Jawbone JAMBOX update – It falls well

One other thought regarding my Jawbone JAMBOX, I’ve discovered that it’s surprisingly robust when it comes to being dropped.

How have I discovered this? Well, I put it on a counter top, table or other large flat surface, turn it on and do whatever else I’m doing. A couple of hours later it has vibrated itself off the desk and hit the floor.

So far, no dents and no apparent damage, but it makes me wonder about the long-term viability as speakers don’t usually handle repeated impacts particularly well. Blah.

On the plus side, since giving up even trying to pair to multiple devices, it’s been an absolutely fantastic speaker. Can’t wait to take it travelling again!

Kindle 3

I got a Kindle 3! Yay!

All in all, so far, I love this device. I’ve been reading books on my iPhone and iPad so far, but at this point, I’d highly recommend it!

I got the $139 version which has wifi only, but for $189 you can snag a 3G version that will let you download eBooks from anywhere without setting up your own wireless network.

So to start with it, the packaging is very Apple-like. So is the charger. That’s nice. It doesn’t come in a shipping box, the box it comes in IS the shipping box, that’s a damn nice design to avoid wasted packing materials.

Out of the box is a nice experience; the Kindle itself is wrapped in plastic and the screen has instructions on how to get started printed on it. If you want to look like less of a fool than me, you won’t try and pry them off since unlike most devices that have a beautifully printed plastic cover over the screen, the startup instructions are the screen itself! Talk about a great first impression.

Oh, and yes, there is a charger plus a USB cable included in the box. Another nice touch in a day where $300 devices *cough*iPod Touch*cough* don’t include power adapters.

I already have a Kindle account and read eBooks on my iPad and iPhone, when I fired up the Kindle it was pre-configured to my Amazon account and once I got wifi connected, I was immediately able to download books that I’d already purchased.

The screen is absolutely beautiful, the Kindle is so much lighter than I’d expected, and it’s a very comfortable fit in the hand. There are page-turn buttons on the left and right, so it’s great regardless of which hand you’re using at that particular moment.

Unfortunately I did have one fairly major problem with the wifi setup. On the plus side it should work fine for most normal home networks, the problem only occurs when using a configuration that is more common in business networks.

If you really care about the details, read on:


It’s looking like a bug in Kindle’s network stack.  Specifically, the device breaks when a DHCP server returns this configuration:

IP: 172.16.0.1
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 172.16.0.1
DNS Server: 172.16.0.40

After the Kindle obtains an IP address, it attempts to send a DNS lookups to 172.16.0.40, but routes the packets to the default gateway instead of correctly delivering them to the local network.

Interestingly this works on “normal” home LANs where 172.16.0.1 is both a router and DNS server, but breaks on a more “corporate” style LAN where the router/firewall/default-gateway is not the DNS server.

I’ve reported the problem to Amazon’s support, we’ll see how much hassle it is to get through the first level support droid.

Santrex.net – Worst hosting company on the planet?

Is Santrex.net a bad choice for hosting, or the worst choice for hosting?

And yes, this is just my side of the story. If you want to read their side of the story, well… Their website doesn’t seem to mention this little outage yet, nor does their public forums. Weird.

Anyway, here’s what happened: around noon April 12th, one of my VPS servers goes down. I open a ticket, then a few minutes later notice the system status indicates a possible hardware problem and some services are offline. No problem, we all have hardware failures once in a while.

4pm, “we’re currently experiencing major issues… in all locations”

April 13th the system status is updated with a (Resolved) tag, but I’m still down. File an update to my ticket, they’re still having issues and are documenting things in another location. Fair enough, although the “resolved” was a wee bit misleading.

April 14th/15th We’re still down, absolutely no sign of things returning, I move my services elsewhere and request a refund. Technical support says to contact billing.

April 17th I get a new “account activation” message, apparently Santrex.net threw out all of their customer data and started over after being down for 5 days.

Over the next few days I’ve exchanged several emails with their billing department, and apparently this is an acceptable level of service, and they’re standing behind their “we might not actually provide the service we sell, and we don’t offer refunds” clauses in their terms of service.

Seriously? A week of downtime plus 100% data loss, and a refund is too much to ask?

It was also nice that they took the time to yell at me for opening a second ticket formally request cancellation, after I followed their instructions to cancel service. Thanks for that guys.

Luckily, this is why god invented credit card chargebacks, Visa will stand behind a consumer when they purchase something and the seller doesn’t bother to deliver.