Signing Up for Net10 Cell Phone Service

I’ve written before about MVNOs, the cell phone providers who lease airtime from Cingular, Verizon, and Sprint. I decided that my Sprint PCS Vision plan was way too expensive. I don’t use the Internet option much at all now that I’ve got a Boingo account and the 2,000 minutes per month is far more than I ever come close to using. Thus it was time to do some shopping.

After visiting some online forums, I discovered Net10 (and have written about it before), an MVNO which has one of the most affordable plans around. The cost for calls is 10 cents per minute, period. No contracts, monthly fees or daily minimums, just a dime a minute. As opposed to other services, Net10’s minutes can be bought in quantites which last all year. I can buy a card from them providing 1500 minutes and keep them fora whole year. Thus, my monthly cellphone bill can be as low as $12.50 if that’s all the minutes I need a year. Instead, my usage is about 300 minutes per month, which equals (duh) $30 per month. That’s less than half of what I’m currently paying for Sprint!

The phones aren’t flashy, which to me is a good thing since I don’t care to have to lug around a PDA/camera phone/rocket launcher when I need to talk. The battery life should be pretty lengthy without those add-ons, too. The underlying cell phone service is provided by Cingular and T-Mobile, so the coverage is good.

I bought a reconditioned Motorola V171 from Net10 to try them out. Cost was $40. This flip phone has a color screen and is fairly easy to use. The remaining minutes are displayed on the screen so I know what I have as well as when they expire. It has support for polyphonic ringtones, in case I ever go insane and want them for some reason.

My biggest beef with the phone is that the volume on calls is a bit weak. I had trouble hearing Kelly when I took a call from her while I was driving. I thought this was a fatal flaw so I called their support number to return the phone. A nice woman in Belize answered the call and took down all my information. Even though I told her I wanted to switch to a Nokia phone, Net10 sent me an identical V171 in return! I was going to send both of them back when I decided to give the new phone a spin. It turns out the volume wasn’t turned up to the highest level, which makes a difference. Also, I reasoned, if I’m talking while driving I should be using a headset, anyway. I bought a headset and now everything seems fine.

My other beef with the V171 is that the phone just doesn’t seem to fit my ear. Motorola designed the earpiece to be totally flat, which doesn’t match any human ear I’ve ever seen. Thus you can press it against your ear and never get a good seal around it, nor feel comfortable talking on it. Once again, the headset saves the day.

To summarize, I’m happy so far with the Net10 service. I’m marginally happy with the phone. Given what I’ve spent on the phone so far, I don’t have much room to complain. Oh, by the way, the phones come with free airtime, so my $40 bought not only a phone but 300 free minutes, too.

I’m porting my Sprint number to my new Net10 service now. I won’t miss Sprint’s fat phone bill nor its now-redundant Vision internet service. Net10 may be as close to a perfect cell phone service as I’ve seen yet.

Grounded Weekend

When I was a kid, being grounded was a bad thing. Being the daddy in a cool family has turned that upside down, though. I had a nice weekend to become grounded and quite enjoyed it.

Friday was Kelly’s birthday, so we went out to dinner with the help of a neighbor who volunteered to take the kids for a while. We went to a local restaurant near the local mall. Bad move. The service sucked and the food was only marginally better. Atmosphere was zero, too. At least we didn’t invest much time in it and could head home to take in a movie.

The flick was The Da Vinci Code, which I understand everyone else on the planet has already seen. I thought it was interesting – mainly due to Tom Hanks’s excellent acting – but I found myself squirming and checking my watch well before it ended. There were some things too implausable to for me to maintain my “suspension of disbelief.” Like inexplicably carting around the goon that had just tried to kill you, for instance. Or a priest casually taking a cellphone call at 40,000 feet. Or a junkie takinig money to walk away from a fix. On the good side, Ron Howard is getting much better as a director: this movie didn’t seem nearly as wooden as some of his others. Overall, I give it 2.5 stars out of five.

Saturday morning I cooked the family a breakfast of pancakes. Then I went to the local Big Box Electronics Retailer and picked up a new car stereo for Kelly’s Oddity. The CD player refused to play CDs, so I reasoned we could buy a new deck and get free installation for less than the cost of taking the old one to the dealer and having them troubleshoot it. I wasn’t planning to install it myself but the professional installers balked when they saw the navigation system in the van. They said if they installed it the navigation system wouldn’t work right. The installation was probably the easiest of the half-dozen I’ve ever done but what they told me was true: the navigation system doesn’t talk through the stereo anymore. I figure I can figure that out at a later time: not having music in the car when the kids are riding in it is a much bigger problem!

Cleaned out the leaves on the lawn with the leafblower Saturday evening. Then got cleaned up and visited my parents’ house. My sister’s family was visiting from Shelby and everyone seemed to be pretty happy. I found myself feeling pretty emotional that night, just enjoying everyone’s company. I was sad when we had to go. I guess when I sneaked upstairs to look through a few photo albums from twenty years ago, I started to realize just how quickly time flies. Too often I don’t make the most of every minute of my life and that is a crime for which I can’t forgive myself. I’ve only got one life (this time around, at least) and its up to me to enjoy it.

This morning Kelly mentioned needing some time to get some work done. I realized today is the first Sunday of the month, so my solution was to cart the kids off to the New Hope Valley Railway for a train ride. Kelly decided to join us so we threw some snacks together and headed off to Bonsal.

As usual, we had a great time. If the train wasn’t enough, Santa and Frosty the Snowman were there. We found seats in a caboose’s cupula where we could watch the rails and stay warm at the same time. A bonus was hearing the steam whistle on Engine 17 blow throughout the day. There’s something magical about the sound of a steam whistle!

Hallie looked positively exhausted after the train ride but wound up sleeping only an hour. Kelly was anxious to keep working so I entertained Hallie by pulling out a deck of cards and teaching her “Go Fish.” She caught on quickly though she had trouble fanning her cards to see her hand. It’s so fun to watch her pick up new games and skills – mainly because she does it so effortlessly. I wonder if its too early to start her on chess?

I again stepped up to the “dinner” plate and cooked up a tasty spaghetti for the family. The kids and I wrestled a bit before bedtime, which went smoothly. Now its time for me to finish up a few chores before retiring tonight myself. The upcoming workweek doesn’t excite me much but I do have plenty of upcoming visits with family and friends to keep me happy.

Thanks to y’all for reading, too. It’s nice to have an audience sometimes.

A Critique of Children’s Music

As a musical guy and a father, I’ve learned to appreciate the children’s music my kids listen to. Here are my thoughts on those CDs we play around the Turner household.

They Might Be Giants’s No! album is good enough, but it doesn’t stay with you. Some songs are annoying enough to shelf the whole CD. I’m a big fan of TMBG, but the overall tone of No! is a little disjointed to be a long-time favorite.

Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer can write catchy, clever songs but they’re aimed more towards the kids than the kids-and-adults music I prefer. If you’re going to have to listen to songs with your kids, you might as well enjoy them, too. There is too much children’s chorus in the songs for my liking. Still, songs like “A Pirate’s Life” are clever enough to put smiles on even the crabbiest parents. Arr arr arr arr!

The Wiggles are non-starters. Annoying times ten! I don’t like music that talks down to my kids, which is what their music seems to do. While I wish Greg Page, otherwise known as Wiggles Yellow, a speedy recovery from his disease, I wouldn’t miss the Wiggles if they never played another annoying note.

Laurie Berkner is in my view the queen of children’s music. Catchy, clever, silly songs with simple guitar accompaniment. Many of these songs were the only things we could decipher from Travis when he was first learning to talk. I can listen to Laurie Berkner all day and not want to pull my (remaining) hair out. That’s quite a feat for children’s music.

Tom Paxton, though, is a brilliant children’s music musician whom I think tops them all. Some CDs are better than others, though. I was indifferent to the first Tom Paxton CD I heard, Your Shoes, My Shoes. It’s got decent songs, but Tom’s singing usually aims for kids rather than kids-and-adults. Still, I love the deliciously morbid writing in The Worms Come Crawling Underground. Even the childrens’ chorus doesn’t take away from it.

Then there’s Tom’s 1992 release I’ve Got A Yo-Yo. I consider it the best children’s CD I have ever heard. This one doesn’t talk down to the kids. It’s good, not just good for kids. It’s silly without being goofy. Oops and The Crow’s Toes are my current favorites. Plenty of variety in musical styles are on this disc, too, so you don’t get tired of it.

So to the moms and dads out there: who am I overlooking? Got any favorites you’d like to mention?

Birthday Girl

Someone special is having a birthday today. Kelly, my babe of a wife, is celebrating another year on planet Earth and I’m fortunate to be sharing it with her.

Happy birthday, Sweetie!

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Green Machine

After reading this post on Treehugger about these ads, I decided I needed to apply this to my own computing habits. I have a PC in the house which does nothing but backup my other machines. Though this backup job runs at 11 PM every night, I used to keep the PC running 24 hours a day.

Obviously, this is wasteful, so I poked around in the PC’s bios and found a watchdog option which will boot the computer by a clock setting. Now the PC boots right before 11 PM, does its backup chores, and shuts itself down after half an hour. Numerous trees saved, untold pounds of carbon dioxide saved from the atmosphere, and a quieter house, too! Continue reading →

Benefit Concert For The Maxwells

Y’all might remember Tom Maxwell’s visit to MT.Net a few months ago. Just found out via David Menconi’s blog that Tom’s 3 year old son Esten was diagnosed with leukemia last month. Esten is responding well but the medical bills are adding up, so a benefit concert is being held in Pittsboro at the Scoreboard December 9th.

I will be there to donate and encourage you to do the same. As a parent of two kids I have an appreciation for the terror leukemia must be for the Maxwells. I hope that Esten recovers completely and my thoughts go out to him and his family. Continue reading →

TSA: Thinking Shouldn’t Apply

So I was going through my umpteenth security screening at the airport when I realized yet another thing very stupid about the “liquid limit” busywork …er, screening the TSA is performing.

Each traveler is limited to 3.4 oz containers which fit in a 1 quart bag. Screeners will pitch an absolute hissy fit if any container is over the 3.4 oz size, yet they all must fit in a one-quart bag. If you can carry a whole quart of explosives (or the far more deadly shampoo), what’s the point of the 3.4 ounce size restriction? Who cares if your liquids are in small bottles if they can all total one quart? Why not just say you’re limited to a total of one quart of explosive shampoo and be done with it?

Sheesh. It’s times like these I wonder if the TSA is nothing more than Bush’s jobs creation program.

Go, Jim Webb!

What I would’ve given to be a fly on the wall during this exchange! Senator-elect Jim Webb mixed it up with President Bush today during an informal meeting between new senators and the President. Check out this exchange:

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,� Bush retorted, according to the source.

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.

I’ve admired Webb after reading about him in The Nightingale’s Song. I’m glad he’s not backing down from the President. People like Jim Webb are just what Dubya needs – someone to wake him up from the fantasy world he’s been living in the past six years.

Going Ape Over Older Females

I was amused to read today’s story (ok, actually last week’s story but the News and Observer either didn’t see it until now or is too cheap to pay for Washington Post material when its fresh) that male chimpanzees prefer older females to younger ones. Most versions of this wire story start off saying how different chimps are from human males, since human males clearly prefer younger women (the USA Today version is the exception). Read the version that ran in the N & O:

Chimpanzees may be our closest biological relatives, but male chimps appear to differ from male humans in one striking way — they clearly prefer older females, according to new research.

And the USA Today version has this to say:

Human males, of course, generally dig younger women, as the Internet-clicking hordes of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan fans demonstrate.

Um, what kind of idiot human males are they talking to? Only idiots prefer younger women.

It’s no contest. Britney Spears? Lindsay Lohan? The “Tart Twins?” You’ve gotta be kidding me. Anyone “clicking” on these two bimbos are either the same age as the girls or younger, and hopefully one day they’ll grow up and know better.

I’ve ranted before about the concentration-camp look models sport today and how horrible I think it is. The Huffington Post commented today about the recent death of Yet Another Anoxexic Model. Sure its sad when people die, but it’s sad to think that the starving look is anywhere near attractive. Beauty doesn’t always mean thin and young, though.

As Prince sang in Kiss, “women, not girls rule my world.” That’s the case with me, too. I like women with beauty, curves, and brains. If they’ve got wisdom and the sexiest thing of all, self-confidence, then they’re absolutely irresistable. Youth? Not so much.

You don’t have to be young to be beautiful. Look at Priscilla Presley, Joan Collins, Sharon Stone, Julianne Moore, or Susan Sarandon. Decades after becoming a phenomenon, Christie Brinkley still looks fantastic. These women have that spark that only comes with age. They age like fine wine.

I doubt the young girls that are being paraded before us will be around long from now. If all you’ve got is youth, ladies, you’re fighting a losing battle.

Those chimps know what they’re doing.

Who Killed The Electric Car?

Kelly and I enjoyed watching the movie Who Killed The Electric Car? [warning: flash] two nights ago. I was fascinated by the story it told of the incredible GM EV1 car and how GM couldn’t wait to pull it off the streets. The EV1 seemed like the perfect electric vehicle: fast, sexy, and decent range. In spite of enthusiastic demand, GM took posession of every car at the end of its 3 year lease and sent it off to the crusher.

I thought the movie was surprisingly fair in this controversy. GM looks like the bad guy – clearly appearing to be threatened by the success the EV1 was starting to show. Had the electric car caught on, it would have instantly exposed cars with internal combustion engines as the dinosaurs they truly are.

While I was in South Bend two weeks ago, I took a moment to tour the excellent Studebaker museum, showcasing the beautiful automotive creations of this now-defunct car company. Like all car manufacturers of the early 1900s, Studebaker’s first cars were electric, with a range of 60-70 miles and speed of 25 MPH: plenty fast for the unimproved roads on which they drove. Their huge advantage at the time was that their competition – the internal combustion engine – was unreliable, loud, and smelly. Since carriages were largely open-air, these last two drawbacks made electric cars seem to be the clear choice. Its been 100 years since electric cars debuted in America and I’m still waiting for mine.

The movie openly mocked the car manufacturer’s research into hydrogen-powered vehicles, and for good reason. Hydrogen fuel-cell cars cost more than $1 million. Hydrogen is the lightest element in the universe, thus its the least-dense gas. It provides poor energy density per volume, making any hydrogen-powered vehicles need highly-pressurized tanks to provide any range. In the movie Joseph J. Romm, author of The Hype About Hydrogen, takes apart the auto industry’s hype about hydrogen, pointing out that by the time any hydrogen infrastructure get put in place other technologies will have left hydrogen in the dust.

I read today that Ford is unveiling their first hydrogen vehicle this week. Its hydrogen tank is pressurized to 10,000 pounds per square inch, twice the pressure of other hydrogen cars. Can you imagine what that would look like in a collision?

The movie made me pine for the past when electric cars ruled the roads. Perhaps someday they will again once people realize there’s a better way to travel.