Virgin Mobile refuses to give my money back
Long story short: We have $55 credit in our VM BroadBand2Go mifi account. This is the rump of a bunch of payments into that account via Best Buy gift cards turned into VM top-up cards. Ordinarily, we would say, ‘fine, we’ll use it when we need it’, but VM, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to drop the monthly plan that we are on (500mb per month at $20), in favour of its vastly overpriced alternatives. Apparently, we can be ‘grandfathered’ into the old plan by calling the VM support line, but as it takes 20-30 minutes to get to talk to a human (never mind the time it took to try, and fail, to deal with this issue), we decided that we wanted our money back rather than have to suffer that.
It turns out that VM has decided that the ‘color of money’ in our account is that of a credit from a Customer Service Rep (totally untrue), and that they won’t refund it.
To summarize: We deposit cash from our own funds into VM top-up cards, pay them into our VM account. VM changes the plans so that they are totally useless to us and then refuses to return our account balance.
Sir Richard Branson, I know you sold this POS company to Sprint, but it’s your name that’s still on it. Do you want your name to be associated with a band of corporate thugs?
Update: For anyone in the same situation. I managed to transfer my balance to a pal of mine with a VM mifi. It still sucks, but at least someone other than VM will benefit.
Nexi
For a month or so, we’ve used all three of the latest Google Nexi: Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10. I love ’em – so much more capable and open than any iDevice, yet strangely different from each other, for no apparent reason except that they’ve been manufactured by different corporations.
I’m not going to do an in depth review, just point out some of the quirks.
Background – we use Apple i-stuff just like anyone else. iTunes was getting irksome in that you have to use it to do anything with the devices, and unlocking a pair of AT&T iPhone 3GS’s proved almost impossible. They are being used as Skype clients instead of the original Cisco ‘iphone’ for Skype.
We still have an iPod 3rd generation which is being increasingly isolated to be used to play Solitaire, as a Tune-In client and a Logitech wifi mouse client. We had an iPad 2, which was given to a family member.
The scenarios which play into this are several:
1) We’re big fans of camping in a camper van. Part of this scenario is to play a movie or two over a bottle of wine when the temperatures drop and the campfire has gone out. In the past we’ve employed DVD players and a laptop to play the movies. Most recently, the iPad 2. The big problem is that you couldn’t just turn up with the iPad and a bunch of (virtual) DVDs to select from, you had to load the vid onto the iPad in advance if you wanted to watch it. So mood wasn’t a factor, you played what you had, which turned out more often than not, to play nothing.
2) Sometimes, we’re interested in Photography, and both of us have fairly serious DSLR cameras and lenses to work with. When we used the laptop, we could simply take the SD card out of the camera and have an instant slide show to watch by plugging it in to the laptop. With the iPad, you had to load all of the photos on the iPad memory before you could start watching the slide show, and clear them off afterwards. Remember. with 12 and 16 Megapixels sensors saving both raw and highest quality JPEG, this could take several minutes and loads of memory.
3) We’d had cheap ($20 per 3 months) pay as you go cell service from Virgin Mobile (Sprint) for lo these many years. It works, actually pretty well, but we simply don’t make phone calls or send texts very much. We kind of use the devices, say, in Costco, to call up and ask, ‘where the hell are you, I’m waiting at the checkout!’ radio kind of things. I have played around with a mifi 2200 from Virgin, but it was frustrating, because Sprint 3G connectivity where we are is very spotty, and everything took ages to download.
1) The first of the Nexi to arrive was the Nexus 7. Wait! You can plug in an OTG (on-the-go) cable, connect a USB hub with a multi Gigabyte 2.5 inch drive and have the biggest video library you can imagine – without copying it to your device! Solves the camping problem in one swell foop. Works on the Nexus 10, too (but not the 4).
2) Likewise, with the OTG cable, one can plug in the SD card to watch slide shows of images on the SD card, that you don’t have to copy to the device. (Nexus 10 also, but not Nexus 4)
3) For $30 / month T-mobile has a web only plan that has 100 minutes of talk, unlimited texts, and unlimited data (actually throttled to 100 kbps after 5Gb). In this location, I seem to be able to get HSPA+ 3.75G connectivity nearly all the time at speeds between 3 and 30 mbps. Whooee!
Odd differences:
Both Nexi 4 and 10 do both 2.4 and 5GHz wifi. 7 does only 2.4. What this means is if I’m trying to watch live TV from a couple of TV tuners on my HDHomeRun, the 2.4 GHz is more likely to get swamped by the legion of 2.4 Ghz ‘2-Wire’ routers that abound here. By the way, I’ve found that XBMC (Frodo) is the way to make that work.
Nexus 4 has a neato converter that plugs into the micro-USB port, and churns out HDMI. What this means is that I can use Skifta on this tiny thing and have full up 1080p videos on my TV using DLNA on our Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra Plus 4. No Apple TV. Sweet. Not quite full screen, though. Close.
Nexus 10 has a micro HDMI port which works the same way. That’s good.
Nexus 7 doesn’t. At all.
But what is so refreshing is that one is not *dependent* on Google Play. You can download and install stuff from any source you choose, unlike iTunes. And, and this is the deal-maker, you don’t get charged $100 per year to write code that works on your own devices. Liberty. Yea!
Cowherd’s Pie
Based on that old English favorite, Shepherd’s Pie, this is a liberal re-interpretation of the idea, using whatever veggies you have to hand and a tomato based sauce.
Ingredients:
For mashed potato:
1 large Russet potato
2 tbsp. unsalted butter
2 tbsp. (or so) 2% milk
½ tsp. crushed garlic
½ tsp. fresh ground black pepper
2 tsp. finely chopped fresh rosemary (halve that if dried)
Pinch sea salt
For pie sauce:
10-12 oz. lean ground hamburger (mince)
1 small onion chopped finely
4 cloves fresh garlic, crushed and chopped finely
1 large or 2 small carrots, peeled and cut into roundels
1 stick celery sliced into 1/8 inch pieces
7 oz. (half a can) stewed no added salt chopped tomatoes
1 squirt (2 tbsp. or so) tomato paste
Fresh ground black pepper to taste
Liberal dash Worcester(shire) sauce
2 bay leaves
Beef stock granules or a cube
Liberal dose of favorite herbs (I used Italian seasoning)
Now be creative and use the veggies that you have: I used 1 red and 1 yellow bell pepper, sliced, 2 small mushrooms, quartered and a zucchini, sliced. You could use frozen peas, frozen sweet corn, chunks of sweet potato, sliced and diced leeks, you get the idea?
Preparation:
In a large saucepan, add a tbsp. of olive oil and heat on low(-ish) with the chopped garlic. As the garlic starts to bubble, add the chopped onion and sauté, turning regularly, 4-5 minutes until the onion is soft (and not burned).
In the meantime, add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil to a large (as you can find) skillet and heat on medium. Add the hamburger and break it up as it begins to brown. Keep the hamburger broken up as we want to brown, rather than braise it. Keep moving it around until all of the moisture has boiled off and the hamburger is browned, about 5 minutes. Add to the onion/garlic mixture in the saucepan.
Whilst this is happening, heat a large saucepan with a couple of quarts of salted water until boiling. Peel the potato and cut into approximately 1 inch square pieces. Add to the boiling water, bring back to the boil and then simmer for about 12-14 minutes until the potato pieces are easily cut but not mushy or flaky. Drain, add 2 tbsp. of butter, ½ tsp. crushed garlic, 2 tbsp. milk, ground fresh black pepper to taste and chopped rosemary. Mash the potato (using a masher, not, repeat not, a food processor which makes the resulting pap taste and behave like wallpaper paste) until smooth. Set aside.
To the saucepan with the hamburger and onions, add the carrots, celery, bell peppers (if using), stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, herbs, bay leaves, beef stock cube or granules and about ½ cup of water. Bring to a boil and then simmer for maybe 10 minutes until the carrot and celery are ‘al dente’. Add the mushrooms and zucchini (if using, but if you are using any ‘soft’ vegetables, add them here to save them from going mushy). Add a splash or two of Worcester sauce, to taste, and simmer for a further 5 minutes or so until the ‘soft’ vegetables are cooked but still have a decent texture.
Discard the bay leaves and empty the sauce into a relatively high-sided dish, as in the photo above, and let cool for about 30 minutes. Then, with a spoon or fork, ‘dot’ the top of the sauce with small pieces of the mashed potato, until you are out of potato and the surface is covered. With a fork, smooth out the potato, and then prettify it with the fork’s tines.
What you do next with it is pretty much up to you. You could have folks spoon it onto a plate and zap it with a microwave for a couple of minutes, or put it in an oven at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes (with some grated sharp cheddar on top, yum) or divide it up into portions and freeze it for later, or a combination.
Feeds: 4 – 6 depending on appetite.
Booze pairing: a bottle of India Pale Ale
Libya. We, the US, feel obliged to come to the rescue of a population that is besieged by its ruling power. In this instance, we are joined (for some values of joined) by fellow nations of the United Nations.
What about Zimbabwe. Darfur. ?????
This feels ‘oil’y to me.
Road trip wrap-up
1. The USA is big. Very big. Awesomely big. Actually driving across it at 65 mph puts a completely different perspective on it than the perspective one gets at 550 mph in an airplane.
2. The natives are friendly. There is no need to fear.
3. Despite having mile upon mile of mind-numbingly boring plain, the USA will suddenly hit you in the face with awesome feature after awesome feature. Just think, the Rockies, Arches NP, and Zion NP on 2 consecutive days. Just wow. (And Bryce would be in there if the weather had agreed.)
4. Corn. Lots of corn. Lots of unsustainable corn. Bob (B.’s brother) commented that the US corn production was an example of capitalism at it’s most efficient. I beg to differ. First of all it uses huge amounts of mineral-oil based fertilizer, which is inevitably going to run out. Second, the corn industry has huge federal subsidies, mostly going to the mega-corporations like ADM. This alone has upset the balance of competition in North America, basically wiping out Mexican corn production (causing untold numbers of previously gainfully employed Mexican farmers to head north across the border, for work, by the way). Third, the notion of turning corn into ethanol (which seems to be widely practised across the nation) is a complete nonsense. It takes more mineral-oil based fuel energy to create a unit of ethanol energy than is delivered by the unit of ethanol. What I’m saying is that it would be simpler and more efficient to burn the mineral oil than create the ethanol. That’s how subsidies have twisted the market.
5. We’re delighted by the Westy. Not a hint of a problem in approximately 6,000 miles (I’ll do the hard numbers in a while). It went through the 200,000 mile mark on its way east. Today we got its oil changed. Rick at Hugo’s was amazed that it needed an oil and filter changed, as he had only done that 3 weeks ago. (We use synthetic oil and change oil and filter every 5,000). I had to top up the coolant once (it was a bit low when I started, and I think that it didn’t use any at all), and used about half a pint of oil over the whole trip. Astonishing. This van is 23 years old.
6. Hard numbers:
Trip distance, out and back: 6,044 miles
Average mpg: 19
Moving average speed (return journey): 51.6 mph
Maximum speed: 84.7 mph!!!!!!
7. B. and I are still good friends.
8. Some streaming QuickTime HD Vids (from the iPod) are available at Oddstray.com. They are still slow to load, so be patient, please.
9. Having decided, deliberately, not to take the fancy camera and rely upon the iPod touch, it was limiting, but liberating. You can put the iPod in your pocket, and it was there, all the time, right there, so one can use it whenever circumstances arose. Against that is that the still images from the iPod are not very good – somehow, every one of them gets washed out and over-exposed. The video, by contrast, seems to be pretty good, even in my shaky hands.
On the way home
We awoke to a windy day in Vegas, which only got windier as we drove west. Ha! First little tiff, despite being cooped up in the van for days on end. I was scolded for encouraging B. to move into a lane where a vehicle was already occupying it. Oh well.
Off we set, west, into the wind. We are kind of used to it being windy on this stretch, and it was no big deal, just a bit of buffeting.
But when we got fuel west of Barstow, my deity, it was chilly!
B. adds: “After the visual wonders of the last few days, Mother Nature still had something new to show us.” From about 29 miles distance, we could see an odd cloud formation against a backdrop of high hills. I predicted that it was Cajon Pass, and thus it turned out to be.
Road Trip blog ends. I’ll do a wrap-up, though.
Amazing pic from B. of the Cajon Pass clouds
Zion – place of refuge
More Zion, this time at our leisure. We did several of the shorter hikes. This park was all carved out by the Virgin River. Its scale is comparable to Yosemite, but there’s no evidence of glaciation here.
Driving south in Utah and across the corner of Arizona. The topography still magnificent. Came to find that it’s part of the same Virgin River complex as Zion National Park. Plucky little river, that!
Farther southwest into Nevada … flat, desert, boring.
We expected to see Las Vegas much sooner than we did. They apparently don’t sprawl like some SoCal cities.
Hunted down a place-to-stay motel. The GPS was trying to entice us into staying at one of the hotels on the strip. But ya’ know what? After the Rockies and Moab and Zion, nothing in Las Vegas could be that splendid. So we’re in Las Vegas, but barely. Well south of the strip.
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Rain, rain …
Rainy ride from Orem
Bryce turnoff in the rain was a turnoff.
Zion NP quick view – we rode the shuttle bus through the park and back without getting off at any stop. But it persuaded us to stay for a night in a nearby RV park (Springdale, UT) for a good go at Zion tomorrow.
This blog is sparse on words. There are simply no words adequate to describe the magnificent sights we’re seeing!
Enjoy!
Sum pics
Next Post
Arches in the rain – nice to have no crowds.
Shame that god didn’t put the arches nearer the road.
Nonetheless, truly awesome spectacle.
Most boring stretch of the road … Hwy 191 from I-70 to Price. Even more so than flat, flat Iowa and flat, flat Nebraska!
Grey sky, grey road grey country.
Wasatch … nice background these Orem folks have!
Good visit with B’s sister and nephew, and a good meal shared by all.
If they hadn’t been digging up I-15 into Orem, life would be excellent.
Wow! And again, Wow!
A gorgeous, clear day. Opened the door to the veranda and discovered a rippling stream in the ‘backyard’. It was absolutely wonderful!
Faced the Rockies, at 11,200 summit in the summit at the Eisenhower Tunnel in a 5000-lb. vehicle with a 2.1 litre engine with 90 brake horsepower. She did OK! Nothing broke. Nothing burned. Nothing got hot.
After the tunnel, it was anti-climactic for a bit. It was easy going through Vail, and a second summit at 10,500 feet (not as steep and in-your-face as the first one … I guess that’s why they call it the “front range”). And then a gentle roll down towards Grand Junction with some beautiful vistas of the White River and the cliff faces, and later the Colorado River.
At Grand Junction, we decided on tactics, and felt that we wanted to go to Arches National Park before heading north to Provo, UT. Heading along I-70 to Hwy 191, B. said, ‘here’s smaller road to get there, Hwy 128. Feeling doubtful, S turned off for the road, and before long it was *WOW* – huge red sandstone cliffs and etched towers. It’s a bit like the Grand Canyon, you can’t really describe it. Just awesome.
The lady in the Visitor center told us not to go to Canyonlands National Park tomorrow, as we would most likely be a lightning rod for the forewarned storms, so we won’t. But we’ll certainly go to the Arches NP.
So now we are here in an RV park in Moab, celebrating an awesome day.
Wow! Rockies! And a bonus … Wow! Moab!
outside our motel
snow-covered mountains
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