Going Cellular

More folks are going wireless

With the end of the 2008-2009 school year, I cancelled my Vonage VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone service.  I thus joined the 18% of adult Americans (and over one in five US households) who have only cell phones. I’d previously cut the POTS (plain old telephone service) back in December of 2007, but hooked up the internet phone as a backup to the cell phone.

My Vonage plan of 500 minutes for about $23 per month was certainly cheaper than the traditional service and included nice features like Caller ID, digital voice mail, selective number blocks, and having my cell phone ring simultaneously with the internet line.  And ditching my old POTS number for an unlisted internet phone cut off all of the political and other annoyance calls that the “Do Not Call” list had failed to kill off.

But I simply am not social enough to chat away on the phone, so I was getting very little use of that vestigial land line.  And occasionally the internet phone would go offline, not coming back up until I cycled the power on the Motorola base unit.  My iPhone service already costs me over $70 per month, so I decided to save $276 per year and go cellular only.  Since my “teacher step raise” for next year will be a whopping $475 before taxes, saving $276 sounds pretty good.  If I keep scrimping, I can keep up with inflation…maybe.

I figured that there would be some pain involved with the cancellation, and there was a bit.  Vonage won’t let you cancel via the internet, claiming it is for security reasons.  But you can do everything else online, so obviously they really just want you to talk to an agent who will try to save the account.  After navigating their annoying voice-response switchboard a polite agent offered me a 100-minute monthly plan for $10 plus some fees (said plan does not appear anywhere I could find on their website), but I didn’t bite.  And disconnecting the service incurred a charge of $43.19 – sounds a lot like Ma Bell’s old gotchas, doesn’t it?  But it wasn’t anywhere near the pain AOL customers reportedly went through a few years back when they wanted to ditch that service, and I’ll start saving money in less than two months.

I’ll have to be more vigilant about having my cell phone charged and handy.  But now I have some money I can put toward my favorite summer mental health therapy – a week of hiking along the Oregon coast.  And sure enough, cell phone service out on the trail is pretty spotty – thank goodness!

Not Your Father’s Star Trek

The new Star Trek movie seems to be a hit

J.J. Abrams’ take on Star Trek appears to be a hit, easily outperforming all of the previous Trek features in opening weekend box office.  However, these days movies have a short life in theaters and rely heavily on foreign markets and rental sales.  We shall see how it fares overall later.  Paramount finally ponied up some real money for this film, and it appears to have been a wise investment.

I enjoyed the film quite a bit, although it had the frenetic pace, camerawork, and lens flare syndrome that makes for a better Bourne flick than meaningful scifi. The reimagined Battlestar Galactica had a shaky documentary style that worked well for it, but I wouldn’t want to see them go too far down that road for Star Trek.

(Caution – spoilers ahead.)

The standout actors for me were Bruce Greenwood as Pike, Karl Urban as McCoy, Anton Yelchin as Chekov, and Zoe Saldana as Uhura.  But Zachary Quinto as Spock and Chris Pine as Kirk also did admirably in roles made very difficult by the quite distinctive acting of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner.  I was less impressed by how they scripted Scotty and his odd sidekick, although Simon Pegg was enjoyable as an actor.  The villain, a vengeful Romulan miner played by Eric Bana, was weakened by a plot struggling to introduce so many characters and back stories and to explain away inconsistencies with over 40 years of previous Star Trek episodes.  I do fully embrace the approach of having an alternate timeline – I can think of no better way to resolve the canon issues that were stultifying the franchise after hundreds of episodes and ten films spread across four decades.

The new Enterprise

Regarding the Enterprise, they should have just used the outlines of the ship from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, since the minor design changes in the new film only detract slightly rather than enhance it.  The engine nacelles seem a bit silly in proportion and attachment to the hull.  But it is close enough to get a pass and clearly Abrams wanted a noticeably larger ship.  It is ironic, however, that the larger scale of the new Enterprise is dwarfed by the villain’s immense vessel.

The new engine room may be a better approximation of the realities of fusion reactors, but seemed more like a brewery redress than a starship interior.  The more industrial look is fine, but the rooms were too cavernous and my impression of the floors was they seemed more like concrete slabs than deck plates.  But I very much like the redesign of the secondary hull with its many more utilitarian shuttles – that is a design change that is long overdue.

Science-wise, the early explosion of the USS Kelvin with silence after someone was blown out of the hull was a nice bit of seldom-observed accuracy for Star Trek, as were the bumpy shuttle rides.  And I loved how the ship seemed to be far less able to “scan ahead” while in warp drive, better reflecting the problems of faster-than-light travel – more like a hyperspace jump than the “fast cruise” of previous outings.  The ship’s multiple weapons and faster firing pace is also more realistic, but oddly less satisfying than the old slower long-duration phasers and torpedoes.  Battlestar Galactica had a great take on weaponry that appears to have affected the Trek aesthetic, even though they haven’t given up on beam weapons.

I certainly think this reboot was a success, and look forward to more outings with this cast.  Abrams is on board to produce the next film, although he has not committed to directing it.

UPDATE:

Don’t miss the concept art Ryan Church created in his work on this film.

Henry to the Rescue

Governor Henry Vetoes SB 834

Governor Brad Henry rescued Oklahoma schools today by vetoing Senate Bill 834:

While local control is an important component of a successful public education system, it is also critical to have rigorous state standards in place to produce the highest quality graduates and ensure achievement and accountability throughout the system. Recognizing the importance of such uniform standards, public and private sector leaders have advocated and implemented numerous reforms in recent years to raise the academic bar for all students and schools.

Senate Bill 834 would essentially turn back the clock on much of that important progress and weaken landmark reforms by allowing school administrators to create their own rules and ignore more rigorous state standards, including, but not limited to, the smaller class size mandates championed by former Gov. Henry Bellmon and Oklahoma voters in the historic passage of House Bill 1017 in 1990. SB 834 would also endanger such worthy programs as full-day kindergarten and alternative education in addition to making optional such critical personnel as school librarians and counselors.

Furthermore, SB 834 does a deliberate disservice to the backbone of the public education system, the public school teacher, by weakening or eliminating educators’ rights and benefits, including due process rights guaranteed under the constitution. These provisions would also undermine ongoing efforts to attract and retain the best and brightest teachers in Oklahoma, something that is critically important, particularly for a state that is routinely recognized for having some of the best educators in the nation.

At a time when we are working to send the signal that Oklahoma is serious about improving its education system and producing high-quality graduates who can compete in the 21st Century global economy, it would be a disastrous step backward to approve legislation that weakens state standards, abolishes historic reforms and reduces rights and benefits provided to teachers.

50s Facebook Manners

A little mental hygiene can help you watch your Facebook Manners.

Animated Bach

Stephen Malinowski’s Music Animation Machine brings a visual clarity to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.