Monkeys Typing Shakespeare

I remember hearing somewhere that when someone loses a limb he still “feels” like it’s there for a while. I’ve been getting these weird ghost vibrations right around where my Blackberry normally sits — front-right pants pocket.

What the heck is that all about? I don’t remember seeing that on any warning label. At first I passed it off as a one-time oddity. But, just now (well, almost now but just before just now), I was talking to a friend and felt the familiar bzzzt on my leg. I reached toward my pocket to get my phone then noticed it sitting in front of me on my desk. Am I crazy? Anyone else getting ghost vibrations from overuse of your Blackberry?

I’ve had about a half dozen of them in the past two weeks. Weird.

You’ve no doubt gotten those emails from Amazon or been on the site when a message extols, if you like that, you’ll LOVE THIS!

Got one today. First, I don’t remember ordering The Little Rascals DVD set and second, I find it really telling that people who have bought that set also buy… well, let’s have Amazon take it from here:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Little Rascals, Vol. 1 & 2 have also purchased The Calculus 3 Tutor: Volume 1 - 10 Hour Course - 3 DVD Set - Learn by examples! on DVD. For this reason, you might like to know that The Calculus 3 Tutor: Volume 1 - 10 Hour Course - 3 DVD Set - Learn by examples!

Yeah, yeah, I’ve gotten really nerdy in these posts — it’s what I do to support the SIMIProject. So, I’ve finally decided to start jotting down solutions for IT problems that I’ve had to deal with.

This one was a really pain in a monkey’s butt:

After successfuly destroying my trusty Treo 650 after three years, I decided to go BlackBerry. Wow! I’m surprised I converted so easily. The Curve is just plain sweet. I chose this model because I was already with T-Mobile for the uber cheap monthly plans they offer and something caught my eye: t-mobile@home. This is the service that lets you use the wi-fi on the Curve to place and receive calls — basically, unlimited calling wherever you can hook up to a wi-fi connection for the added fee they charge ($20).

Excited as I was, I set up my phone and started playing with the connection features. Then… wuh? huh? The little UMA symbol that tells me I’m getting free calling switches to Edge — NOT free calling. Booooo! Lame! I spent hours googling the issue. I spent hours on the phone with various T-Mobile tech support people. “Well, we don’t support alternative solutions other than our own hotspots or the T-Mobile routers.” Boooooooo!

The problem I was having was that the phone would bounce between UMA and Edge even if I was sitting right next to the wi-fi router. In fact, sometimes it wouldn’t bounce to UMA at all. The only way I could get UMA to stick was to turn off the T-Mobile service on the phone (cool feature, by the way). Well, after dealing with two @home specialist (the second one called me by mistake not realizing that I just spent an hour on the phone with his colleague) I got my answer. It seems, the second @home specialist (who called me by mistake) knew a LOT more about this service than the first (I love talking to tech support people who know what they’re talking about — mostly).

It turns out that the Curve will choose whichever signal is STRONGER — not which service is FREE’ER. Seems logical enough. So, there you go. The phone is doing what it is SUPPOSED to be doing. Wouldn’t it have been neat if the first three T-Mobile tech support people had told me that?

A few additional things I learned along the way:

1. You can test the quality of your internet connection using the FREE java applet at http://myvoipspeed.visualware.com/ (make sure you see the applet moving on the lower half of the page — you don’t need to buy the software on the top half).

2. You can use that site to help optimize your router settings. Play around with the various features on your router and retest until you get all green lights on the test. If you can’t, your Internet connection could be the problem.

3. The UMA feature was designed for users who have craptastic t-mobile reception at home. The idea being, that your home wi-fi would always be stronger than the prevailing T-mobile signal. In markets like Los Angeles, you’ll get a battle royal on your phone and Edge will often win.

4. You need to make sure your firewall is not blocking ports 500 or 4500 (UDP).

5. The last guy I spoke to freakin’ LOVES his job and loves to share his wealth of info.

6. If you ask nicely, you can get lots of cool info that isn’t easily available to the general public like this from one of the @home Tech guys:

The HotSpot @Home service relies on the IPsec security protocol to provide secure calling over Wi-Fi. T-Mobile-branded wireless routers are configured to permit IPsec communications by default, but other devices may be configured to block IPSec. Similarly, the firewall policy on any router may have been configured (intentionally or otherwise) to prevent IPsec communications.

In order for IPsec to work, the following ports need to be allowed through the firewall in both directions:

• UDP port 500 (Internet Key Exchange or “IKE”)
• UDP port 4500 (IPSec/IKE NAT-T)

Many consumer-grade routers, including the T-Mobile branded Wi-Fi routers, include a simple check-box that will enable IPsec communications. This option is typically named ‘Enable IPsec passthrough’ or something similar.

For users of advanced corporate firewalls or home-built firewalls (typically running a UNIX-like operating system), IPSec may also require explicit rules to allow the following two protocols (independent of port) through the firewall:

• IP protocol 50 (Encapsulating Security Payload or “ESP”)
• IP protocol 51 (Authentication Header or “AH”)

The other day the monkeys were flinging more poo than usual. I walked up to a few of them as they were jumping around a computer screeching and banging on the screen. It seems Bongo had purchased a new iPhone and was trying to get it to sync with his Outlook 2003 calendars and contacts. There was very little hair left on his head as he had pulled most of it out dealing with the fine folks at Apple.

First, he was getting a strange error (0xE8000025) whenever he attached the iPhone to his PC. Then his phone would just disappear — not the real phone, the link in iTunes. He dutifully followed the Apple Geniuses advice and went the Apple Genius Bar at an Apple store. Why? I have no idea. The problem was with his iPhone connecting to HIS PC.

After about 12 hours of Apple Geniuses, Teir 1 support (1-800-myiphone), Tier 2 support, Googling every page in the known universe and using an entire bottle of Windex to wipe monkey poo off his monitor, we got his iPhone to sync.

Through our adventure, here is what we learned:

1. The iPhone needs a USB 2.0 port — if you only have USB 1.1 you may get the 0xE8000025 error when you plug in or the annoying “iTunes could not connect to the iPhone because an unknown error occurred.” Since Bongo had an older computer we added a USB 2.0 card and we stopped getting this error and the disappearing iPhone routine.

2. iPhone requires iTunes to sync. After installing it, you need to run Outlook at least once. iTunes uses the local *.pst OR (this “OR” is really, really important) the local *.ost file from Outlook. *.ost files are created when you have Exchange in “Cached Exchange Mode.”

3. To sync information from an Exchange server you must check the “Use Cached Exchange Mode” in the email setup dialog box (Tools –> Email Accounts –> View or Change…). You must also be sure that Outlook has fully synced with the Exchange server to update the *.ost file on your local machine. You can see this from the icon in your system tray.

4. iTunes deserves a lot of the monkey poo tossed at it for a problem dealing with repeating calendar events. We ended up deleting all of these (In Outlook 2003: View –> Arrange By –> Current View –> Recurring Appointments). For good measure, we also deleted all calendar events prior to the start of the year. However, I think this was probably unnecessary and overkill.

In hindsight, it would have saved a LOT of time if the Mac Geniuses or the Teir 1 support person had told us about the USB 2.0 issue. Props to Tier 1 Susan in Toronto for explaining that one to us (I want my t-shirt). It would also have been a nice thing if the < Tier 2 had told us about the *.pst/*.ost issue. We figured that one out talking to Susan. She wasn't an Exchange expert but when she told us that iTunes actually reads through the entire file, something just clicked -- without Cached mode, this file does not get updated (or created).
Bongo now loves his new iPhone with anti-monkey poo screen… me, I’m loving my BlackBerry Curve with wi-fi. I got a post about that coming soon.

A Happy Chanukah from the folks at MonkeyGoods.com:

My little monkeys are at it again… Rose, Jade and I made the little animation.  Enjoy!

This video really needs no introduction. It is Carl Sagan in all his genius.

Respect our pale blue dot.

The little monkeys put together another claymation in honor of Dr. Safran’s mother’s birthday.