Author Archives: David

Verizon iPhone

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Lots of people are clamoring about the fact that Verizon is going to offer the iPhone.

There are a lot of good reasons to get an iPhone from Verizon … better network, better packages, tethering, etc.

One significant reason NOT to get the Verizon iPhone is: It doesn’t work in the UK and Europe.

The UK and Europe use the GSM system for cell phones … and the Verizon iPhone doesn’t support that.   It uses CDMA.

I know from personal experience that the AT&T iPhone does work fine in the UK (although it’s pricey).

I’ve also seen comments mentioning that the CDMA can’t handle data connections at the same time as voice connections.

So if you travel to the UK or Europe much, think twice about getting the Verizon iPhone.

I did see a rumor that Apple is going to offer a “World phone” that will, theoretically, have CDMA and GSM capabilities.

We still have a number of months left on our AT&T contract … so I’m going to hold off on jumping over to Verizon.   Ginny & I travel a fair amount and really like the UK & Europe.

Positive Customer Service

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Yes, it happens occasionally.

Once again it was with Comcast.

Well, at least partially.  This was a good recovery from a potentially bad experience.

Two weeks ago the picture on our cable was getting very pixelated … my first thought was that the TiVo was going bad, so I tried connecting the TV directly to the cable (using the digital tuner) and still saw the problem.

So I called Comcast customer service and scheduled a service call.  This was on Monday and the earliest service appointment they had was on Wednesday.  OK, we could live with crummy TV for a few days.

Tuesday we got an automated call from Comcast telling us that they had found a problem in our service and corrected it … and our service call had been canceled.  If we were still experiencing the problem, we should press “1” to be connected to customer service.

I checked the TV and, what do you know, it was working fine.  No pixelation.  Cool.  I didn’t have to leave work early on Wednesday to be here for the service call.

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Chase Bank Fail

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I had a very frustrating experience with Chase bank yesterday.

I wanted to pay down the balance of our home equity line of credit to zero. I did not want to close the account.

The pay down amount isn’t obvious on their web site, so I called their customer service.

The woman I talked to was clearly a script reading drone, as she could not give me JUST the information I wanted. She had to give me ALL the information that showed up on her screen.

The balance on the account was about $60 plus some variable interest.

The first amount she told me was to close the account entirely (which I explicitly told her I did not need) was around $500. This included the early termination fee.

The next amount she gave me was (supposed to be) the amount to bring the balance to zero. She quoted me $400!

I explained that the amount she gave me could not be right because my current balance was only $60.

So she had to log back into the account to get the breakdown. Since the call had already gone on for 25 minutes, I just told her to forget it and I would calculate the amount myself.

Back on their website I finally found the variable interest that was due: $0.46.

Unfortunately the website would not let me pay the full amount … I had to pay the current balance first, then pay the variable interest.

The last time I wanted to do this I was unable to make a payment less than $1 … So I had to make a $1 withdrawal so I could pay a little more than $1.

This time it let me pay the .46 without jumping through hoops.

I like many of the services Chase offers, but their phone customer service leaves a lot to be desired.

Virtualization

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One of the goals I have for the new system is to replace the two existing servers.

My current plan is to do this via virtualization.

There are a number of virtualization options available … each with advantages & disadvantages.

The virtualization products I’m currently consider are:

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Dell PowerEdge T310

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(Read this entire post, as there is a very weird problem described later)

It’s been quite a while since I upgraded the hardware that runs this (and others) web site.

The warranty on the systems either will be expiring soon or has already expired.

So I bit the bullet and ordered a new Dell PowerEdge T310 server. The pertinent specs are:

  • Quad core Xeon 2.66ghz processor
  • 12gb RAM
  • RAID controller
  • 4 x 500gb hot swap drives (configured as 2 x 500gb RAID 1 sets)

The system arrived last week and I got it set up immediately.

I actually ordered the system with only one 250gb hard drive and 4gb of RAM … and upgraded it myself.

A few things annoyed me out of the gate …
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Inheritance

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One my gripes about the Eclipse framework is the general lack of standardized interfaces & inheritance.

For instance: a TreeColumn & TableColumn both have a lot of attributes in common … width, alignment, movability, sortability, resizeability, etc.

But since they don’t share an interface or a common ancestor, you can’t handle them with common code.

Similarly widgets like the ComboBox and a Text field share a lot of attributes … they can hold text, they can be changed, etc, but you can’t access those attributes with a common interface.

Sadly most Eclipse widgets explicitly forbid subclassing … so I can’t subclass the various types and add my own interfaces. The following is a direct quote from the TableColumn javadocs …

IMPORTANT: This class is not intended to be subclassed.

And, unfortunately, they enforce this in code.

Preventing Multiple Instances

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One of the things I needed to support in my RCP is the ability to prevent multiple copies (instances) of the application from running at the same time.

The solution is surprisingly easy … although, as with many things, not especially well documented.

In your Application class (that implements IApplication) you need to create a lock file in the application’s instance location.
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Help Icon on Dialog Pages

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Another item I struggled with … adding the help icon to various dialogs (wizards, preferences, properties, about box, etc).

In almost all Eclipse dialogs … there is a question mark icon in the lower left hand corner. You click on this and it invokes the context sensitive help.

The problem was, I couldn’t figure out how to activate this.

I thought it would be controlled by some plug-in or product setting, but I couldn’t determine where.

After a fair bit of digging & debugging of base Eclipse, I determined that this feature is turned on globally for the entire application:

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