I’ve been desperately trying to stay productive during my stay in Boulder. Its pretty easy when I’m colo’ed with the Mailbank folks, but it gets harder when I go back to the hotel.

First off, the Millenium isn’t a business class hotel. They have a lot of great amenities, but they don’t go out of their way to make life easier for business users. There’s lots of noise in the hallways, what seems like a five minute walk just to get to the front desk and no taxi stand out front (although I understand that dependable taxi servce basically doesn’t exist in Boulder).

Most aggravating is the shitty internet access. They insist on charging me $10 per day for access, but the quality is really awful. For the first day, it wouldn’t work at all. Typically, the front desk staff was clueless about how to fix the problem and I was very quickly escalated to the real operator that contracts with the hotel. It took them a bit, but they eventually dispatched “a local technician” to the hotel to fix the server. When I got back to the hotel that evening, everything was working fine. Hopefully they don’t try to charge me for the first two days of service because I ain’t paying!

Even with the problems out of the way, the connectivity isn’t all that great. I’ve been desperately trying to download the latest .Net framework so that I can install a plugin that will allow me to bridge the gap between Basecamp and Outlook. What should have been a simple exercise to install a 6mb plugin has turned into a major hassle. The .Net framework is roughly 22mb in size and for some reason, the download repeatedly craps out when I get near the 5mb mark. I can only deduce that there’s some sort of download cap in place on the network.

While writing this, I was inspired to try the download via a proxy server located back in the Toronto office. This proxy has the effect of running my web traffic over a different port than the standard port 80 that web traffic typically runs on. The result? Same thing. Crapped out just shy of 5mb. I tried the download using IE7 to see if that changed the result, but natch. Same thing. (Hey Microsoft, how come there’s no download manager in IE7? No retry on failure? Yick.)

Not only am I unable to download some pretty standard software, my email experience sucketh verily.

I use IMAP, and when connected via the hotel network, I’m getting all sorts of timeouts and other issues that I can only assume are related to the network configuration.

I had to buy a phone when I got here. I dropped my handset in the airport just after I arrived and the impact caused the “9” key to stop working. This led to some funny (embarassing at the time) exchanges like this one I had with some colleagues…

this is going to sound like an odd request - would it be possible to get a passcode that doesn't include the #9? I dropped my phone yesterday and the "9" key no longer works. I'm on the road and I won't be able to get to a landline for this call.

which got a response of

That's an interesting request I've got 2 9's in my passcode unfortunately

I eventually got it straightened out, but I could have done without the hassle. Unfortunately, my home phone number also includes a bunch of 9’s, my voicemail # for the office – same thing. Getting a replacement handset was pretty much my only options.

I had my heart set on a Motorola Q, but I couldn’t find one that took a simcard. I would have taken the Motorola L6, which is a slightly stripped down version of the Motorola Slivr, but I had no confidence that I could actually get the thing unlocked.

Price was another consideration.

Because I need to be able to use my phone in Canada, I couldn’t just sign up for a package with a US wireless provider and get a substantially discounted handset as a bonus. I just needed a handset, which meant that I had to pay full price for the phone. Most phones that you can buy without a plan start at $300 US. I figured if I had to spend that much money on a phone that I should probably spend enough to get a phone that I’ll actually use for the next couple of years. All of this lead me to choosing between the T-Mobile SDA, the Samsung T509 and the T-Mobile MDA.

The SDA had a great form factor, but I really hated the little joystick and I couldn’t get over the lack of a touchscreen. The T509 was really nice, but I had no idea if I could get it unlocked and I wasn’t crazy about using a “non-standard” PhoneOS. I really like the fact that Palm and Windows based phones have a great selection of software, hacks, and tips from other users. The less-ubiquitous PhoneOS’ don’t really have any appreciable aftermarket.

I eventually settled on the TMobile MDA – a Windows Mobile smartphone that will replace my existing XDA IIs. It was $100 more than the SDA, the PEBL, and a few others, but it has the added bonus of being small enough to carry around in my pants pocket and not requiring me to adopt any new software or tools on the desktop.

Getting it unlocked was a bit of a pain. The T-Mobile dude at the store assured me that they could have it unlocked in 24 hours. Three days later, I’m still waiting for them to email me my unlock codes. Instead of waiting, I took matters into my own hands and applied an unlock hack that I found on the XDA-Developers forum.

Cool Hacks from this post:

• Remote Calendars – RemoteCalendars is an add-in for Outlook 2003/2007. After installing this plugin, Outlook users should be able to subscribe, reload and delete a generic remote iCalendar from Outlook. This will allow you to view your Basecamp calendars inside Outlook.
• LokiWiz .2b – A patch for HTC Wizard/Windows Mobile 5.0 devices (such as the T-Mobile MDA). Installing this patch will have the effect of allowing a user to remove the SIM and CID lock from their handset. Note: Installing this patch might be a violation of your terms of service with your cellular phone provider. Please check your agreements with them before installing this patch.