T-Mobile and Amazon don’t really like you

My sister likes to talk on the phone. A lot. And Cingular charges use $85 for a family plan where we share 1250 minutes. And 35 cents/minute for extra minutes. Highway robbery! With T-Mobile, we could get 1500 minutes each with two $50 individual plans. Great, I thought.

However, T-Mobile doesn’t work in my house. Still. I figured three years was plenty of time for them to fix the holes in their network. I figured wrong.

In Sunnyvale, the middle of Silicon Valley, finding good cell phone coverage is harder than you think. So it’s T-Mobile for my sister and I get to stay with Cingular (GSM 800 gets them reception in my house).

First stop is the T-Mobile store on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale. I tell the sales rep I want to sign up for a plan (pass the credit check and such) here in California, and have my sister pick up the phone at a NYC store. No can do, the guy says. If you want the phone in NY, you’ll have to ship it there yourself. I point out to the guy that if I order online, shipping is free.

“What do I get out of it?” he asks me, point-blank.

Continue reading “T-Mobile and Amazon don’t really like you”

Why Asian Muslims didn’t explode

After the cartoon fiasco, Karim Raslan of the The New York Times wrote Why Asian Muslims didn’t explode. He doesn’t really answer why, but he does cite several cultural differences.

Some of hsi strongest rhetoric:

Whether we are conservative or liberal, many of us are appalled and angered by the stupidity and insensitivity of the Danish newspaper cartoons. But that doesn’t mean we’ve taken leave of our senses.

I, for one, won’t be throwing out my Lego set or my Bang & Olufsen sound system, let alone plotting to unveil a Zionist conspiracy.

I may be a Muslim, but I can tell the difference between a newspaper and a people, a country and a principle.

waterfall 2006

interesting software conference this spring.

Sessions include:

  • Take Control of Your Team’s Decisions NOW! by Ken Schwaber
  • Avoiding the Seven Pitfalls of Lean by Mary Poppendieck
  • Pair Managing: Two Managers per Programmer by Jim Highsmith
  • Two-Phase Waterfall: Implementation Considered Harmful by Robert C. Martin
  • User Interaction: It Was Hard to Build, It Should Be Hard to Use by Jeff Patton
  • FIT Testing In When You Can; Otherwise Skip It by Ward Cunningham
  • The Joy of Silence: Cube Farm Designs That Cut Out Conversation by Alistair Cockburn
  • wordUnit: A Document Testing Framework by Kent Beck
  • Slash and Burn: Rewrite Your Enterprise Applications Twice a Year by Michael Feathers
  • Very Large Projects: How to Go So Slow No One Knows You’ll Never Deliver by Jutta Eckstein

Sarah Slean has a way with words

Sarah Slean takes a break from poetry to share some tales from the road. Her words recall Finding Forrester:

After the requisite used bookstore visit, we return to the room to find a tray full of goodies from our fairy godmother Natasha. Champagne, roses, chocolates, and fruits…heavens! I enjoy a brief moment of pretending I’m Maria Callas in Milan. The wind howls outside and I remember my toque-wearing self. My guests are impressed. The grapes are delicious. Cool, perfectly taut globes that burst sweetness at first bite. My mind drifts into thoughts of nature’s dazzling perfection.