Online Chat: Not always a good idea

You know those cheap-o electronic toys you give to little kids that have voice recorder functionality?  Every time a kid gets one of these things he spends all day recording random crap just to hear it again.  The miracle of the microphone is a toy to them.

And it doesn’t change as we get older.  Case in point, I was playing a little Battlefield 1943 on XBox Live.  Out of habit, I connected the headset.  Not that I had anything to say, just that if it’s not connected all the voice chat flows through the main speakers and my parents don’t necessarily appreciate the foul language.  Also, if it gets obnoxious, I can always turn down the headset volume.

As a side note, Battlefield 1943 is really hard to play without an HDTV.  All the letters are really tiny, friendly icons are inconspicuous, and I can’t see a damn thing when I go into buildings (though that may be because the contrast is really screwed up on my set).

But getting back to my story, I was playing along with my mic muted because, well, no one else was talking and my folks picked those few hours to move stuff around in the basement so there would’ve been a lot of background noise.

About halfway through a match on Guadalcanal, someone logs on and decides to make a comment every time he gets killed.  And in the most colorful language, too.  Language that would shock me if I didn’t hear it from all the other 12 year olds on XBox Live, but still not something I’d want my little cousins to hear.

So after a few minutes of his rants and raves (I had hoped he would grow tired of getting killed all the time and log out, but that proved a typical pipe dream), I finally had it.  I turned on my mic and said “Dude, if you got nothing else to say, turn off your mic.”  Then I turned my mic off.

Of course, because everyone sounds the same on the voice chat, I don’t know whether the offender told me “Ah, shut up,” or someone else told him “Yeah, shut up.” 

Point is, that was the end of it.  I didn’t hear any X-rated rants from then on.

So my request to you all is: if you have a headset but have nothing to say, turn off your mic.  I don’t want to hear about it every time you get fragged or you’re asking your mom for five more minutes of play time before you have to take out the trash.  Hell, I don’t even want to hear your dog barking when the doorbell rings.  It’s really friggin annoying.

So stop it or I’ll bury you in a box.

Backups are important

So this story is over a week old, but I’ll tell it anyway.

I really should have taken it as a bad sign when the hard drive in my laptop started going “CHICK-CHICKITA-CHICK-CHICK-CHICK” every now and then.

This is because computer hard disk drives are physical objects using mechanical moving parts to operate.  A small electric motor spins the platters which store the information while a read/write head moves over the platters and reads the data.  The reason we still use mechanical hard drives to this day is because they’ve had a pretty reliable track record so far.

But like all mechanical devices, they are prone to failure.  It’s a matter of “when,” not “if.”  That’s why hard drives are rated in MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) expressed in hours.  This means that a representative sample of the drives are taken off the assembly line and tested until they fail, and they gather an average based on that data.  One could last a million hours, another could die before 5 minutes have passed.

Now given this tidbit of information with which I’ve provided, you can probably guess where I’m going with this.

The hard drive on my laptop failed.  But it wasn’t a catastrophic failure like the evil beast being sucked into the miniature black hole created by scientists in the resistance at the end of the movie.  No, this was more like the pathetic offbeat little league team getting their asses handed to them by the team of good looking kids with matching pressed uniforms, and the mercy rule was observed.  That’s the kind of pathetic failure I’m talking about: the kind where if it wasn’t happening to you it would feel a measure of pity and an undertone of uncontrollable laughter.

Now before complete mechanical failure, I was able to create a backup using the programming in the recovery partition on the drive.  Fortunately as well for my sake, Microcenter had a price break on 2.5 inch hard drives.

So, after an overnight backup, a quick trip to my local Microcenter for a new drive and spending a whole day reinstalling Vista and restoring my data onto my brand-spanking new drive, I’m back up to speed.

But I tell this tale not to lament in my own personal pity party.  Rather, I preach to you all a warning: back up your freaking data.  Music, photos, documents and videos all reside on those ubiquitous guaranteed-to-fail mechanical marvels.

So whatever your method, be it burnt DVDs, stockpiled USB flash drives, or additional redundant drives, be sure you follow a regiment so you may save yourself from the drama I have so recently endured.

And remember, hearing your laptop go “CHICK-CHICKITA-CHICK-CHICK-CHICK” is not a good sign.

The event has taught me something: seems I was right to show preference to Western Digital drives.

The problem with mobile data plans

“Get Internet access right on your cell phone!”

Bull.

Now allow me a moment to explain my disdain for the instigators of mental pain.

See, I have a Blackberry Curve 8320.  In addition to its truly spectacular smartphone capabilities and comfy keyboard, I love the inclusion of a Wi-Fi radio in the 8320. 

Most every place I go has an open network, which is a blessing since I don’t have a data plan.  Usually I can get by using just Wi-Fi, since most major sites have WAP pages (pages specially formatted for viewing on mobile devices), and I can get to my primary email account through a webmail interface.  Even WordPress has an online interface to publish posts.  A final benefit of the Wi-Fi radio is that if I ever spring for T-Mobile’s unlimited Wi-Fi calling service, the 8320 has the capability to make those calls.

Now the stumbling block comes when I want to use an application for the Blackberry OS that accomplishes the same tasks as the WAP sites, but more efficiently and with further functionality, like the Facebook app, and there are even others, like Pandora radio, that unlock capabilities not even remotely available through a WAP browser.

Now the apps I mentioned above are only two examples, but both operate only over the air, meaning they use the cellular radio to transmit data, and won’t even look for a Wi-Fi radio.

On a certain level, I can understand why access to the Wi-Fi radio was not built into these apps.  To start, an overwhelming majority of Blackberry users bought their device for its superior messaging functions, and that includes e-mail.  It’s only logical that a majority of owners would have a cellular data plan to go with their incredibly capable device.  Second, not every Blackberry device has a Wi-Fi radio, just the same as not all have GPS receivers or cameras.  In fact, the adoption of Wi-Fi into mobile phones seems to be shrinking as cellular data subscriptions rise in number, so it isn’t quite practical to build Wi-Fi functionality into apps.

Now I suppose I could quit my bitching and cough up for a data plan, but there’s where speed bump number two comes into play.

T-Mobile has a horrible tier system for data.  First is the barebones data plan that only allows access to certain sites using T-Mobile’s proprietary WAP browser.  It’s cheap, restricted, and certainly not appropriate for a powerful platform such as the Blackberry.

Fortunately, T-Mobile has realized this, and they actually have separate classifications for Blackberry services.  But its a dizzying array of options, from enterprise activation for businesses, to email only, email plus prepaid SMS and MMS messaging, internet access only, and a whole shebang package.

Keep in mind this is only a small sample of data plans from a single service provider.  When you dig down into the services, you have to consider certain specifics in the coverage like bandwidth, data caps, tethering (using your phone as a modem for your computer), and area coverage.

And still, we’ve yet to see affordable plans.  Every plan I see adds up to being to expensive for someone like me: a college student already over his head in debt with student loans.

Seriously, it’s 2009 in the freaking United States.  Land of Opportunity.  I think that opportunity should extend to affordable internet access on your phone, and applications that can use the freaking Wi-Fi radio when the user doesn’t have a data plan!