Some Thoughts

I got this fortune in my fortune cookie recently. One of the best ever, it reads:

“Stick to things as they are, distrust novelties”.

Thank you Mr. Cookie-man, I think I will.

I own a cool Coldplay CD. I like its catchy lyrics and also since most of the songs sound similar, it doesn’t matter which song I listen to. Which is good because iTunes LOVES playing songs from that CD (X&Y) for some reason. It seems like every 3rd song is Coldplay. I’m sure it is a nefarious Apple plot to take over the world.

A few months ago I switched yet again to a different cell phone provider. I went back to T-Mobile, and was intrigued by their T-Mobile at Home service. You know the one where the phone hooks into your broadband connection and then all subsequent continental U.S. calls are free (after paying them a monthly fee of course).
Anyway, I got the service which works pretty well. The sound quality is normal, and I haven’t experienced any delay in the conversation while talking. Only every now and then does the phone act strange, like refuse to dial, and once in a great while it even crashes in the middle of a conversation. I’ll put up with these little annoyances as long as they don’t happen too frequently, but can’t live without my Mac synchronizing via bluetooth with address book.

Luckily, there is a nice site dedicated to hacking your mobile phone to work with Apple’s iSync:

http://en.isync-hilfe.de/faq-blog.html

It didn’t take long to get it working, and I even made a little graphic for my phone so it looks better in iSync.

It was pretty easy to get set up. I just followed the instructions on the isync-hilfe.de site for the Nokia phone and it worked the first try. iSync will say that the synchronization didn’t work but your phone will know better and everything will come through just fine.

Feel free to use the graphic I made, as long as it not for commercial purposes.

I’ve wanted to post this one for quite a while so I’m giving it a date of January even though it really should of been posted back in ‘06.

At the pharmacy Christmas party we gave out the “Walker Texas Ranger Excellence Award”, which consists of a fairly large brass candle stick holder. I got the idea for the award after using the candle stick holder in various pranks around in the pharmacy. We voted for the employee who best embodies the qualities of the character Walker Texas Ranger. Of course many people could of won the award but this year it went to a guy named Matt, who has basically never missed a day of work in 5 years. Anyway, we WERE going to get a signed picture of Chuck Norris to hang up in the compounding lab, but unfortunately those things cost around $114. I’ll settle for the unsigned copy.

Ok, so back to all things Chuck Norris. I’ve been a fan of the Chuck Norris Facts, for a while now, that have circulated the internet. (As a side note: I’m pretty sure that Conan O’Brian catalyzed the whole thing with his Chuck Norris Lever). So back in August of aught six I added around 50 of the best Chuck Norris facts I could find and had them popup pseudo-randomly in the message section of compounding database program that we use at the pharmacy. I surprised the users and it was a pretty big hit, or was it a roundhouse kick, I forget.

So I’ll go out on a limb here and claim the World Wide Gloating Privilege of being the first person to put Chuck Norris Facts into a unrelated software program. Go ahead and prove that you beat me to it!

Switching cell phone companies made me think about some improvements that could be made.

1. Bill by the second. Since we are live in the digital age, why can’t we be billed by the second instead of the minute? The provider can charge for the extra time it takes to connect and disconnect the call.
I’ll make some assumptions, 100 calls a month and 20 of those calls end between the first and twentieth second of the last minute. That would produce a savings (assuming an average distribution within that group) of 1,010 seconds or 16.8 minutes. Now if your provider is charging $0.45/60 seconds for going over your allocated time the savings could be significant.

2. Include a phone card. Cell phone plans should include a phone card that uses minutes/seconds from of your plan’s allotment. It would be useful if visiting a place that doesn’t have or allow cell phone reception, or if the reception is too poor to have a good conversation. You could then call the 1-800 number from a land line and be all set!

3. Straight forward pricing structure. Have you noticed that it seems that your cell phone sweet spot doesn’t exists with your carrier? Either it is too few minutes at the right price, or it is a big jump in minutes at too high of a price. Would a fairly linear curve of minutes to price be that bad to implement? I’m with a certain carrier that has two text message plans. The first plan is 200 messages for $4.99 and the second and only other plan is 3,000 messages for $19.99/month. It would be like going to a fast food joint and them only having small or extra-large drinks on the menu.

4. Incoming texts should be free. Speaking of text messages, you shouldn’t be charged for receiving a message. The sender is already paying to send the message and there isn’t a way to block a message if I don’t want it. It is like charging me a dime every time someone mails me a letter.

p.s.

check out the entry for the ampersand, you will never think of it the same way again.