Verizon Wireless Adds New "Premium" Plans at a "Premium" Price

I have been awaiting the July 1 unveiling of the new Verizon Wireless plans for several weeks now, and when I excitedly visited the store yesterday, it was very much a disappointment.

The new America's Choice "Premium" plan (for both family and individual plans) is nothing more than a ~$20 tacked on fee for your plan that includes (quoted from their press release):

• Mobile E-mail – Customers get their e-mail on-the-go with Verizon Wireless’ new Mobile E-mail application on select Get It Now^®-enabled phones. With Mobile E-mail, Verizon Wireless customers can access up to 10 of the world’s most popular e-mail services, including Yahoo!^® Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, AOL^® Mail, AIM^® Mail, Verizon.net accounts and more on their mobile phones.
• VZ Navigator – This location based service from Verizon Wireless gives customers audible turn-by-turn directions and location information to more than 14 million points of interest including restaurants, ATMs and gas stations.
• Messaging – Unlimited text, picture, video and instant messaging to anyone on any network in the U.S. The plans allow customers to send and receive messages to other wireless users and e-mail addresses worry free.
• V CAST Basic Video Clips – Verizon Wireless customers can enjoy video clips of the latest news, sports and entertainment in the palms of their hands.
• Internet – Included with the V CAST VPak, customers have unlimited access to Mobile Web 2.0^SM at speeds faster than ever before.
• Network – Verizon Wireless has invested more than $37 billion in the last seven years to increase the coverage and capacity of its national network.

The problem is, you already paid $20 more a month for the unlimited messaging on the America's Choice "Select" plans, so we are now looking at an extra $40/mo!

So now the plan matrices are as follows (for zip 76039):

Individual Plans

	Basic	Select	Premium
450	$39.99	$59.99	$79.99
900	$59.99	$79.99	$99.99
1350	$79.99	$99.99	$119.99
2000	$99.99	$119.99	$139.99
4000	$149.99	$169.99	$189.99
6000	$199.99	$219.99	$239.99

Family Share Plans

	Premium Plan
lines ->	2	3	4	5
700	$139.99	$169.98	$199.97	$229.96
1400	$159.99	$189.98	$219.97	$249.96
2100	$179.99	$209.98	$239.97	$269.96
3000	$219.99	$249.98	$279.97	$309.96
4000	$269.99	$299.98	$329.97	$359.96
6000	$369.99	$399.98	$429.97	$459.96

I have been with Verizon for 7 years, but it's looking mighty cloudy in our relationship. This was a huge let down for me personally because I wanted a viable opponent for the iPhone. $20 a month is a bit much for a non-smartphone based device.


To make matters worse, I was due for a phone upgrade after 1 year (which it shows online) , but somehow when I went into the store they said that I wasn't eligible for the 1 year upgrade until October? Some math is fuzzy there somewhere. Of course the people in the stores aren't customer service... they are sales people, so I decided not to argue with people that didn't know what they were talking about, and I walked back outside into the Texas downpour that was happening.

7 years Verizon... I'll miss ya. I've been wanting a Blackberry Pearl anyways...

digg - Submit Item

This was a resume that was submitted to a major bowling alley. Typos and format are unchanged; however, names and places in the resume were changed for privacy reasons.

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Student From Salisbury University Sells Crocheted Vaginas

Wow, you can actually purchase crochet vaginas that this Salisbury University girl makes from yarn. Item's range from coin pouches, tampon pouches, mini-gina's, etc. For an extra $0.50 you can add a piercing. Disgustingly genius.

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Our "Banana Republic" House Of Representatives

Video: After 5 minutes of voting, the majority was to deny the oil bill to create refineries; the Speaker kept the vote on for 45 minutes until DeLay and others could sway some R votes to yay until they had enough for a majority; this is why DeLay is going to be arrested.

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Infamous Webcast News: Google Toolbar to support JRE 1.5

My take: did they really need a webcast to announce this? I really hope something huge is going to come out of this partnership, that we are only getting a sip of what is really to come.

The most exciting point, where my nose started to bleed with excitement, is when they brought up a Java Lamp and gave it to Eric; har har get it? A Java Lamp? Java == lava. Boy oh boy, they are clever.

In the Q&A section, someone asked the question about what can be expected of the next operating system. The funny part is how they were confused at whom that question was directed to? Hmmm, why would Eric be confused? Mr. Google (Eric) responded with a flat smirk and a nodding head, "We are in the End-User search business." Hmm.

The plan is to not have the JRE packaged inside the Google Toolbar, but to have the Toolbar packed inside the JRE download, so at least the Google Toolbar won't add another 120MB.

Part of the deal is to make the distribution of OpenOffice more available by Google's means of advertising. Eric had no comment right now on how that will occur.

A reporter asked Mr. Sun Microsystems (Scott), "Is your opponent Microsoft? and what is the strategy to win?". Scott Replied, "It's giving the customer a choice... continuing to support the open source community... 10 years from now there will be another company up here [on stage] better than Google" to which Eric replied "Thanks Scott... but I love my Java Lamp."

Depeche Mode US Tour Tickets Now Open

Get your seats for the Depeche Mode tickets now! Who knows when they will ever get "back" together again? Eek; not super cheap for Dallas.

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Rita Causing Mass Exodus of South Texas

The article describes Galveston and SE Houston being evacuated. One of my friends said the drive from Houston to Dallas ~30hrs (normally 4-5). Baylor canceled Friday classes, and my neighbors and I are housing 10-20 of our friends from Houston here in our Waco apartments. Craziness; time to go buy candles, batteries, H20 and lots of beer.

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Google VPN Connects: Connection Wanes In and Out

If you download and install the secure client from http://wifi.google.com/download.html, it will actually connect as you can see from the PPP configuration. The DNS resolving works fine, but TCP connections seem to drop on and off. Probably due to the high number of people that are trying to connect.

PPP adapter vpn.google.com:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-53-45-00-00-00
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.241.6
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.255
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.241.6
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 66.51.205.100
                             66.51.206.100

C:\>netstat

Active Connections

Proto  Local Address       Foreign Address        State
TCP    computerx:pptp      computerx:0            LISTENING
TCP    computerx:1125      66.28.250.26:https     TIME_WAIT
TCP    computerx:1127      66.28.250.26:pptp      ESTABLISHED

I wonder if they will try and hook this into:

Pinging proxy.google.com [216.239.42.4] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.239.42.4: bytes=32 time=58ms TTL=49
Reply from 216.239.42.4: bytes=32 time=55ms TTL=49
Reply from 216.239.42.4: bytes=32 time=57ms TTL=49

Anyone dare to portscan for the proxy port?

Worst Use of Flash and Animated Gifs

Some service fraternity at Baylor University made, and keeps up, a website that has some of the worst web-design techniques ever used.

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GTA "Keep off the Internet Site"

On GTA's website for the new PSP game, one of the semi hidden links takes you to this website which talks about why you should turn off your internet.

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People wonder why I don't have a PSP...

Absolutely stupid...

China Limiting Online GameTime to 3 Hours?

WTF!? The Chinese government produced a system, which must be installed with every internet game, to limit consecutive online play time to 3 hours to "prevent young people from getting addicted".


Damn Communists...

Google Talk: the next AIM? I think not.

Tonight at approximately 23:00 Google released their well hyped IM client. There have been talks on and off of this for the past few months and the shadows have now been lifted. As the post that it had been released, which spread on Digg.com like bums on a broken money jar, I too went to http://talk.google.com and downloaded the beta and excitedly installed it. I messed around with it, along with my friend using the VOIP capabilities.

My basic conclusion of Google Talk is thus:

• Nice. Not thrilling, but nice.
• Google Talk is not meant to be a competitor to AIM. Why not? Because average Joe Schmoe need to have their emoticons and profiles. Hell, I think that they'd miss all the viruses!
• Google Talk supports Google Mail... ... ... and... ... ... well that's it. If one doesn't have a Gmail account, there's not really a big point.
• I was not able to use another Jabber client to connect, so that I can link my accounts. AIM/MSN/Yahoo/Google.
• The interface is fantastic; just check it out!!
  

Personally, I quickly uninstalled it and continued to use my AIM and Skype; however, I do look forward to Google Talk's future possibilities.

SO MUCH GOOGLE!!!!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Google Talk Review

The Download Squad does a review of Google Talk. Their comments are mostly positive. They say it includes Basic IM capabilities, high-quality and easy to use VoIP, complete integration with Gmail, and a simple, ads-free interface.

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40 Things That Only Happen In Movies

Funny stuff.

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Anime about Baking Bread

I thought I had seen it all, but I guess I was wrong. I just caught a glimpse of Yakitate!! Japan which is the tale of a young boy(6 years old) being taught to master the art of bread making. WTF!?