The art of unlocking cell phones

Before I left for vacation, I'd already decided that it was time to upgrade to a better cell phone (not made of cheap plastic and that might actually have a signal while I'm at work). My dream was to have a gsm phone that I could have a US carrier SIM card for, and then just buy a chip in El Salvador. I went all over (Findlay, Detroit, Cincinnati, DC, if you can consider that "all over") and found that pretty much all phones are sold "locked" to a certain carrier. Everyone said to check e-Bay. Not enough time for that. I found one place in Cinti, a half hour before it closed, that said they could unlock a phone for me for a certain cost. Oh well. I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to buy a phone in El Salvador.

So, I went to Tigo, and found a phone I liked at a price I liked, but due to the confusing nature of my job and were I'm paid, I didn't have all the documents that they needed. Okay. Then a friend found a friend that he hadn't seen for a while that works at Digicel, another carrier here. I am now the proud owner of a Motorola PDA/phone, for a mere $40 a month, on only a 12 month contract.

How can this be??!! US carriers always wanted me to sign a 2-year plan, with a phone that I can't use with any other service. I remember those unhappy days of having a Sprint phone. And this Digicel phone, while locked, can be taken on a short trip to see unlocking "professionals" downtown, and can then be used with any carrier. So I can buy a $1 SIM card when I go to Nicaragua next week, if I go back to Colombia I can use my card from there, and wonder of all wonders, can get a chip the next time I'm back in Ohio and use a pre-paid service.

This article in the NY Times this morning talks about some teen that figured out a way to unlock the iPhone so that you don't have to have a contract with AT&T. Seems fair, being that maybe I'd rather stick with T-Mobile or Verizon. And for me, it's not that I don't want the Digicel plan. It's that roaming is expensive and I'm traveling enough to feel like I need a way to call if my car catches on fire in the middle-of-nowhere Honduras and I'm not brave enough to put it out with my handy fire extinguisher.

Happy V-Day

I was going to do a bookblog, and I probably still will, but in the spirit of Valentine's Day...

This is from one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Michael Drayton.
Click here to listen to my reading (my first podcast!)

THREE SORTS OF SERPENTS DO RESEMBLE THEE

Three sorts of serpents do resemble thee:
That dangerous eye-killing cockatrice,
The enchanting siren, which doth so entice,
The weeping crocodile—these vile pernicious three.
The basilisk his nature takes from thee,
Who for my life in secret wait dost lie,
And to my heart sendst poison from thine eye:
Thus do I feel the pain, the cause, yet cannot see.
Fair-maid no more, but Mer-maid be thy name,
Who with thy sweet alluring harmony
Hast played the thief, and stolen my heart from me,
And like a tyrant makst my grief thy game:
Thou crocodile, who when thou hast me slain,
Lamentst my death, with tears of thy disdain.


Not that the traditional sonnet is merely sugary. In Shakespeare, as in film comedy, conflict and even insult can be forms of courtship. Here is Shakespeare's contemporary Michael Drayton, with one of the most engaging, meditative first lines in all literature:

Podcasting Delayed...A Little

Oh Cincinnati...how I miss your 24 hour a day fast Internet connection. Sigh. I'm lucky to have what I do here, but I miss my play time, the time to learn how all this new techie stuff works. I need to figure out how to make video files small enough that I can post them on my blog and how to convert existing files into a file format that is smaller as well. For the time being, I'll remain a lurker in the collaborative blogging session! I didn't end up having a spare minute to do my first podcast today, but I plan to give it a try this weekend. Tired of putting these things on my to-do list every week and they never get done. During one of my classes that I taught in the lab this week, I was happy to see that one of my fellow teachers sitting in the back of room was creating his own blogs and asking questions right along with my students!

On another note, I'm also waiting to see if they have much of the 2006 Winter Olympics on tv here. We get a couple of sports channels with the cable, but they only seem to play soccer games! I did get to see some of the U.S. figure skating finals last week, so I still remain hopeful.

Info that I enjoyed finding from this week's blog06 suggestions:

• What is a blog? If you have any doubts, check out The Weblog Project.
• A Podcast on How to Podcast. This was very helpful. I'm going to try to make my first audio entry later today.
• Collaborative Blogging I need to join this.
  
• Uwe's Bookblog entries. This week's entry is Bill Bryson's (who I love) Notes from a Small Island. This motivates me to try making my own bookblog. Barranquilla doesn't have a culture of readers, so anything I can do to help my students become more interested in reading would be a step in the right direction.

My First Video Posting!

We'll see how well my first video post goes. Thanks, ProfeBlanco, for the footage from Caracas!










Watch the Video

RSS, Vlogs, and Audioblogs

I'm happy to have discovered Bloglines this week through blog06. I'd heard of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds before, but I've never had the time to play around to figure out exactly what they are until now. Hopefully it will let me keep a little more up-to-date with all of the blogs and websites I try to read every day! I feel guilty for not having time to regularly read the news any more--most days I just glance at the headlines in the NY Times and that's it. There's an online version of El Heraldo, B/quilla's main newspaper, but I maybe get around to that one once every month. Every morning when I'm lying in bed not wanting to get up there's one or two men who walk through the streets by my housing, shouting "El Heraldo," and believe me, I think every time that I should get one so I could know more what's going on in the city I live in. But it just never seems to happen...

This week I've also been tinkering with video blogging. I don't want to have to pay for a service to host my videos, but so far I've not found anything that's been easy to use. Any suggestions? I'm also interested in adding audio, but I need to go buy a microphone first. It would be much easier if I was back in the 'nati where I could simply call from my cell to audioblogger!

Thoughts so far on blogging in education

I'm participating in two different TESOL EVO 2006 sessions, one on collaborative blogging in education and the other on using drama in second language acquisition. So, for a while at least, this blog will have my thoughts about what we've been discussing so far in the blog session.

Shouldn't technology make our lives easier, not more difficult? The students may enjoy it, and so might I, but how much are they actually learning? And how much time is wasted? These things exhaust what little is left of my energy at five o'clock on a Friday afternoon.

I'm enjoying the blog06 session the best so far, mostly because it goes hand-in-hand with the activities I'm attempting to develop for my students here.