August 2009 – Zachary Lund

Time Warner Internet in my Studio Apartment

I moved into my apartment just over a week ago. Time Warner came out and set up my Internet in my studio apartment this morning. The process was pretty smooth. However, it would appear that my unit had the only unmarked line in the box in the basement. The cable disaster made finding the line quite the challenge.

Once the technician found the correct line, the rest was easy, and the speeds are what I expected.

Since I just need Internet for one more semester, hopefully, I won’t have any problems.

eBooks on BlackBerry

Up until recently, I have read most of my novels and books on a Palm TX handheld using TextDrive. I used PorDiBle to convert text files into PDB files that TextDrive could read.

This method worked much better when I always carried my Palm handheld with me and used it as my primary calendar and contact management device. The appeal of electronic books is that I always have it with me. Once I started using my BlackBerry to maintain everything, my Palm fell into disuse, and I no longer carried it with me. I started reading less. I needed a new solution.

I have started using Mobipocket on my BlackBerry and Stanza to convert texts. Mobipocket has a whole online store for purchasing texts, but the reader itself is free and can read non-purchased texts that I already have. Stanza can convert between plain text and the Mobipocket format. Unfortunately, Stanza is only available for Mac OS X and Windows. There are other options, but Stanza worked best.

Now I once again always carry the device with my current novel, and I can spend my free time reading instead of playing games on my BlackBerry.

Bayes Filtering in SpamAssassin

The Bayesian classifier in SpamAssassin began tagging emails a few days ago. I found this out because while messages were not marked as spam, my procmail rule started diverting all messages to my spam folder. The old rule was not particular about where the yes was and since BAYES contains yes, all emails looked like spam. The new rule only looks for the yes at the beginning.

# Old Rule
:H
* ^X-Spam-Status:.*Yes
$MAIL/spam
# New Rule
:H
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
$MAIL/spam

Now incoming spam messages contain an additional score in the spam report.

X-Spam-Report:
        *  3.5 BAYES_99 BODY: Bayesian spam probability is 99 to 100%
        *      [score: 1.0000]

I was surprised that it took the Bayes filter three months to gather enough email to begin scoring incoming email. It is a nice addition because it bumps up the spam scores enough to ensure that more messages that are spam get marked as such.

AT&T contracts are meaningless

I had a great experience on the phone with an AT&T representative when I called to transfer my number from an existing corporate plan to my own personal plan. I selected my options, and the representative explained to me that because it was a transfer, I would get a standard zero-month contract. He explained to me that I was free to change my service or transfer my number to another provider whenever I wanted to. This all went through successfully, and I was set.

Two weeks later, I noticed that my account had been slapped with an 18 month contract. When I called, AT&T had no idea why I would have had no contract, and they said that a standard transfer of service contract is 11 months. They told me that the first representative I spoke with was mistaken and that there is no record of my zero-month contract. Luckily I got my contract bumped down to 11 months; however, it doesn’t explain what happened to the zero-month contract.

Edit: 11 months is the standard length for a transfer of service. However, I did not agree to that over the phone. If they can slap me with a contract without any change in service or without my acceptance, their word and their contract are meaningless.