The Ramblings of Ken

Update - 8/14/2012: I've since wiped my MacBook Air Linux and Windows partitions. I just wasn't using them enough. Windows 8 completely strikes me as a mess of an operating system. I may come back to post step by step instructions as I do this again with the final version of Windows 8.

This post is a work in progress, bear with me...

I successfully have a triple boot with Mac OS X, Windows 8 Release Preview, and Gentoo Linux again on my MacBook Air. I used to have a triple boot on my old MacBook 13 inch with Snow Leopard. However, Lion changed everything. With the introduction of the Lion recovery partition, triple booting legacy operating systems that depend on BIOS emulation was no longer possible. This is because you cannot have a hybrid GPT/MBR partition with more than four partitions. GPT partition schemes don't understand extended partitions and MBR partition schemes cannot have more than four primary partitions. Mac OS X Lion now takes up three of those partitions with a default install. You've got the EFI partition, the Mac OS HFS+ partition, and the recovery partition. You've only got one left if you want to boot a legacy OS alongside Mac OS X.

I dreamed for the day when Windows could successfully EFI boot on a Mac. I tried it with Windows 7 and it failed miserably. I can't remember if I tried it with Windows 8 Consumer Preview at all. I guess I figured that Apple had to change their EFI implementation from version 1.1 up to UEFI 2.0. Apple still uses a wacky non-standard EFI. They haven't changed anything there. However, I decided to attempt an EFI boot from a USB Windows 8 installer to see what would happen. It worked fine! With Windows now able to boot and install on my MacBook Air in EFI mode, I resurrected my old EFI enabled Gentoo Linux image and restored it to an additional partition. All operating systems are booting and running just fine now.

In the coming days I will post the exact steps I used to achieve this. The only drawback is that Windows cannot use an accelerated video driver when booted in EFI mode on the Mac. If I don't plan on playing games on my Mac under Windows then it shouldn't be a problem, though.

Stay tuned...

Verizon Wireless is killing unlimited data. It's true. I was so upset about this when I read the article that I picked up the phone to call and cancel my account with them. However, I remembered that $350 early termination fee that I would have to pay and I hung up the phone before even making the call.

There have been official updates since then from Verizon saying that you will only be forced off of an unlimited plan if you purchase a new subsidized device and renew your contract for another two years. Those that continue to pay full price for their new phones will be able to keep their unlimited plan.

Later, I came across a forum posting at MacRumors.com saying that it worked to take a Verizon 4G LTE sim card and put it in your Verizon 4G LTE iPad. Your unlimited data plan will work on the iPad, including personal hotspot functionality. There's nothing Verizon can currently do about this. They are obligated to allow you to put your sim card in any device that will function on their 700 Mhz block C LTE network. When the FCC auctioned off the 700 Mhz block C spectrum, they put a provision into the terms of the purchase that open access must be allowed. Verizon sued to try and get this open access requirement removed, but then later dropped the lawsuit. They seem to have surrendered to the FCC's requirements.

Reading about all of this sparked an idea. If I somehow had my 3G unlimited account upgraded to a 4G account and got my hands on a 4G LTE sim then I could have unlimited 4G LTE data on my iPad. Then, if I fully switch over to Google Voice, I could also tether my iPhone to it and still use it while my account was provisioned on the iPad. Then, what convinced me to actually give this experiment a try was that I logged in to my account on the Verizon Wireless website and saw that they actually had a free 4G LTE phone. It wasn't actually free, of course. It comes at the price of a new 2 year contract commitment.

Well, I took the plunge. I decided that it was worth the risk of a new two year contract on one of my lines to try this experiment. I transfered one of the upgrades that was available on my family plan over to my line. I ordered the Droid Charge to replace my beloved iPhone 4S. Let me say that I don't have too much experience with Android devices. The little experience that I do have has left a bad taste in my mouth. It didn't feel very good to order the Charge, for all intents and purposes, to replace my iPhone. It especially didn't feel good after reading all the reviews about the Droid Charge. It doesn't look like a very good phone at all. I still went ahead and did it, intending to never use it at all. I knew that I could still contact Verizon and have my iPhone activated again if the experiment failed horribly.

The device finally arrived. I followed the instructions that came in the box to activate my sim card. As soon as I heard confirmation that my new sim card was activated I picked up my iPhone and tried to make a call. I got the message saying that my device was not activated. Ahhh! It was really done! I stuck the sim card into the Droid Charge and turned it on. I confirmed that I could make calls and that the data connection was working.

I actually made myself use the device that night and the next day to see if I could ever like it. It seemed like an okay phone while I used it until I went to sleep. The next day, however, it was a horrible experience. The battery was dead by noon, the data connection kept dropping, and the device started to feel very slow. I've never had experiences like this on my iPhone.

Later that night, after I got home from work, I pulled the sim card out of the Droid Charge and cut it down to micro sim size. I pulled the sim tray out of my iPad, removed the sim card, and replaced it with my cut down card. Everything that I had read said that you should only have to go into the settings app on the iPad and reprovision the cellular account under general -> reset -> subscriber services. However, after fussing with the sim card and rebooting the iPad several times, I decided to try the reset account option under subscriber services. It worked! I had a cellular data connection on my existing unlimited plan!

It turns out the next day we were traveling up to the Boise area. I turned on the iPad's hotspot option and tethered my iPhone to it. I logged in to my Google Voice account using the Talkatone app. I had my wife give me a test call and Talkatone would not ring. We then made an outbound test call while on the freeway using a 3G data connection. They heard us loud and clear. I realized that my iPad would drop the data connection if I was receiving an incoming call on my Verizon number and the busy/no answer forwarding wasn't working because of that. I stuck the sim card back in my Charge and dialed *72 plus my Google Voice number to enable permanent call forwarding. We tried another incoming call and it worked great. My experiment was working. At this point I was delighted that everything was working out. My enjoyment was increased even more when we finally got to Boise and I tried this all out in a 4G LTE service area. I was getting speeds up around 20 megabits a second!

So far this experiment seems to be a success. My iPad already went with me on my commute to work and back, so it's not a problem to have my iPad in my backpack and my phone tethered to it in my pocket. No behavior is changing there. 99 percent of the time I am always in an area with WiFi, so I will still be able to receive calls without the iPad. When I am going somewhere where I won't have WiFi and it is inconvenient to carry my iPad with me, then I will just pop the sim back into my Droid Charge and just use it as a basic phone.

I just thought I'd share my experience for those that might be thinking about doing something similar...

Let's follow up on a previous post...

If there was any doubt as to my status of Apple fanboy or not Apple fanboy, there should be no doubt today.

Tomorrow makes the two week mark with my new iPhone 4S.  Guess what I am thinking now... why didn't I do this years ago?  I bought in to a great promotion Verizon was running back in April of last year.  They were offering the Palm Pre Plus for $50 to existing customers that never had a smartphone before.  The one thing that lured me to this offer, though, was the fact that they were also offering the mobile hotspot service for no additional cost.  I also thought that I would be paying an additional $29.99 a month to have a data plan on my phone line.  However, it came out to be around $23 more a month because of a company discount that I was not aware of.  That was all I needed to hear.  I was convinced.  It was time to go into the world of the smartphone.

The Palm Pre was nice... for awhile.  I loved having the ability to have the web, email, Facebook, and everything else in the Palm of my hand (pun not intended).  However, there were issues with the keyboard.  You were very lucky if you typed out a short text message and it actually said what you wanted it to say.  The phone became very slow too.  I quickly discovered homebrew hacking possibilities for the phone at precentral.net.  Hacking non-approved software onto the phone brought new life to it, but it got to where I couldn't handle it anymore.  The keyboard and GPS problems it had (another saga you can read about at precentral.net) just brought the phone to the point where it was not usable for me anymore.

Palm then released the Palm Pre 2 with webOS 2.0.  Mr. Jon Rubinstein himself also announced that the Palm Pre and Palm Pre Plus would get webOS 2.0 by the end of 2010.  I wanted it!  The new update to webOS 2.0 would be what would really make my phone rock!  I looked forward to the day when I could run it on my phone.  Well, they ended up backtracking and announced in February that webOS 2.0 would not be released for the older devices.  That was it... I was done.  HP ended up buying Palm and promised a lot things.  I don't know if this was HP's decision to not release the update or what it was.

Actually, I wasn't done with Palm yet it turns out.  I expressed my frustration that my less than a year old Palm Pre Plus would not get anymore updates to the local HP representative.  He managed to work out a deal to send me a Palm Pre 2 at no charge.  I was sold again on Palm (or should I say HP) devices.  They bought my loyalty at the cost of a new Palm Pre 2.

Needless to say, it didn't last more than about six months.  Don't get me wrong, the phone was great.  The hardware was a breath of fresh air compared to the Palm Pre Plus.  It still had GPS problems, but I had learned to live without it.  Additionally, the keyboard problems were gone and the software was buttery smooth.  I was in love with my phone again.  However, in August HP announced the death of webOS devices.  That was the end of webOS as we knew it, as far as I was concerned.  If HP didn't care anymore, why should I invest my time, energy, and money into this platform?  I made my decision that I was going with a Google or Apple platform from now on.

Having used an iPod Touch 3rd generation and also an iPad I decided that it made sense to go with an iPhone.  It obviously didn't make sense to get an iPhone 4 when a new iPhone announcement was right around the corner, though.  Fast forward to October 7, the day iPhone 4S pre-orders became avaiable, where I stayed up until midnight to pre-order my black iPhone 4S.

The iPhone 4S has been outstanding!  It more than exceeds my expectations.  The camera is great, the virtual keyboard just works, and amazingly I have functional GPS now!  Siri is surprisingly useful too.  I won't give a full review here.  The reviews are out there on the web if you want to read them.

My home now has my old 13 inch aluminum MacBook and 3rd generation iPod Touch, which my wife primarily uses; an iPad 2; a MacBook Air; and now an iPhone 4S.  Yes, I admit it now.  I am an Apple fanboy through and through.  I have totally bought in to this ecosystem that Apple has created.  Now I'm just wondering when I can afford to get an iMac, an Apple TV, and a Time Capsule.  It won't be any time soon, but I look forward to buying more Apple devices.

Again I say... why didn't I do this a long time ago!

The news that AT&T is buying T-Mobile has got me thinking about how evil cell phone companies appear to be. There seems to be an evil side to a lot of corporations in America, but not all of them get to the level of trying to squeeze every cent out of Americans that they possibly can. This seems to be even more true when it comes to cellular phone carriers in the United States.

Of the remaining big 3 carriers in the US, only Sprint has not announced plans to get rid of unlimited data plans. Data and tethering pricing on cellular devices is the one of the largest forms of screwing over American consumers. My "unlimited" data plan with Verizon is $30 per month. Unlimited really means don't go over 5 GB a month. By comparison, my Comcast dedicated connection does not have these limits and I only pay $10 more a month. I get a connection that is at least 15 times faster than my cell phone that is always on for not much more money. Something is wrong with this picture.

When the iPhone 4 was released on AT&T, they announced tiered data pricing. You no longer get your "unlimited" connection, but you can get 2 GB of data for $20 a month. My mom uses 2 GB a month on her connection at home just checking her email. AT&T is screwing people over. They are going to make a lot of money on data overage charges

Verizon is going to do the same thing, as they have at least hinted that they will have the same kind of plans when they finish rolling out their LTE network. Why do they have to squeeze every last penny that they can out of their customers?

When the T-Mobile acquisition is complete, surely AT&T will find a way to get T-Mobile customers to pay the same rates that current AT&T customers pay.

So why do we even have cell phones? Why do we let the carriers push us around like we do? I am just as much at fault here as everyone else is. Can we not live without our mobile devices?

I want to hear from people as to why they pay what they do. Why do you have a cell phone? What phone and on what carrier do you have service? Do you have a smartphone with data capabilities? If you don't, is it because of the high premiums you pay for data? Have you considered getting one?

About a year and a half ago I bought my first Apple product, a 13 inch MacBook Unibody. I've used many laptops in my IT career. The PC laptops seemed like they were constructed very cheaply and had a lot of hardware issues. The first thing I did when I got the laptop, however, was install Windows. I didn't think that I liked Mac OS X in my limited experience with it. I just knew that I had a good solid laptop that wouldn't have hardware issues. I also considered myself an avid PC gamer at the time and still used my Windows desktop all the time.

Let's fast forward now. Now my work computer is a Mac as well. I quite like OS X, except when it comes to games. However, now that I am married I find myself gaming less than I used to. I also have an iPod Touch 3rd generation that I love. I still quite like Windows, especially Windows 7. However, am I an Apple fanboy? I find myself watching Apple news sites to see the latest on their new products and I always look forward to new OS X and iOS updates. I read about Microsoft and PC news less and less everyday. What is happening to me?

I used to blog. I had a site at www.tigrao.org. I stopped doing it mostly because I got lazy and didn't want to maintain my own web server anymore.

Getting married and starting a family has given me new perspectives on life. In January my first child, a girl, will be born. New perspectives and new ideas on life deserve to be published somewhere to be shared, regardless of whether or not they are worth anything to the world.

This space may not be updated regularly, but there just might be a new post that shows up here every now and then...