Ah, the ongoing saga of great customer service from Vodafone! So I call my favorite people this morning to request a PAC code so I can move my number over to T-Mobile before cancelling my account. Their response? You'll have to email us. What? I can't do it over the phone? No, you need to email us. Hmm, let me see, I've done practically everything else over the phone until now, why can't I do this? Oh, because, it needs to be in writing. Oh, right! OK, that makes perfect sense now.

What a last-ditch attempt to make it more difficult for people to leave (or just delay the inevitable.)

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In my previous posts, I was complaining about how I lost the ability to use my Vodafone 3G data card when I bought a MacBook Pro. Apple has abandoned the PCMCIA slot in the new MacBook Pros in favor of the newer ExpressCard slot and Vodafone couldn't care less. This is a problem that affects more than just Mac users as, from what I hear, Dell is doing the same thing with its new laptops. Yesterday, I posted that I found a new service by T-Mobile that allows you to use your mobile phone as a modem with an attractive data plan. I ordered the plan along with a T-Mobile Vario II (a rebranded HTC TyTN/Hermes). This morning, I had a knock on the door at around 8.30am and my new phone and connection were handed to me by a friendly Royal Mail driver.

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I'm playing with Ruby on Rails these days and I've been thinking about how Rails isn't entirely DRY. (i.e., doesn't implement the Don't Repeat Yourself philosophy fully.) The area where it falls short of DRY is in the duplication between defining the database schema (either manually, or through the use of migrations) and defining the Model.

In Rails you can define constraints and validations in the Model. You repeat the Model definition when you create migrations to create your database structure (or if you create you create your schema manually, when you do that.) You repeat the constraints (e.g., foreign keys) in the database also. For Rails to be completely DRY, it should generate the schema and update the database automatically based on the current state of your Model classes. (Allowing overrides that go low-level, where necessary, of course for specific optimizations or advanced SQL.)

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I recently wrote about how I am very unhappy with Vodafone's service. Basically, I have a 3G data card with them that doesn't work with my new MacBook Pro and they've made it clear that they can't care less. They wouldn't, for example, freeze my account until they have a card that does work with my computer. Instead, they want me to keep paying them for the data card until my contract runs out in February. In my last post, I felt helpless about it. Today, I don't.

I discovered that T-Mobile has several plans where you can use your phone as a modem for your laptop. They actually have data plans that support this. AFAIK, this makes them the only company currently to offer a mobile data solution for Mac users with new laptops. I just signed up for their Flext 35 + web 'n' walk Max plan which comes with "Unlimited Internet".

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An Apple employee starts blogging anonymously. Of course, the race to discover her identity begins immediately. While looking for the feed to subscribe to, I stumble on an error page that tells me that her blog is running on a Windows box under IIS. Conspiracy? :)