Indiscriminate Transgressions

Well I was all pissed off that Bully: Scholoarship Edition was locking up one of my Xbox 360s, the important one, but Rockstar released a patch.

The thigh-texture problem (people with ballooning, flashing thighs) and some frame rate problems still exist, but at least the lockups are gone. The game shows Version 1.03 on the title screen now, and philosophically that’s an interesting thing, a version/patch identified on a console game, because it indicates that the slippery slope of PC-style patching for console games is well and good, and is headed more and more in this direction.

In this case 1.03 fixes the lockups. But here’s my question/conspiracy theory…

Were 1.01 and 1.02 released to manufacturing? Some people complaining of lockups went back to the store and exchanged their copy that locks up and got a new copy that didn’t lock up anymore. Maybe 1.01 was the initial release to manufacture (maybe even in error), and 1.02 was the “jesus christ we screwed up let’s manufacture the new ones with this copy but hey don’t throw out the ones you already made as that would cost dollarzzzz?” Then the patch comes out to take _everyone_ to 1.03 is to try to save face?

Cos we already KNOW that the “only on older consoles” thing is a line of crap, as MANY people with really new consoles (including 2 month old elites) had the lockup problem. And we already know Take-Two/Rockstar will lie first when confronted with something.

So I mean, I guess I’m not buying the “horrified” act.

Dell sells this card and it’s supposed to have GPS in it. Only, it doesn’t seem to. The help in the Dell Mobile Broadband Card Utility tells you how to use the GPS option in the tools menu, and/or the GPS Status button in the card manager. So here’s the card manager:

I don’t see me no GPS Status button. I contacted Dell tech support a few times over the last few months, and they eventually refer me to Sprint, which is ludicrous since Sprint a> sucks, b> doesn’t have customer support to speak of c> doesn’t support this card. I tried once.

So lo and behold on my final chat session with tech support tonight, the one where I’m planning on getting mad and demanding 40% of my purchase price refunded for false advertising, the man in India types these magic words: “The Dell Mobile Broadband Card Utility (DMBCU) determines the presence of GPS software when the software is installed.” Aha. Aha!! Registry.

So I fire up the process monitor. I run the DMBCU and capture events. I search for GPS and I find on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Novatel Wireless\NextGenCommon a key called GPSHWStatus:

…and it’s set to 0 or not there…

I’m running Vista x64 - this key would be different on 32 bit windows machines, should be the same but without the Wow6432Node\ part. So, on to registry editor:

Indeed, it is there and set to 0. So ah sets it to 1:

And the next time I run the DMBCU, it installs a driver(!) for … the GPS!

and would ya lookie here:

It seems to work. I’m inside and I haven’t checked it out yet, but when I hit that button it finds the GPS on COM6 and starts to search for satellites.

I did all this while the Dell tech support guy was connected to my machine remotely. He tried to pull down the Tools menu to look for the GPS entry, moused over all icons in my tray, and then told me I would have to contact Sprint. [sarcasm]I’m SO glad I allowed the remote connection.[/sarcasm] When I got angry about that, he spent 3 minutes looking up information and then mentioned the bit about the install. I did the rest and then near the end when I said “Did you see that? It installed a driver!” he says to me “Great. Glad we could fix your trouble.” Uh huh.

I hope this helps someone. I have seen many posts on the Dell Community forums about this with no solution.

I’m trying to pay a ticket online. Yes, I was driving while on my cellphone, which is now a first offense in NJ. But it’s still a payable offense, so the ticket says I can pay my ticket online. I was issued the ticket on 1/16, and since today’s the 19th I figured I’d give it a try.

Here’s the site:

www.njmcdirect.com

the first thing I notice is that I have to pay an extra fee online, even though I guarantee that this is a cheaper process than me paying in person:

The Convenience Fee is assessed to fund the interconnection between NJMCdirect.com and the Automated Traffic System. The Convenience Fee is based on the penalty and the amount of the traffic ticket, (fee schedule shown below). Consistent with the N.J.S 2B:12-30, the money is deposited in the Administrative Office of the Courts Automated Traffic System Fund.

Penalty Amount : Convenience Fee Applied
$1.00 - $40.00 : $1.00
$41.00 - $87.00 : $2.00
$88.00 - $200.00 : $3.00
>$200.00 : $4.00

By the way, the site doesn’t do anything in Firefox for me. It just hangs and never comes up with the page. In Internet Explorer it’s slow as molasses. But, here’s the best part, the site has _hours_ where they accept payment. Here’s the relevant bit:

Online Payment Hours
Payments can be made on this website during the following hours:

Mon - Thurs
7:30AM - 11:45PM (EST)
Fri
7:30AM - 10:45PM (EST)
Sat
7:30AM - 3:45PM (EST)
Sun
1:00PM - 11:45PM (EST)

Huh? What is there a human on the other end answering to the HTTP requests? Why are Sunday’s hours so short? Potential maintenance issues?

Anyhow, I enter the ticket number as indicate, and for the license plate number, I type in exactly what the ticket says, including the hyphen. I get a generic error, “Invalid license plate number.” Even though it says nothing about the format of a plate “number” (mine has letters, why is this called a number anymore?) I decide to leave out the hyphen. I then get the following error message:

NJMCdirect is unable to locate the ticket information. Please contact the court to resolve this matter, or refer to the back of the traffic ticket for alternate payment options.

I triple checked the information, and it’s all correct. Wheeeeeeeee!

Ironically is about waiting less…

Well, the EVDO service has been working fine for two weeks now, and I haven’t had to call customer service. I’m getting great speeds:

My bill had 2 “web minutes” used for $0.40, but I don’t dare call them.

Right.

So, if you bore yourself with the last post, you’ll note after the screwup there, they finally promised me really and truly that my credit card was charged to pay my deposit, and that I would have service restored in about an hour.

That was at 6pm.

So I did a little work, tried again at 8pm, still nothing. So I called and put Sprint on speakerphone again for the 20 minute hold, then when I got a person, they told me that what the previous person meant was 4 hours until I’d be turned back on.

So at 11:15pm, still nothing. So I called Sprint back (I’m rapidly approaching the number of calls that get one booted from their customer base, methinks) and this time I’m told tomorrow morning.

So I decide to try the magic words. “Well then, cancel my service.” Boom, whisked over to a really nice guy named Mark. So then Mark:

1. Tells me that my account has been “expired”
2. Informs me that the phone number assigned to my datacard has been released or reassigned
3. Tries to call his help desk, to get it fixed
4. Tells me his help desk is closed, that he will have to “fix it [him]self over the internet”
5. Takes my phone number and tells me he’s going to call me back

An hour goes by, Mark calls me back and says I’m all set. The card is able to connect again. I still can’t log into sprint.com, Mark tells me to try my password in upper case. Still nothing. So I’d imagine that the password is screwed up and I’ll never be able to talk to customer service again. (He tells me to do the lost password thing, I explain to him that it sends a text message with the password which is irretrievable from the data card, he laughs at this.)

I explain to Mark that I’ve called customer service a LOT and that I don’t want to do that anymore cos I don’t want Sprint to fire me as a customer. He laughs and tells me those people are “1/1000 of the 50,000,000 customers” they have (he did his math wrong), that they called in a LOT and that they had free service for months and months, and then he gives me some b.s. assurance that THIS TIME it is a done deal. I say right, but I’m rapidly becoming that customer you describe due to Sprint’s screwups that result in calls and credits to my bill. He laughs at this and says “yeah, I can see that.” Is that a threat? I don’t know anymore, I feel like the laws of the universe don’t apply to this situation.

As Mark and I are wrapping up the call, he says some funny things.

1. I ask “are there any other ways that my service will be screwed up in the next few weeks?” He laughs and says “Oh, [ha ha] there’s a million things that can go wrong [ha ha ha].” That instills confidence.
2. Then he says, and I kid you not, “Thanks for calling Sprint, and I’m glad we could take care of it in one call tonight, now you have a good evening.”

So I am going to have a good evening. Luckily, I have 2-5 internet connections at any given time; I’m always evaluating and recommending new technologies and incorporating them into projects. If you are thinking about using Sprint’s data service and relying upon it in any way, here’s a hearty recommendation AGAINST following that course of action. I know I will never use their service in any kind of project I do that requires an internet connection. HSDPA through Cingular/AT&T is probably better even with the whole latency thing. Yeah, the connection will be slower, but maybe it will stay on for more than 36 hours at a time.

Maybe somehow this will be the last time I need to contact them. ha ha ha