Joe's Random Ramblings

So, my AT&T U-Verse Internet access went down a week ago, on Thursday, 8/22.
I called up AT&T support, and they said they can schedule a technician to come out and fix it for Tuesday, 8/27. Ok, I bite the bullet.
So, they scheduled a technician for Tuesday, but nobody showed up. I called them again, and got it rescheduled for Wednesday; again, nobody showed up...
I escalated it, to second-tier support (which has a different phone # and an access code, so that the riff-raff doesn't call them...) and got it rescheduled for Thursday with a high priority. This time, a technician showed up at 8am, and fixed something outside for 4 hours. But it's still not working, but "that's the wiring to the outlet," and that technician is not handling that (he only does "outside" work...)
They wanted to schedule the "inside" work for Saturday... I went ballistic. Got a supervisor who does the usual BS dance of "dispatch says they can't schedule it before Saturday, and we have no power over them"...) I called the BS, of course. After an hour on the phone, the lady finally came up with the idea to "maybe get somebody from another area over here today"...
So, instead of Saturday, this gets rescheduled for "4-8pm" today.
I get back home shortly after 4pm. There is an AT&T van parked out in the parking lot. I go over to the van, and talk with the technician. He has 3 assignments scheduled in the same apartment complex, one of them mine. So much for "getting somebody from another area." That "another area" stuff was just a lie from the person I talked to earlier, to save face.
I'm the second person on his list, so he knocks at my door after about 1/2 hour, when he has finished the first assignment.
It turns out that the technician who did some stuff in the morning didn't connect the outside wiring to the wires going to the outlet inside my apartment. Complete and utter fail!
Once this last guy connected the wires, everything worked.
Sigh. Why can't these guys a) schedule things properly, and b) get decent technicians?
They need to fire most of their personnel. It seems that all of their support people are incompetent.

Unfortunately, there is no other Internet provider for the complex. I would love to get FiOS in here.
But, I can still hit back at AT&T. I'll be switching my cell phone service from AT&T to T-Mobile.
It is bad enough that I have to endure the incompetence of the AT&T U-Verse support people. I don't want to endure any more id*ots from that company.

AT&T recently sent me a letter about them "upgrading" their privacy policy.
Essentially, they want to "offer" more stupid ads...
They provided some links to opt out of this crap. Of course, they should have provided links to opt-in, but that's not my main beef here.
One of these links for opting out of receiving mobile ads (adworks.att.com/mobileoptout) needs to be accessed from the actual mobile device. I tried that, and their webpage says that I have Wifi switched on.
Ok, fine, I switch it off.
But now, the webpage still claims I have Wifi on! Grrr.
I wonder what idiots programmed that check...
The screenshot shows that Wifi is off, and I just use the 3G data connection.

I came across an excerpt of an aviation poem by Gill Robb Wilson in Martha Lunken's column in the July 2013 issue of Flying magazine.
I really liked this poem, which is about the trust put in pilots, in particular airline pilots, so I searched for the full version. It appeared in his book "The Airman's World" in 1957. The book is out of print, and Amazon only lists a few used copies for sale.
Luckily, there are several websites that show the full text of the poem, e.g., here.

In light of all the idiotic and illegal NSA snooping, I decided to do full-disk encryption on my Nexus 7 tablet and my Nexus 4 phone. That works all great. This should keep the criminals at NSA, as well as the TSA and Border Patrol out of my devices. My computers at home have had full-disk encryption for a while already...

Anyway, in a side-effect, the CyanogenMod updater, as well as the Clockworkmod recovery, don't know how to handle the encrypted data partition, so installing a CyanogenMod update fails.
Of course, the command line is always helpful...
So, here is how to upgrade CyanogenMod with an encrypted device:

1. Connect the phone to your computer using a USB cable
2. If you haven't already, install the 'android-tools' package
3. Download the CyanogenMod archive you want to install, from get.cm.
4. Reboot your phone into recovery mode.
5. Once recovery is up, select "Install zip from sideload". Note: This is with the Clockworkmod Recovery, your recovery may have different options.
6. On your computer, type "adb sideload <the_downloaded_cm_archive>", e.g., "adb sideload cm-10.1-20130706-NIGHTLY-grouper.zip"

That's it. Works like a charm.

BTW, it is also a possibility to use TeamWin's recovery. TWRP can unencrypt the data partition, unlike Clockworkmod.

Update: Since writing this post, I have switched to TWRP and use that on all my devices.
One slight issue with the disk encryption is that by default, the encryption key is the same as the unlock PIN or password. Usually, the unlock PIN or password is pretty short, since it is entered several times during the day.
There are programs in the Google Play Store that separate the disk encryption password from the unlock PIN or password. An example is the CryptFS Password Manager. I highly recommend using that or similar tools (or the command line) to use a strong password for the full-disk encryption.

Another update: With CM12, a couple of devices, e.g., the OnePlus One, which is by now my main phone, use hardware encryption, with a proprietary library. TWRP doesn't yet work with that, so it is not possible to decrypt the /data partition in TWRP. adb sideload works, because in CM12, the sideloaded file is saved to /sideload, which is on the root partition.
Another update: TWRP from version 2.8.6.1 handles decryption on the OnePlus One, and possibly on other modern devices.

According to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (I happen to live in her district), what we know so far is only a small part.
Doesn't surprise me. The NSA has run wild in the Bush years, and unfortunately, Mr. Obama has continued this abuse of power.