Thomas Gericke

Hi there!

This totally makes me sick. About a week ago, I renewed my contract with t-mobile and got an upgrade from my old iPhone to a new 3G iPhone with 16GB memory. Well, nice, nice.

I was told, the “old” contract would be cancelled within the next few days and the new contract would begin right after the other one stopped. But the new phone would work instantly with the old card. Well, and it did. Everything worked quite fine.

Just until last Sunday, 2009-04-12. On Sunday, my iPhone told me for the very first time: “Could not active cellular data network“. Well, at first I thought there might be just a coverage problem. Then I remembered, the contract needed to be switched and maybe there would be a short service outage.

Then I forgot about the problem for a while. Until today. I tried data networking and it didn’t work. So I called the service this evening.

There’s one number burned in the very back of my brain. It’s the T-Com service hotline:

+49 800 33 0 1000

I called this number and all the fun began. This hotline is voice-guided, which always makes me very, very happy. You can shout from the deepest point of your lungs to this conversation partner and she will never ever be mad about it.

She asked me, what my call was about. I said: “INCIDENT!”

She did not understand.

I shouted: “OPERATOR!”.

Well, she agreed to connect me with an operator but she first needed my phone number. After I told her my number, she said: “This is a cell phone number. I need a land line number.”

Just as I was about to destroy everything I could reach with my free arm, she said: “If you don’t have any number, just say ‘next’.”

“Hell, next. Neeeext! N – E – X – T !!!”

“Please be patient, the next operator is reserved for you”, she said and I smiled. Nice, nice. BUT: after 16 (sixteen!) minutes, a male voice said: “All operators are busy. Please call again later.” *Click*

What the hell?! Okay, okay. I remained totally calm (will clean up the broken dishes later… [just kiddin’]) and called the same number again. “Incident. *ARGH* OPERATOR! NEXT!” And I got connected to a women within less than one minute.

I told her about my problem and after she listened about 2 minutes to my hole story, she said: “You have to call T-Mobile, there’s the number 01805 …”

“Stop!” I said. “I definitely WILL NOT call a service number which is NOT toll-free.”

I could see her shocking face on my iPhone as she searched on her computer and finally found another number, which I immediately called:

+49 800 88 55 400

Funny thing: the man who answered was responsible for DSL and leased lines and had absolutely no idea about cellular networking. But he agreed to pass me on… to his manager or whatever. And this funny person told me to call the toll-free cell phone service number:

2202

Well, I called this number. Three times in 5 minutes!

The first guy told me to active the Airplane Mode. As I told him “but this will interrupt our call”, he said: “no, no, we will stay connected, I know this for sure!” Oh my God, what a freak. As I tapped the “Airplane Mode” button, my iPhone said — guess what — “this will interrupt your current call”. Well, ehm… eh?

He then told me to quit the call and to this Airplane-Mode thing. Cellular data networking should work after that. I tried and — surprise! — it dit NOT work!

I called the same number again, told the hole story to another guy and just as I was about to ask what to do now, the connection was terminated. What the hell?!

So, I called the same number again a third time and told the story again. It was someone with a foreign accent, but he was totally okay. He asked me to stay connected, he would talk to an iPhone expert. After about 5 minutes, he came back and asked if I ever tried to turn the device off and on again. OMG! Sure I tried it several times. He again talked to the iPhone expert. As he came back to me, he had no further idea.

His suggestion was to call back tomorrow at 8am to get directly connected to an iPhone technician. I agreed to that.

But I could not believe, this problem to be that unique. So, I googled for “could not activate cellular data network” and the very first link was. http://unfake.it/c4l

One guy posted, he simply reset his networking settings (Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings). So, I tried this. And — TADA! — it works perfectly again.

My conclusion: T-Mobile should use Google as knowledge-base.

Hi there!

Yesterday, I posted on my Twitter account:

“Have you ever won the jackpot without even playing the lottery?“

Some of you asked me, what this posting was about or what I wanted to tell you. Well, let me try to explain it. But be careful, this is some kind of metaphor!

For years and years, I used to play the lottery. Regularly, I invested and assumed to receive my return of invest very soon. I paid (let’s say…) X and once in a while, I received X-1 (minus one) in return. But, well, if you get at least something (even less than you invested) back, you usually keep on playing. You keep on playing and investing and assuming and somehow hoping. You swear (to yourself): “the pay-off-moment will come”. But it does not!

Over the years, playing the lottery becomes some kind of habit. You just do it, even though you don’t know anymore, what exactly you are doing. And especially you don’t know the reason anymore. You try to quit playing but you start over again, because over the time, you invested that much and it shouldn’t be worthless. You promise to yourself: “one more time, only one more time”.

And this is the point: you expect the unexpected (e. g. winning the jackpot). If you act like this, maybe some little nice things may occur, but usually, the unexpected won’t happen (at least not to you). After I quit playing the lottery, I still expected to get my return of invest, because I somehow deserved it. The point (and problem) was: I still expected! This is a no-go!

And quite immediately after I stopped expecting anything, I won the jackpot without even playing the lottery.

Of course, there’s no guarantee to win without playing, but it’s more likely. And so, this is my conclusion:

• You play – you lose
• You expect the unexpected – you lose
• You don’t play and don’t expect – you might win

And for those of you, who still believe, this is about money and gambling: it is not!

T.

Hi there!

English // German

I have the very first iPhone, bought on 2007-11-09 in an T-Com store. Now, the display ain’t working correctly anymore. // Ich habe das allererste iPhone, gekauft am 2007-11-09 in einem T-Com Laden. Jetzt funktioniert das Display nicht mehr korrekt.

The device did not fell down, I did not hit it anywhere. I just put it in my pocket at work and as I got home, the lower centimeter of the display ain’t working anymore. // Das Gerät ist nicht herunter gefallen, ich habe es auch nirgendwo angehauen. Ich habe es auf der Arbeit in meine Tasche gesteckt und als ich heim kam, funktionierte der untere Zentimeter des Display nicht mehr richtig.

This unfortunately includes the buttons “Phone”, “Mail”, “Safari”, “iPod” and – of course – the lower buttons in each application. The 90% of the display do work absolutely correct. // Dazu gehören leider auch die Buttons “Phone”, “Mail”, “Safari”, “iPod” und – natürlich – auch die unteren Buttons aller Anwendungen. Die oberen 90% des Display funktionieren einwandfrei.

I know, my iPhone ran out of warranty, but it’s very obviously a well known hardware failure, which occurs quite often. // Ich weiss, dass mein iPhone bereits aus der Garantie gelaufen ist, allerdings ist das sehr offensichtlich ein Hardware-Fehler, welcher durchaus recht oft auftritt.

I found several websites and forums about that: // Ich habe darüber einige Webseiten und Foren gefunden:

• http://unfake.it/GzR (german forum // deutsches Forum)
• http://unfake.it/VVL (german forum // deutsches Forum)
• http://unfake.it/Q4E (english website // englische Webseite)
• http://unfake.it/0S3 (english website // englische Webseite)

The last one is probably the most important and interesting one. Quotation: // Der letzte Link ist wahrscheinlich der wichtigsten und interessanteste Link. Zitat:

“First the very bottom of the screen went out so I could not hit the space-bar on the keyboard, or change to the number/character screen. Then it got worse a few days later, now I cannot hit any of the main function buttons.”

This is proof enough for me. It must be a hardware failure and must have its origin in the fabrication. // Das ist Beweis genug für mich. Es muss sich um einen Hardware-Fehler handeln und dieser muss seinen Ursprung bereits in der Herstellung haben.

Now, I will print out those websites and I will confront T-Com in a store with those fact the next few days. I simply don’t want to pay for a new display, ’cause it’s really expensive. // Nun werde ich diese Webseiten ausdrucken und die Telekom in einem Laden mit den Fakten konfrontieren. Ich möchte einfach nicht für ein neues Display bezahlen, da das wirklich ziemlich teuer ist.

Does anyone have some more tips? // Hat noch jemand gute Tipps?

T.

Hi there!

Yesterday, I was invited to a laymen theatre play in Nuremberg, which was completely written and performed by some good friend of mine. Yet unknown artists, a story never seen before, but definitely worth viewing:

Eine(r) stirbt immer http://www.ensemble2.de/

The story goes as easy like this:

Three chapters, three women, three men, three couples, three relationships, three stories, each resulting in one death. It is about cliche between men and women, about prejudices, sex and misunderstandings.

If you dunno what to do on a Saturday evening the next few weeks, I can only recommend, giving this a try.

Bye, T.

Hi there,

today, I found something very intesting in the blog of Christian Heeren. His page was linked in the Digsby Forum and he teaches, how to get your studiVZ or meinVZ contacts in your Instant Messanger.

Though meinVZ is not really important to me (I nearly don’t use it), this might be interesting for you.

This is, how it goes: http://unfake.it/pPJ

Hi there!

Have you ever tasted the scent of your banknotes?

I have! And in my opinion, US Dollar notes definitely smell much better than European banknotes do…

Today, I went to my bank and took some US Dollars, just in case I will have trouble with my credit cards. 🙂

I did not like the old theme anymore, so I switched to a new one this night.

This evening, I thought about setting up a flickr and a twitter account. Okay, okay… I did not just think about it, I did it. What a freakin’ show…

After setting up my accounts, which was very simple, I began to link ’em to facebook and back, I uploaded photos and back… And as I did this, I began wondering. “What the hell…?! What am I doing? All the information on every site and every picture on and in each account?”

I drawed a very simple drawing and I now have a question:

Is this, what Web 2.0 is supposed to be?

What do we have?

• a homepage
• a facebook account
• a blog
• a twitter account
• a flickr account
• maybe a online diary
• maybe a guestbook
• maybe a photo blog
• maybe a gallery
• maybe a Google account (grabbing feeds and more…)
• maybe this and
• maybe that

And they all talk to each other. Am I the only one on this planet, who is very, very confused with all those sites and applications? 🙂

This is my first post via my cell phone… Seems to work quite alright 🙂

Many years ago, I wrote an alternative for the common so called “Gallery” where everybody uploads his/her pictures. After a server crash and several hardware upgrades, that “picturebook” wasn’t working anymore.

Today, I fixed this.

Many old pictures are back online again on my private website http://www.thomasgericke.de/ 🙂