Verizon wireless and text messages

Posted on 2010-08-10 by Joker

Let me start this off by saying that I have used AT&T, Verizon, & Net10 for my cell phone. I have never worked for any of the aforementioned companies before I wrote this. I can’t say I won’t in the future as I do not know everything that will happen in the future.

Well I’ve been with Verizon wireless for about 18 months now. I have never been so glad to know the my contract with a cell phone company is nearing the end. I will most likely go back to Net10 as they treated me in a nicer manner. I’ll list some of the differences.

  • Net10 only charged me 5¢ to receive a text message if I actually read it, it was free if I never read it. (Verizon charges me 20¢ just for receiving a text message) (They both will send certain messages for free, but those are service related messages, like reminding you that your going to expire.)
  • Net10 allowed me to rollover my minutes while Verizon is still in the dark ages where you only get a certain amount & if you don’t use it up you never get to see it again.
  • I almost never got spam when I was on Net10, but my wife has been hit with spam while on Verizon. (To get refunded for the spam she has to call them after they have billed us for the month, while if I just ignore them on Net10 I don’t get charged.)
  • Verizon told my with that they raised the text message rate from 10¢ to 20¢ to be competitive. When I heard that I thought that was outrageous as Net10 still only charges 5¢ for sending or receiving a text message & again they only charge you if you read it not just receive it, unlike Verizon that charges you just for receiving the message.

Since my family has several member that insist on sending text messages I applied for & eventually received a Google voice account. I did that because I now have a cell phone number where I do not get charged for receiving a text message.

Posted in blog, Cell Phones, Evil, Free, Google, Google Voice, Net10, spam, Verizon | Comments Off

USB Memory Support for the Xbox 360 coming April 6th

Posted on 2010-03-26 by Joker

I was checking out Major Nelson’s blog When I noticed a post with the same name that I gave this post “USB Memory Support for the Xbox 360 coming April 6th”. I was excited by this as I won’t have to pay for overpriced memory cards anymore on the 360. I was very excited when I saw the following pictures in the group that he posted & linked from the article (first picture & second picture), yep 293 GB free which means either he was on a dev kit or they may have a larger hard drive in the works for us in the future.

After I & most likely many other of his followers asked him about this he replied in his twitter “FYI : The pics I have posted on Flickr of the USB support are from my dev kit. For those asking.”. So unfortunately it was on his dev kit so for the near future we are limited to a 250 GB hard drive which is overpriced, but we won’t need to pay extra for external storage & we won’t be restricted to 512 MB as we have for many years on the Xbox 360. I guess this is good news for anyone that plans to or currently uses an Xbox 360 in a vehicle as the hard drive & optical drive both have moving parts so you could in theory download games to one or more memory cards & have your gamer tag in a memory unit so that you get to miss out on the issues associated with the hard drive. I also wonder if this would be a good thing for those in the military as they could grab their gamer tag along with some other data to take with them in a small & easy to carry method that would be able to deal with more abuse the a hard drive would normally.


Posted in Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox Live | Comments Off

Some more podcast issues

Posted on 2010-02-09 by Joker

On the MAKE Magazine: MAKE Podcast I get the File Too Big (Error Code C00D10E0) error on 4 different episodes that are not PDF files. The PDF files if you mark them as played & your computer should stop downloading them, if it still does you get to delete your ZuneStore.sdf that is in "%users%\%youruser%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Zune". (Where "%users%" is "C:\Documents and Settings" in Windows XP & "C:\Users" In Windows Vista & Windows 7 IIRC, also "%youruser%" is the name of the user name you are using.

The episodes I’m having an issue with are the following. "Weekend Project: The Arc Light", "Weekend Project: The UnaBox", "Weekend Project: Remote-Controlled Camera Mount", & "Weekend Project: Personal Portable Heater".

The sad thing about this is the Zune Insider podcast has a 1.2 GB file that downloaded without any issues.

I’m also getting the following errors for the WordPress.tv » How To podcast C00D1199 & C00D119A.

The episodes I’m having issues with are the following "Upgrading to WordPress 2.9" & "Introducing After the Deadline for Firefox".

I did post about these issues on the zune.net forums, at File Too Big (Error Code C00D10E0) & HD Video Podcast episodes not downloading properly/giving me errors.


Posted in blog, Microsoft, Zune | Comments Off

Zune 4.2 update

Posted on 2010-01-26 by Joker

Well this morning at about 7 AM MST I got the following message on zune.net. “zune is unavailable

As part of continuing efforts to improve our service, Zune is undergoing scheduled maintenance that will prohibit customers from renting and purchasing content for up to 24 hours starting Jan 25 at 10 P.M. (PST) / Jan 26 at 6 A.M. (GMT). Your local video library will continue to be available during this time.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience.” (I only included the English, it looks like they said it in five languages total.)

I then launched the Zune software & after I tried to sign in to zune.net it told me that there was an upgrade, so I had it update to the 4.2 version. It told me to disconnect my Zune, which I did & the upgrade went without any new issues. I was told I had to reboot at the end which I did.

After all of that I plugged in my Zune 120 & was told about the firmware update. So I let it upgrade from 3.2 to 3.3 for the firmware on it.

It looks like the new version didn’t fix the issue I want fixed the most on the desktop software. That is it still tries to download episodes from podcasts that I’ve told it to delete & I also deleted manually to free up disk space.

They did a better job on dealing with the upgrade this time then last time. I remember with the 4.0 update it took me several hours to figure out that the service was down & I couldn’t get the update until after it was back up.

Posted in Marketplace, Microsoft, Zune | Comments Off

Indie games on Xbox360 require connection to Live

Posted on 2010-01-07 by Joker

I saw a recent tweet from XboxSupport that said "@carocat 2 play Indie Games, u must be connected 2 Xbox LIVE 2 start it. After it starts+loads, u can disconnect from LIVE if u want to. ^KS". After seeing them saying that I went & tested it with a single player game called Miner Dig Deep, where I found what they said to be true.

This is annoying for me as if I take my 360 to a location where I don’t have an Internet connection I can’t even open the game. All I get is a message that says "To play this game, sign in to Xbox Live.", with the option to sign in or not to sign in.

I’d like it changed so that I’m allowed to have the offline parts work without being signed into live. I’d also like achievement points to be available for the indie games as well. I know I’ve bought some arcade games because they said I could keep an achievement that I earned in the trial of the game.

The other thing I’d like to see is being able to remove any rating I’ve put on a game. I have one time accidentally rated a game that I hadn’t even played & that made me want to be able to remove the rating I had applied to it. Even if it was implemented in the web site first or only in the web site that would be better than not being able to remove a rating.


Posted in Indie Games, Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox Live | 3 Comments