ipod, iphone, apple

This is a cranky post. Sorry. I'm pissed.

Earlier this week my phone stopped working. Parts of the touch screen no longer responded to my touch. My wife still responds to my touch, so I assume it's a phone problem, not a touch problem. Conveniently, my buddy davexoxide let me know about a $50 refurbished 3G phone.

Today I decided to do something about it.

My experience so far today:

1. Log on to ATT Site, Get a Free Upgrade!

Turns out, the ATT site says I qualify for a free upgrade.

I click to do it and see the error message below. So I called that number.

2. Call the number

I called the number. They suggested I go to a store.

3. Go to a store

I went to the nearest store. It says AT&T all over it. It is not an "AT&T Core" store, though, so they don't have the iPhone and can't sell it. They suggest I go online. I mention that the website gives me an error. They suggest I call. I ask for an entry in my customer records.

4. Go online, try again

IT STILL DOESN'T WORK. SURPRISE!

5. Call the number suggested by the website

While I'm waiting on hold I hear:

Please keep in mind you can always visit any of our retail stores to view any of our latest product offerings and phones.

Not "any one" only "AT&T Core" stores. assholes

Talk to Adam. Adam is friendly without wasting my time. He suggests:

"To get the iphone you have to do the upgrade in stores."

I suggest that I did that. He suggests that it has to be an "AT&T Core Store." If that is an important distinction, as it is in this case, shouldn't they always make that distinction?
He apologizes and says that he can't do anything, but Alyssa will.

Alyssa says

"Hold on a second, OK"

Here's the scenario: all of our music is stored as mp3s. We want to be able to control music from a laptop as we sit in our kitchen or back room and have that music broadcast to speakers all over the house and back yard patio. Ideally we'd rather not have to run speaker wires from a central amplifier to the rest of the house. There seem to be 3 or four solutions to this problem.

Apple Airport Express and iTunes

Now that we're a family of Mac users, this seems like a decent solution. We buy a handful of Airport Express units ($100 new or as low as $60 used/refurbished) and install them in a power outlet near the speakers. The speakers have to have their own amplifier and accept a headphone mini-jack input for this to work. I'm also not 100% sure that the airports would all be synchronized in terms of what they play at the same time, though there are multiple articles which claim that it is possible. So, it probably works ;)

Bonus: Each of the airport express units expands the coverage of the WiFi network as well which will make our house super strong...and perhaps we could sell access to that to neighbors...

Drawbacks: iTunes only.

A Dedicated Device like Roku or Squeezebox

Roku and Squeezebox are two alternatives focused specifically on music. Roku is more focused on using the Roku to control the music, costs $200, and doesn't act as a WiFi repeater. The Squeezebox Receiver or Transporter could also do this but, like Roku, are way more expensive at $150 or $2,000 respectively and don't act as WiFi repeaters.

Drawbacks: Still requires some client software on the laptops that is Windows/Mac only :(

Remote Wireless Speakers - Audio Unlimited

So, yeah, I got a mac. It's nice. But it's missing some fun. So, I added fun.

Open Files in my Editor (TextWrangler) from the Command Line

When writing code I use Eclipse, but there are times when I just want a decent text editor that's also fast. My coworker Steve recommended I try out TextWrangler and it seems to be pretty good so far. I was really used to being on the command line and doing: xemacs somefileinthisdirectory.info and having it open my editor for that file. No longer the case...there's path issues and even after solving those TextWrangler doesn't want to open multiple files.

After a bit of digging I learned of the command open -a TextWrangler filename but it won't accept wildcards (filename.*) and that's a lot of stuff to type.

So, I whipped up a little shell script to help me out - here are the steps.

First, Set your PATH

The first step is to set the "PATH" so that your command line knows where to find executable scripts. I have a folder in my home directory called "bin" where I still all sorts of fun little helpers so I added that to the ".profile" file in my home directory:

export PATH=/Users/greg/bin:$PATH

You can do this easily on the command line:

echo "export PATH=/Users/greg/bin:\$PATH" >> .profile

If you don't have a .profile file, thatcommand will create it. If you have one, it just adds that last bit to the end of it. Note that this command will only work if your name is "greg." Otherwise change "greg" to whatever your username is.

Second, Create the Shell Script to Call TextWrangler

At this point, you need to create a little shell script that will use that long syntax to open up the files that I pass to it: