11/18

That's the day I'm eligible for a device upgrade at Verizon. On that day, I'm going to buy my new phone. I hope I chose right, and if I have any problems in the first couple of days/weeks I'm sending it back.

Just a couple of problems I have with my Droid 2 Global, the worst phone I ever had:

• Connect to PC only works in USB Mass Storage mode. Otherwise windows can't install the drivers even though I have the Motorola applications installed on my PC. Other connections only worked once. I'm not gonna reinstall my PC just for this.
• Because of this I can only sync music to it via Winamp. The other software only work in media sync mode, which doesn't work on the phone.
• And because I want to reset it, but want to back it up, I need to copy the SD card over WiFi. My corporate mail requires me to encrypt the SD card, and guess what, in USB Mass Storage mode if you copy things over they will be copied in decrypted state... Just as you were putting the card in a card reader... Finally found a program that doesn't close the connection while copying files to a NAS over WiFi as the built in file manager does during transfer. I think it gets tired around 40MB for a reason. A software that can get tired that could be a Nobel Prize worthy invention!
• UI freezes up on a regular basis.
• The screen switch button about 50% of the time doesn't work. The phone is too busy being idle to respond to your request that you want to do something with it. Imagine if you need to call 911 for a really good reason!
• Reaction to user interaction is pathetic. A couple of days ago I waited about 30secs between clicking the dial button next a contact and the phone actually start dialing.
• During navigation it usually reboots every now and then, and we know how safe and legal it is to juggle with your phone while driving.
• In general freakishly slow reactions.
• Poor battery life even with the extended batteries. I was moved to another cube to get away from the ping pong noise, and there I only have 2 bars. By 2pm I have to hook it up to give it some juice.
• Screen keyboard is almost impossible to use without auto-correct. The buttons are too close or/and the logic is terrible that tries to figure out which key you wanted to press.
• My slide to unlock screen disappeared this week. When I press the button on the top it shows up for a one second or less, and than the screen is unlocked automatically without me doing anything. Me sliding to unlock can only happen if my security timeout has passed and have to key in my PIN code. After googling it solution seems to be a factory reset.
• The phone I have is a replacement phone already. After 5 months the original one I had to send back as it was rebooting on its own 2-3 times a day! Just lying on my desk doing nothing, probably bored, so it restarted itself... On a regular basis.

Sometimes I would really just like to throw this phone and stomp on it. Maybe I'll do it after I got my new phone and it proved itself. Like the guys in Office Space with the HP Printer :) Or maybe I'll go to a shooting range, rent a colt and buy ammo enough for 4-5 rounds and I hang it on the target clip and shoot at it until there's nothing left. If I need to I'll buy another round of ammo. And another.

I don't think I can be so mean to sell this phone to anybody on eBay. Humanity must be saved from this disaster!

And the one to blame for all this is myself! After my v50 and v600 I swore never to buy a Motorola phone again, and yet I did it. I'll go with the Samsung Nexus. Please if someone has it and hates it let me know immediately! If that's shitty, too, than it must be a general Android problem, and I might choose a Windows phone in the end.

iPhone? No way. My solid conviction is that Apple is the meanest company in the world.

After 8 years it's finally here

8 years ago, in 2004 this was one of the radio commercials you could hear on your radio while you were playing GTA San Andreas:


The script:

Man: What happens when five eligible bachelors welcome a little girl into their lives? 
Gina: Hey!  It’s my turn into the bathroom! 
(canned laughter)
Man: Non-stop hilarity!  "My Five Uncles."  The sitcom with a lot of heart.
Uncle 1: Hey Gina. Welcome to your new home.  You sleep in here, and we all sleep in there.
Gina: Uck.  Whatever.  Does anyone have something to smoke?
(canned laughter)
Man: it’s the show that shows family values exist even in unconventional families.
(knocking)
Gina: Uh, what are you guys doing in there?
Uncles (together): We’re just flossing, dear!
(canned laughter)
Man: It’s a brand new show taking hilarious comedy in a whole new funny direction!
Gina: I don’t get it.  Why don’t any of you guys have a steady girlfriend? 
(canned laughter)
Man: And they learn some lessons about life and love along the way.
Uncle 2: Come on guys, group hug.
Gina: I’m an emotionally abused orphan.  Can’t I get in on any of these group hugs? 
Uncle 3: No, you stupid bitch!
(canned laughter)
Man: My Five Uncles. Thursday nights on LSBC

Now is it just me, or this new series on NBC was really created based on this fictional radio spot?

New to the US 101

After almost 2 years I think I'm qualified to put together a list that could be help to anybody else who just have arrived to the United States and is about to start a new life here. The first 6-12 months will need some adjustments and you will face some limitations for sure.

I hope this helps all of you!

Basics

1. SSN - Social Security Number: This you need for everything: getting paid, opening a bank account, get credit cards, cable TV, internet, mobile phone. Fill out and bring this form with you to your local Social Security Office. You cannot get an appointment for this. Go in the middle of the day. Everybody else will go early in the morning.
2. Open a bank account. You can try one of the credit unions, too. You most likely will be allowed to open an account, but you'll have to update them with your SSN once you have it.
3. Once this you have your SSN get a secured credit card from an issuer. I suggest to deposit $2000 and never have a balance bigger than $600. Pay it off every month. After 6 months you should be eligible to get a real credit card. This will start building your credit history. You need to have a good one! Google what that is, it's too complicated to sum it up in this post. But you have to have credit to get credit. Strange system. To monitor your credit you can either pay $10-$15 every month, or you can sign up with Credit Karma. Less service but it's free and gives you a basic idea where you are at.
4. You need a car. Without car you won't be able to get around unless you live in a big city with good public transportation system. If you have at least $10000, you could aim for a new car. Used cars are not cheap. Only the ones that are very used... If you don't have that kind of cash, you'll have to settle for a 12 years old Toyota Camry. If you put down 40-50% of the price of your new car, you'll get credit. No credit is better than bad credit! Your APR will not be the best though. You probably won't get financed for a used car, even if it is certified pre-owned. Never accept sticker price on a car, and you can negotiate on the maintenance plan for your new vehicle, too. Instead of the standar $2500 you can get it for something between $1000-1500 depending how good you are negotiating.
5. Car insurance: with the 12 year old Camry go for liability only, it will be something around $50-$70 a month. For a new car you need the full coverage. A 6 months premium can vary between $700-$1200. Try AAA, Allstate and StateFarm. Others charge way too much as I saw. Once you have 18 months of US driver history (i.e. 18 months after your driver's license is issued) rates will go down on your premium.
6. Driver's license: get it as soon as you can. In California, you need to take a test. Easy as pie compared to the European ones :) You can get the handbook from DMV, read it and go take the test. Once you pass you'll be scheduled for a behind the wheel test. Watch this video and follow the guidelines and you'll pass. Once you get your DL you're no more required to carry your passport with you all the time.
7. Mobile phone: No credit history? You'll probably have to give a $400 deposit or so per line. You'll have to live with pre-paid for 5-6 months, sorry, if you don't want to leave the deposit. Difference between the providers:

• AT&T and T-Mobile are GSM providers. If you have your SIM free phone, all you need is a SIM card
• Sprint and Verizon are CDMA based, so you'll need a phone as well.
• Verizon and AT&T does not give unlimited data
• T-Mobile slows your data down after you reach a limit
• Sprint claims to have real unlimited data
• Verizon has the largest network, you'll get signal probably everywhere
• Unlimited nationwide calling means: you can call as much you want, but you'll have to pay the per minute fees once you reached your included minutes. The possibility is unlimited, not the service :)

8. Cable TV and internet. Again, needs SSN, and probably you'll have to give a deposit, but I didn't have to... It varies.

Company perks

1. Health insurance: most important thing. If your employer provides only HDLP you are screwed and they're cheap. Health will be expensive for you. If they don't offer FSA open an Health Savings Account to save at last the tax on your health expenses. For foreigners your only option is Chase HSA as I found. If you don't travel much, you're good with an HMO plan, otherwise go with the PPO. The difference is: HMO - you have a health care provider, you can only go to their facilities and pharmacies, you'll have a primary physician that you need to visit anytime you have a problem, he'll transfer you to a specialist; PPO - you can go to anybody in the network and you're free to visit a specialist right away. PPO is more expensive, might require higher co-pay from your side. I'm with Kaiser and I'm satisfied so far. Kaiser is an HMO.
2. 401k: that'll be your retirement money. Try to contribute to the max, and use whatever contribution your employer offers. Besides this you'll only get social security once you are retired. I don't believe the government will be able to give me any money in 40 years... Your call :)
3. Vision and dental: this covers your eye-care and dental care. Eye checkups, contact lenses, frames and glasses, fillings, crowns, root canals, professional teeth cleanings. Usually you get $1500-2000 coverage per year. Co-pay varies per service.

A place to live

Now that's expensive in California. If you are OK with it, live with room mates, otherwise you'll pay around $1200-2000 for rent per month, plus $200-250 for utilities (water, garbage, heating, electricity). When you rent, they'll check your credit. If you don't have children, choose freely your place. Avoid very cheap areas: you'll get rubbed, mugged, and you'll wake up for gunshot noise. If you have children you need to choose an area with a good school district. More expensive. Locate these areas using Trulia or Realtor, and than look for listings on Craigslist. That'll be your cheapest source! You can save some money if your children are about at the same age. So you can settle for a good middle school and when they go to high school you'll move to another place.

Mobile home is an over-sized RV, cheap but it's like camping all the time! If you choose to live in an apartment, aim for the highest floor, otherwise you'll be bothered by people walking.

Until you find a place to live, you can find extended stay rentals. Either an apartment or you try Extended Stay America or Marriott Residence Inn. Bit cheaper than a hotel, bit more expensive as an apartment, but you get WiFi, cable, furnished apartment with kitchen. A place of your own.


Let me know if I missed something! :) Good luck!

Olympic coverage from the USA

The Olympic coverage from the USA is ridiculous. NBC does the worst job ever. Almost nothing's live on TV, the evening coverages are only about Americans. After almost 2 years I know now why Americans don't know anything about the rest of the world, and the media is the one to blame: 8 runners, one is on Team USA, they don't even show the faces, names of the other 7... And that applies to all the sports.

At least they have their website where they broadcasting live on YouTube all the video streams by the Olympic Broadcast Services. American races and games with American commentator, of course... So I can watch all the water polo games and other Hungarian events live, and that's a good thing!

Now the Internet stream is filled with ads. Like every minute. Sometimes the actual happenings are not even taken into account, and they broadcast a 10 second ad block in the middle of a game. I figured, that at my workplace there's no ads. They applied recently a filtering system that blocks certain sites (like memebase for which I'm furious) and all the ads. All of them, everywhere!

So it is possible to block YouTube video stream ads! First I was trying it using the URL filter of my router. I was recording the HTTP requests with Tamper Data, and found the domains where these streaming ads came from. But that didn't seem to be sophisticated enough: there were no ads, but the live stream was not served as well. So I went with the crowd and installed AdBlock Plus in my Firefox.

By default it doesn't work on YouTube streams but there's a guy who seems to know what he's doing, and he explained in a forum entry what to do! So I've added the custom filters to my settings:

In case you don't want to type those rules in, here they are for copy-paste:

• ||http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/ad-
• ||c.youtube.com$~object_subrequest
• doubleclick$domain=youtube.com
• google$third-party,domain=youtube.com

Well I just started a stream in my Firefox while we were watching the Pommel Horse Finals (congrats to Krisztián, winning our 3rd gold medal!) on IE. I had to watch it on IE, because the ads crash Flash Player on Firefox and chrome full screen YouTube exits if I move the focus to another window...So in that stream for 5-10 mins I didn't see ads.

We'll see how it performs later on the men's Hammer Throw Finals!

UPDATE: It works! Hammer throw finals, not a single millisecond of ads!

Evil fat

So my weight loss program stuck around 220-225lbs. I refuse to starve. I don't think I eat too much, and I'm going to the gym every workday morning and I come home every time completely exhausted and smelly. I ride the elliptic for 30 mins and I do my weight lifting routine. All together 60-90 minutes in the gym, and that's all hard workout! I do feel my training is legit and not just a waste of time!

So the solution I came up with was to start a creatine monohydrate cycle. It is supposed to help increasing the size of your muscles and your strength. The bigger my muscles are the bigger is my body surface, and if the amount of fat doesn't grow it will spread on a larger body resulting in a leaner look. :) Let's see how it goes.

I'm at the end of my 4th week, and I started 5 days of loading. I can increase the amount of weights in all my exercises week by week, so my strength does increase and my biceps grew about 2 centimeters (almost an inch), so it seems to work :D Let's see how it goes.

In the past I drank whey protein and other stuff, but they all seemed to be just wasted money. A container that should be enough for a standard 3 months cycle was only $20 at Vitaminshoppe so it will not max out my credit card for sure, and so far it seems to work.

I bet somebody else doing the same thing would look like Arnold in his glory days!