Anatiferous blog | Move every zig.

Howdy! This is my (William Reading's) webpage. At the moment, I only have this blog script and my gallery up, but I hope to get more stuff on this page at some point, or so I thought when I created this site years ago. Updates and shiny new copy to eventually go here. If you'd like to contact me to point out that I've done something to break XHTML/CSS standards or heaven forbid--look at my Vita--drop me a line at my e-mail address bill +spam @ [ELEPHANT] aggienerds.org. Simply remove "+spam", the spaces and the pachyderm along with its brackets and that address will reach me. I'm also available on Jabber/GChat/AIM/MSN with the same address above.

If you’ve ever lived in a college dorm or an apartment on a budget, you’re probably well aware of how much of a fuss dealing with laundry can be. If it’s not collecting change for the machines, it’s walking back and forth or fighting with cut-throat grad students over the two working machines on the other stide of the complex.

A few months ago, I was finally relieved of this problem, for a new Haier XQBM22-C was delivered to my door by the friendly (and relieved that I was home) UPS guy.

I didn’t know at first that it was going to solve my problem. In fact, some of the reviews on Amazon.com let me to believe that it would only be good enough for some of my clothing and very light duty washing, but thankfully they were wrong.

I’ve washed everything from t-shirts to queen size blankets in that little machine (though I’ll admit that the latter was a tight fit) and have been pretty pleased with the results. I obviously need some way to dry everything, so for most purposes the Polder 8310-05 Chrome Clothes Rack works great.

When I run out of space on that rack, I’ve found that hanging up the clothes on hangers well spaced in the closet works great. The pole in the closet is also great for hanging blankets and towels.

Obviously, there are few downsides to doing my laundry this way, but I’m definitely willing to live with them:

• I have to wait a good while before the washed clothing dry. This isn’t really a problem because I rarely need my clothes immediately and if there is a case where there is a real sense of urgency (one hasn’t presented itself yet) then I can always fallback on the dryers in the laundromat down the street.
• Dried clothes tend to be stiffer. I’ve found that while clothing doesn’t tend to be any more wrinkled than coming out of a dryer, it is a little bit stiffer. Most of the time, wearing the clothes for a short period of time or otherwise moving the fabric around tends to get rid of the “stiff” feel.
• Drying tends to consume a fair amount of space. I’ve got a walk-in closet with plenty of room, so it’s usually not an issue.
• The small tub requires more small loads to complete a wash. Before I had the mini-washing machine, I would tend to let clothing pile up and then do it all at once. I still do that sometimes, but when I do, I have to split the loads into smaller bits. As a result, it tends to take more time overall to wash, but since I’m usually at home it’s less work than going outside to the laundromat and shuffling things around.
• Lack of care with the drainage tube can be catastrophic. If you’re not careful with the drainage tube, it can come off the side of the sink and make a royal mess. The same applies for adding too much soap.

Even with all of that, I find that I spend less time overall worrying about laundry and more of my time doing other things so it’s worth it to me.

This phone from Boost Mobile is pretty nifty. It’s anywhere between $30-$60 (depending on the promotion and store), runs J2ME Midlets, has an embedded GPS and can be used with a dirt-cheap prepaid data plan. Combined with the fact that it’s a fairly ruggedized phone, it’s ideal for all those things that most feature-rich (read: expensive) phones probably shouldn’t go.

So while I’m still on T-Mobile as my primary provider for the time being (T-Mobile’s EDGE at $20 on top of voice is still the best deal for mobile internet access that I could find and I use the voice service more than my inner-geek would like), the hardware and service has some real potential. Although their primary focus is your nearly broke youth/college student who is trying too hard to “be cool” (their slogan is “Where you at?", prominently displayed everywhere from their website to the splash screen on their handsets), their service is great for anyone wanting a service for light voice and moderate data use on the cheap.

There are a myriad of rules governing Boost’s prepaid service, but it essentially comes down to $0.20/min for voice during peak and $0.10/min off-peak. Data is $0.20/day. While you have to pay a minimum of $20 every 90 days to keep the service active, data for that period could be a maximum of $18.60. That also includes 7-14 minutes to go with the data for every three months at $20. (Strangely enough after I put the $10 card on it, I somehow ended up with a $5 credit and then a $25 credit for a total of $35 in credits–I suppose they’re running some kind of promotion right now.)

Boost mobile is remnant of pre-merger Nextel, so it’s based off of Motorola’s iDEN technology. This unfortunately caps data transfers to about 19.2 kbps when in packet mode, but that’s okay for yanking RSS feeds and transmitting telemetry data using the on-board GPS for tracking. It’s also relatively easy to load third party apps on the phone. (Unfortunately, that probably breaks their business model, since nearly all of the apps that they support loading on the handset have daily/monthly usage fees.)

Nevertheless, you can use Mologogo or AccuTracking for tracking a vehicle or what have you with the phone, browse the web with Opera Mini, or use Google Local Mobile to satisfy mobile map urges–nearly any app using J2ME. (Some apps have weird issues with button mappings)

I’m still experimenting with using it as a laptop tether, but when I pass it “S=2″ under windows, my machine gets assigned the same IP address for the host and gateway, one that is allocated to the US Defense Information Network to boot.

I’d try it under Mac OS X, but I’m going to have to fix up the script because it calls for putting “S=2″ in the phone number field and there is apparently some validation on that field in Tiger.

Update:
Despite the fact the phone uses screwy IP addresses to talk to the gateway at Nextel, it does indeed work. I benchmarked it at dslreports.com/mspeed with the 600k file:

20 kbit/sec
1.961s latency
239.196s d/l time

It’s nothing amazing, but not half bad for $6 a month. There’s got to be something cool that I can do with this phone..