It also functions as a clock featuring both 12 and 24 hour modes.  Once per minute, instead of displaying a word, it shows the time in HHMM format.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tubes: IN-12 Nixie tubes, 18 mm digit height, decimal points with flashing LEDs.
Background lighting: brightness adjustable.
Alarm: adjustable time, snooze and tone.
Time format: 12- or 24 hour mode.
Display: time / alarm / date / or alternating time – date.
Effects: scrolling date, display fading, digit cycling in different styles.
Power: 12VDC 350mA max.
DC Power consumption: ca. 3VA (full tubes and background LED brightness).
Timekeeping: more than 1h with 1F SuperCap in the event of mains failure.
Time accuracy: internal 4 MHz crystal, adjustable with buttons for minimal deviation.
Dimension (w x h x d): app. 200 x 50 x 80 mm (incl. tubes)
Weight: app. 450 g

Click here to view the embedded video.

Good

Port

* 8/10 Fonseca Porto Aged Twany Port 10 Year Old
* 8/10 Noval Porto Special Reserve, 500ml
* 9.5/10 Chateau Reynella – McLaren Valle – Old Cave Fine Old Twany Port Aged 12 years  500ml (Australia)
* 9/10 Warre’s Otima Porto 10 year Twany
* 7/10 Smith Woodhouse 10 Year Old Twany Bottled 2006
* 7/10 Taylor Fladgate / 10 year old tawny porto / Portugal
* 7.5/20 Dow’s Fine White Porto
* 8/10 Osborne Fine White Porto – Portugal\
* 9/10 Noval LB Porto Finest Reserve
* 7.5/10 Cockburn’s 10 Tawny Matured in oak ( okay for the price, but would prefer Noval or Warre’s)

Riesling

* 7.5/10 Carl Schmitt-Wagner
* 6/10 Polka dot – German 2004
* 7.5/10 Loosen Bros Riesling “Dr. L” 2006
*

Mix

* 8/10 Escudo Rojo (Chile)
* 8/10 Primus (Chile)
* 8/10 Montes (Chile) Cabernet Sauvignon 70%, Carmernere 30%
* 7/10 Wollersheim Winery – Domaine Reserver Dry Red Wine 2007 (Lake Wisconsin Viticultural Area)

Malbec

* 8/10 Gascon (Mendoza Argentenia) 2007
* 10/10 Dona Paula Estate Lujan de Cuyo  (Mendoza Argentina) 2006

Merlot

* 8/10 Veramonte Merlot 2008 Reserva Casablanca Valley Chile

Cabernet

* 7/10 Red Diamond 2004 (Washington State)
* 7.5/10 Avalon
* 8.5 Bonterra Vineyards 2006 Cabernet Mendocino County (organic)
* 7 Famiglia Bianchi Cabernet Sauvignon San Rafael Mendoza 2007
* 7/10 Terra Alta Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon Golchagua Valley Chile 2008

Chardonnay

* 8/10 (Katie) St. Supery 2007 Chardonnay Oak Free Napa Valley (Rutherford, CA)
* 8/10 (Katie) Natura Chardonnay Valle Casablanca 2008 Emiliana
* 7/10 (Katie) Toad Hollow 2008 Unoaked Chardonnay Mendocino County – Healdsburg, CA
* 7/10 (Katie) Foxglove Central Cost 2008 bottled by Varner San Miguel, California
* 8/10 Ghost Pines Chardonnay Sonoma / Napa / Monterey (really good…)

Viognier

* 7/10 California’s Jewel Collection 2005

Moscato d’Asti

* 7/10 – Umbeto Fiore – Italy
* 7/10 – di Lenardo Vinyards – (In my next life, I’ll be thin.)  Pass The Cookies! (Italy)
* 8/10 Rosa Fiore Denominazione Di Origine Controllata E Garantita 2008

Moscatel De Setubal

* 7/10 Moscatel De Setubal S.O.C. Colheita 2001 Bacalhoa (not carbonated, very port-like)

Carmenere

* 7/10 Cino Sur – Wine of Chile . Colchagua Valley – 2007
*
Torrontes

* 7/10 Finca Navarrita Selection – 2006 – Argentina

Other

* 7/10 Ratafia – Minnesota (Katie does not like at all)  Rich, orange, 1 glass at a time

So-So

Cabernet

* 6/10 Hahn Estates (Cal)
* 5/10 Clara Benegas Chardonnay 2008 Mendoza Argentina
* 5/10 Rossi Wallace Napa Valley Chardonnay 2008 s

Cabernet Merlot

* 5/10 Covey Run Washington (Washington)
* 6/10 Trapiche Oak Cask 2005 Mendoza (Argentina)
* 5/10 Penfolds Koonunga Hill (Australia)

Riesling
•6/10 Weisser Burgunder Spatlese Trocken 2004 (Friedelsheim Germany)

Chardonnay

* 6/10 Twin Fin (california) 2005
* 6.5/10 Kali Hart Vineyard 2006 Monterey County, Gonzales, CA
* 5 Fess Parker 2008 Chardonnay Santa Barbra County

Gewurztraminer

* 6/10 Fetzer Vinyards VAlley Oaks California (Brian liked, Katie too sweet)

Sauvignon Blanc

* 6/10 Parducci 62% Mendocino Country, 38% Lake County (California)
* 7/10 2007 Paso Robles Jardine – Vina Robbles – Paso Robles, California

Bonarda

* 4/10 Broquel Bodegas Trapiche 2005 (Mendoza, Argentina)

* way too fruity for a red wine, hard to drink more than one glass
Port

* 6/10 Warre’s Warrior Special Reserve Ruby Port (Portugal)

* too fruity for more than 1 glass
* 7/10 Cockburn’s 10 Year Old Twany Porto 2007
* 7/10 DelaForce Porto 10 year Tawny
* 6/10 Wollersheim Winery Port 2007 American Port – very fruity and think for a port(WI)
* 6/10 Dow’s Lat Bottled Vintage Porto 2003
* 7/10 Warre’s Warrior Reserve
* 5/10 Dow’s Crusted Porto

Malbec

* 7/10 Gascon – Mendoza Argentina 2007
* 7.5/10 Alamos – 2007 Mendoza Argentina
* 6.5 Trapiche Oak Cask Mendoza 2006
* 5 – Piattelli – Juan De Cuyo – Mendoze Argentina 2006

Bad

Riesling

* 1/10 Starling Castle – Germany

Torrontes

* 3/10 Baguala Torrontes 2007

Shiraz / Grenache

* 3/10 Wallace by Ben Glaetzer Barossa Valley(Australia)

Malbec

* 2/10 Layer Cake Vintage 2007 – Mendoza Argentina
*
* Cabernet
* 0/10 Pascual Toso Maipu Vineyards (Mendoza Argentina) 2006

Or, do you just have an interesting factoid about these guys?

SOLVED: Display #1: NEO8000

The enclosure is about 4″ tall and 1/3″ thick. On the front is stamped “Y.S” and on the back is written “NEO-8000M Made In Japan 3.9.3″  There do not appear to be any other markings.

SOLVED: Display #2: NEO5000

The enclosure is about 3″ tall and 1/3″ thick.  The only markings I can see are “”Made In Japan 2.d.3″

UPDATE: These are the NEO5000 and NEO8000 – I found clear photos of them on Neonixie-l from a post ajfranzman made 6 years ago… I’m still looking for specs if anyone has them.

(Egon warned against crossing the streams.  He did not warn against crossing the wires and reversing the polarity.  If you do, this is what happens)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The net effect: this process takes a lot longer than dealing with JPEG images.  @21 Megapixels, there is plenty of data to play with, especially if the final video will be 1080P or smaller.  However, processing the images takes, on my machine, nearly 5 times as long.  If I was producing footage to be used in an IMAX theater I would still use this process, but for every conceivable circumstance, I can’t see any practical benefits to using raw files over JPEG.

Feel free to tell me I’m wrong in the comments

I need some guidance and I hope you can provide some help.  Hosting my two websites (this one and tubeclockdb.com) is getting expensive.

I’ve used nearly a dozen shared hosting companies before going to Media Temple’s (GS) service.  The reason that I liked Media Temple was that their support was great and they proactively notify customers when there will be a potential outage.  They are far above other hosts I’ve used: Bluehost, PowWeb, Deamhost, and lots of other low end providers.

The (GS) service was nice, but being a shared server meant that my site would take longer to load than I was happy with.  The (GS) service allowed me to take a burst of traffic without thinking about it, but the flip side was that the overall performance was lower.

A few months ago, I migrated over to the Media Temple (VE) 512 service.  I setup the server, installed only the components I was going to use and voila, it worked!  It worked until I did the cut-over and the real traffic quickly caused it to exceed memory limits.  Crap.  So, I upgraded to (VE) 1GB and that work’s 90% of the time.  However, when I get bursts of traffic, I have to quickly upgrade to the (VE) 2GB server or my resources are quickly exceeded and I can’t even SSH in to the box.

I’ve ensured that my httpd configuration is limiting worker threads and that PHP has sane memory limits.  At the end of the day, the only real solution is to keep upgrading.

When I was on the (GS) service, I was paying $200/year.  The (VE) 1GB costs $50 per month and the (VE) 2GB costs $100 (when paid monthly.)  On top of that are the extra fees for snapshot backups.

This is getting more expensive that I intended for a personal blog and a niche-topic website.  I’ve started running ads to offset the cost but I hate the way the look and they don’t come anywhere near offsetting the operational costs of the website.  Nixie Clocks don’t have a large market and so setting up affiliate accounts for manufacturers is not likely to yield much success.

If you were in my situation, what would you do?  Stay with (VE) 1GB, revert back to (GS) and accept the slower speed, or change hosts?  (Or, is there some money-making opportunity that I am missing?)

TL;DR – this is getting expensive to host.  Do I switch hosts?  Go back to GS?  Find some creative way to make money?

As an interesting side note, I find that Joomla! can handle significantly more traffic than WordPress with the same server resources.   Granted, lots of my problems stem from the theme on WP I am using, but the difference is significant.

72 Megapixel Michigan Beach

by me – will be updated as I learn more

And, from my friend James T: “Archimedes, Pascal, and Newton are playing hide-and-seek. Archimedes covers his eyes and starts counting. Pascal looks around and hides behind a bush. Newton grabs a stick and scrapes a one meter by one meter square in the dirt and stands in it. Otherwise, he does not hide at all. Archimedes opens his eyes and looks around. Of course, he immediately sees Newton and calls, “I see Newton!” Newton calmly says, ‘but hang on, one Newton in a square meter is a Pascal!’”

(If you don’t know why this is funny, watch this.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also worth noting, I am now producing video reviews of my clocks.  So far, I’ve documented the Nocrotec V600, X2000 and NixiChron.  Coming soon: the Numimini.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In this world, there are three basic types of hosting: Single application, Shared and Dedicated.  VPS, “Cloud,” EC2 and others are just variations of these three varieties.

Think of hosting like the place that you live. It can be a high density apartment building or a single family house on a sprawling plot of land.  Hosting is like this too.

When someone asks me to setup a blog for them on their own domain, the number once place I point people to is WordPress.com.  To use the housing analogy, you’re moving in to an apartment building, but it is pre-furnished and the maintenance people are great and take care of everything.  You still have to write your posts and upload your photos, but they maintain the WordPress software, the underlying server and operating system.  They perform backups, keep the site online, and defend against intrusions.  Don’t gripe about the cost; for the amount of services they provide, this is a great price.

Shared hosts, like Media Temple’s (GS), PowWeb, Blue Host, etc., are like high density apartment buildings.  They don’t come with any furniture, but all of the plumbing, electrical and structural support you need is there.  All you have to do is move your personal items, like WordPress or Joomla! and you’re ready to go.  It is your job to keep WordPress up to date and to perform off site backups.  They maintain the server, make sure it stays online and enforce basic rules.  For you, the majority of the hard work is done.  If your server goes offline, they reboot it.  However, the trade off is that you can’t have wild parties or install certain types of custom software (think bittorrent trackers..)  Additionally, since it is an apartment building, you can have lots (1000’s) of neighboring websites on your machine.  This can, at times, slow your site down even if no one else is using your site.  So, like any apartment, choose your building carefully.

Dedicated servers are pretty much just an empty plot of land.  It is up to you if you want to build a CentOS house, Fedora, Ubuntu or something else entirely.  Your dedicated server will come with your choice of operating system (options depend on your hosting company.)  However, they are generally a bare-minimum install.  For example, you will need to install and configure: Apache, MySQL, PHP, related modules, and a few other things for even a basic WordPress blog to work correctly.

The biggest benefit of a dedicated server is that you don’t have any neighbors and you can install any software you want.  Bittorrent tracker?  No problem.  Game server?  Sure!  How you pull that off is up to you but generally it can be done.  The other benefit is that you get a larger percentage of the machine’s resources (up to 100%) so you won’t suffer the same outages or slowdowns associated with shared servers.

Dedicated vs. Dedicated Virtual:  A dedicated server is one which you control 100% of the “bare metal” resources.  A Dedicated Virtual uses something like Xen, Parallels or other VM Hypervisor to partition one beefy machine in to several smaller machines.  Each virtual machine acts independent of the others so if one goes down, the others keep working.  You still have complete, a.k.a. ROOT, control of the server, even in a Dedicated Virtual machine.  Examples of these servers are Media Temple’s DV and VE Servers, Amazon EC2, Linode, and Slicehost.

Why does hosting cost so much?

Well, setting up a server, installing the software and making everything work right is a specific skill set.  Lot of people, myself included, have spent years learning how to do this.  Second, if your server goes offline in the middle of the night, who has to deal with it?  Who performs backups of your data?  Bad things happen to good websites.  What differentiates one host from another is how they deal with it.  In the end, you get what you pay for.

For a personal website, spending $200/year is not an unreasonable amount given the hardware, software, and skill required to make it happen.

But I want my own domain name!

Great! Most services enable you to set a custom domain name.  For example, WordPress.com allows you, for a small fee, to set your own custom domain name.  Tublr, allows you to even set sub domains of existing websites to your custom URL.  For example, see tumblr.ineedcaffeine.com.

Why do some hosts cost $20/year and some hosts costs $20/month?

The economics of shared hosting work because the vast majority of websites on their machines will not even get one visitor per day.  These users pay for services that they never use and are a net gain for the company.  So, in response, many hosting companies, especially cheap ones, oversell their server capacity.  If you’re paying $20 per year, your machine will have lot of neighbors.  While they may not be using a lot of resources individually, any single customer who experiences a flood of traffic or a horribly mis-configured site can take you and thousands of other people offline.

Warning signs to watch out for:

• Anything that is “unlimited” – storage, transfer, visitors, etc.
• Anything that is functionally unlimited (e.g., 100,000GB per month transfer)
• Anything that is FREE
• Any hosting company that spends lots of money on advertising
• Any hosting company that does not explicitly state your limits

How can you tell if a site is oversold?

I can’t find any foolproof rules, but I do have a good indicator:  Whois.sc.  Look up the domain name there and see how many other sites are hosted on that server.  For example:

• Rovrr.com – 1 site
• Ineedcaffeine.com – 2 sites
• (PowWeb hosted site / 65.254.250.105) – 11,607 websites!

See the difference?  Rovrr is on a Media Temple DV server.  This site is on a Media Temple VE server.  The bottom one is on a PowWeb shared server.  You get what you pay for.

What makes you qualified?

I’ve build, maintained and hosted well over 100 different websites.  I’ve worked with the following hosting companies:

• PowWeb
• BlueHost
• 1&1
• GoDaddy
• Rackspace Cloud
• Amazon EC2
• Media Temple
• HostGator
• SpyMac (defunct)
• Berbee
• Qwest
• And a few others that I can’t recall…

So yes, I am qualified to make these statements.

What do YOU use?

For most people, I put them on a Media Temple GS server.  It is a shared machine but I’ve been happier with them than any other shared host that I’ve used.  Personally, I use Media Temple’s VE server – largely because I like to tinker and because of the performance it offers.  For my company, Rovrr, I use several Media Temple DV servers as well as EC2 instances at Amazon.com

As far as what is right for you – I strongly suggest going with something like WordPress.com or MobileMe.  They do all of the un-fun server work and you can focus on the content.

Handy Little Decision Chart:

Any other rants?

Yes; I’m glad you asked.  Low end personal website hosting is a slimy business.  Nearly every company offers an affiliate program and so there are thousands of websites that “review” hosting companies.  I suggest that the people who setup these hosting review sites have motivations that are influenced by the commissions paid.  This comes at the expense of the integrity of the review.  Some companies are worse than others – but they aren’t hard to spot.

Photo Credits:

• Top : Flickr / kindofindie / CC license
• Middle : Flickr / sweetknez23 / CC license
• Bottom : Flickr / stevensnodgrass / CC license

I’m not making a cent off of this website so I don’t really care who you use for hosting.

• iPhone App store – done
• Android App store – done
• Google Wave App store – not yet!

From Google:

A wavelet is a threaded conversation that is spawned from a wave (including the initial conversation). Wavelets serve as the container for one or more documents (of which the basic conversational document is known as a blip). The wavelet is the basic unit of access control for data in the wave. All participants on a wavelet have full read/write access to all of the content within the wavelet. As well, all events that occur within the Google Wave APIs operate on wavelet level or lower. When you spawn a wavelet from within a wave, you do not inherit any access permissions from the parent wavelet. During the lifetime of a wave, you may spawn private conversations, which become separate wavelets, but are bundled together within the same “wave.”

Source: http://code.google.com/apis/wave/guide.html

My domain names for sale:

• MONETIZATIONWAVELET.COM
• SOCIALWAVELET.COM
• SOCIALWAVELETS.COM
• WAVELET.US
• WAVELET.WS
• WAVELETA.COM
• WAVELETADS.COM
• WAVELETADVERTISING.COM
• WAVELETAPP.COM
• WAVELETAPP.INFO
• WAVELETAPP.NET
• WAVELETAPPLICATION.COM
• WAVELETAPPLICATION.INFO
• WAVELETAPPLICATION.NET
• WAVELETAPPLICATIONS.COM
• WAVELETAPPLICATIONS.INFO
• WAVELETAPPLICATIONS.NET
• WAVELETAPPS.INFO
• WAVELETAPPS.NET
• WAVELETAPPS.US
• WAVELETB.COM
• WAVELETBUILDER.COM
• WAVELETBUILDER.INFO
• WAVELETBUILDER.NET
• WAVELETCENTRAL.COM
• WAVELETCENTRAL.INFO
• WAVELETCENTRAL.NET
• WAVELETDIRECTORY.COM
• WAVELETDIRECTORY.INFO
• WAVELETDIRECTORY.NET
• WAVELETHELPER.COM
• WAVELETMARKETING.COM
• WAVELETMONETIZATION.COM
• WAVELETPRO.COM
• WAVELETSEARCH.COM
• WAVELETSEARCH.INFO
• WAVELETSEARCH.NET
• WAVELETTRACKER.COM
• WAVELETTRACKER.INFO
• WAVELETTRACKER.NET
• WAVEWAVELETS.COM
• WAVEWAVELETS.INFO
• WAVEWAVELETS.NET

Other notes: Yes, these domain names are set to renew.  Yes, I have rejected offers for being too low.  If you are going to bid $10/name, don’t even bother wasting my time.  I will sell them individual but strongly prefer to sell them as a group.  To purchase, please leave a comment below with your real email address so I can reach you.

Sam: The words “big” and “large” only begin to describe this thing.
Max: I think “stupid” and “inane” would be useful additions.
Sam: Not to mention “grotesque.”

Some information on the ball of twine from the official website:

Darwin, Minnesota is the home of a the largest Twine Ball in the World made by one man, Francis A. Johnson.

The Twine Ball is 4 meters (13 ft) in diameter, 40 ft in circumference, and weighs 17,400 pounds (7,900 kg).

Francis A. Johnson started his obsession in March of 1950 and wrapped for 4 hours every day for 23 weeks.

Francis lifted it with a crane to continue proper wrapping as he went along. For 39 years, this magnificent sphere evolved at Johnson’s farm. Eventually the ball was moved to a circular open air shed on his front lawn.

When Francis died in 1989, the city of Darwin moved the ball onto a special city lot across from the park on Main Street.

The gazebo that shelters it today allows viewing from all sides through Plexiglas panels.

The museum is a volunteer-run museum and gift shop that offers key information on the ball’s history as well many unique souvenirs.

The official website, complete with misspellings http://www.darwintwineball.com/

Short crappy video of the ball

Click here to view the embedded video.

And if you are so motivated, here is where it is located:

View Larger Map

Photos of the ball of twine

It is a Packard Instrument PCB from 1971.  It has the numbers 7100398 and 5065082 on the board.  There are 7 RCA DR-2110 Numitron tubes soldered to the fron and each one seems to be driven by an EL-RAD X72-333.  There is also one AMD  IC with the markings 930159x 7317 and a TI M 7523 SN7446AN.

I am guessing that this is part of either a counter or a calculator of some sort.  Specifically, I would like to know what this device is from and what the EL-RAD components did.  I can’t seem to find much information on either one.  If you have any guesses, please leve a comment below!

More photos:

We focus on the core Facebook offering; we believe this is the basis for any good social media campaign.  We build a solid page and tweak it to match your business goals.  From there, we can build custom content tabs, integrate with your existing website, blog, etc.  We do all of the work for you.

Who uses us?

• Tony Oliva
• Rudy Maxa
• TubeClockDB.com

Learn more here: http://www.SocialBundle.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video was shot between 10:30PM and 1:30AM starting on 3/3/2010 from the Minneapolis Grain Exchanging looking east. Shots were taken at 10 second intervals and the final playback speed is 30fps.  A Sigma 50mm 1:1.4 was used at about f/2.8 allowing for 1/40th second exposures.  The frames were rendered in to a high quality H264 video and uploaded to Vimeo.

The application itself is intuitive.  Simply open the application and wait for a GPS signal.  Once it is established, hit the record button and then put the phone to sleep.  It will keep recording data as a background process while you take your walk, run, flight, etc.  When you’re done, simply re-enter the application and hit stop.  You should probably give the track file a useful name.  After a few uses, it will be hard to tell “track23.gpx” from “track17.gpx.”  From there, you can export the data using the methods described above.  We want to save the track as a GPX file an import it to Google Earth.

In Finder (or Explore for you Windows folks…) open your Android device and grab the GPX file.  Drag it to the 3d view of Google Earth and voila – your track is open.  Use the following tools below to control the animation:

This control offers basic Play functionality.  It is visible above the Layers panel when you have a PATH selected in the Places panel.  Long story short – just click play.

The control below is visible in the top left portion of the 3D view.  You can use it to select a given point in time as well as to crop the start/stop points of a path.

The control below is visible at the bottom left portion of the 3D view.  It is used to start/stop/loop/save animations.  (This does NOT save video clips.  More on that later)

Lastly, the settings used in the animation are as follows (click to enlarge)

RESULTS:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Other Notes:

• The animation was captured with iShowU HD.  I love this program and think it is one of the best OS X screen capture programs on the market.  The video was captured as an intermediate file format and re compressed using Quick Time Pro.  From there, it was uploaded to Vimeo as a 720P HD video file.
• Turning off 3d Buildings seems to speed things up…but it looks boring
• Turn off other interesting layers that Google Earth has on by default.  They just become a distraction in the final video
• When importing the data, have it stick the data points to the ground for best results
• The data points are jagged.  I haven’t found a good way to smooth them out but decreasing the sample frequency or increasing your speed should help.
• Downtown areas do not work well for GPS accuracy

Get My Tracks:

I purchased the unlocked Nexus One this past week and signed up for the Simply Everything Plus plan which includes VVM as a standard feature.  Everything on the phone works except for the visual voicemail.  I downloaded the application, tried several times and had no luck.  I gave up and went to the nearest T Mobile store for help.  The employee who was helping me was very kind and we tried calling the T Mobiles customer support and technical support several times and no one had a resolution.  It was only after about 45 minutes that she was transferred to Google support that we had an answer.  According to the rep, Google is blocking VVM on the Nexus one and suggests that I switch to Google Voice.  No F#$%king Way.

I am inclined to believe the employee helping me.  When the Google support person told her that, she turned white and verified that she heard him correctly.  Not only was this news to me, this was apparently news to everyone at T Mobile as well.  It is possible that she was mistaken and if I find out more information, I will gladly correct this post.  As it stands right now, I am still w/o VVM and it doesn’t appear that I will ever have it.

I don’t like Google having all of my personal information.  They have my contacts and calendar, a different company handles my email and T Mobile now handles my voice (after another bad Sprint experience.)  No one company should handle all of my information and that is why I am not using Google Voice.  I have an account and it seems like a great service, I just don’t like that Google is handling it.

If you find a workaround, please post it below so I can update this post!

Text from error messages:

Not Activated: You do not have access to Visual Voicemail. Please upgrade your account.

Visual Voicemail: Visual Voicemail is available with this phone as part of your data plan for no additional charge.  Click below to enable Visual Voicemail on your account.

Change Service Result: Your purchase cannot be completed at this time. Please visit My t-mobile.com or call 611 to purchase this value bundle.

Background:

I am 22 months in to a 24 month contract.  Sprint made a material change on Jan 1 2010 to my account and on principal alone, I wanted to terminate my contract.  In the contract that Sprint and I agreed to, I gave them the right to change the contract and they granted me the right to exit the contract for a material change.

Sprint made a material change to my account and I want to exit my contract.   I am not looking to change service providers nor am I looking to terminate my service.  I simply want to go month-to-month/non-contract and stay with Sprint.  According to three reps I talked to (1 online, 2 over the phone) – the only way to get out of my contact is to terminate the service or switch to a new carrier.  They are forcing me to go to the competition.

Let me reiterate that:  Sprint is not allowing users to stay on their network who disagree with material changes to their contract.  I want to stay with Sprint but they won’t let me!  If I want out of the contract, they are forcing me to leave.  They won’t simply prematurely terminate the contract and keep me as a customer.

I’ve paid every bill on time and have great credit.   You would think they would want to keep my service.  And all of this because of 2x $0.20 fees.  Someone is missing the big picture.  You know, someone could just wave 40 cents in fees and keep me in contract….

01/05/2010 06:53:44PM    Agent (Ahmed H.): “How are you doing Brian?”
01/05/2010 06:53:52PM    Stuckey: “Im great, thank you”
01/05/2010 06:53:56PM    Agent (Ahmed H.): “You’re welcome.”
01/05/2010 06:53:58PM    Agent (Ahmed H.): “May I please have the reason you are chatting with us today?”
01/05/2010 06:54:09PM    Stuckey: “I have less than ********** months left of a ********** month contract. The regulatory fee is a material change to my original contract and I would like to switch to a month-to-month plan and keep my service.”
01/05/2010 06:55:22PM    Agent (Ahmed H.): “One moment please.”
01/05/2010 06:55:31PM    Stuckey: “Sure thing.”
01/05/2010 06:57:17PM    Agent (Ahmed H.): “I apologize but you are not able to go to a month to month basis since your contract is still effective.”
01/05/2010 06:57:35PM    Stuckey: “Right, but this isn’t the contract that I originally agreed to”
01/05/2010 06:57:54PM    Stuckey: “By allowing Sprint to change the contract, I was granted the right to exit for material changes”
01/05/2010 06:58:08PM    Stuckey: “I don’t want to cancel my service, only go month-to-month”
01/05/2010 06:59:21PM    Agent (Ahmed H.): “That is correct and you cancel your service if you would like. You may call Account services to discuss that issue with them since they handle cancellations and contracts. The number is **********-**********-**********, option ********** and **********.”
01/05/2010 06:59:41PM    Stuckey: “I’m not looking to cancel”
01/05/2010 07:00:01PM    Stuckey: “Just to terminate the contract and become a monthly paying customer”
01/05/2010 07:00:11PM    Stuckey: “There are less than ********** months left”
01/05/2010 07:00:42PM    Agent (Ahmed H.): “I understand that but they maybe able to cancel your contract since there is a change in it. But then they would still keep your service active. Account services handles that.”
01/05/2010 07:01:06PM    Stuckey: “Got it – Can they see these call notes?”
01/05/2010 07:01:25PM    Agent (Ahmed H.): “They sure can see your account notes.”
01/05/2010 07:01:36PM    Stuckey: “Okay, I will give them a call. Thank you”
01/05/2010 07:01:46PM    Agent (Ahmed H.): “You’re welcome.”
01/05/2010 07:01:49PM    Agent (Ahmed H.): “May I please ask if you have any further questions for me?”
01/05/2010 07:02:02PM    Stuckey: “No more questions”
01/05/2010 07:02:07PM    Agent (Ahmed H.): “Thank You for choosing Sprint as your wireless provider. We appreciate your business. Have a great day.”
01/05/2010 07:02:30PM    Session Ended

See also:

http://consumerist.com/2009/12/30-day-window-to-cancel-sprint-without-penalty-starts-tomorrow.html

Click here to view the embedded video.

As far as the video capture goes, I opted to film a 30 FPS and speed up the video in Premiere. (The other method is to use an intervalometer and combine the photos in post.)  This method works great when the source footage is short (less than 10 minutes long) and generally gives smoother results.  The only downside is that you generate significantly more footage than you will use and it takes a long time to process in post.  All of the source clips in this film are played at 5x to 50x their real time speed.

If you are interested in using the source footage, you may be able to find it on iStockPhoto or you may contact me directly.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The total duration of this film is about 2:30.  I have removed the music that was originally in the video so it is currently MOS.  If you know of any Creative Commons songs that would work, please let me know!

Gallery

I Googled it

And I found something much more interesting than zero results.  So, I wanted to perform an experiment.  I took the code and pasted it on one of my sister sites, TubeClockDB.com and used Ping-O-Matic to notify blogs of the update.  WITHIN 10 MINUTES of the ping, I started getting hundreds of hits per hour searching for “8MLDQ6″  This was interesting.  Google had crawled my site and started sending search results within just a few minutes.

Astounding Finding #1

They crawled my site, updated their indexes, distributed their updates to all of their machines and started returning my site as a result within 10 minutes.

That is amazing.  Simply the quantity of work involved with something like an update is impressive.  To do that in a few minutes is astounding.  Of course, Ping-O-Matic played a big role in that so hats off to them too.

Astounding Finding #2

Ping-O-Matic does a great job notifying Google and other blog services.  If you’re not using them, you’re missing out.

Astounding Finding #3

Almost all of the search results were coming from corporate networks.  Huh.  Adobe*, I’m looking at you.  You take the dubious honor of having the most employees searching for a job at Google from your network.  The US Military had the number two position.

*this could change.  It was the number one position when I was looking earlier.

Astounding Finding #4

People are lazy.  They want to find the answer on Google and give it back to them.  I have a feeling that Google is looking for a different kind of person, but I could be wrong.  (I’m not, however.)

8MLDQ6 T UI
67FML RH AA
NRA6Q 8EFL
DMQ86II2 O3
2S5J 13JXOJ

Oh, and this game came out in 1988.  I feel really old now.

Boring Action Video!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Description from Wikipedia:

The mysterious enemy known as DOH has returned to seek vengeance on the Vaus space vessel. The player must once again take control of the Vaus (paddle) and overcome many challenges in order to destroy DOH once and for all. Revenge of Doh sees the player battle through 34 rounds, taken from a grand total of 64.

New Features:

Revenge of Doh differs from its predecessor with the introduction of “Warp Gates”. Upon completion of a level or when the Break (‘B’) pill is caught, two gates appear at the bottom of the play area, on either side. The player can choose to go through either one of the gates – the choice will affect which version of the next level is provided. The fire-button is only used when the Laser (‘L’) or Catch (‘C’) pill is caught.

The game also featured two new features for bricks. Notched silver bricks, like normal silver bricks, take several hits to destroy. However, after a short period of time after destruction, they regenerate at full strength. Fortunately, clearing a level does not require that any notched bricks be destroyed. Also, some bricks move from side to side as long as their left and/or right sides are not obstructed by other bricks.

The US version features an entirely different layout for Level 1 that feature an entire line of notched bricks, with all colored bricks above it moving from side to side.

The game features a mini-boss in the form of a giant brain, which will help you practice for DOH. You must aim for the brain’s mouth to defeat it.

Home versions of Revenge of DOH also featured a level editor, where players could create their own levels or edit and replace existing levels, with the exception of two levels: the mini-boss and DOH.

THEN

NOW

My best guess is that it was taken from about here. Which do you like better?
View Larger Map

Update!

According a photo I found on Lileks (http://lileks.com/mpls/gopher/index.html) the theater on the side of the frame is probably the Gopher.  That puts this photo at the 600 block of Hennepin avenue – right where the City Center is now.  I am guessing this was taken from Hennepin avenue but it may have been shot, facing the opposite direction, on Nicollet Avenue.  According to the site, the theater opened in 1938 so this photo is probably from the 40′s.  Anyone have a better guess?

Update #2!

I believe this photo was taken in 1949 or 1950. If you zoom in on the theater, there is an advertisement for “Sons of New Mexico“. According to IMDB, it came out in 1949 and was apparently a pretty crappy movie.

Wavelets are the next big thing.  Wavelets have a business model. Wavelets are the name of 3rd party applications that sit in the Google Wave application. However, the potential outcome is significantly different. Google Wave is a collaboration platform with social aspects that targets both the personal market and business market. Businesses can host their own Google Wave instances and 3rd parties can extend functionality through Wavelets.

Why are Wavelets the next big thing? Because businesses will pay for them. Because end users will use this in lieu of email or AOL Instant Messenger. They have the promise of bringing all of the ease and potential of Facebook applications in to a business environment.

Learn more about the API here: http://code.google.com/apis/wave/

Learn about the developer’s guide here: http://code.google.com/apis/wave/guide.html

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related Domain Names

I am looking to use these domain names for a near term project. However, if you are looking to use these, I may consider selling an individual domain name. The entire lots is available for sale -$9,500 Firm.  Contact me for an up-to-date list and pricing.

• MONETIZATIONWAVELET.COM
• SOCIALWAVELET.COM
• SOCIALWAVELETS.COM
• WAVELET.US
• WAVELET.WS
• WAVELETA.COM
• WAVELETADS.COM
• WAVELETADVERTISING.COM
• WAVELETAPP.COM
• WAVELETAPP.INFO
• WAVELETAPP.NET
• WAVELETAPPLICATION.COM
• WAVELETAPPLICATION.INFO
• WAVELETAPPLICATION.NET
• WAVELETAPPLICATIONS.COM
• WAVELETAPPLICATIONS.INFO
• WAVELETAPPLICATIONS.NET
• WAVELETAPPS.INFO
• WAVELETAPPS.NET
• WAVELETAPPS.US
• WAVELETB.COM
• WAVELETBUILDER.COM
• WAVELETBUILDER.INFO
• WAVELETBUILDER.NET
• WAVELETCENTRAL.COM
• WAVELETCENTRAL.INFO
• WAVELETCENTRAL.NET
• WAVELETDIRECTORY.COM
• WAVELETDIRECTORY.INFO
• WAVELETDIRECTORY.NET
• WAVELETHELPER.COM
• WAVELETMARKETING.COM
• WAVELETMONETIZATION.COM
• WAVELETPRO.COM
• WAVELETSEARCH.COM
• WAVELETSEARCH.INFO
• WAVELETSEARCH.NET
• WAVELETTRACKER.COM
• WAVELETTRACKER.INFO
• WAVELETTRACKER.NET
• WAVEWAVELETS.COM
• WAVEWAVELETS.INFO
• WAVEWAVELETS.NET

More sources:

http://www.technology.am/google-wave-to-launch-public-beta-service-by-end-of-september-012431.html

http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/