Of course now that I’m in Baltimore, my phone has decided to stop working. Murphy’s Law.

My 5600 is reporting “invalid or missing sim card” - even I was able to receive a call just fine this morning.

ARRGHHH.

Update 730pm: So since I wrote the above, the following comedic sequence of events happened:

0. I tried cleaning the SIM card contacts with my shirt, toilet paper, tissue, hotel towel. I even tried the old NES technique of blowing on it. No luck.

1. I called Cingular. They ran me through some basic troubleshooting and told me they would send me a new SIM card - but it would take 2-5 days to receive. Argh!

2. I thought about buying a pre-paid SIM card at a local store as a temporary measure. But my phone is locked. So I went to Erik’s Unlocking a 5600 page. Lo and behold, you need a working SIM card to unlock your phone. Argh!

3. I took a taxi to the local Cingular (formerly AT&T Wireless) store to see if they had any techs or extra AT&T Wireless SIM cards. Nope. None. No techs, and no SIM cards for an AT&T Wireless customer like me. Seeing my problem, one of the sales guys took the SIM card, and rubbed it vigorously with his thumb. (Actually it was more of a vigorous schmearing action.) And it worked! Argh! Unbelievable!

4. I made a quick call to verify that it worked. I checked email to verify that it worked. It all worked! All it took was some of his thumb grease.
But wait… why isn’t this post over? Because…

5. 2 hours later, I look at my phone and its searching for a signal… in downtown Baltimore. What the heck? I reboot and it says that I am now Denied. Argh!

Remember Step 2? I’m guessing that when they placed the order for a new SIM card, they cancelled my existing one.

So now I’m back to Square 1 - no cell phone service for the next 2-5 days. Argh!

Don’t call me. And don’t leave any messages.

Good thing I had some free time in my hotel room to catch up on some blogs… otherwise I might not have noticed that Mark tagged me.

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Program Manager at Microsoft
2. Network Engineer Intern at Dresdner at 75 Wall St — Dresdner is a giant bank in Germany that you’ve never heard of.
3. Student Residential Network Coordinator at Johns Hopkins — Where I would hunt down people who stole IP addresses (they were $180 a year), earning the name “NARC” amongst my CS colleagues.
4. Lowly factory worker in the New York City garment district — Including a 2 week stint at a warehouse in East Newark, NJ. Not just Newark… East Newark.

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Wayne’s World
2. Lost in Translation
3. Das Boot
4. The Crow

Four Places I’ve Lived:
1. Mountain View-Sunnyvale, CA
2. Baltimore, MD
2. New Hye Park-Great Neck, NY
3. Queens, NY (Though I’m originally from Brooklyn. People find this very surprising for reasons I don’t understand.)

Four TV Shows I Love:
1. Family Guy
2. The Shield
3. 24
4. Drawn Together

Four Places I’ve Vacationed:
1. Hong Kong
2. Las Vegas
3. Grand Cayman
4. London

Four of my favourite dishes:
1. Chicken Parm Hero from Hero Boy.
2. Peter Luger - They only have 1 dish there. Don’t ask for a menu unless you want to look lame. 3. Lobster at Per Se
4. Salted Chicken - available at many Cantonese style Chinese restaurants, like Kirin.

Four sites I visit daily:
1. FlyerTalk
2. Fidelity.com - and then shake my head.
3. WSJ
4. Mark was right - I just look at my feeds.

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Any W Hotel again.
2. First Class on a Cathay flight again.
3. New York.
4. At my desk at work. Seriously.

Four bloggers I am tagging:
1. Omar Shahine
2. Dan Steingart
3. Jenny
4. Andy Ruff

So here I am in Baltimore. I was thinking of using Skype but it turns out I left my headset back home.

Fortunately I brought my Jabra BT800 headset! And my Toshiba M200 has Bluetooth!

I just pair them, and go… right?

Wrong. I pair them and it is registered as an audio device. And Windows XP stops at that. Some searching on the web finds this:

vitaero - Use your Bluetooth headset with Skype

Use your Bluetooth headset with Skype
Products | vitaero
vitaero is a software application that seamlessly connects a Bluetooth? headset to SkypeTM on your PC so that you can manage your calls with the headset buttons. The software works with all popular Bluetooth headsets.

Just like a mobile phone - vitaero maintains a low-power connection to the headset to preserve battery life while not on a call and then automatically senses the need to switch on the audio - so you are talking through Skype with the touch of a button.

No more wires! …now you don’t have to be tied to your PC when making Internet phone calls… vitaero makes Skype wireless.

Huh? I need a for-pay product to use my bt headset as a headset on my PC?

Some more searching finds this:

Rufan-Redi: Jabra BT800: whisper sweet nothings in my ear

The BT800 pairs like a charm to my Powerbook (running OSX 10.4) and I was able to use the headphone both with Skype flawlessly as well as listen to iTunes (admittedly in only one ear) as I wandered about.

Under WinXP on my Vaio it’s however a different matter. The WinXP SP2 Bluetooth drivers while nice and stable are not exactly feature rich. They let you connect a to a cellphone to use it as a modem but don’t seem to support any audio/headset profiles. I can only hope that will be improved before Vista rolls around.

ARRGHHH.

I certainly do hope that this is fixed in Vista!

As Omar pointed out, Apple had the bluetooth experience nailed like 3 years ago!

I’m getting ready to head out to Baltimore to attend this:

Career Center | JHU Career Fairs

Upcoming Career Fairs at Johns Hopkins
Science and Technology Career Fair
Thursday, February 16, 2006

Feel free to drop by the Microsoft booth to say hello!

TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows XP/2000 and Linux

Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows XP/2000/2003 and Linux
Main Features:
Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.

Encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a device, such as USB flash drive.

Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.

Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:

1) Hidden volume (steganography – more information may be found here).

2) No TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data).

Encryption algorithms: AES-256, Blowfish (448-bit key), CAST5, Serpent, Triple DES, and Twofish.
Mode of operation: LRW (CBC supported as legacy).

Based on Encryption for the Masses (E4M) 2.02a, conceived in 1997.

Sounds interesting! Now if only I can find my USB pocket drive…

Apparently there was a record setting blizzard in New York.

Well, what’s a New Yorker to do with 2 feet of snow?

Newsday.com - Photos: Blizzard of 2006

Susan Lacina (L) and Franco Pantoni (R) sit on a bench in New York’s Central Park drinking coffee and eating bagels with dogs Bo, Spike and Ginger.

Carry on, of course.

I was at Panera for lunch this afternoon in Cupertion with my gf.

This is the second time I’ve been there, and frankly, I don’t get what all the hype about Panera is. Maybe I’m just getting the wrong things, or that I keep not bringing my laptop, but I just don’t see why there’s so much buzz about it.

I had a roast beef sandwich and, well, frankly at $6.xx, I could’ve gotten a much better one elsewhere. The sad part is that the bread on this sandwich was the worst part of the sandwich.

Compounding my gripe was the service I experienced there today. At Panera, you first order and pay, and then get a buzzer to let you know when your food can be picked up. I ordered and paid.

5 minutes went by.
10 minutes went by.
15 minutes went by.
20 minutes went by.
24 minutes went by. I had enough. This was a Saturday afternoon at 2pm!

I went to the food pick up area to inquire what happened to my order. Well, it turned out that it had been waiting there for a while! Why? Because the cashier entered the wrong pager number - instead of entering a number, she entered “2P” which could not be handled by the food pickup area.

Ok, it’s bad that the cashier entered 2P when the system expects a number (and that the system doesn’t reject it!), but it’s even worse that the food pickup area simply give up when they see an error like that. That’s just broken.

In conjunction with the mediocre food, I doubt I’ll be going back anytime soon.

Want to try out Windows Live Messenger? (The next incarnation of MSN Messenger.) Just leave a comment - be sure to leave an email address.

I think I can give out 10 today. So first 10 wins!

ALL GONE. Please keep checking http://www.decheung.com for the latest news