Closure on T-Mobile

Twenty-one days into owning an iPhone, I am still all giggley everytime I find a new feature or just simply amazed by how intuitive it is to use the phone and how creative it is. Hopefully by now everyone who has heard of the iPhone acknowledges that AT&T is the sole wireless carrier that provides services for the iPhone. I was a former T-Mobile subscriber and made the switch in a heartbeat, well almost a heartbeat - I made three calls to T-Mobile before switching over, via iTunes, to AT&T with my new iPhone.

So we received our last T-Mobile bill. Excited to see the final bill, bringing closure with T-Mobile, only to find a $200 termination fee. It's pretty cleverly described in the bill for the $200 line item - account termination fee. It doesn't state early termination, because our account was no longer in contract, so it somewhat misleads people into believing it to be either the early termination fee (which in this case they couldn't have gotten away with it - I called T-Mobile 3 times before switching to iPhone with AT&T to make sure we no longer had a contract and there was to be no fee involved in terminating the contract, the the 3 times made sure such conversation got recorded for "quality" purposes) or the account closing/termination costs - which technically do not exist if there is no valid cause for such penalty. Most people probably would have bit the bullet, but I wasn't going to let T-Mobile get away with this one.

Remembering how I was nearly harrassed during each of the three calls I made to T-Mobile to making sure IF I had switched away from T-Mobile, I was not going to be penalized, for getting deliberately transferred to a "specialist" whose is trained to (try to) talk people out of switching away from T-Mobile because of the arrival of the iPhone, I prepared my mind for another agony. Much to my delight, the T-Mobile rep that answered my call maintained diplomacy and agreed to look into the account, in detail, after I reminded him of the three calls I had made and that I knew they were being recorded. He eventually stated that there were some "discrepencies" in the account, but he does show the notes that it was agreed there was going to be no early termination fee (which by the way he stated was what the $200 was charged for). After about 10 minutes on the phone, he volunteerly took the fee off - which will take 48 to 72 hours to process - so we will see. Not about to let me off the hook that easily, he said "so I see you might have been interested in getting the iPhone, did you get it?" Funny he asked, of course I got it. I went off telling him how great the iPhone is, how it is a revolution, I actually got the admittance, for the first time by a T-Mobile customer rep, that "it's too bad T-Mobile doesn't offer the iPhone". I reminded him that T-Mobile is the sole service provider for iPhone in Germany come this fall, he followed by saying "it's too bad it's not here though". He went on by saying how he loves Apple products - he has the iPod, Shuffle, loves iTunes, and would love to play with an iPhone - true passion for Apple finally shown. We concluded the call by him asking me to reconsider T-Mobile in the future when they do have the iPhone, and I asked him to go check out an iPhone finally, we both laughed. Well, the finally thing for me to do to put our now terminated T-Mobile contract to closure is to make sure the $200 was taken off as agreed, which a situation any dignified service provider should rightfully fix.

iPhone Rocks!

The long awaited iPhone finally hit the stores today, and it was everything as promised and more! We got the 8-gig from the Tysons store a little after 7pm tonight. After playing with it, well, all night, we concluded that it is indeed amazingly intuitive, fun and easy to operate! We signed up from the iTunes website and literally took 5 minutes to enter my existing phone number to switch over from T-Mobile, and then the actual transfer was transparant to us and took exactly 30 minutes. The extra large screen real estate is great for scrolling with the fingertip swiping motion as well as ease of reading. The high resolution makes the contents so clear. The mute button allows the phone to be muted while still allowing the alarm to function usefully - excellent feature per my husband who finds his Treo nearly retarded for muting the alarm when putting the phone on mute. The 2.0 mega pixel camera works great and when docked, the picture taken on the iPhone gets snyched with iPhoto. Photos work great and the zoom in and out features enabled by pinching of two fingers are even more jaw-dropping in person. I was able to find the YouTube videos I searched for in seconds, bookmarked them for frequent viewing, and shared them with family and friends. The email setup was so easy that gmail setup took less than 1 minute, after mastering the on screen touch key board. The google maps are as good as promised; we were able to zoom in on our house in the satellite view. They sim card slot is nearly unnoticeable; the sim card tray requires merely a push of a paper clip and slides out gracefully. We tried swapping in JD's sim card with existing AT&T number but that did not work, as anticipated. The iPhone runs on OS X, so if one is familiar with Mac OS X, will find iPhone's user interface extremely familiar to use. All in all, I am extremely pleased with the iPhone. Extra memory down the road would be helpful but I am equally happy without the extra memory...and JD can't stop saying wow.

Yankees comeback

Since my last posting about the Yankees, they went on a winning streak of 9 and closed in on the Red Sox and improved to second place in AL East, untill the last three losses against the Rockies. What happened with the Rockies' sweep? High altitude? I don't see enough homeruns as should be. Veterans are making rockie mistakes and the Rocket is not performing! Perhaps it's Rockies' recent winning streak out-lucking Yankees' winning streak? The Yankees need to go back to Bronx and put on those pinstripes. But for now, let's hope they have better strategies in San Francisco.

Parallels and Windows on Mac OS X

Something wrong with this picture? Windows Explore and Mac Finder are being used in parallel in Coherence mode using Parallel. This utilizes the Parallels Desktop for Mac along with Windows XP Professional install. The average boot time is about 4 seconds and allows windows applications to run in native speed. Works great!

iLife

It was fun spending a night alone creating a video stream from the latest travel archives while the rest of my family is either watching basketball, geeking out at WWDC, or sleeping in a different time zone; what have I become...someone having fun geeking out alone.  Check out the latest stream made available for streaming and Podcasting by iWeb, created using iMovie HD from clips of short movies stored in iPhoto and audio imported from iTunes.  Yup, you guessed; together they are called iLife.

Podcast: pcast://itpc_rss.mac.com_jdman_iWeb_homemovies_podcast_rss.xml

Stream: http://web.mac.com/jdman/iWeb/HomeMoviesMP4/Movie.html

Dying to have an iPhone

It has been quite some time now that I've heard the discussion of how iPhone is going to change this, and the iPhone is going to change that, and if we only just get an iPhone, NOW. These were conversations among nations top scientists, and how they know a good piece of equipment when they spot it. June 29 is just around the corner. Three new ads have been launched by Apple Inc., each intrigue and attention grabbing. All in the while, I ask, why didn't I think of that, and I bet the rest of the cell phone industry is thinking the same thing. The questions is why didn't they think of it. Is Steve Jobs the only genius in this world, or the CEO world at least, or is he is just one of them among the many Mac geniuses that are spreadout in each Apple store? Bottom line, I trust Apple's products and can't wait to get an iPhone!

Apple and AT&T

Two stocks to bank on for the next 12 months. While the Apple stock (SYM: aapl) is already high, it's still building the momentum for the company's upcoming product release of iPhone. Speculations have it that the iPhone will reshape the mobile phone market. If you want a proven track record, just take a look at the iPod. AT&T (SYM: T) on the other hand will be picking up the windfall of the iPhone mark since its predecessor Cingular signed a 5-year exclusive deal with Apple for being the sole service provider for iPhone.

Yankees wins again

This could be the turning point for New York Yankees. Today, this marks their second win in the row against Chicago White Sox. It's starting to look rosie for the Yankees; let's hope they keep it up. :-)

Interview with a CIO

Never eat out with your colleagues before you big interview; to not admit that you could be teadious and sloppy at times.

I showed up at an interview in my sleeveless white tank top looking shirt after staining my very professional looking navy blue jacket. It was embarrasing but since it was an internal company interview, I swallowed the embarrasment and showed up on time. The hiring manager turned out to the the CIO of the group, and I thought, crap, there goes my chances.
Despite the intimidation of being interviewed by the CIO, with diminished confidence by the way I happened to have dressed, I went on with the interview, listened tentatively about what I am being asked and sold myself feveriously. Some of the questions and topics were:

- Degree and certifications
- Personality Traits
- In a project where I am in a management position, did I make decisions or collaborated with peers and engineers to come up with decisions
- What has been a challenging situation in managing someone
- If 3/4 of the job is managing and corresponding with customers and peers, sometimes on behave of the CIO, what do I see myself doing with the rest of the 1/4 of my time
- Even though it is not expected that the deputy CIO knows all subject areas, one is expected to have the high level knowledge to converse the subject
- Customer first, one needs to recognize that; be able to shape the solution for the customer by providing alternative ways to solve problems that still meet customer's needs but able to get customer to step outside of their comfort zone to understand and accept the alternative solution you have to offer; finally shape the solution/rfp around the solution your organization is able to deliver
- Pilot and evalute solution with quick turnarounds
- CIO constantly on travel and folks waiting for direction/guidance for next area to explore
- Video conferencing is being explored; expensive toys such as 9K video cameras are being use; how to fit CEO's needs for video conferencing; how to quickly apply the solution to everyone in the sector/division, eventually company wide conus and oconus
- Podcasting
- Weblog; making it easy for folks constantly on the go, such as the CEO to blog
- RSS feed; making it easy to broadcast for folks like the communications director next door (literally) to broadcast communications quicker better
- Portal; ha, time is already being spent on this one, it's an ongoing effort; CAG scheduled to go on in FY08; how to enrich content even more
- Ultimately, with a working solution, goal is to help apply implemented solutions with external customers
- Speak Easy; join, it will reap much benefits; Toastmasters also
- Growth plan; room to grow, to shape
- Executive level presentations; gotta do them with fewer slides and let folks ask questions and be able to answer them
- No micro-managing, but expecting possible results and progress
- Preference is not a senior manager but rather junior manager who has room to grow; preference is technology savvy, out-of-box thinker, able to brainstorm with
- Need to work on presentation
- People is our number one asset, don't ever count them out

This turned out to be the most motivating interview for me ever.