map after two minutes of no response. Or add a feature for it to turn off. Cause sometimes I don’t want to use the GPS, and sometimes I want to Find Route, and sometimes I want to View Map, but I repeat I never want that question just sitting there indefinitely.

—-

Memo to Bloggers and Website Administrators,

Unless you’re actually updating your blog every five minute, you do not need the blog to refresh every five minutes. I can hit F5 for myself.

—-

Memo to Electronics Makers Everywhere

Stop the LED abuse! Do not underestimate the power of LED! The power splitter for my car has an LED that lights up the entire car at night. My old Pocket PC docking station had an LED so powerful I had to place black electrical tape over it and it’s still distracting.

This has been mentioned a couple of times around here, usually in the comment section, but I thought I would devote an entire post to the subject. If you are paying for insurance on your cell phone, stop. If you are offered insurance on your phone, decline. Optionally, give the sales person a dirty look for asking. Not too dirty, though, because he’s probably required to ask.

The basic premise behind cell phone insurance is the same for any other insurance on a physical item. You pay a monthly fee and in return, if something happens to your phone, they replace it. Actually, they won’t necessarily replace it. They will replace it with a phone of “equal or greater value.” And you’ll have to pay a deductible that could be more than the cost of replacing the phone on your own.

The problem with the phone of equal or greater value is that you have no control over what kind of phone they will replace it with. Sometimes, without realizing it you chose the specific phone you did for a reason. It felt good in the hand. It had a particular feature or game on it. This is if you’ve got a regular phone. If you have a smartphone, chances are the particulars on the phone (slide-out keyboard or no, operating system, etc) were chosen with some degree of care. The phone you get is anybody’s guess. If you wanted one with a good camera but they decide that a bad camera plus a more storage space (that you would have gotten in the first place if you needed it) means “equal or greater value,” you’re stuck. Even if you actually get a better phone, you can still get burned. Those extra chargers you bought for your previous phone? Incompatible because they switched brands on you or your band changed their proprietary interface.

I had a Nokia phone that I liked just fine until I dropped something on it and it broke. They replaced it with a Motorola. The chargers were incompatible, but more than that I just didn’t like the thing. I can’t even tell you why. My dislike of it was almost immediate. I would not have bought it in the store. But I had no choice. When it died six months later, it was a happy day. Even though most phones come with a 1-year warranty, it apparently doesn’t count if it’s a refurb, which is what you typically get through the insurance policy. I didn’t care, though, because this gave me the ability to buy a phone that I actually wanted. Nokia had upgraded their chargers, though, so I had to buy chargers all over again.

Here is what I should have done: forget the insurance. If my phone breaks, I go out and I buy another one. You can get used cell phones really cheap on eBay. Yeah, it’s used, but so was the phone you broke. If you’re not a smartphone guy, you can get a new phone for less than $30 (no contract), which is less than the $35 deductible. Or you can get the exact same model you had before so everything works.

If you’re buying a more expensive phone, it may be more tempting because you’re going to take a bigger hit if you have to replace it. You’re not going to be able to buy a smartphone for $30. But the more you do on a phone, the more important it is that you have the phone you want. At the bottom end, the difference between one phone and the next is relatively small. Even though I never liked the Motorola phone, it never occurred to me to just junk it and replace it. Give me a smartphone that can’t do what I want it to do or doesn’t have the features I want and I would do just that.

When they give you a new phone, they explain that they don’t have your current model “in stock.” They do this even if your current phone is still being sold by the provider! What I’m relatively sure they do is order a bunch of phones in bulk of one model per price area and simply use that to replace any phones in that price bracket. Economically, it makes sense, but they’re not up front about it and the result is costumers thinking that they’re buying something that they’re not.

My story may be an unusual one, but I don’t think it is. The same thing happened to Web and a couple other people I know. In fact, nobody I know has ever had insurance replace their phone with their phone.

Save the money and simply prepare yourself to take the hit. If your phone breaks, look at it as an opportunity reassess your cell phone needs.

Life before we got those products in those ads.

-{Via Unfogged}-

Liz Pulliam Weston has a list of things that you should buy used and new.

From the “Don’t Buy New” list:

1. Books - Agreed. Unless there is something that you’re seriously itching for that’s new, buying used is as close to a no-brainer as it comes.

2. CDs and DVDs - This can be risky because scratches can disrupt the play. Further, it can be a bigger problem finding what you want. The savings are also not that great. To pick a random example, if you go to Amazon.com, Chris Isaak’s seminal Forever Blue is $3-4 used (including shipping), $6-10 new (including shipping), and $10 for the MP3s (no shipping). If you want to haggle over a couple bucks, go for it. But there’s something to be said for getting a nice, new CD.

3. Kids’ Toys - Not a good idea for gifts, but the rest of the time probably not a bad idea.

4. Jewelry - If you’re buying for yourself, sure. Buying it for a loved one can be risky.

5. Sports equipment - Check!

6. Timeshares - Now there’s an interesting idea. Not sure timeshares would be my thing, but I don’t know it would have occurred to me to buy used.

7. Vehicles - This probably deserves a post of its own. In the meantime, there are more reasons to buy a new car than the new car smell. For most people, buying used is the more economical thing. However, we make money to spend it on things. The money spent on a new car is not entirely wasted, depending on what your priorities and options are. Unless your car is important to you in a non-utilitarian way or you’re hyper-worried about reliability, though, I agree.

8. Software and console games - Same issue as with the DVDs. The two used Playstation games I bought used did not work out. At all. Getting half off isn’t necessarily worth it if you have to buy it twice.

9. Office Furniture - I bought a used office chair once that spilled grease all over my carpet. Office furniture can also be one of those personal things where you have a strong preference for one or the other. Otherwise, though, getting used isn’t a bad idea.

10. Hand Tools - Okay.

From the “Don’t Buy Used” list:

1. Laptops - Actually no. If you don’t need a particularly powerful laptop, you can get a used one for 20% of the price of a new one. When companies upgrade, you can buy their old ones through intermediary and they’re often really good laptops replaced for no reason but their age. If it breaks? You can get another. Or you can learn how to replace parts. If you need a more powerful laptop, you can also get some good refurbished ones. Even without warranties, it can still be a pretty good deal. I’ve bought several used Thinkpads for myself and others and they have all worked out splendidly. A lot of the time, Weston is right. But it depends on what you need.

That’s actually the one one on that list that I take issue with.

Farhad Manjoo suggests six ways to improve our cell phone industry in the United States. Most are hard to disagree with, but I found one:

You have the right to unlock your phone. When you get a phone as part of a new cell plan, there’s a good chance that Verizon, Sprint, or whoever else has “locked” the device. This means that the phone won’t work on another carrier. The companies do this because they want to recoup the subsidy you’re getting for buying a phone along with a cell contract. For instance, AT&T gives you a price break on the iPhone when you sign up for two years of AT&T service (the full price of a 16GB iPhone 3GS is $599, but you pay only $199 when you sign the contract). Because it’s helping you pay for your device, AT&T locks the phone so that you can’t take it to a rival like T-Mobile.

Sometimes I get the feeling that when people say things like “Oh, I wish that our cell phone system were more like the rest of the world’s with open standards,” they’re kind of thinking that they’ll get to stick it to AT&T. In reality, they’re sticking it not to AT&T, which is already close to being there, but to the much-celebrated Verizon.

If it weren’t Manjoo and if he didn’t hone in on AT&T and T-Mobile, I would suspect that he didn’t know what he was talking about. But he does and I believe he’s being disingenuous. You see, Manjoo is an iPhone user and iPhone users by default have to believe the worst of AT&T. AT&T locks their phones and that is unconscionable. Ergo, the government should force AT&T (and T-Mobile) to unlock their phones.

What he’s leaving out is that Verizon, which all right-thinking iPhone users love, and Sprint and most carriers who are not AT&T or T-Mobile don’t use SIM cards and their phones technologically cannot be unlocked. So what Manjoo would do is punish the evil AT&T and (innocent bystander) T-Mobile. Verizon, meanwhile, would get a free pass. Further, it would be punishing AT&T and T-Mobile for using a more open standard over the closed one that Verizon uses.

If we really want open cell phones like they have in Europe and the rest of the world, we sould not be punishing GSM networks like AT&T and T-Mobile, but would rather be punishing CDMA networks like more-or-less everybody else. The law would not say then that “If you use SIM cards, you must allow unlocked phones” but rather “If you make and market phones in the United States, they must be GSM-compatible and must be able to be unlocked.” That way, makers of CDMA phones would have to include GSM capability in addition to CDMA capability. This would be a logistical challenge and would make the phones more expensive. This would be unfair to Verizon and Sprint and generous to AT&T, but it would be rewarding AT&T for doing something good and right and decent (which I know is against the rules because they’re mean to iPhone users).

It would strongly incentivize switching over to GSM or some sort of open technology. Now, Verizon is moving from CDMA to LTE. LTE is a more open standard akin to GSM, but it can be made proprietary. You can absolutely bet that if carriers with open-standard networks are met with a burden that those with proprietary standards are not, not only will Verizon go as proprietary as they can but AT&T and T-Mobile (also moving to LTE) will do the same. I agree with Manjoo that a law should be passed or a regulation put in place, but I think it should be one far more aimed at Verizon, Sprint, and the other CDMA carriers. Even if that means being nice to AT&T.

However, the counterargument to such a law is very clear. Essentially, opponents will be able to say “But the phones will cost more!” because, well, they will. If you can take my AT&T phone and walk it over to T-Mobile, AT&T is either going to stop subsidizing your phones or they are going to ramp up their cancellation fees big time. And who could blame them? They helped you buy their phone. So get used to the idea of a cell phone costing $600 instead of $200. Personally, I think this is a positive development. However, a lot of non-geeks would rather have their phone paid for. At the very least, you’re going to have to let the carriers keep a phone locked for the duration of the contract.

By the way, they can’t even do that now. At least not with devices made by companies not named Apple.

When they talk about how mean AT&T locks their phones, let’s be upfront about something. They’re not talking about AT&T locking phones; nobody is talking about anything but the iPhone. You want to know how much it’s going to cost me to unlock my HTC model? $3. It’s not even a question of whether AT&T will let me do it or not and in fact sometimes they will help. I would be doing so through an intermediary with HTC, the phone’s manufacturer. If you can’t do that with the iPhone, look not to AT&T but to Apple. And before we start talking about how the meanies at AT&T won’t let them because AT&T is holding the phone hostage, remember that Apple was the one that lined their pockets with that deal. We know they didn’t have to because Apple’s competitors did and do not concede exclusivity. Sure, AT&T paid Apple a pretty penny to prevent things like that happening. But it was Apple that took the money and pocketed it. They certainly didn’t pass the savings on to you.

Meanwhile, it’s White Knight Verizon that has locked phones that cannot be unlocked under any circumstances.

Anyone have any brand and model HDTVs to endorse? It’s kind of high on our list of things to get when the money starts rolling in (don’t worry, a big chunk of it is going right into savings). I’m looking for somewhere in the ballpark of 32″ to 42″. That’s a big ballpark, I know. I’m indecisive. Extra points for TVs with good 180 degree visibility and particularly for TVs with minimum glare as the TV will be facing a window.

Since getting booted off AT&T, I am a free agent for the first time in my life when it comes to cell phone plans. Though each time I moved (up until the Cascadia move) I kept changing carriers, I always beelined to AT&T because I’ve always been reasonably satisfied with them and they’ve been the devil I’ve known. More recently I’ve decided to stick with AT&T because they use a GSM-SIM network and so I am not locked into a pre-authorized phone.

Now, of course, I am off AT&T for the time being. My initial thought was that I would walk straight over to Verizon. Verizon, of course, boasts the best network in the country. They also have the Motorola Droid phone. With Windows Mobile sadly going the way of the dodo, I have decided that Android is likely where I will depart to and the Droid is the gold standard right now for Android phones.

I had some trepidation about going over to Verizon. The main reason for this is that Verizon, like Sprint, uses CDMA phones. What that means is that if you buy one of their phones, you will never be able to use it on another network. This is in contrast to GSM networks, which are based on SIM cards that are transferrable from one carrier to the next. GSM carriers do tend to lock their phones down in an effort to prevent you from doing so, but for a small fee you can (with the exception of the iPhone) usually unlock the phone with minimal intrusiveness (compared to, say, jailbreaking an iPhone). Beyond that, though, you don’t have to buy a phone from the provider nor do you have to buy one associated with the provider. Verizon and Sprint, on the other hand, can much more easily refuse to activate any phone that isn’t theirs. As such, they can more-or-less require that you buy a phone from them (that won’t work for anyone else) for an outrageous price or for a lesser price with a burdensome contract.

In the end, though, I wasn’t going to let my ideology get in the way of practicality. I may not like the Verizon arrangement, but if they can offer me something that nobody else can (a national network, in this case, and the Droid), I’ll make due.

Three things changed my mind about Verizon. First, their rates are high. Much higher than any of the other carriers in the area. With the other carriers, it depends on what precisely you want as to whether or not it will cost you more or less than the others. Except Verizon, which is always higher. At least in my usage bracket. Second, and this is a relatively minor point, the Droid has some hardware/software limitations that my current phone does not and I am less enthusiastic about what was Verizon’s biggest selling point. And if I really want, I can get a Droid-equivalent SIM phone anyway.

The third thing was the biggest thing. I had been able to dismiss the practical sides of my ideological opposition to the way that Verizon does business by figuring that I can put up with a bad carrier and a required data plan for a one-year contract. But I then discovered that Verizon will not let you out of the data plan as long as you have a smartphone whether you are under contract or not. That means that if I ever want to get rid of my data plan (which I’m not sure I even want in the first place), I have to (a) get a new phone which requires a new contract, and/or (b) carry around a Pocket PC in addition to my cell phone. I did (b) for a while and I don’t want to go back to it because I am unreliable at remembering both and it’s my cell phone (the more important of the two) that I more typically forget. More than that, though, I resent being forced to make that choice. AT&T doesn’t make me do that unless they subsidize my phone (which is more than fair) and even then only the term of the contract. Nor do either of the other carriers.

The fourth and last thing that changed my mind about Verizon was finding out that AT&T is buying itself into my market. By the end of the year, they will have purchased Galaxy Mobile, one of the regional carriers, pending FTC approval. That means that the one year contract that Verizon requires would make it that much longer until I can switch back to AT&T when they come to town.

The other two options, however, both give me considerably more flexibility. Galaxy is being bought out by AT&T and so if I go with Galaxy I will be able to switch over to AT&T as soon as I want, assuming the sale goes through. In fact, I will be forced to switch. That’s the downside. Galaxy is presently a CDMA carrier and I would have to buy a phone just to use in the interim. To buy a Galaxy-compatible HTC Fuze (which is what I own now) will cost about $150 and Clancy’s phone will cost an additional $50. Or I can just get a cheapo phone to tide me over, but (a) I don’t know how long it will take before I can go back to my Fuze and (b) I’ll have to carry a Pocket PC and a cell phone in the meantime, which I don’t like and I’m not good at.

But of the three local carriers, it is Galaxy that had the best sales pitch. A good enough sales pitch that even if they weren’t bought out by AT&T, they would probably be getting my business despite the CDMA problem. Good rates and, despite the fact they are a regional company, national coverage.

On the other hand, Frontier Wireless is by far the most flexible option. Frontier not only uses SIM cards but doesn’t deal with locked phones at all. Clancy’s phone is already unlocked and it will cost less than $10 to unlock mine and I will be good to go with Frontier immediately. It is also a very local company, which I really like but which is also its greatest weakness. Frontier operates almost solely out of Arapaho and while they have national coverage, they discourage off network use. Any data plan I get with them would only cover Arapaho and have roaming fees everywhere else. That wouldn’t be an issue except that the times I most need a data plan is precisely when I won’t have it: when travelling. On the other hand, Frontier doesn’t care whether I have a data plan or not. I can use my Fuze as a Pocket PC, which Verizon won’t let me do at all and Galaxy will only let me do when out of my contract (in this case when they boot me over to AT&T).

So, while waiting on AT&T, I am debating between Galaxy and Frontier. It mostly comes down to whether I want a data plan or not. On the one hand, I lived without a data plan all the way up until late last year when I got one. On the other hand, I got kind of used to it. Back on the first hand, though, I’m not sure how useful it will be when I spend almost all of my time within a 5-minute drive home. It was most useful when I was traveling, which I did a lot of previously but am likely to do less of when Clancy starts work. Then there’s the question of my work. If I get work in Tupelo or with the Census Bureau, it will suddenly become much more useful. If I start software testing for OpenOffice at home, it won’t be very useful at all.

It’s odd to know exactly what I want (AT&T) and yet not be able to decide what I want (until AT&T comes to town). I guess I should be thankful that Verizon so graciously removed themselves from consideration.

At approximately 6am on Tuesday of this week, I got a terse text message from AT&T:

YOUR OFF-NETWORK DATA USAGE IS IN VIOLATION OF YOUR SERVICE CONTRACT. CALL [phone number] FOR DETAILS.

I also noticed that my phone was listing “Off Network” a couple places on the screen where it usually said “AT&T.” I hadn’t noticed that before. I assumed that I was still within AT&T’s network because I knew that they had serviced around Callie and the phone had given me no indication that I was not in an AT&T area. Had I been missing the words “Off Network” this entire time? One of the downsides to having my detail-attention problem is that I never know these things for sure.

I called AT&T when I got out of bed a couple hours later and sure enough I was outside AT&T’s range. This meant that AT&T was having to pay someone else for the use of their tower. This was costing AT&T money and AT&T did not like this very much. If I continued to do this, there would be a series of repercussions and none of them good. None of them logical, either. First, they would start charging me for off-network use. Then if I didn’t stop they would cut my off-network use. Then if it did not stop they would cut off my data plan and then my cell phone altogether. Then if it did not stop, they would cut off my entire family’s cell phone plan (my family shares a plan - I have a Colosse number).

The first step is in itself curious. If AT&T starts charging me for off network use, then are they still losing money on me? Seems to me that they could charge the same amount that they’re losing to whoever’s towers they’re using. Or they could do what companies like AT&T often do and charge more and make a little profit off the deal. The charge is 5 cents a kilobyte. Are the local towers really charging them more than that?! Then, if they proceed with the next step, which is to prevent me from using data for any off network at all, the rest is rendered moot. Because at that point, it has to stop.

The next thing he said was equally bizarre. He said that the problem was that my usage was over 40% off network and that was the problem. So it wasn’t the amount of off network use I was doing, but rather the portion. So then, theoretically, if I go up to Tupelo (where AT&T has coverage) and use up a whole bunch of bandwidth, I could bring that average back down. The easiest way out for me then would be to clog up their data streams needlessly. That I could do.

What appears to be the case, however, is that the guy I was talking to was talking out of his hat. While the portion may have been an issue, the number is not 40% (which is really quite generous) but 20% (which is about what I would expect it to be). But mostly, there is a kilobyte limit that I was not only exceeding, but smashing like a pinata. No amount of data usage in Tupelo would have made up for that. So at that point, my only option was to cancel my data coverage on AT&T. Further, given that I am presently out of AT&T’s service area, it probably won’t be long before they discover where my phone calls are being made out of.

I’ve been a loyal AT&T customer since I was 17. It wasn’t AT&T at that point, but it was a company bought by a company that merged with a couple other companies that bought AT&T. And I technically wasn’t with AT&T in Deseret, but was with an affiliate that was on AT&T’s network. But then I got on the folks’ plan and have been with AT&T since. The only problem I’ve ever really had with the company was actually with Deseret Mobile, the affiliate, who were not up front with me about the price spike that came with a new phone I had purchased and, despite the existence of a 7 day no-questions-asked return policy, would not let me get back on my old plan.

As it happens, I may not be away from AT&T for very long. It appears that they are moving into the area by the end of the year as long as the FTC does not step in. Of course, this is a bit frustrating because all of this could have been avoided if they had just done so a year ago. Now I’m going to have to figure out what to do between now and when they arrive or elsewise decide what other carrier to go with.

I’m tempted to tell AT&T where they could stick it with their illogical threats, but I am inclined to think that was mostly just the guy I was talking to. The fact that he got the 20%/40% wrong tells me that he wasn’t reading from some threatening script. Besideswich, whoever made this happen more than made up for it.

Jones Soda is a Hit Coffee favorite, at least among Web and I (I have no idea of Sheila’s opinion on this important matter) and apparently they’ve sold out. In the literal sense, I mean. They’d been bought out by a competitor.

(On a sidenote, Jones soda is owned by a guy named Jones and Reed, the purchasing company, is owned by a guy named Reed. You don’t expect to see that a whole lot these days.)

Jones had actually been, up to a point, pretty successful until recently. Unfortunately, they leveraged at the wrong time to expand into candies and wider distribution and had fallen onto hard times. Reed bought them for a song.

Web expressed some concern that this will mean the end of one of the few major options for those that prefer sugar to corn syrup. This does not appear to be the case, fortunately for sugar-lovers (or is that corn syrup haters?) as Reed is apparently all natural-oriented. That type of thing could mean corn syrup (it’s natural, so how can it be bad for you, corn producers ask) but more likely means, as my former roommate Dennis put it, that the flavors will now come with Ginsung included or somesuch jazz.

I don’t care if they include Ginsung or not nor do I care if they go with corn syrup. What I love(d) most about Jones Soda is their innovative array of flavors and their creative packaging.

If Reed goes messing with the flavor selection, that will be the biggest bummer since Jolt Cola stopped their flavored line. Most of you that know of Jolt know it for being super-duper caffeine-infused. But for a while when I was in college, they had a line of different flavored drinks that was really good. The only two things that compare to it are the current Mountain Dew offerings, which are seasonal and inconsistent, and Jones.

I was introduced to Jones and irregular Jolt back when I was in college and both quickly eclipsed Coke and Pepsi. Sortly after, Southern Tech University signed an exclusive deal with Coca-Cola that prevented them from selling Jones on campus. So I would have to go across the Interstate to the scary part of town to get my fix. That was where I discovered Jolt. They made a great combination: Jolt if I wanted something caffeinated and Jones if I didn’t. I would bring some back to my roommates (Dennis, Saresh, and Hubert at the time) and they liked it, too (except maybe Saresh).

Then we moved on, I moved off campus, and Jolt fell off my radar and a year or so it disappeared.

Jones, too, had fallen somewhat off my radar until I moved to the northwest. Jones Soda is apparently based out of the Pacific Northwestern United States. I did not know this. I did know that Jones was more widely available out there than anywhere else I’d been, but for some reason I thought that Jones was a Canadian company. But anyway, I guess due to regional preference, it was more widely available and so I got it when I could.

Interestingly, one of the airlines I flew also offered Jones in lieu of Coke or Pepsi. I was honestly kind of disappointed. It was somewhere below Coke and above Pepsi. The fact that they used sugar rather than corn syrup didn’t seem to make much of any difference.

Pepsi has been on a sugar kick lately with a “Throwback” line made from sugar instead of corn syrup. Clint swears it tastes sweeter, but honestly I can’t really taste it. It does taste a little bit different, but mostly different and not better or worse.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if somebody at Pepsi had just gotten tired of people ragging on corn syrup and decided to give people what they wanted just so that they would shut up and that most people would come to the conclusion that I did. So then even if Throwback was a failure, they’d have something to point to and say “See? Nobody cares!”

Of course, it’s also possible (my experience with Jones aside) that to get the full taste of sugar they would need to do some R&D work and revise the formula built around corn syrup. Or maybe they did do some R&D work to bring the cost down and the lack of awesomeness that I sense is a matter of corners cut elsewhere.

On one last note about Jones Soda, the second thing I mentioned was the creative packaging. Jones takes submitted photographs and puts them on the bottles, which is neat. They also let you order custom bottles with your own pictures. I had this idea that one of these days I would take the comic book characters I created in high school and give each one of them a Jones flavor. If I want to do that, I might should get a move on while before Reed decides that’s a corner that can be cut.