google voice transcriptions SUUUUUUCK
after being sort of spoiled by the ease of use of visual voicemail on the iphone (which is the only iphone feature i miss) i figured when someone sent me a google voice invitation that i’d go ahead and provision it for use with my pre. i had visions of the transcription text arriving in my email, and being able to read my voice messages instead of having to listen to them. unfortunately, this isn’t the case. as with all google services, GV starts off mostly functional but with some serious caveats, including leaving me wondering about the motive for them to offer it as a free service. of course, that’s my thought about every free service they offer, and that evilness is part of why i avoid dealing with them as often as possible.
here are some fun GV transcriptions i’ve gotten:
From my good friend Phil, who is having trouble with his monitor:
Hey. It’s Phil calling to ask you questions. Just curious if you’ve ever run into an issue with your monitor like I just did. I think my mother died. I don’t know if you really. Another little, but I just started getting these. Birkel flights like he kinda went past, but I just went black, or the other office til the desktop and Also unlike this little wanna sort of paint all over the screenwriter, redline Jill, I’ve quite live, and I hope this is gonna fill the whole screen with little colors. The. Grink I was well, so try to clear off and just trying to Mon around it’s just a monitors my cos I’m not in the still do it, so I don’t know if you know anything about those type of this crap anyway if if you have a chance give me a call if you could help. If not, I will. P Olympia for a while so. Alright dude. Later.
From Doug, the douchebag tech at Qwest who doesn’t return calls or emails:
Are you. This is Douglas quest tech support. I was asked to give you a call regarding some slow speed issues and dropping connection. Mike with your view. I. P set up or if you have any was alright. Take a look at the levels email what I’m seeing is your upload speed is o’clock in the red, it’s full rate, it actually and it’s about half what it should and I have taken some errors pummeling as well, which I don’t really have any to do is congested Gateway hurt your, and I T data or V D S, L to as it’s also called which it there is really cool congested gateways on on that type of system so something else. Maybe inside wiring issue. Jack as you possibly the modem call me and so yeah but you see a problem, so I’ll be here for the a couple more hours today if you wanna send me an email. I can give me a call back. I want to hear from you. It’s Doug dot Morgan at Qwest, dot, com and again. I’ll be here all day tomorrow so I don’t talk to you today. Thanks so much bye bye now.
From our Realtor:
Hey Chris Calum ward O’Brien doing a couple of things. I printed out a bunch of stuff, just a little while ago. I wanted to get out and fill love and that’ll give them an account. The warm up and then it occurred to me. I, I. I’d check in with you find out how we’re ready to go and then where I need to come pick you up so I can come pick you up and I will get out. Rock and Roll see what we can see it was wonderful slushy dreary morning but in the meantime, just give me a call when you’re up and I got plenty of things I can be David here for a second. I’ll call you back a little bit import see you bye.
So, as you can see, the transcription tech is sort of accurate, but for the most part it just generates what Cadie describes as “weird poetry”.
webos development, borderlands, fun
i’ve been spending the last couple of weeks familiarizing myself with palm’s mojo sdk for webos. i’m looking at building an irc app for webos since there aren’t any yet. it’ll take me a bit of work, but the SDK and development environment are pretty intuitive. the application framework makes extensive use of JSON (jscript) and CSS elements.
the broncos have managed to start this season 6-0, which is pretty awesome since they haven’t managed to play terribly well since around 1999. being brought up as a cynical broncos fan means that i’m still extremely skeptical of the possibility of any future winds.
i’ve been looking at playing borderlands, but i’m sort of on the fence about it still. some reviews talk about how great the game is and that it’s fun, challenging and also really great in terms of graphics. other reviews, however, have pointed to it being a repetitive mess that isn’t any fun for more than maybe 20 hours, and that it turns into a grind-fest.
i also recently picked up both infamous for ps3 and arma ii for pc. infamous is incredibly fun. it’s sort of like gta4 with superhero powers. arma ii is what project reality wishes it could be–full military simulation. everything from bullet physics to wind modeling to vegetation trampling, flight dynamics, vehicle behavior, etc are all accurately modeled. it’s sort of buggy, but it’s a lot of fun and looks fucking phenomenal.
so long at&t (hopefully)
i have this habit of re-evaluating my expenditures every 3-4 months or so, and making changes to stuff. this includes changing insurance providers, phone carriers, tv providers, isps, etc. i think in some aspects of my life (as shocking as it seems) i enjoy change.
this time, i’m changing phone carriers. i’ve had a cell phone for like 8 or 9 years, starting with voicestream (who became t-mobile) changing to cricket, then nextel, had a phone for work through sprint, and then at&t. now i’m moving my personal line to sprint. not only is their coverage at my workplace better than at&t, their roaming agreements make their coverage better across the US and i’ll save $30/month with the same features, sans roll-over mins (which i never use anyway).
i went to best buy yesterday and picked up a palm pre and activated a new line to test it out, with the intention of porting my number over if everything turned out well. i knew my coverage at home was shitty, so i was going to get myself an airave. sprint gives these out to nearly anyone who has shitty coverage at home or at work. it’s a femtocell that acts like a miniature cell site, using your broadband connection to tunnel your voice/1xRTT data to their core.
anyway, i called tech support yesterday, playing dumb and saying i had terrible coverage at home. the first rep put me on hold and talked to account services, who wanted to speak to me about sending me an airave. i got transferred to them and spoke to the rep in AS who told me she’d be happy to send me an airave free of charge and would waive the monthly fee for 24 months. thrilled, i agreed to the offer and she placed me on hold. unfortunately, i got disconnected about 5 minutes later. also unfortunate is that she didn’t note the offer on my account, so there was effectively no record that the offer was made, so i had to attempt to get someone else at sprint to either believe me that i was offered the stuff or offer it to me themselves. i had no such luck and managed to get disconnected a total of 9 times.
the last rep i spoke to agreed to ship me an airave and would waive the monthly fee. she then informed me that they had none in stock and i’d need to get one locally, but i could have the cost credited to my bill and would still have the fee waived. thinking that i was all set, i went to a sprint store and picked up an airave. while i was at the store, the corp store rep tried to add the feature code to my account but couldn’t. also strange was the fact that there were NO FUCKING NOTES INDICATING THAT I WAS OFFERED A FREE AIRAVE AND FREE SERVICE FOR IT. she called sprint customer service and the account services rep asked to speak to me..he offered me a whopping 2 free months of airave service, stating there was no more he could do. i explained that i had spoken to several people that day, both of whom promised that i could be sent an airave free of charge and also could have the service fees waived. he was unwilling to budge. he said he’d added the feature code, i paid for the airave and left the store, annoyed at the whole situation.
i ran home really quick and installed the femtocell, thinking it would be ready to go when i got home that night. i got home and found that the device wasn’t working. of course, the customer service hours are only until 2100 CST, so they were closed. i waited until the AM and called airave support, who informed me yet again that 1. there were no notes regarding having the cost waived for either the service or the device and also that the device had not been activated on my account. after 5 minutes on the phone with her, she got it set up and another 5 minutes later it was active and working. the positive part is that it works great. i think i’m going to contact executive customer service tomorrow (monday) to see if i can get anywhere regarding the cost of the device or in the very least waiving the monthly charge for basic service. i’m not gonna hold my breath.
SOCIAL MEDIA EXPLOOOOSION
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