Info For Those Considering AT&T's Microcell

I wanted to send this out in case others are considering purchasing AT&T's Microcell.  Before this becomes an "AT&T stinks" thread, let me preface that my particular issue is with my apartment.  It's a proven dead zone for AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon.  Also note that the Microcell only works with AT&T 3G phones.

Yesterday, I purchased the Microcell from the AT&T store in Cary.  After taxes, it was about $162.  The sales rep also informed me that if I did sign up with the $20/month "unlimited minutes" Microcell plan at the time of purchase, there was a $100 mail in rebate for the Microcell.

After some issues trying to set me up with the rebate deal (a Microcell with 5 months of unlimited minutes?), we found out my account wasn't eligible since it was created in the Washington, DC Metro area.  The deal is only good for plans created in these trial markets.  This also goes for the ability to purchase the $20/month for unlimited minutes. The sales person did say that they've been told the Microcell was going to be further rolled out in January, and I'd be able to get the $20/month unlimited minutes plan then (sadly, minus the $100 rebate). However, the Microcell itself only has geographical constraints, so it would still work in my apartment.

Once I got home, my set up was pretty easy.  The only caveat is that the Microcell needs to be able to get a GPS signal.  That meant I couldn't place the Microcell where I really wanted to in my apartment.  Once it was powered on and connected, it took about 90 minutes for the Microcell to connect, register with AT&T, get its GPS signal, and be ready to go. When it was online and ready, I received an SMS message saying something to the equivalent of "Thanks! You're Microcell is ready."

I now have full signal in my apartment (as opposed to none).  A few test calls and text messages worked fine as well.  I haven't tried web access over Microcell, since I use my wi-fi with my iPhone.  You can have up to 10 phones that can connect to your Microcell.  The numbers have to be added to your online AT&T account management page for others to be able to use it.  Right now, it's just my wife's and my cell phone.

For DBA's, new blog to follow

An old co-worker of mine has started The Bungling DBA blog. Even though we now live on separate coasts, he and I are forever bound together as Lunch Twins. I'm not sure if this blog is also a bit of friendly ribbing at my expense or not, but I applaud him for starting a tech blog and look forward to his updates.

Server "uptime" bragging

I recently saw a blog post about someone showing their server having an uptime of over 400 days, and wanting other readers to reply with some of their larger uptimes. Quite a few people obliged, and the numbers were in the hundreds of days. This made me think, "Is this really a "good thing" anymore?"

Some questions that come to my mind when I see servers with long uptimes are

1.) Are patches being applied? There are a lot of security and performance updates that are released within a year. Some may not be critical, but are you being responsible and diligent in keeping your server up to date and secure?

2.) Does the server need to be up for so long because it is a single point of failure for a critical service? Hardware gets cheaper and cheaper, and many services can be loadbalanced or clustered. With the popularity of virtual machines, even more so. If this service experiences a failure, will your customers or users notice? How long will it take to restore its functionality?

3.) Do you know if the server will restart correctly in the event something causes a reboot? This could be unexpected, like a hardware or power failure; or expected, like applying kernel updates. Over a long period of time, a lot of small changes can happen that could cause startup scripts to break, but would go undetected until you have to restart. Or, your hardware just might not want to go through a restart for whatever whacky reason.

I guess what I'm saying is, having regular maintenance reboots aren't a "bad thing." Yeah, it used to look cool to have a server up for 600 days, but I don't think it's really worth it now.

Free download of SnagIt (through 6/5/2009)

Some of you may like to take screen shots for documentation, blog posts, or other troubleshooting info exchange. One product I've used that is more useful than Ctrl+PrintScrn or Alt+PrintScrn is SnagIt. Until 6/5/2009 5PM EST, they are providing free download and registration key for their SnagIt 7.2.5.

http://www.techsmith.com/Covermount/covermount.asp?ID=8

Note this is for PC only, and is not compatible with Windows Vista.

Rumor: iPhone and SlingPlayer over 3G without Jailbreak

I've overheard a couple rumors that users have been able to use the SlingPlayer application with their iPhone over 3G (as opposed to Wi-Fi) without having to jailbreak their phone. Apparently, when they connected their iPhone using a Cisco VPN solution, they were able to use the SlingPlayer application. It got me thinking if this rumor is true, would this trick work with another type of VPN server that is compatible with the iPhone? Perhaps running a PPTP server at home, such as Poptop?

I haven't been able to confirm or deny this, since I'm not willing to pay $30 for the iPhone app, and I'm not sure if it will work with my original SlingBox, but I wanted to share for those that would be interested.

Monkey - House: A Big F-U to GoDaddy

Heads up to those that, like me, trust their domain registrations with GoDaddy.

Monkey - House: A Big F-U to GoDaddy

It's ridiculous what they can do when your domain lapses. I guess I got distracted by their advertising.

Getting the VMware Boot/POST screen

I was trying to re-kickstart an install of a Linux server in my VMware cluster, but I couldn't get the VMware Boot/POST screen so I could choose the PXE network install option. I also was having a rough time with my Google search queries to find the answer. Since I had a tough time finding it, I thought I would write it here, so if anything, I could find it again.

I had to modify my .vmx file for my virtual machine and add the line

bios.bootDelay = "10000"

The numeric value is the number of seconds the POST/Boot screen is shown. So in my example, this would be 10 seconds, which deceptively goes by pretty quick.