Well, I haven't updated for several days, so I suppose I should. It's all about my car and my phone. I went to see Revenge of the Sith last Sunday night at Block E. The movie was okay, not great. Visually stunning, but the script was pretty weak. I guess Hayden Christensen just doesn't hold my attention either...
Anyway, I went to the restroom after the movie let out, and realized that my phone was missing. I'd worn some shorts that I shouldn't have. The pockets were too small and they're out of style anyway. At any rate, I went back into the theater to look for my phone, but couldn't find it. I eventually left a note for folks at Block E to e-mail me if they found it (I had no phone, so leaving a number seemed silly).
When I got home, I sent myself a text message via e-mail just in case whoever found it hadn't turned it off and back on to see the convenient message I'd left as a welcome message. It would turn out that nobody bothered to read either my text messages or the welcome note. Anyway, I sent a second text message in the morning, then looked up the recent activity via the T-Mobile website. Uh oh—phone call to Ecuador. That only happens in movies! Sheesh.
So, hoping to prevent any more international dialing (nevermind that I was over my monthly minutes anyway) I went into downtown to try to find the T-Mobile store. I couldn't remember where it was, so it took some wandering before it was found at the IDS Center's Crystal Court. My phone was replaced for $42 and change and after just a few minutes of chit-chat. The new phone is a Nokia 6010, replacing a 3595.
Well, sort of. The new phone doesn't always display the time on the main screen, and I haven't been able to figure out how to change that. The new phone also wasn't working with GPRS, but that may have just been temporary (it's possible that I went over my 1MB of traffic per month, and they might just cut you off, though I'm not sure).
Of course, once whoever it was that found my phone realized that he couldn't make any more calls, it magically ended up in the office at Block E. I got an e-mail at about 5:45 PM. I think they may have had it for a few hours beforehand, since there were a few other call attempts around 2:30 PM, but then again they were mostly to women listed on my contact list. So nice that people want to terrorize people when they get a phone randomly landing in their lap (this is why I assume the person who stole it is a "he" rather than a "she").
Anyway, so I got the phone back after it became a dud to whoever found it. I'm actually using it now with the 6010's faceplate because of the aforementioned clock and data problems. Maybe I'll find the magic clock-enabling trick at some point and switch back to the new phone.
My car is finally repaired, at least enough so it won't stall anymore when leaving the highway. It's pretty straightforward—a solenoid in the torque converter that engages the internal "clutch" when traveling at highway speeds wasn't disengaging anymore. I was worried this would cost mondo cash, but $273 isn't too bad IMHO. It's not really clear if this helped the stuttering/jerking I've been feeling for a while—apparently that goes away when the air conditioner is turned on! Weird.
Well, I suppose I'll go to the TCLUG meeting tomorrow. It's about the SuSE distribution, owned by Novell these days. I don't know much about SuSE, so I may as well learn something about it.
Posted by mike at June 4, 2005 12:18 AM | Car , Hardware , Movies