First DKU-5 seller just refunded me my money in full because he couldn’t find the cable. That deserves a positive feedback.

I did buy another original Nokia cable, I’m just waiting for it. The seller said all proceeds went to a ministry, so they have to be legit, right? RIGHT?

The universe doesn’t want me to put ringtones and pictures on my phone.

Yes, I forgot to mention - Amy and I got new cell phones a couple of weeks ago, and what an ugly scene that was, as we fought over who got the “cool” phone. We got a Motorola v262 (which I think is either an older or just the CDMA version of the v260) and a Nokia 6015i. The fight was over the v262, and I lost. In hindsight I don’t mind really, as I’ve grown to prefer Nokia’s menu system.

Anyway, our wireless provider has chosen to use BREW, so the only way to get custom pics and ringtones etc. on there is to pay through the nose with the BREW service. Or buy a data cable. So off to eBay I went.

After digging through hundreds of listings for Chinese knock-off cables selling for 4 bucks but with shipping of $15, I finally found someone selling an actual Nokia DKU-5 cable. Pretty cheap too, but I could tell it was a Nokia cable because the listing pic showed the Nokia driver CD.

One week later, he shipped it.

Four days after that, it arrived. Except it wasn’t a Nokia DKU-5 data cable, it was a regular USB cable such as you’d use with an MP3 player, camera, or PSP. And because I have an MP3 player, a camera, and a PSP, I already have 3 of these cables. I looked back at the auction pic, and yes, I received what was pictured. I just couldn’t tell at the time because the pic was a bit blurry.

I emailed the seller, and he says he was sure he had the right cable and he’d look for it. This was almost a week ago. Negative feedbacking will ensue if I don’t hear anything more.

Figuring I wasn’t going to get the DKU-5 from this guy, I went and bought one of those Chinese knock-offs from another eBay seller. I made the stupid assumption that if there were so many of these things on eBay, they should work just fine. Duh. Anyway, this guy was very quick, the cable arrived promptly.

I spent two hours trying to get Nokia’s PC Suite software to find my phone. Thinking it might have been my USB ports, I tried on Sam’s machine, with the same results. Then I discovered that I had to install a particular driver for the cable, as it doesn’t use the same chip as the real DKU-5, it uses the PL-2303 chip (and is actually classed as a serial device, so you need a USB-serial driver), and needed the drivers from Prolific’s website. Once installed, I was able to happily.. ..still not connect with PC Suite. So I tried some third-party phone management software, MobiMB. This found my phone straight away, success!

Well.

I successfully transfered a MIDI file to it, but the phone refused to play it. No matter, I figured it was just because I threw any old file on there, not one that had been converted with Nokia’s software. But when I tried it on my own PC with MobiMB and some pre-converted tones, I found that none of those worked either. Hmm. Maybe you HAVE to use Nokia’s software?

I tried transferring an image though, and that worked fine. My phone now has a cute pic of Amy in nekomimi. Back to the MIDIs.

I wondered if because the phone was connected with MobiMB, it might somehow allow PC Suite to work. And it sort of did. PC Suite reported the phone as connected. I just couldn’t access it.

Sigh.

I found that MobiMB can display the link quality of your connection, presumably intended for infrared and Bluetooth connections, as cable should be stable. Except mine wasn’t, it was jumping all over the place and generally reading “poor”, with lots of errors in transmission. And as I’m taking the cable out of the phone yet again, I notice it feels a little loose. Looking down, I see that the plug has come away from the plastic cabling. Oh yeah, great build quality.

Seeing as it’s already almost broken, I took Alain’s advice and tried to see if there was anything I could fix. I did see one bent pin that was almost touching another and got my hopes up, but straightening that out did nothing.

I’m now watching two more eBay auctions for legit DKU-5 cables.

(And why don’t I just buy them outright from say, Nokia’s website? Because they’re 50 bucks. And I’m not paying more for the cable than I did for the phone)

Another thing I learned at AI - I’ll whine and complain about the hotel pop machine charging 2 bucks for a bottle of Diet Pepsi, but I’ll gladly pay that for a bottle of ramune in the dealer room.

It’s all about the marble.

Another patented It Worked on IRC, It Can Work Here Too post.

Amy just got a new phone, and by “new” I mean it would have been cutting-edge 10 years ago, but that’s the price you pay for having shitty credit and living in an area with almost no coverage.

Anyway, she said it had games on it, and I mocked her, so she started up Snake, but then quit because, and I quote, “It’s too complicated”.

Bear in mind, this is the woman who was playing Civilization III last night. So managing vast empires, that’s fine, but making a snake eat an apple? Not gonna happen.

GamerDad being down makes me a sad panda.

But it will be back!

I watched REVOLUTION OS last night, on FSTV. (Yeah, fight the power!)

While a little cringeworthy (Eric Raymond’s telling of his “I’m your worst nightmare” comment to a Microsoft exec stands out), it did a fairly good job of painting a picture of the Open Source and Free Software movements, although it seemed a little biased towards the Open Source guys. Richard Stallman came off as looking a little bit pathetic, especially the scene at the conference where he’s up on the podium trying to tell everyone they’re running GNU systems, not Linux systems, and Linus Torvalds brings out his kids. Calculated move? Mmmmm. Even if it wasn’t, it was rude - no matter how many times Linus has heard Stallman’s speech, you’d think he’d have at least pretended to be listening.

I suppose I should start writing here again, shouldn’t I? I mean, I’ve been doing this for five years, it seems a shame to give up now. Especially when Amy is actually updating her blog - but seriously, Xanga?! What the hell? Like you don’t have a perfectly good websitelogspace already?

I guess the main reason I haven’t been posting anything is that I’ve been more active on various forums, and basically that means I’ve already said what I needed to say.

Maybe I should use this space then for talking about things I wouldn’t want people on the other forums knowing, like my unhealthy obsession with Nell from Advance Wars? Then again, that subject matter probably fits in all three forums..

Recent research has concluded that Stax > Pringles.

Check how awesome my trash folder is.

Yeah, I’m that cool.

Wow, I’ve been so terrible. Barely got the site up and running again before just ignoring it for a month.

I think I have an excuse though don’t I, with the new baby and everything? Oh, that’s right. Baby X hasn’t deigned to grace us with its presence yet. Every time the Schwan’s guy comes, we say to ourselves “Well, that’s the last time we’ll see him without the new baby”. We’ve said that 3 times now, and he only comes every fortnight.

I’m terrified, of course. I’m certainly excited, but that whole childbirth thing doesn’t sit well with me.

Alright, onto the flood of posts while I have a few spare moments!