Chovy's Blog

Here it is…I have been an AT&T cellular customer for about 3 years, that being said, my contract has been up for quite some time now. I would like to switch to Cingular to get their nation wide rollover plan 450 minutes/month, although this is lower than the 600 I’m getting now, I still don’t use 450/month at my current rate of talking.

LetsTalk.com has a great site, inwhich you can choose phones and plans, and greater discounts on phones than you’ll ever get through the cellular company directly. For example, the phone I want is the Seimens C61, on a two-year plan with cingular the phone is $9.99 (after $10 mail-in rebate). I personally hate mail in rebates, they are a huge hassle which I often forget about, or finding directions on what to include are non-existant.

On LetsTalk, I found the same phone is free (before $50 mail in rebate) and this is true even for a 1-year contract, not the required two-year plan by cingular in the Cingular stores. For the Seimens C61 on a 1-year contract at the cingular store the phone is a grotesque $69.99 (no rebates).

Furthermore, LetTalks does offer a $50 rebate on the phone, ontop of the initial cost of $0 for the phone. So they are basically paying you $50 to take this phone with your 1-year plan!

As far as working a better deal on the minutes, etc. You’re pretty much stuck with the standard packages. At the Cingular store they were unwilling to give me a better deal.

NOw to Why the AT&T and Cingular Merger Sucks….the only way I can port my current AT&T number to Cingular is to do it directly through Cingular. I cannot port my number between the two companies on LetTalks.com orders. I went into my local Cingular store and asked why, and they said AT&T and Cingular are now considered one company, and switching plans is considered an upgrade, not a new plan. This is a load of crap, since absolutely, they are two seperate phone companies operating as one, seperate pricing plans, seperate cellular networks (I can only get AT&T service at work – not Cingular, and only Cingular at home, not AT&T).

So I think I’m going to dump my current phone number, as much as I hate having to go back to all the companies who send me bills and inform them, it’s still better than paying $70 for a phone that LetTalks.com is willing to give you $50 to take, and agreeing to a 1-year contract instead of 2 years.

Something to cheer you up!

If it doesn’t load in IE, try this

Here are the lyrics in both Romanian and English

Here’s another video after the one above gained popularity, all the students in the class are dancing along with him:

class lipsyncing

Here’s a few more additions to Chovy’s Joke List.

Car vs. Telephone Wires in Texas

I read that cars would soon be communicating with each other over IP, to relay traffic congestion status and other hazards among each other…is this what they meant?

Car Communications Prototype

…and in a related story…

Can your SUV Lexus with hitech steering dodge this? (like in the commercial, where it swerves out of the way of an oversized pebble on the road).

It’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve decided to quit smoking; however, I suffered a minor setback this week and smoked a 1.5 packs. I fell off the wagon. Unfortunately, I’ll have to start from square one again today, 1/17/05.

Got off with a good start and did 2.06 miles on my elliptical trainer doing 50 minutes straight without stopping. The last 30 minutes were easy. It’s the first 20 that are hard. Hint: watch a movie while exercising, the time flies by!

This answers a few questions…

The Guys’ Rules

At last a guy has taken the time to write this all down. Finally, the

guys’ side of the story.

(I must admit, it’s pretty good.)

We always hear “the rules” from the female side. Now here are the

rules from the male side. These are our rules! Please note… these

are all numbered “1″ ON PURPOSE!

1. Learn to work the toilet seat. You’re a big girl. If it’s up, put

it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don’t hear us

complaining about you leaving it down.

1. Sunday sports. It’s like the full moon or the changing of the

tides. Let it be.

1. Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are never going to think of it

that way.

1. Crying is blackmail.

1. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one: Subtle hints

do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work!

Just say it!

1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every

question.

1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That’s

what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.

1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In

fact, all comments become null and void after 7 days.

1. If you won’t dress like the Victoria’s Secret girls, don’t expect

us to act like soap opera guys.

1. If you think you’re fat, you probably are. Don’t ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the

ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.

1. You can either ask us to do something or tell us how you want it

done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it

yourself.

1. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during

commercials.

1. Christopher Columbus did not need directions and neither do we.

1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings.

Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit.

We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say nothing,” we will act like

nothing’s wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the

hassle.

1. If you ask a question you don’t want an answer to, expect an

answer you don’t want to hear.

1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is

fine…Really.

1. Don’t ask us what we’re thinking about unless you are prepared to

discuss such topics as baseball, the shotgun formation, or monster

trucks.

1. You have enough clothes.

1. You have too many shoes.

1. I am in shape. Round is a shape.

1. Thank you for reading this. Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the

couch tonight; but did you know men really don’t mind that? It’s like

camping.

Here’s a quick fix when working with command line parameters in Perl that will take paths, absolute or relative, as an argument.

For example you execute your script like so:

$./foo.pl -path ./my/path

$./foo.pl -path ../../some/path

$./foo.pl -path /absolute/path

All of which could be possible paths entered by users, you want to support all of them and convert them all to absolute paths in your script. This ensures you script can be called from anywhere, and accept any path given.

– begin scrip –

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Cwd ‘abs_path’;

my $root = $ARGV[1];

$root = abs_path($root);

print “$root\n”;

– end –

Should always print an absolute path, ie- starting with the full path “/some/path”.

I bought the nVidia FX5700 Personal Cinema video card because it was the cheapest TV Tuner and FM Tuner card, with 256mb of memory. I paid something like $250 for it.

I had problems from the beginning. Installing the driver on Windows XP was a pain (and it’s not supported on Linux, like they claim it is – one of the reasons I bought the card).

When I finally got the regular driver to work, I had ghosts on the screen, which was causing problems for me, turns out the cable was faulty, but with a KVM switch resolution degradation was still a problem (not so on my other two pc’s also connected to the KVM switch with different cards.

Another reason I bought it was so I could record tv. Which was I was not able to setup. I connected the cable tv feed and sound loop wire to the sound card, and then the RF signal receptor (for the remote), and when I installed the nVidia Forceware drivers, after going through the hassle of downloading the tv listings, etc. ….It said “no tv tuner detected”. I removed and re-installed several times, tried searching the nVidia forums (which by the way, are not very helpful). There literally is very little info as far as forums and technical documents out there related to this particular nVidia card, so I’m going to sell it on eBay and try an ATI card (which is supposed to have good Linux support) or buy a better nVidia card.

The setup was straight forward, and even using the CDs included with the eVGA nVidia FX5700 card, could not get the TV tuner to recognize. All I really got was an overpriced graphics card.

Another problem was that as soon as I connected the cable tv feed to the card, the monitor started flickering and getting “shaky”. This was unavoidable.

Incidently, this is the 2nd nVidia card I have purchased, the first one stopped working after about 3 months. I don’t know why I convinced myself this one would be any different.