MySprint iPhone saga

Friday the 13th: EZpass over the Rip Van Winkle bridge to the Sprint store in Hudson NY. Buy iPhone. Request number port from BoostMobile to Sprint. Store agent initiates the port and instructs it will take 2-3 days. I instruct the agent to cancel the port. I am told the port is cancelled. Leave store with new working iPhone.

Saturday: Spend the morning setting up the iPhone. Purchase Garageband from the app store. Nice.

Sunday: Attend a lovely sausage making event and lunch with friends on their lovely farm. During a political discussion, using my iPhone, I confirm that Newt Gingrich was born Newton McPherson and his middle name is indeed Leroy.

Monday: MLK day is a bit of a haze but I do remember finally fixing some pantry shelves that took only five years to get to.

Fast-forward...

Tuesday: AM. Wake up. Hand grind and brew my friend Ed's freshly roasted El Salvadoran bean. Drink coffee. Toast homemade sourdough and prepare to field calls and email which I was able to check on my iPhone while drinking the coffee and eating the homemade sourdough w/ fresh butter and local honey. Exhale. All is good.

Until...

I try to call my brother to go over the details of my recently deceased fathers estate and plan to deal with probate, taxes and other stuff.

"We are unable to complete the call"

I proceed to login to my Sprint account to check to make sure there isn't a network outage and notice the device phone number has changed. It's my old BoostMobile #. Wha? Huh?

Doing some online sleuthing I discover I could try resetting the iPhone but decide to call the store to speak with a Sprint rep. My first mistake and probably not my last. They're clearly not pleased to hear from me. They walk me through the reset process which after repeated attempts finally registers the new/old phone #. Took a while but I'm relieved to be back on the Sprint network. Woohoo!

Err not really...

"We are unable to complete the call"

Call Sprint store. Inform them of the situation. The agent says I have to bring the phone in and stresses I should never have left the store until the number port (remember the one I had cancelled) was complete. Translated: I should have come prepared to camp outside the Sprint store over the weekend. Clearly my fault. Clearly! What was I thinking?

Wednesday: Rip Van Winkle bridge. Ugh. The prospect of hours of wasted effort. Ugh. Prepared to just return the device, gird my loins, and get a new one. Start over. Problem solved.

Ah if it could only be that easy...

The agent. She insists she can activate the iPhone. What can I say I'm a wuss plus I need the fucking phone. After various attempts to activate (while I might add handling some other poor schmuck who wandered in after me), and forty minutes later, steam shooting out of both our multiple and tangential orifices, I demand a credit on the phone so we can both get on with our lives. Exhale. Done.

Thursday: Escalation Day.

Countless emails and phone calls within Sprint's customer service and tech support. Countless people with names like Jose K., Peyton C., on and on into an abyss of first names, last initial. Lots more emails, tweets, fb...Sorry call this number. Soory. Sorry. Sorry.

Yes, to their credit Sprint was apologetic. Owned up to their cock-up. What they did not say. What I really wanted to hear was that Sprint would have a working iPhone in my hands the next day.

Friday: Officially mobile phone-less. In fact without two working phones since my old BoostMobile account has been cancelled.

Thursday evening I gave notice of my Sprint account cancellation to Ecare. Still awaiting confirmation.

Epic. FAIL.

Sprint to nowhere: Or how an iPhone was turned into a brick in 2-3 days

Email to: Bill P. White, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility

Dear Mr. White,

Today I had to return an iPhone 4 to a Sprint store in Hudson, NY 12534 purchased last Friday the 13th of January. On that day I had TWO working mobile phones. Today I have no working mobile phones -- one big fat empty goose egg.

In a nutshell Sprint somehow managed to completely bollox an existing mobile number port from Boost Mobile => Sprint which coincidentally disabled voice service not only on the iPhone but also the Boost device. I fully understand mistakes happen and we deal as best we can but in the past 48 hrs I have spent many hours and received no apologies and frankly have been met with a lot of defensive and rude conduct on the part of many Sprint employees. Oddly the virtual online help has been respectable.

The ported # for the iPhone is (917) xxx-xxxx. The original iPhone # was (518) xxx-xxxx. PIN ####. I would appreciate if this can be forwarded to the appropriate authorities within Sprint to perhaps address the technical and customer service failures.

I'm an Apple user going back...well let's just say it's been a fruitful marriage. The iPhone is a terrific device. The problem isn't with the iPhone.

Since I am currently without a mobile I can be reached directly on a LAND LINE (518) xxx-xxxx. Can you sense the irony?

Sincerely,

Two layouts, one page using the pseudo class :target

The gist:

CSS:

#main750 { 
 max-width: 960px; 
 height: 350px; 
 border: 1px solid red; 
 padding:10px; 
}
#main750:target { 
 width: 960px; 
 height: 350px; 
 border: 1px solid blue; 
}
.leftcol {
 width:20%;
 float:left; 
 border: 1px solid green;
 padding:10px;
 margin-right:10px;
}

HTML: <ul> <li><a href="test-target-pseudo.html#main750">target fixed-width blue border</a> <li><a href="test-target-pseudo.html">target variable-width red border</a> </ul> <div id="main750"> <div class="leftcol">left col</div> <div>content</div> </div>

The original past: One pseudo-class, one document, two layouts

Been a while

But as Rimbaud once said... “Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.”

iPad design made simple: JSKemper.org

www.jskemper.org this is an effort to build an iPad web app that takes advantage of touch events yet remain display compatible across all devices and platforms.

The app takes advantage of the :orientation property to adjust the layout according to portrait or landscape viewing.

iSticky

iPad [and iPhone:orientation] sticky footer
An experiment in how it might be possible to target devices using media queries. Due to uneven @media browser support additional client-side detection will most assuredly deliver a better user experience across all browsers and platforms.

• Provides css for iPad sticky footer. [Thanks to Ryan Fait http://ryanfait.com]
• Uses css @media queries to point iphone, ipad and "all" other formats to unique stylesheets.
• Stickiness is disabled in non-ipad devices.
• Fixes stickiness based on device orientation

On Github

WeTheApp beta

Released WeTheApp beta a mobile Constitution web app using the U.S. National Archives original transcription. Written with HTML5/CSS3 browsers in mind using Boilerplate, the JQTouch framework, jQuery and the PhoneGap mobile dev. platform.

Be independent and know your rights!
The idea behind WeTheApp was to develop an app with a simple interface that would work on both mobile and > 480p. As the mobile device market becomes crosscut by OS and hardware fragging an open approach insures some level of interoperability that is reasonably platform independent. I say reasonably because, though adoption is advancing rapidly, HTML5/CSS3 browser support diminishes the further one strays from iOS nirvana.

To do for next time:

• Create separate stylesheet and improve layout for >480p
• Carve up the Amendements into smaller chunks perhaps accordianize
• Add annotations and notes as floating tips
• Differentiate internal<=>external links and make them sane by adding ext cancel
• Keep building and testing the HTML5 media layer
• Further testing on Android and Symbian

Release Notes: 2010-12-13

Changed toolbar background
New toolbar title font color

Release Notes: 2010-12-03

Hosting fixed. Hooray! Now resolves to wetheapp.org

Release Notes: 2010-11-29

Cleaned up hosting, well sort of, now points to a Heroku.com Rails server
Added site to github.com/mashcode/we
Bill of Rights section broken down into 10 screens
Further minor editorial changes
Added back HTML5 <video>

Release Notes: 2010-11-28

Updated homepage graphics
Further minor editorial changes
Removed HTML5 <video> <iframe>

Release Notes: 2010-11-26

WeTheApp version 1.0 beta