AT&T: A ten-year customer says goodbye

 food for thought, rant, technology  No Responses »
May 102011
 

I just moved into a new apartment where the AT&T reception is, well, atrocious. Still, I like AT&T, so I’m dragging my feet to switch to Verizon (or something else).

Today, I spoke in live chat to some AT&T employee. I believe the name was Monica Garnett but I could be wrong — and it probably doesn’t matter. My issue was that I didn’t seem to have a mailbox for my phone number. She says my data plan is unsupported for smart phones.

… Wait, what? I’ve been using this data plan for over a year with this phone. Maybe I never got voicemail, but who cares! It WORKED. I had unlimited text and unlimited data. Now, yes, I know, this plan had been removed and AT&T wasn’t offering it anymore, but I am an existing customer, I get the perk of keeping that, right?

… No. I was told I could switch to their 200Mb/month or 2Gb/month plan, which I did, but what I wasn’t told is that THESE PLANS DO NOT INCLUDE MESSAGING.

Now, I want to fix this. I got screwed by a company, big whoop, whatever, I’ll just limit myself a little. THE WEBSITE DOES NOT GIVE ME REASONABLE OPTIONS. I can get unlimited text, or unlimited text with any mobile-to-mobile calling, or 1000 texts.

I could pay $15 for 200 megs and $10 for 1000 texts, and then I’d have $25 — which is, $5 less than unlimited data and unlimited texts. Huh. NO.

I could pay $25 for 2Gb and $10 for 1000 texts, or $20 for unlimited texts. So .. $35 or $45? NO.

Seriously? So I have to pay MORE now to have LESS than I used to have? Well, goodbye, AT&T. Guess who’s going to go say hi to another phone service provider tomorrow?

 Posted by Trevoke at 10:13 pm

Work and martial arts

 food for thought  No Responses »
May 102010
 

Funny how, when I’m busy, I stop updating this blog, isn’t it.

I’m learning a good amount on HTTP, Perl (specifically CGI) and working on using TDD with Ruby/Rails: it’s a mindset.

Regarding martial arts, sensei helped me figure out that my punches are all wrong, and the issue has been traced to lower back muscles. Thankfully, I’ve got tons of subway time now, so I can practice standing. For those of you who don’t study martial arts… That last sentence is not a joke.

On an unrelated note: I always enjoy the fact that ‘martial arts’ is commonly mistyped as ‘marital arts’. I knew the two were similar (*grin*), but some sentences are downright hilarious.

 Posted by Trevoke at 10:25 am  Tagged with: ,

Inter-array permutations in Ruby

 food for thought, ruby  No Responses »
Dec 172009
 

I don’t really have a better name for this. It’s also not completely clean, but it works. I had, almost a year ago (362 days ago), written a blog post about lexicographic permutations. That was about permutations of elements within one array.
Someone on ruby-forum asked about permutations between multiple arrays. I found something in C#, which I was happy to transcribe to Ruby and tweak a little.

def array_permutations array, index=0
  # index is 0 by default : start at the beginning, more elegant.
  return array[-1] if index == array.size - 1 # Return last element if at end.
  result = []
  array[index].each do |element| # For each array
    array_permutations(array, index + 1).each do |x| # Permute permute permute
      result << "#{element}, #{x}"
    end
  end
  return result
end

So, we get this:

first = ['one', 'two']
second = ['three', 'four']
third = 'five', 'six']
result = array_permutations [first, second, third]
=> ["one, three, five", "one, three, six", "one, four, five", "one, four, six", "two, three, five", "two, thre
e, six", "two, four, five", "two, four, six"]

Magic!

——
Edit – of course, my solution is hackish, and someone came up with a quicker and more elegant solution:

def fancy_array_permutation array
  return array[0] if array.size == 1
  first = array.shift
  return first.product( fancy_array_permutation(array) ).map {|x| x.flatten.join(" ")}
end

This gives the same result as above.

 Posted by Trevoke at 12:51 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Why do I study martial arts?

 food for thought, Martial Arts  2 Responses »
Oct 032009
 

I am watching Rocky III and IV (the only ones I really like), and the driving theme is the power of the human spirit. Rewatching it now, I see a lot of other ideas. They’re not particularly hidden, but I never really noticed them before. This started to make me think about my choices.
Continue reading »

 Posted by Trevoke at 5:28 pm  Tagged with:

Christopher Moore’s Lamb

 food for thought  No Responses »
Jun 272009
 

Well, I just finished the book. Apparently I do that with a lot of books – finish them at the wee hours of the morning.
“Alright.. I have half the book left to go.. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”
“Alright.. I’ve got a quarter of the book left to go…”
“Well, only 35 pages…”

So, it’s 2:30 am and in less than 8 hours I have to be beating up little kids.
Raven recommended Lamb by Christopher Moore.

I was really happy to have picked it up, and enjoyed reading about Jesus Christ as a child, and then as things evolved, I first really liked reading about the eastern religions. Then I realized things didn’t fit. Some things about which I’m too young and stupid to have a sense of humor (like chronology and History) weren’t right. There were some absolutely terrible puns.
Then it hit me that this idea of his wasn’t really new – I’d read something quite similar in one of Aleister Crowley’s books : Meditation Give it a read.

In the end, all the magic was gone from the book, and while I did enjoy the way it was written, and how well everything is put together, and how believable everything is.. It had become just a story.

I don’t know what to think of the fact that I didn’t get any new spiritual concepts from this book; I was kinda hoping I’d get something new. On a personal note, as I’ve thought and written somewhere before, I think now’s the time for me to -do-.. Enough with the theorizing.

Thankfully, there’s an epilogue in which Christopher Moore explains that he had to play with History and chronology, as well as scriptures and accepted “knowledge”, to get things to fit the way he wanted them. It’s not perfect and he apologizes.
There’s even a second epilogue, because I bought a special edition (looks neat!), and he explains how he did it all, his trip to Israel, his thoughts during the trip…

Overall, I must admit, I’d probably recommend the book – it makes one smile, definitely -, but the epilogues really gave me a lot of respect for the author. And that was before he self-proclaimed a “not particularly devout Buddhist with Christian tendencies”.

 Posted by Trevoke at 1:46 am

Two videos – a change in the world?

 food for thought  No Responses »
Mar 312009
 

Those two videos have been brought to my attention within maybe two weeks of each other, and I hate thinking of random coincidences.. So here they are, together so I can find them again in several years.
Playing for change: Stand by me
Where the hell is Matt?

The first one fills my heart with a warm feeling – the song was recorded by all these people around the world simultaneously (or so they say, but it sure is well edited in any case).
The second one brings tears to my eyes, I’m not sure why.. I’ll let you guys watch it

 Posted by Trevoke at 10:01 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

Who follows who?

 food for thought, Martial Arts, sparring  No Responses »
Mar 262009
 

In the past couple of weeks, I’d gotten to spar progressively harder with a blue belt who is twice my age, but has been in dojos where sparring and self-defense were more important than kata. As a result, I consider him somewhat dangerous to spar with.. And, well, I let myself get caught up. I stopped being the watcher..
I hid behind the excuse that I was just sparring as hard as he wanted to spar, and so it just escalated.
Yesterday I took a different approach; I resolved to work on what I wanted to work, which turns out to be distance/range evaluation and shifting.. And I sparred at half-speed. He followed my speed, only speeding up a little as he got into it. I did not.
I asked him after sparring what he thought of the first minute or so of sparring with me, and he said he didn’t remember much.. But it enlightened me to hear “At first, I always take a few seconds to see if we’re going hard or soft, and then I get going”.
Here I was, thinking I was following him, and here he was, thinking he was following me! It sure is a good thing I took a step back from the vicious cycle.

 Posted by Trevoke at 8:36 pm

(Lexicographic) Permutations in Ruby

 food for thought, ruby  1 Response »
Dec 202008
 

Taking the code from this other blog … It’s pretty elegant Ruby!

I won’t waste your time repeating what the guy wrote in his blog – you’re welcome to go read it. I just felt that I should help spread a little this elegant implementation of the standard permutation algorithm, fixing a small bug within it in the process. If, like me, you have issues understanding how to use this, well – you have to use this function and call a block of code on it. It runs the block of code on each permutation it finds.

def permutations array
  if array.size < 2
    yield array
  else
    array.each do |element|
      permutations(array.select() {|n| n != element}) \
      {|val| yield([element].concat val)}
    end
  end
end
 Posted by Trevoke at 9:13 pm  Tagged with: ,

Can You See With Your Tongue?

 food for thought, medical, technology  No Responses »
Dec 012008
 

Can You See With Your Tongue? | Senses | DISCOVER Magazine.

This is an amazing article – a scientist who managed to make people react to light-based input without using their eyes. The human brain is … limitless within its limits ? It’s definitely worth the read.

 Posted by Trevoke at 11:44 am

An old-school 6th dan

 food for thought, Martial Arts  No Responses »
Nov 042008
 

Yesterday evening a man who trained about as long as sensei came to train with us. Black obi, rather frayed to white. He’d trained a long time under his uncle, and then ~15 years under sensei’s sensei. He’d taken a break for a while, so he was a bit out of shape, but his mindset, his attitude, his devotion were 100% into everything he did – an important lesson which I forget all too often.

He left, very happy to have joined us. I hope we’ll see him again.

 Posted by Trevoke at 3:44 pm  Tagged with:
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