Smartphone data use comparrison

A couple of months ago I was given an iphone 3 to use since my existing phone was dieing, I was a month or so away from end of contract, and it was cheaper to go onto my g/friends AT&T plan as opposed to staying solo on Verizon.  The price was right.  The phone was free, no contract, and even with the data plan I was paying less because it was a group plan.

This past week we started looking at usage of the phones on her plan in the hopes of finding a way to streamline the bill a bit.  My data package is 2gb for $25 because the 200mb for $15 didn't make sense.  Well I'm hear to tell you that the 200mb plan is looking better for me now that I have a couple of months under my belt but I'm also going to compare my usage with a friend who has an HTC Inspire (freekin' huge), his wife who has an iphone 4, and my girlfriend who has an iphone 4.  I must admit that the graphs showing usage on the AT&T site are pretty and so that is what I will be using as a reference.

First off let's look at my iphone 3 usage:

I came on board at the end of the billing cycle in May which is why there was so little use.  I have wi-fi at home, work, and when i'm at her place.  This is my first smartphone but I have had a phone in the past with some form of internet access on it.

Now let's look at her iphone4 usage:

She has wi-fi access at her place, mine, and her parents.  She does not have wi-fi access at work.  She is also grandfathered in with the unlimited data plan so there's no threat of an overage (yet) in the event that she decides to watch one too many youtube videos on her phone.  She is a long time smartphone user.

Now let's look at my friends HTC Inspire usage:

He too has wi-fi at home and does not have it at work.  He has the 2gb data plan.  The June spike is attributed to traveling out of town and being bored in a hotel.  This is his first smartphone though he has had a phone in the past that had internet access on it.

Finally let's look at his wife's iphone 4 usage:

She too has wi-fi access at home and elsewhere.  Her data plan is 200mb.  The June spike is attributed to user error (forgot to join network while at someones house).  This is her first smartphone and I'm unsure if she's had internet access on her previous phones.

I'm aware that 3 of 4 phones listed are iphones.  An argument that was brought up is that the droid user does not have wi-fi at work which explains the heavier usage.  This is thrown out by one of the iphone 4 users having no wi-fi at work AND an unlimited data plan.

What I see in this data is more how 4 people use their phones instead of what types of phones they are.  I have heard arguments that droid phones use more data which I refuse to believe.  The OS has no affect on data consumption.  It's the applications (dare i say 'apps' for fear of Apple coming after me for using their word?) that are on the phone that initiate the data connection.  To assume otherwise is uninformed about the underlying technology and thus wrong.

I see a husband and wife with smartphones and it can be assumed that they are together more often than not outside of work.  This would imply that they have access to the same wi-fi spots.  If this is correct then one could infer that the usage is a behavioral issue and not a result of the handset.  Feeding into my behavioral theory is that the user who has no wi-fi at work and has an unlimited data plan is actually in the < 200mb range consistently.

All of this came up with my trying to decide what to do about my data usage plan.  I'm currently at 2gb for $25 because i wanted to not feel restrained by my data package.  Because I believe consumption is behavioral, I'm no longer worried about dropping my plan down next month to the lower allotment of 200mb for $15. 

It is my advice to others jumping on the bandwagon to start high and then turn it down after you see some trending.  Some people are heavier users out of habit.  Some are lighter users out of habit.  I apparently am a lighter user and I'm OK with that.

Beavis and Butthead - They're Back

http://popdust.com/2011/07/22/beavis-butthead-jersey-shore-new-season-preview/

I'm not a fan of Family Guy.  American Dad is ok at times.  The Simpsons need to be put to rest.  South Park should have ended years ago.

I'm normally not a fan of the retarded humor and Family Guy is the one that I think is the one that best represents the genre.  That being said, I'm actually happy Beavis and Butthead are coming back.  Maybe it's the nostalgia of them that made me grin when i heard this.  Maybe it's my juvenile side that still laughs when I've got gas.  I just think the world could use a dose of simple stupid humor again because of how polarized we're getting and how vogue it is to throw political commentary into every form of media.

After finding this out, I'm grinning and I don't know why.  :)

Gnome 3 - Follow Up

Linus himself trashes Gnome 3.  The comments are originally from Google+ according to the article.

I for one ditched Fedora/Gnome and went back to Ubuntu where I'm fighting with Unity.  Unity would have pissed me off if not for encountering Gnome 3 first.  Reading this makes me feel better about my previous rant about Gnome 3 and it's epic failure.

I hate being right.

Bottled water consumption

A friend sent me link to more information on the topic of water consumption.

What caught my eye about the topic is that everyone seems to forget that they get water from their food too.  Does a person who eats salad and lots of fruits need as much water.  Theoretically no because the food they're consuming is heavy in water to begin with.

I guess what I'm focusing in on are the people who pound water all day.  It should be a gradual process.  I know people who believe they should have a specific amount drank by different times of the day and if you disrupt their routine they'll go mental.  How can this be healthy?  All they hear is "drinking water is bad for you" when i say "forcefully drinking that much water in a limited time frame is probably bad for you".  Maybe they couldn't hear me because of the sounds of water sloshing around.  :)

Most importantly on this topic are those that consume bottled water.  Go to a grocery store and stand in the soda/water isle for a couple of minutes.  You're bound to see someone come up and grab multiple cases of water.  If I'm in a more affluent part of town, it's my observation that I'll see this even more.

This brings up the bottle vs tap argument.  I'm not sure whether people are using bottled water as a status sign, or if they're lazy, or if they're that clueless and so they buy into the propaganda.

I say "status sign" because it appears that people go out of their way to show they're drinking their bottle of water everywhere that they go.  As though they're soooooo healthy that they need to flaunt that they're not putting that low brow toxic stuff in their system.  Watch them.  They display their bottles very prominently in meetings and even on their desk.  Like coffee cups of yesteryear, your bottle of water reflects what you're trying to say about your lifestyle.

I said "lazy" because there are a lot of people who use it for the convenience factor.  As soon as their done with their serving, maybe they'll even throw it in a recycling bin.  It frightens me when i see this happening in homes.  Grab the bottle because it's more convenient than actually filling a glass.  That's OK though because it'll get recycled (hopefully) when they're done and they'll grab a fresh one in a couple of hours.  Yes I'm calling you lazy if you do this.  Get over it.  You've got a million excuses but in the end you know they're pretty flimsy.

There's countless sites dedicated to the argument of bottle vs tap.  Those that are adamant about using bottled don't use them though and prefer to use the facts written on the labels or information that "someone told me a while back but i don't remember who or when" which is usually code for THIS IS BULLSHIT COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH BUT IT SOUNDS GOOD.  I find it ironic that in the easy access information age that we are in today how few people fact check stuff even after they're called out on it.

I'm not saying drinking water is bad.  That much should be obvious.  I'm saying that the hype about how much you should drink is incorrect.  I'm also saying that people need to stop buying multiple cases of bottled water at a time because they're wasting their money on a product who's packaging does more harm than good.

--------
About me:  I have a case of water in my freezer since it's summer time and I can pull a frozen bottle out and have it be cold in a couple of hours after sitting in a cooler.  I also use those frozen bottles in coolers instead of buying ice packs because as serve a dual purpose of chilling things and when they thaw I can drink them.  I strongly prefer my water to be cold.  I have a bottle on my desk every day that starts off frozen and I refill it constantly so the water stays cold as the ice melts.  I do this to cut back on my soda intake which has been known to hit 6-7 cans a day easily.  I also take my bottles home with me, fill them up from the tap and toss them in the freezer for the next day.  When they are all gone I will be using old soda bottles.  I do this because there is no reasonable source of ice cubes throughout the day for me at work.  I'm anti plastic whenever possible and work to minimize that type of packaging in my life.

You may now attack my views.

FBI Raids Hunting Down Anonymous

Courtesy of CBSNEWS.com

This is of course on the heels of Anonymous threatening to release Sun and News Of The World Emails today after defacing The Sun earlier today...

Can't help but wonder why the FBI is launching these raids.  Why the attention?

Clearly these "hackers" are a threat to national security and will bring down our freedoms and encourage rampant homosexuality and promiscuity and any other nonsense that is being spewed out by hate mongers on both sides.

The fact is yes they've been attacking very large multinational corporations lately.  The reality is it's only a matter of time before law enforcement comes after you when you've been in the headlines as much as they have been.  The fact is Anonymous is a boogie man for law enforcement to chase down and a great way generate news to draw attention away from other more pressing issues.  There are bigger problems in the world than companies like Sony being 'hacked' but law enforcement is doing what is in their best interest (assuming they want to stay employed much longer).  The global economy is unstable right now, countries in Europe are defaulting on their debts, the USA's credit is tanking, oil prices are constantly on the rise courtesy of OPEC (not directly because of BP, Exxon, or the other oil companies kids!!!), and China's economy is expanding at a rate that is not sustainable long term which can lead to a major crash in time.

Yeah.  Chasing down rogue 'hackers' makes a lot of sense.

A part of me now wants to watch the original Hackers movie and yell "Hack the planet" tonight...  :)

I have to pee

I have to pee.  Seriously.  I really need to go.

In the past couple of weeks I've started on a quest of self improvement when it comes to my diet.  I still drink like a fish and will eat the hell out of some chicken wingz.  I've always believed that you can eat anything you want as long as it's in moderation.  As part of this attempted lifestyle change I began to record what i ate. Not getting overly granular and recording portion sizes and quantity etc.  Just more or less making notes.  I try to keep track of how many Dew's I have but beyond that I'm not going to waste my time trying to figure out if i had a two servings of cookies vs three based on what the package said.  I'll worry about portion sizes another day...

I was inspired to do something like this because of something I heard on NPR a couple of weeks ago.  The topic was childhood obesity and I hope you'll forgive me for not remembering too many of the details of the show.  The nutritionist on the program said the first step she had parents do before bringing their children in was to record what they ate for two weeks.  The parents were in denial that they and their kids ate so poorly but there it was in black and white.  Attempts were made to rationalize why the kids ate hot dogs and mac n cheese every night for a week.  Most parents genuinely believe their kids eat better than they really do.  Kids don't like their veggies which is no shocker.  The parents being referenced in this show were amazed at just how badly they were feeding their kids.

This got me thinking.  I don't think i eat THAT badly.  I like my veggies.  I know i buy them when i go shopping.  I know i like to eat them when i go out.  In fact I ate veggies... last night...errr... lunch the day before... err... shit I can't remember now!

I began recording my consumption last week and I'm very much not proud of what I'm reading when i look at it.  I didn't realize how little water I've been consuming recently and it's summer when I should be consuming more!

The first lifestyle change so far isn't too drastic and gradual.  I bring a bottle of frozen water to work every day and keep filling it up through out the day so it stays cold.  Bottle is appx 16 oz and on Fri I estimate I had over four bottles (only recorded four because I'm not trying to cheat myself here).  My bladder went into overdrive!!!  Every time i turned around I had to go to the bathroom again.

A friend of mine gave me a piece of advice when it comes to increasing water consumption.  Always take your bottle with you whenever you go somewhere.  It's easier to sip then as you're going somewhere whether it's at work or out in public.  I only like water when it's very cold so i purposely have a smaller bottle.  This means it won't get warm too fast.  Also means i get through it quicker (nice morale boost).  Every time I have to go pee now I bring the bottle with me to fill up on my return back to my desk.

Aside from the constant flushing, am I noticing an effect yet after increasing the water intake in the past week?  I can't pinpoint anything one way or another yet so i can't answer this question yet.  What's most important for me is that I'm becoming more aware.  I don't call this a diet.  I call this a lifestyle improvement.  As i said before, I still drink like a fish and will tear up some chicken wings if given the opportunity to.  I'm not looking to change my entire lifestyle.  Just looking to tweak things a bit.

No joking... I have to pee again...

Nintendo DS Games

I need to dust off my DS and play some games.  The problem is, I'm having a difficult time trying to find games I want to play.  I gravitate towards the puzzle games a lot because I can play the hell out of them for a while and then put them down and not miss a beat.  I'm also open to a decent RPG.  Never did finish the last Zelda game i was playing a couple of years ago because i got to be too busy.


http://ds.ign.com/index/games.html

Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks looks promising.  Phantom Hourglass was good but never finished it.

http://ds.ign.com/objects/143/14333936.html

Sonic Rush looks good too.  I've always been a fan of Sonic.

http://ds.ign.com/objects/683/683045.html

Plants Vs Zombies just looks fun.  :)

http://ds.ign.com/objects/084/084432.html

Star Fox?
http://ds.ign.com/objects/826/826993.html

Ahhhh good ole Mega Man...
http://ds.ign.com/objects/794/794195.html

Bejeweled 3?!?!  Considering how much of my life has been sucked up by the first two, this looks bad for any prospects of me getting something useful done.
http://ds.ign.com/objects/111/111908.html

Thanks IGN.  I now have a list of games to hunt for again.  Time to load up the ole DS with fresh games and pack it away so I can have something to do while the laptop is being exploited for frontierville purposes.  :)

Now that I've wasted your time reading my ramblings, you may now go back to your regularly scheduled boredom...

Google to Retire Blogger & Picasa Brands in Google+ Push

Original Story

I can't say I'm horribly shocked that they're re-branding everything under their name.  This is both a good and bad move.  Some people may be reluctant to use some of these services for lack of a known name behind them.  On the other hand this is becoming tighter integration with other Google products which means there is less separation of services.  Although my blog costs me nothing (and generates zero revenue so far) I like the idea of it being separate from its parent company.  Realistically I know it's not but i like the appearance of it.

Is this a wise decision right now?  Yes there's the launch of Google+ and this will make that smoother but at what cost?  There is a growing sentiment that Facebook has gotten too big and is perceived as evil.  I for one am nervous about how much influence Facebook now has over its users, customers, and other technologies  that it appears to be expanding into.

I'm drawn to Google+ right now not only because it's new but because Google has advertised that it will not have the perceived down sides that Facebook has.  I've entrusted my email to Google.  They've been my search engine for years since I was on dial up and they only had one ad on their site.  I've entrusted them to advance technology with phones and their green initiatives.  They owned Blogger/Blogspot before I even dreamed of starting this.  I should be OK with this and yet I'm not sure this expansion of the brand name sits well with me.

Is Google spreading their name too far too quickly?  Is this a step in the right direction for their growth?  Should we start listening to those wearing the tin foil hats about this giant entity that is trying to be our friend so that it can exploit us?  Is it possible to trust one company more than another knowing that no successful business can ever truly have my best interests in mind?

This will be fun to reread in a couple of years.  :)

Fedora 15 - Gnome 3

These are the comments that I posted elsewhere and thought they were worth keeping.

http://ostatic.com/blog/fedora-15-released-gnome-3-looks-good

(not me)

by Enzo on May. 25, 2011

Looks good, works bad. I'm trying to give Gnome 3 a fair chance and have been using it for awhile now on a daily basis, but a few things still bug the shit out of me and plenty of other people as well.

1) Stop trying to hide all of the configuration options. How can I change my system fonts? Have to hack it. 2) Then you hide the important stuff - like how to restart the fucking system - put that in the menu option when I click my user name - why should i have to hold down the ALT key to make Suspend go to Poweroff? or logout in order to restart? 3) No real screensaver - really? Who's the dipshit that thought of that? 4) Minimize - the old minimize missing button war - i've read all of the reason behind it, but if i can still right click on the window bar and minimize the window, all of those reasons are bullshit. Put the fuckin' minimize button back on the window. 5) Accessing workspaces requires me to move my mouse to the upper left hand corner hotspot to get the desktop overview display and then all the way back to the right to select my workspace. Again, who's the dipshit that though of that? Why not create a hotspot in the upper right hand corner that brings up the workspaces? This is not that hard folks. Is anyone who works on Gnome 3 actually using Gnome 3?

It is not complete horrible, but it is not good either. There are definitely some complete morons working on this project from an overall design and usability perspective.

(me)

I agree with Enzo. Trying to turn my machine off was confusing and so i got pissed and found a terminal window. It has been off for 2 days now while i decide if i want to deal with this again. I came over to Linux so that I could customize and change things. Gnome 3 is very reluctant to let me do that.

Wasn't aware of Enzo's observation about the (lack of) screensaver and use of the Alt key.

I am a new Mac owner and I have to tell you this is not what i was looking for in my Linux desktop. I see a lot of potential in Gnome 3 but right now it's utter crap. Why would you release a version of software with so many glaring usability flaws? It feels like they were trying to push this release out the door the way Mozilla crew is pushing out FireFox and Thunderbird quicker just to inflate their release numbers.

-------

Now that I've had 24 hours to reflect on things and play with Gnome some more, I still feel the same way.  One of the old jokes about Linux is "fixing stuff is part of the fun of using it."  Bull shit.  That mindset went out the window five years ago when they got the brilliant idea to believe it could be a threat to the desktop world.  If people want to make an interface that kicks ass then they should spend the time to make it instead of churning out a half finished product and expecting everyone to put in a lot of work to finish it.  If they have a vision as to what they're trying to build then to hell with the release dates and version numbers... finish the damn product!

The other argument I've heard for years is that since it's open source it's OK that things aren't working perfectly.  You should expect it to be a bit buggy and you get what you pay for.  Sorry but that's a cop out.  Most people involved in these projects do this for a living where their code is held to a standard.  Dare I say, experienced coders would bring a level of professionalism.  I'm sure most are genuinely upset that people like me are unhappy with their product but then the entire team should not only take pride in their accomplishments but also feel ashamed of their short comings.

For what it's worth, I finally figured out how to change the background on my desktop but no chance at changing the theme colors or even a screensaver.  Took me 30 min to figure out where Firefox went when minimized it and wasn't too happy to find all 15 of my instances when i did figure it out.

Gnome 3 is failing for me right now...

Fedora 15 Install Progress

I installed Fedora 15 the other day.  Initially it looked like a good product.  The install went pretty smooth.  I have /home on a separate disk so had to specify my mount points of / (root) and /home which was to be expected.  Installer made me format / as ext4 whereas it had been ext3 in the past.  No big deal for me.  Since /home/username already existed and i chose there was a little confusion for the installer.  It apparently had to change permissions on the directory.  Finished install and ran updates.

Welcome to Gnome 3!

Yeah.  Not a fan of it out of the box.  It looks pretty.  I installed a few programs and they were able to sync up with the preexisting user data in /home/username.  Despite the different look and feel of Gnome things were starting to work again so I thought I'd give it a shot and try to get with the times.

Right now I'm hung up on trying to update the Nvidia drivers which seem to be a bigger pain than they need to be.  I tried:

• /etc/init.d/gdm stop
• killall x
• init 3

Finally got the command init 3 to kill the xserver but then had other issues which need to be researched when it's not the middle of the night and I have to work in the morning.

Another issue I'm running into is when i open up terminal and pwd, I'm not in /home/username where i should be.  I have a hunch this is the ghost of my old profile and planning on testing this by creating a different user to see if this holds true.  If so, then I'll back up important files and blast the old user and then recreate.  Sounds simple enough which is why I'm sure something will go wrong!

Meantime I'm starting to read up on Gnome 3 some more.  I couldn't save anything to my desktop which I tend to do a lot.  Not sure if this is considered normal or not.  Also had issues copying stuff from a flash drive to /home/username.  It was very awkward and not intuitive.

Game plan is to take another crack at a couple of my issues one of these evenings.  Then reinstall and take better notes as I go along.

I'm conflicted right now.  I wanted to like what I saw.  I knew things would be broken out of the box like with every other Linux distro.  Right now I have a sinking feeling in my stomach because of what I've experienced with it.  For all of the prettiness that I saw I'm not not as impressed.  KDE is quickly becoming an option and I'm even considering going in a different direction and use Kubuntu.  I want to like this creation of mine but I have a feeling that in order to save it I might be forced to destroy it.

This situation is going to take some consideration.