Q. What messages am I billed for?
A. AT&T bills for all messages whether sent or received, read or unread, solicited or unsolicited. Also, any message sent or received that is longer than 160 characters will be delivered as multiple segments of up to 160 characters each. Each segment is billed as a separate message.
In addition to AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon charge for the incoming text messages as well despite what actions you take after receiving the message on your phone. I wasn't able to find anything on Sprint's website regarding how incoming text's are handled, but I spoke with 2 customer service representatives who both told me if the text is deleted before being opened, the end user will not be charged.
This is a glimpse into how cellular service companies can really push the customer around however they want, and AT&T is perhaps the biggest culprit. With the iPhone on their side, people have no choice but to sign up with the cell phone giant who nearly went bankrupt before Apple came along and saved them. The AT&T iPhone exclusivity contract expires at the end of this year and AT&T is doing everything it can to keep the iPhone from leaving the carrier in the dust. Analyst predict that were Apple to break free from AT&T and stretch across multiple carriers, their profits would continue to soar as its former exclusive carrier would lose a large percentage of its business and iPhone service plans would become much cheaper. #KeepYourFingersCrossed
So let me know if you are interested. Also, if you know how to play any instrument, that'd be helpful too. I can write out music for pretty much anything. Guitar, flute, french horn, a pair of spoons, anything. We don't really have to be good, it's all just for fun. Leave me a comment if you live in the Atlanta area and are interested.
I recently saw Watchmen (a little late, I know, but hell, it was only 75 cents) and I have got to say I was bored out of my mind for nearly the entire movie. I made some observations about not just Watchmen, but the the entire movies, television and video industry in general. When I was younger, I used to cling onto every minute of a movie and feel disappointed when the end credits started rolling. Yet lately, I find myself constantly wondering "How much longer is this going to take?". In fact, there aren't many movies I have seen in the past year that I didn't think could have been trimmed down a little. I would wonder is this just something that comes with age, but my parents don't seem share the same feelings. What seperates my recent lack of attention span from their own?It's not just movies. I constantly find myself sitting through television shows wishing Tivo had the ability to speed it up, maybe just 20 percent faster, or god forbid, the crew cut out some unnecessary parts and just fill in the rest of the time slot with commercials or something. Nothing annoys me more than a lingering pace, much like the one I saw in the nearly 3 hour Watchmen - much of which could have been pushed into a montage or the opening credits (much like Wolverine's opening credits - Perfect!). Even YouTube videos that exceed about a 7 minutes mark tend to have me moving on to the Related Videos or More from this User panel.
Not until I started going to bed last did I find a possible answer as to what has triggered this Video-A.D.D. I've acquired as I started watching [adultswim]. A large majority of this station's programming is fulfilled with a collection of scenes no longer than two minutes each. In fact, some of their shows are barely over 10 minutes total running time such as Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Frisky Dingo to name some of my favorites. Even the flagship of the station, Family Guy cuts up its scenes and kicks the pacing into 5th gear by splicing flash backs and reference videos about every other minutes or so. And Robot Chicken, well, that's the pot of gold for people like me. Was that sketch funny? Doesn't matter, it was only 5 seconds long. On to the next one!
[adult swim] is not alone in fueling this condition. YouTube plays probably just as big of a role in my developing habit. With the information super highway at my fingertip, I'm not shooting through videos like fruit at the grocery store. If it doesn't grab my attention within the first 10 seconds, I skip to the middle. If nothing interesting is happening at the random point I drop my mouse, so much for that video and on to the next.
And how about that Smart Phone? It doesn't matter if you have an iPhone or a BlackBerry, not matter what you cannot stand in a line alone anymore without playing with it. Facebook, Twitter, Chat, Email, the World Wide Web available anywhere in the world. I don't even need a newspaper anymore, I can get everything I need from this little 4 oz computer that I carry with me at all times, not to mention, most of the headlines have to grab my attention in 140 characters or less.
If you haven't lost interest in reading this blog yet, then chances are you've got a longer attention span than myself. Let me know what your thoughts on it.
Some of you may know that last November Adam, Jessica, Holden and I attempted to revive the President Evil concept that Jay and I made in college. We filmed three episodes and then Adam moved to Dubai, but he came back and we finally got episodes 2 and 3 off his computer.
President Evil is a web series about a zombie that becomes President and two men who find it their duty to kill the new leader of the free world, President Grogg.
The idea began in 2004 during the George Bush / John Kerry election season. "President Evil: The Beginning" was entered into the Mercer University Halloween Film Festival and won 1st place. Heroes Chip and Jim feel their patriotic duty to slay this surprisingly effective new President to save mankind from zombie...kind
Four years later, while Obama and McCain led campaigns, a new set of heroes found themselves fighting against the zombie executive branch after a re-election keeps President Grogg in office. After saving the economy, balancing the nation budget, mending foreign affairs, and saving the country, President Grogg is still just a zombie to Nick and Mack who are fed up with brains on their pizza in "President Evil: Re-Election Day".
Nick and Mack hit the road bound for Washington DC and with a little help from their friends, they aim to take down the zombie empire with guns blazing.
Episode 1: "Re-Election Day"
Episode 2: "Campaign Strategies"
Episode 3: "Right To Bear Arms"
And, in case you've never seen the original one that Jay and I made in 2004, here it is. As a fair warning, we only had one night to write, film, and edit it. Plus, it ran longer than expected, so we had to cut it short (film festival had a 6 minute limit)
Episode 0: "The Beginning"
Cities this map covers:
I might just cut out sleep for the next 2 months, that should help me get more of these things accomplished. I would estimate that within the next 60 days, I should be able to cap off at least half, if not 3/4 of these To-DO items.
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First I'd like to thank everyone who voted on the poll or expressed your preferences to me in one form or another for the upcoming music video shoot this weekend. As we are drawing closer to the call time, I've been working on getting a script together / picking a song to use.
Oddly enough, I'm now drawn to a song that wasn't even in the voting. It's called "That's Not My Name" by a band called "The Ting Tings". It's a fun goofy song that's got a good beat. The concept will be centered around a softball field, which is perfect for Saturday. We can shoot the video, then play dodgeball. Perfect sunny afternoon.
In addition, we can film a "How To Play Dodgeball" video for our new and future players. Not 100% on the "That's Not My Name" video yet, but it's the only one I've got an idea for and I'd really like to email the plot to my dodgeball peeps and start casting for the vid by tomorrow night (wednesday night). Adam's working on some of his own ideas as well. Might be able to film two videos this weekend. w00t!
Per Holden's Back To The Future 2 theory, he suggested that time traveling to the past is boring/useless. Read his whole argument for a better idea of his theory. While Holden made several great points, after thinking about it, I've come up with some thoughts opposed to only time traveling to the future.
Time Traveling into the future would only be profitable if you could go back to your original time. Marty McFly had the delorean which was able to carry him back to 1985, but what if this jump was only a one time event. In such a case, going into the future may be unwise.
To begin with, there's the obvious plot that Blast From The Past, Encino Man, and Brenden Frasier in general has taught us. You will be uneducated about the world events that have occured since you time traveled. You would just be that guy who knows the same thing as old people do. Go on and on about how in his day, facebook and google ruled the world.
But maybe you decided to go far into the future, after laptops and desktop computers had gone the way of the dinosaur and cellphones were now old technology where everyone gets everything you need is in a chip implanted in you (Mulder was right). Man continues to evolve and get smarter with every jump. But you're still set in your old ways, now having to catch up to the faster world.
With out that delorean, you won't winning any horse races. The only way to use time traveled knowledge to make the dough is to travel back to 2004 and bet a hard eight when you know its coming, bet on the RedSox to win the World Series, and 4 8 15 16 23 42 to win the lottery. Maybe while you're in 2004, start up a website called Twitter and make even more bank. Oh and do us a favor and tell congress that GM, Ford, Chrysler, and AIG will sqwander any money they give them, and you should know, you're from the future.
I spent the weekend in South Carolina betting on horses and learning German. I won $3 (balla!) at SteepleChase during an afternoon of hanging out with friends, drinking, playing beer pong, and watching horses race around the tracks while dressed up like the Great Gatsby. Going into with low expectations, I was really impressed with how much fun I had. While one of the horses I bet on won, another didn't even finish the race. I was wondering where it went and a few seconds later we heard the announcer call over the intercom, "Horse Ambulance to the track. Horse Ambulance to the track."
The word "Horse Ambulance" is code for "Truck to ship horse to glue factory".
On the way to and back from South Carolina, we watch movies and I inquired as to what all my favorite Rammstein songs where actually about with some new friends from Germany. I learned several new phrases that should be fun to put use to:
"Mutter" - Mother
"Benzin" - Gasoline
"Buck Dich" - Bend Over (typically said to a girl before mounting)
"Keine Lust" - Not tonight, I have a headache
"Mein Herz Brennt" - My heart burns
"Ich Will" - I want
"Du riechst so gut" - You smell so good
"Links 2 3 4" - Left 2 3 4 (as in a military march)
"Zwitter" - Hermaphrodite (this one was a lot of fun hearing the girls explain what it means)
"Tier" - Animal
"Spieluhr" - Music Box
"Seemann" - Sailor (a lot of confusion while they were explaining this one. I believe the phrase "Oh, I love seemann" was the highlight of the explanation)
"Rosenrot" - Rose color
"Feuer Frei!" - Fire away!
"Sonne" - Sun
Now I need a russian friend to explain to me what all these t.A.T.u songs mean.
Thought I might share little known music group (at least in the US) with all you drunk internet surfers who somehow stumbled across my blog at 4 am at night. (I recently got a traffic analyzer and my key demographic seems to be people hitting the site between 1-4 am and surprisingly a couple hits from Guam).
Girls Aloud is a pop group from britain, very much in the Spice Girls fashion. As it turns out, they've been around for about 7 years and were a pretty big hit in England despite their speech impediments (british accents). They were formed on a television program similar to American Idol. They've got 8 CDs and 7 DVDs. To highlight some of their hits, I've found a great megamix that presents a lot of their big hits:
After they released the megamix above, Girls Aloud had another CD come out that has this great song called "Sexy No No No" on it. I really love this music video , got kind of a Marilyn Manson meets September vibe to it. If you don't know who September is, don't worry, that'll be a post for another day. Here's Girls Aloud's "Sexy No No No":
Was anyone who reads this lucky enough to see Britney in concert in Atlanta last night? I'm so mad that I didn't get tickets when they first went on sale. I found a great deal- $28 for Britney tickets, So stupid to have not jumped on that! Two weeks ago, I finally decided that I wanted to go. The only law abiding tickets I could find were $575 each. For the first time, I made a commitment to trying to win tickets from the radio, which of course was a bust.
When she made her first come back attempt in Spring 2006 with the secret concerts, I was actually lucky enough to be in San Diego where the first two occured. I heard about the first one the day after it happened, so I visited the gas lamp district and looked for tickets to her second show that night under the same fake name as the first. Tickets had skyrocketed from $15 to $200 for the cheapest. I found out later that tickets got as high as $700 right before the concert for a 20 minute show.
As it turns out, I ended up getting really sick last night anyways, so I guess its for the best I didn't get BritTix.
As a general poll, does anyone ever really win anything off the radio?
Jessica and I were playing a game last weekend where I'd play a song from an old movie or video game and she'd try to guess the source. Having not grown up in America, it's got an extra challenge in that most of these games and older movies, she's never seen, so instead she would describe the atmosphere she perceives from the song.
I'd play the Spiderman movie theme by Danny Elfman and she'd explain the violins sound like someone flying through the air and the robotic percussion sounds something like a bugs, usually arriving at something that fits the movie the song is on the soundtrack for.
When we got to the Halo theme, it really made me appreciate the soundtrack of the game. There are basically two competing forces in the theme song. The first and most prevalent is the low strings- what everyone would sing if you asked them to hum the halo theme. Dun dun dun daaaaaah, dun dun dun daaaahhh, dun dun dun daaaaaa, dun dun dun dah dun dun dun dah dah dah. It's a very military style of music. Really gives you the image of troops gearing up and running into battle. The second element of the song is the tribal percussion. With several repeated hits on the uh of 4 and the down beat of 1 "Bah-bum", it makes me imagine something like a mayan tribe around a fire getting pumped up to fight off whoever it was the mayans fought with. You put the two together in the song and you've got the Earth dwelling troops vs the alien tribe dancing on the battlefield.
