iPhone to be released tomorrow

Thursday and the week is almost over. Tomorrow is the release of the iPhone. Just what *I* want - a GSM phone with a glued-in SIM. Worse yet, locked to AT&T! Pass!

July 5th Updated - it was rumored to be glued-in but in reality its easily removed. A hack is "imminent" to release it from the total control of the death star.


Yoda says: Unsimlock it they will, portable it will be!

some things about Uruguay have not changed...

Some of my readers know the feeling. You buy the calling card online, get it emailed to you. Dial the number. Put in the code. You dial your friend's Movistar phone in Uruguay 01159894xxxxxx and

S I L E N C E

Like a full minute of silence. Sometimes you get disconnected after that point (and on some cards you get billed for the silence!!) and sometimes it (gasp) actually starts ringing!

It took three tries this morning to call a Movistar phone. I'd not had occasion to call anyone with an 094 phone in a couple years and it brought back memories of the exact same thing.

Telefonica, if you're listening, spend a few extra pesos on interconnects for calls into your network. With the cut of the price of the inbound minutes you receive, it'll pay for itself.

However, its very possible that Telefonica has an upgrade planned and the equipment was just slightly too large to enter the country as checked luggage. :)

It's a beautiful country with friendly people and I miss it a LOT though.

reality tv is an addiction

If you get a chance to see World's Heaviest Man on TLC, do it. TV schedules have been bloated with shows about morbidly obese people.

This one is quite different because the guy's in Mexico.

This guy starts the show at 1200 pounds. The show covers a year in his life and he drops to 800-ish pounds using the zone diet. His day-to-day life is also quite different from the similarly-super-sized Americans shown on other productions. The focus of the American shows is "feel pity on us because we're so big." And anyone would. How horrible to be trapped in such a body. But the American show is portrayed as a little bit of a freak show.

This documentary is different. It opens with the guy shaving at the start of the day. Hell, as the show progresses, its even hinted at that he's having a sex life. I was listening to the female medical professional explaining in Spanish that he's started having erections in the morning - when anything is dubbed in a documentary they generally let you hear a little bit of the speaker's native language to sort of set the tone. I understood her directly and was very curious to hear how her very frank assessment would be overdubbed! They did it accurately which doesn't always happen.

Gotta go, my other favorite show is on: BRIDEZILLAS!

silent for nearly a month, wow

It's been a busy month. I fell off the face of the earth for a week. The plan was to visit my parents in Wisconsin but decided it would be less stressful to just stay home. It would not have been a vacation in the least.

The last couple of weeks have been an exercise in computer forensics. It's quite a story - one that cannot yet (or ever) be told. Suffice it to say that it is VERY true that a server should be behind a locked door!

My data card saw a lot of use during those exploits - when you're working with an undocumented network that you just really can't trust, it's great to walk in with your own network connection! I'm very impressed with the reliability of Sprint's high-speed service. And if you want to get it on the cheap, google the keyword SERO. I pay less than the quoted price for unlimited megabytes, put it that way.

I've been following the exploits of Casey Serin (iamfacingforeclosure.com). I think the guy is crazy. But his story definitely resonates with me. The sojourn in Uruguay left me very much in debt and things are just starting to turn around for the better. I'm not in debt to the extent that he is, not by a long shot! Karma is going to bite that guy hard I think.

The world of Web 2.0 just keeps getting crazier by the day. The employee turnover rate is breathtaking. To work where I do is a series of going-away parties. There are some interesting trade secrets - here's one in general: if you're going to start a wiki using the staff you have this quarter, do it with a big stock of "For Dummies" books to get the framework there.

It's been a very busy week though what with some big organizational and documentation projects and then shifting into crisis mode at the end of every day.

Guess who Bush II will pardon at the end of his term? Hmm...

Scooter Libby got sentenced to 30 months. Hopefully he's not the last member of the Bush II administration to get sentenced.

I don't usually donate money to political causes but I'm going to throw a few bucks this way:

http://www.wilsonsupport.org/donate

It's the civil suit against the other cronies in the case.

I hope the judge sends him to jail and he can appeal from behind bars.