how to configure your APN for better download speeds with Net10 if you are using an AT&T BYOD sim.

Back around the end of July, I made the mistake of changing my cellular service over to sprint.

Sure I loved the new samsung galaxy nexus phone, and 4G cellular was great in the 4 or 5 places I could get a 4G signal at in the Roswell / Alpharetta Georgia area (none of which were at my home where I could barely get 2 bars of 3G service). Combine this with having a lot of trouble with their 3G network where I would have full signal strength but wouldn't be able to access anything on the data network, which was absolutely fricking ridiculous.

Well at the end of December I was completely fed up, and I started researching on finding a cheaper way to have decent cell service. See, I used to have AT&T which gave me great coverage, but their policies on data usage sucked. I rarely go over 1 1/2 to 2GB of data usage per month, but when I had to spend 4 days in the hospital and only had my cell phone for internet usage I racked up a whopping 2.1GB of data and got charged an extra 20 dollars on my bill, which prompted me to look for something with unlimited data. Having unlimited data plus the supposedly great 4G coverage Sprint advertises suckered me into signing up with them.

Anyways, after some research I decided to go with the Net10 BYOD (Bring Your own Device) unlimited plan using one of their AT&T compatible sim cards and my old Samsung Captivate phone that I still have. You might say why in the hell are you going from such a nice phone like the galaxy nexus back to the captivate which has issues with the GPS lock not working very well, random shutdown issues, and in general just being an older model phone.

The answer is, I already own it, and that I'm also in the process of getting the needed parts in to repair a unlocked International model GT-I9250 GSM model Samsung Galaxy Nexus that I purchased off ebay that has a damaged micro USB charging port. I ordered the flex cable part with the usb connector on it that I will swap out after I take the phone apart.

Anyways back to the info about how to configure your APN for better download speeds with Net10 if you are using an AT&T sim.

I followed the instructions on setting up the APN on my captivate using the APN settings that Net10 gave me, but ran into issues with download speeds being very sub par, especially with me having a HSPDA signal with 4 bars on my phone.

thru a little trial and error I determined that the issue was with the proxy settings that net10 wanted me to use so I wanted to share the APN settings that gave me the best speeds both for uploads and downloads.

Name: NET10

APN: wap.tracfone

Proxy: not set

Port: not set

username: not set

server: not set

MMSC: http://mmsc.cingular.com

MMS proxy: not set

MMS port: not set

MCC: 310

MNC: 410

Authentication type: not set

apn type: not set

apn protocol : IPv4

Bearer: Unspecified.


the main differences between this and the settings that Net10 wanted me to use were the proxy, proxy port, mms proxy and mms port. Once I removed these I went from very slow download speeds of less than 100K per second, to nearly 3 MB per second download, and 1 MB per second upload speeds.

for cheap unlimited service this isn't bad, and by me setting it to auto renew every month on their website I was able to get my monthly service for $45 per month instead of $50.

You might be asking youself, now if he signed up with sprint back at the end of July, isn't he going to have to pay an ETF fee? Well the answer for that is yes, but I'm getting a nice refund back from the IRS and plan on using it to pay the ETF, and I plan on selling my phone after everything is settled and square for whatever I can get out of it, to help recover some of the ETF.

How to Add Android Market to 4.3" Emerson EM543 MP3 player running Android 4.0 (ICS)

These instructions are for a Polaroid PMID702C but I can attest that these instructions also work on the 4.3" Emerson EM543 MP3 Player with Android 4.0 (ICS) that is currently being sold by Big Lots here in the United States for $50 during their current sale. It's normally sold for $60
 Note that if you do not have a micro SD card installed you will need to get one as the settings on the tablet will not let you mount either the internal or sd card storage on the EM543 unless a SD card is inserted. I used a 8GB card I had laying around.
anyways here is the link.
How to Add Android Market to Polaroid PMID702C

My adventures with PRK Laser Eye Surgery 5 months later

My eyes have stabilized. My Right eye is currently at about 20/50 right now and is showing a prescription and is still showing a slight stigmatism.

My Left eye has reached it's target prescription as it was purposely undercorrected to give me mono vision.

It looks like I will have to go back in for a touch up on my right eye to get it as close to perfect 20/20 vision as is possible.

I will find out when I go back in for my next follow-up appointment on December 11th at the Thomas Eye Group, this time I'm seeing the surgeon who did my surgery Dr. Carlyle.

How-to: Windows 8 Professional Upgrade install and activation on system without OS installed

Using this info you should be able to do a clean install of the Windows 8 Upgrade on a system without an Operating system.

• Open regedit by pressing Windows-q, entering regedit and selecting the result from the list of hits.
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/
• Change MediaBootInstall from 1 to 0
• Go back to the start screen and enter cmd there.
• Right-click Command Prompt and select to run it as administrator.
• Type slmgr /rearm on the command line and hit enter.
• Reboot Windows now.
• Run the activation utility afterwards, enter your product key to activate Windows.

This is the same method that worked for Windows 7.

My adventures with PRK Laser Eye Surgery 2 Months later

I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I've seen my biggest improvements in my vision since I finished up taking my eye drops last Thursday night. In the 7 days (as of tomorrow) since the last time I used the steroid eye drops my vision has drastically improved. I'm still not back to 100% but I'd say I'm around 89% there. I had gotten depressed as it had seemed like my vision was never going to improve. By this time of the evening before I stopped the steroid eye drops my vision was so bad that I couldn't see clearly more than 3 to 4 feet away from my face, and my night vision driving experience was quite frankly a horrific nightmare with me seeing double and even triple oncoming head lights or tail lights, and me being unable to read most signs up until I was almost right on them.

I'm now down to seeing a mostly clear image with a minor bit of blurring either slightly above or below the image that mostly is noticeable when I am looking at lights or trying to read text. This tends to look like a slight haze around text.

Since this change is so pronounced I would say that the steroid drops were most likely the biggest factor in the delay in my healing. I don't know why they kept me on them for so long (4 drops a day for 2 weeks after surgery, then 2 drops a day for 2 weeks, then 1 drops a day for 2 weeks). I was using the 1% predni forte (prednisone) eye drops.

Hopefully within the next couple of weeks my vision will continue to improve so my distance viewing is much better as right now that's the remaining thing that needs to be fixed. I don't go back to the eye doctor until October 1st and I'd love to be able to nail perfect 20/20 vision in my right eye and 20/30 vision in my under-corrected eye with minimal ghosting or hazing.

How to resize a HFS+ partition on a Hackintosh if it's created in the middle of the drive.

OK first off a little back info on this situation. My hackintosh system was originally setup with the hard drive partitioned fully for my original Lion OSX install. When Mountain Lion came out I purchased it, used the unibeast tool from TonyMacx86's site to create a new Mountain Lion USB installer and then I used the Disk Utility on that installer after I rebooted my hackintosh and then booted off the USB Mountain Lion installer disk to resize my original Lion HFS+ partition so I could create a second blank partition for Mountain Lion. I then installed Mountain Lion on this second partition and after downloading the new Mountain Lion Multibeast software from the TonymacX86 site and installing it I was able to successfully boot my hackintosh from the new Mountain Lion Partition without having to use the USB Mountain Lion install disk.

So after I copied over all of my files,etc. that I wanted to keep from the old Lion partition I decided to use disk utility to delete this partition with the goal of moving the mountain lion partition to the beginning of the drive and then resizing it to fill the full drive.

That's when I ran into problems, apparently Disk utility can shrink a drive, and it can be used to expand a partition to fill the entire drive, but it can't move an existing partition to the beginning of the drive.

I know I could have just backed up the partition to a dmg and wiped the drive, created a new single partition and then restored the DMG file to it, but I wanted to see if this was possible to move the partition. Since I was able to do it I wanted to document the steps and share so anyone else who runs into this situation can also benefit from this info to move their partition and then resize it to fill the full size of the drive. 

here are the steps I took.

1. downloaded current version of partedmagic bootable linux cd iso from here. http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=downloads
2. burned the partition magic iso to cd, inserted cd into optical drive on my system.
3. booted system to linux desktop using the partedmagic bootable cd I burned.
4. ran the partition editor shortcut on desktop.
5. chose the resize/move option in the gparted program that the partition editor shortcut opened.
6. moved the partition to the beginning of the drive, this takes quite a long time so be prepared to wait, or go do something else and check back in about an hour or so.
7. after the move is finished reboot the system and boot it from your Lion or Mountain Lion usb installer key, and use the disk utility from it to do a repair on your drive as the header will show as being slightly screwed up and will prevent you from being able to resize the drive until this is fixed. I tried to resize the partition using gparted and it didn't give me that option, which is why you need to use disk utility.

8. after running the repair you can now open the mountain Lion disk utility program and go to the edge of the partition and drag it down so it will fill the entire drive, and then click apply. this process takes a little while to finish but is much faster than the move to the beginning of the drive using gparted from the partedmagic boot cd.



Anyways I hope this information is useful for you.


I remain your obedient servant,

Doctor Evil

09-11 Remembered 11 years later

11 Years ago today, I was at work at HCR Enterprises (A now closed asset management company that purchased outdated computer equipment to refurbish and resell), when One of our lead callers came in to announce that she had just saw TV footage on the mini TV in her office where someone had flew into one of the twin world trade center towers. I quickly turned on the radio in my work area to listen to the news and heard the announcement that another plane had just hit the second tower and then heard the announcement that the towers had collapsed a short while later.
I can say without any shame, that I cried that day for people I had never met, knowing that so many people had died for no good reason, and that so many Husbands, Wives, Mothers, Fathers, Sons and Daughters would never get to see their loved ones alive again.. I will never forget 9-11, or those who died that day.