JISHOU, HUNAN — What do cell phones, washing machines, the Internet and electrical supplies all have in common? Aside from the obvious, electricity, they all added to my frustrations — or shall I say challenges — this week.

The cell phone issue was the biggest. I had bought my Treo 600 off eBay ages ago with the understanding that it was unlocked, meaning that I could use it with any carrier as soon as I inserted the appropriate SIM chip into it.

Wrong.

Sure, the Treo could find China Mobile and China Unicom signals, but without international roaming enabled (not that I could afford it), I could not use those signals. So, senior English students Christopher, Ava and Sophia took me to the China Mobile tents set up for returning students, where they helped me get a China Mobile account and SIM card.

Of course, it did not work. Believing my phone to be the all-powerful, unlocked, works-anywhere-in-the-world SuperTreo, I was of course mighty perplexed. The kids took me to the China Mobile store in downtown Jishou, where I got another SIM card that worked the same as the previous one.

“SIM card not allowed,” my SuperTreo informed me. “Your phone cannot be used with this SIM Card.”

How very informative. Thank you.

September 5th, 2008 | Tags: China, china mobile, laundry, ruijie, Technology | Category: China, Commentary | Comments (2)

The wires are buzzing with news that CompUSA, one of the few brick-and-mortar computer retailers left, will be no more. Its assets will be sold off following the holiday rush piecemeal by an asset-management firm.

It was inevitable, and a little sad, but times change.

Back in late 1997, I decided I needed a second job. I walked into Louisville’s only Computer City store, filled out an application, and within short order was working the floor as a commissioned computer sales associate. That was back in the days when computers still cost more than $1,000 and margins were high, so a salesperson could actually make a commission and the store could actually turn a profit.

I was (to my mind) surprisingly successful in sales, and was able to make almost half my teaching salary working part-time at Computer City. (That’s a sad comment on teaching salaries, by the way.) It was hard work, but fun in many ways.

At the time, Computer City was a subsidiary of Tandy Corp., which also owned Radio Shack. It was not making Tandy all that much money. So when CompUSA, formerly known as SoftWarehouse, offered to buy the entire Computer City chain in 1999, Tandy did not put up much of a fight.

It was a bold move, and a risky one. Tandy had literally hundreds of stores nationwide, so CompUSA was taking on a huge investment in personnel and property. Buildings cost money to operate; personnel need to be paid. All of those expenses cut into a company’s profit margin.

December 10th, 2007 | Tags: Technology | Category: Commentary | Leave a comment

The video conference came off well, despite some minor technical glitches and the seeming inability of some teenagers to avoid talking altogether.

We were using iChat on an eMac, with a webcam I brought from home. The video quality was pretty bad, largely because of the equipment on our end. I suspect NASA/JPL has somewhat more sophisticated video equipment. Still, you could tell there were people on the screen, despite the pixellation and slow response time.

Audio was a different issue. The audio through the network was garbled, like those early webcasts using RealPlayer. I gave up on the iChat video finally, and just connected my desk phone to their teleconference line and put it on speakerphone. Then at least we could understand what they were saying.

So, we had blocky video from iChat and somewhat clear audio from the telephone. Not ideal, but it worked.

The format was straightforward. We introduced ourselves (not individually, by schools) and the four Cassini scientists introduced themselves. Then they opened the floor to questions from the students. Each school took a turn, until the hour was up.

From what I could gather, at least two of the conferees entered the contest individually. The rest of us participated as science classes. The individual students had fairly sophisticated questions about the moons of Saturn and the planet itself; the classrooms had less technical questions. One can assume the individual students were more interested in space exploration than the typical student, and had spent more time delving into the Cassini mission.

December 5th, 2007 | Tags: Education & schools, Technology | Category: Astronomy | Leave a comment

My students will participate in a video conference with real space scientists at 2 this afternoon. It’s a first for me, for them and as far as I know, for the school.

The Cassini imaging team at the Jet Propulsion Lab sponsors a contest each year, which challenges students to write short essays relevant to the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan. This year, the challenge was to argue why the team should choose one of four possible targets for a 91-minute imaging sequence. The essays could be no longer than 500 words, and students could work in teams of not more than four members.

Among the 188 essays accepted for judging were our 13 submissions. On Friday, I received two identical emails telling me that one of our essays had made to the final judging round, and inviting our students to an hour-long teleconference/video conference with the Cassini scientists this week.

I was excited enough to photocopy the message and hand it to my 34 students as they took a scheduled chapter test. Some admitted to being excited; others were outwardly more blasé, but apparently intrigued at least.

Having never organized a video conference before, I had to take a crash course by surfing the Internet. After frantically reading all kinds of information, asking an alumni parent for some corporate-America help and downloading a copy of CuSeeMe, I emailed the Cassini team for advice.

Turns out we can do the whole thing with iChat. Thank you, Apple Computers!

December 5th, 2007 | Tags: Education & schools, Technology | Category: Astronomy | Comments (1)

My otherwise trustworthy Geo Metro has been sidelined for a month, because I suspected terribly expensive repairs were needed. Instead the problem was something very simple, and I feel damned foolish.

We were driving the short distance to the local Jay C supermarket one day when the Geo just quit running less than a mile from our house. It had done this before, and would usually start right up again after sitting for a while. So we got a lift to the market and back home, and let the Geo sit alongside the road to cool off.

After waiting a reasonable length of time, we walked back to the car, started it up and drove it home.

The next day, it refused to start. With a shot of starter fluid, the motor would run a bit, then die. OK, I said to myself, it’s gotta be something in the fuel injection system: bad pump, bad injector, bad electrical relay. The next chance I got, I checked the car for the obvious, John-can-fix-it items in the fuel system.

October 18th, 2007 | Tags: Technology | Category: General stuff, Physics | Comments (2)