Wednesday August 10, 2005

Treo 650 DUN

I have been having troubles with using Bluetooth DUN between my Treo 650 and my Apple Powerbook 12" running MacOS X. For a good description of how to configure it check out this thread on TreoCentral or vocaro's excellent summary. It mostly worked just fine, but every 5-60 minutes the laptop would get an RFCOMM error and drop the connection. Trying to immediately re-connect would fail with the same error. But if I turned off Bluetooth on the Treo and then immediately turned it back on again it would come back. Very annoying, but it mostly worked.

On my last trip I started to get very annoyed. Searching places like TreoCentral, would find that most people used DUN without any problems (assuming their carrier's version supported it), but a few would have problems similar to mine, but with no real fix available. So I started googling and just happened to stumble into PhilMUG's website and saw this passing configuration notes about the System Preference->Network->Location->Bluetooth->PPP without explanation:

    Click PPP Options.
    - set all boxes as unchecked

and

    Select Bluetooth Modem
    - Select Treo 650 Globe GPRS as the modem. 
    - leave both Enable error connection and compression in modem and
       Wait for dial tone before dialing options unchecked.

I looked in my laptop's Network Preferences and I did have some of those boxes checked. I cleared them and so far have spend 4-6 hours connected using DUN without any RFCOMM errors. I have not gone through and systematically tried each of them separately to see which are the culprits, but I suspect it may be the "Enable error correction..." and/or "Use TCP header compression." My weak theory is that the Bluetooth link has bit errors that the correction or compression cannot deal with resulting in an error. Without checks the junk goes through but is dropped by the TCP/IP stack.

So far my DUN usage has been from the mundane hotel usage to gain 100+kbps over a dialup ISP (and the infamous 60+ minute charges), to web surfing in an RV parked in a field outside Sears Point Raceway! Not as fast as a WiFi hotspot, but it sure works in a lot more places. Now if wireless vendors could come up with cheaper data rates and better GPRS/EDGE coverage I would be really happy! ( Aug 10 2005, 08:57:12 PM CDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

Monday August 01, 2005

Where Have You Been?

Thanks to Michael Jordan for a reference to this cool web site. While my world travels are not too extensive, at least I have seen most of the United States!

create your own visited states map

Monday July 25, 2005

I Am Not The Drummer You Seek!

One of the small benefits of having a "plain" name is that it provides some amount of privacy through obscurity. Googling my name will bring you a long list of sites unrelated to me, mostly references to the basketball star from the San Antonio Spurs commonly called "The Admiral". After creating this blog I have risen through list and can now be found on the third page of Google results, previously you really needed to know something else about me to find me. So I have moved from total obscurity to partial obscurity.

The blogs.sun.com software has a fun feature that it allows you to see what sites are referring to your blog. Usually this contains just the few friends and colleagues that I interact with. Recently I noticed a large number of google referrals with my name and the word "cars". That was strange, so I went to google.com and entered the search. To my amazement my blog was the top hit! While I like cars and auto racing (NASCAR in particular), my depth of knowledge on the subject is far from unique or particularly valuable.

Then in looking at the other results, I remembered the rather obscure fun fact that the drummer from the band "The Cars" shares my name. Obscure because no one ever remembers the drummer in a band, even if they blow up on stage. So while I enjoyed the band's music, and in fact have their anthology (although what was with Panorama?), I can't do better than make noise with a drum set.

Friday March 25, 2005

The Future is Now!

Looks like Viewsonic has made a major break through!

A true paradigm shift!

Thursday March 17, 2005

My new phone

I have recently purchased a new phone, a PalmOne Treo 650. While I have had PDAs and I have had phones, this is my first entry into the converged handset world.

I had a slow start getting it activated. I had purchased the unlocked GSM version directly from PalmOne (before the $100 price increase) and needed a SIM card. I battled through the Cingular/AT&T customer no-support having to deal with such discussions such as "You can't have that voice plan because it is a PDA not a phone!" to which I responded "But I can make phone calls with it!", which provoked "But its a PDA not a phone". Repeat for 5 minutes...

Eventually I got someone who knew what they were talking about and quickly got the order in and a promise that the SIM would be FedEx'd the next day.

A week later no SIM...

More calls and a further promise that it is on its way, must have gotten slowed down by the holiday.

A week later no SIM...

More calls just to discover that the order was cancelled. Why? "It just happens sometimes."

One last order and they finally get it right, I get my SIM, and I have voice and data access!

So next steps are the obvious ones of loading the phone with all my contacts and other data that was on my previous PDA. Along the way I am impressed by the integration and easy of use. The camera and screen are of decent quality, not that I have much desire to take or send low-res pictures with a phone.

Now it is time to start really using the Treo for its capabilities. I initially setup in VersaMail (any relationship to the BofA VersaTeller?) application to read my personal RoadRunner POP mail account. Works great! Now to send a message, uh-oh, no relaying allowed. Some googling and reading about anti-SPAM features that virtually mandate mail servers to not relay mail that did not originate from or are not destined for their network. One interesting solution is to go to smtp.com which for a fee will be your SMTP mail server for a particular From: address. Their Family Plan is ideal for the low volume a PDA will generate. But the real solution is to just use one of the available, put poorly advertised, SMTP servers on your wireless carrier's network. In my case the old AT&T wireless network uses smtp.mymmode.com (the old smtp.attwireless.net is going away).

Now things are getting more interesting!

Next step is to figure out how to get e-mail from my sun.com account. Sun is currently running a pilot program to allow external access to e-mail through an "edge" server using all of the appropriate security tricks. However, as a true geek I want access to all the services I have from my laptop which means I need a VPN tunnel. According to PalmOne's web site, there are only two listed VPN for PalmOS providers, one does PPTP and the other IPSec. Sun of course uses Cisco 3000's and IPSec so the solution is movianVPN by Certicom. Unfortunately Certicom has got out of the retail sales of movianVPN so you must purchase it from an Irish supplier WorldNet21 Technology. A few Euros later and a trivial configuration, I am through the firewall accessing my e-mail at work!

Given the bulk of the e-mail I get at work, even after SPAM filtering, the included VersaMail was not up for the job. Its IMAP handler was very slow to determine changes on a large Inbox and it is also limited to only being able to store messages in the Treo's RAM and not in the optional SD card. So the next step up was to try out SnapperMail, a full featured e-mail client that works well and has a very good support forum over in Yahoo Groups. (ChatterEmail is another alternative.)

The last critical piece for a geek is to be able to SSH into a system. So I just grabbed PSSH for free, and my reading glasses, and I am in!

Now the only question is if this has made me more productive or just busier?

( Mar 17 2005, 01:34:47 PM CST ) Permalink Comments [3]

Wednesday February 16, 2005

Budget Not Such a Budget

On a recent trip to Boston I rented a car through Budget. I had the normal options of buying the tank of gas for an average price per gallon, returning it full, or returning it partially empty and paying an outrageous price per gallon. As anyone who has done the math, unless you are really sure you will return it almost empty, buying the tank is not a good deal.

Now the new hook.

If you return the car with less than 75 miles travelled, they will charge you $6.00 regardless of what the gas gauge says!!

The only way around this charge is if the gauge is full and you show a receipt for gas purchased, but they will not remind you to show it to them to avoid the fee!

I suspect that they are trying to combat the fact that most cars will read full with up to a couple gallons of gas being used. Someone driving just a short distance can return it "full". As a result, if they top off the tank before the next customer they may end up paying for a gallon or two. Most rental car companies simply ask if you have added gas, if not they charge you a per mile fee, otherwise they have a fixed price per eighth of a tank.

Is this solving a real problem or just another way to get a few more bucks per customer? I'll let you decide.

( Feb 16 2005, 08:34:34 PM CST ) Permalink Comments [1]