Journal

New Phone… yay?

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I got a new cell-phone, and disconnected the one that Sandra was using. We were still listed on a Novell “employee spouse” plan, and while there may have been a bit of a discount, it’s hardly ethical to continue to accept it. The only reason we took six months to switch is that we didn’t KNOW we were still on a Novell plan.

Anyway, new phone. I got a GREAT phone (Sony/Ericsson T616), but I think I need some additional hardware to download pictures from it. We got a cheap rate plan that lacks the email account necessary to email the pictures. I think the USB cable they sell for the phone ($15 at Tangshop.com) will let me download pictures and upload contacts and calendar information, but I’m just not sure.

Oh, and the phone number… no, I’m not going to tell you what it is. The phone is for when I travel to conventions, not for day-to-day talking. If you are one of the close friends and/or family who know Sandra’s OLD phone number, go ahead and call us at home to get this new cell number. The rest of you, well, you’ll just have live with the knowledge that You Don’t Need To Know.

–Howard

12 thoughts on “New Phone… yay?”

  2. I’ve got the T610, and overall it works quite nicely (616 being essentially the same phone but operating on AT&T’s net iirc?). The camera is kind of crap, but for something that you’ve got quick access too basically all the time, it’s not bad. My typical pattern of interaction (for the non-phone bits) is over bluetooth
    and that has proven to be about as pain free as anything involving computers
    ever is (other-end devices include palm t2, linux over a d-link bt-mumble-120
    usb adaptor, and a recent powerbook). It’s also survived a few gravity
    tests onto asphalt.

    Part of me wonders if I should post the pictures I took with it of my
    girlfriends cat humping her stuffed Cthulhu doll as quality samples, but that’s probably -5D6 SAN right there.

    1. None of my PCs have bluetooth or IR interfaces, and I figure that ADDING such an interface would be far more costly than the USB cable. The thing is, I’m not sure the USB cable will work for syncing pictures. Maybe the menu item for “send via USB” appears when the cable is plugged in. Maybe the device appears as a mountable volume from the PC. Who knows?

      That’s not a rhetorical question. Does someone out there know?
      :

      3. usb bt adaptors are actually pretty cheap. $20-30
        new and $10-15 ton ebay[1]. I’ve never tried a cabled
        solution so I can’t say how that would work. I’d be tempted to just mail you my spare one, but I should
        ask Kirsti (the aforementioned girlfriend) if she needs it first.

        [1] the search i ran to make sure I wasn’t
        talking jibber-jabber here
        looks like $5-10 isn’t unreasonable

  3. unethical?

    ya know, maybe i’m strange but i don’t see it being unethical…unless it was specifically in the agreement or something, but you gave quite a few years of hard work for that company and a lot of the more decent companies i’ve worked around have had kinda a “once an employee always an employee” mentality with some of the smaller perks, especially when such perk benifits both the company and the (in this case) cell provider. the company gets cell coverage for their employees for a cheaper rate, and the cell company gets a larger customer base that may otherwise have gone to another carrier…and still make a profit, if not as large of one otherwise (except for factoring in the larger customer base the discount causes…which almost always beats the discount) but i don’t know the whole thing so maybe i’m just full of it 🙂

      1. Re: unethical?

        A pension or severance package I WOULD accept (unless I was planning to go to work AGAINST them, in which case I wouldn’t feel good about taking their money, no) but this wasn’t a pension plan or severance package.

        In fact, this was a corporate account phone plan that I couldn’t modify without knowing the Novell account number. Not only did we not think it would be ethical to keep it, this was something that was going to be increasingly inconvenient to maintain. Case in point — we couldn’t switch from TDMA to GSM.

        I’m glad we cancelled the account and opened a new one. I had to drive around the corner to the wireless store, but I got a vanity phone number, and a rate plan that wasn’t available through Corporate Accounts.

        –Howard

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