/dev/dump

Some of you may have noticed that my email, or my blog, or website, was down. I discontinued my hosting service with BlueHost, and when I did, I mistakenly thought that by keeping my domain registration with them, that I'd still have DNS services.  It was both a foolish mistake, and yet an easy one to make.  (I should have known better...) Anyway, things are back to normal now, once the interweb's negative caches have timed out... It does seem unfortunate that BlueHost: Does not include DNS with domain registration, nor do they have a service for it unless you actually host content with them. Did not backup my DNS zone data.  (So even if I paid them to reactivate hosting, I was going to have to re-enter my zone records by hand.)  This is just stupid. So, I've moved my DNS, and when my registration expires, I'll be moving that to another provider as well.  (Dyn, in case you wondered.)

So I've not blogged in a while, but my recent experience with a major mobile provider was so astonishingly bad that I feel compelled to write about my experiences.  (Executive summary: never do business with T-mobile again!) I had some friends out from Russia back in November, and they wanted to purchase an iPhone 5s for their son as a birthday gift.  Sadly, we couldn't get unlocked ones from the Apple Store at the time, because they simply lacked inventory. So we went to the local T-mobile store here on San Marcos Blvd (San Marcos, CA.)  I knew that they were offering phones for full-price (not subsidized), and it seemed like a possible way for them to get a phone.  Tiffany was the customer service agent that "assisted" us.  She looked like she was probably barely out of high school,  but anyway she seemed pleased to help us make a purchase.  I asked her no fewer than three times whether the phone was unlocked, and was assured that, yes, the phone was unlocked an