Globe 3G: Failure to Connect...

I've been using Smart 3G as my ISP for my notebook PC with my Nokia 6120 classic (as a USB modem) for quite some time now. But their signal is weak at times and if I'm farther inside the house it goes dead completely. Now I've noticed that with a Globe SIM in the fone,the 3G signal is still on so I thought I'd give it a try and then buy their dongle if it does work. However while I could browse on the fone, I couldn't do it on the notebook, swapping the Smart SIM back in and some fiddling makes it work again but with Globe I only get this...

...and so far I'm out of ideas. Though maybe a reinstall of the entire OS would help with the drivers and all, but I'm not yet ready to do that. I'll try and see if their custserv would say.

UPDATE: It's been awhile, but after I bot a Globe Visibility Prepaid 3G dongle, the custserv rep hinted that I should use APN:http.globe.com.ph instead of internet.globe.something. It did work but Globe's signal was pathetic at my location :-( so it's back to Smart.

SmartBro: Failure to Connect..

My uncle has just bought a prepaid SmartBro dongle. He got tired of waiting for his 56K dial-up connection to finish loading Avast Home edition to get rid of a pesky malware. However upon installation, he got this pesky 'failure to connect' error message when trying to connect, so he brought the dongle to me to see how it would go on my notebook pc. I installed it no problems, though it gave me a BSOD when I just pulled it out of the USB port and auto-restarted my PC.
When I told him that the thing worked fine even without registering the thing, he brought it home and he still couldn't get it to work so this evening he brought his own notebook (a Neo using WinXP MCE SP2) over to check. After a little fiddling, I found out that Smart's software was looking for its modem on COM6, while the thing was really installed on COM4. So I just setup a new dialer in Network Connections - problem solved. However it would be more elegant to force the modem to COM6 so uncle could just use Smart's dialer app. But he was more interested in getting this dongle to work so he could get the malware off his other computer.

Credit Crisis, NOT!

So what's the fuss all about??? LINK. Spend, spend, spend...

Greek Riots

Over in Manila, a father and his 7 yr. old daughter, and another man were caught in the crossfire in two separate police operations against robbery suspects -- and everything is calm. Families of the victims bewail the incompetence. Please bring the Greeks over here!!! IHT.com link

Ebola in Pigs

I hope it's not some loony terrorist tinkering with bioweapons and testing them in my neck of the woods...

BLOOMBERG Link

and

ManilaTimes link

...if authorities aren't careful with this, it could make bird flu look like child's play.

Although this is very different from the swine flu outbreak in China in 2005 (I thought it was in 2007). That one was quite as deadly as the bird variety.

START!!!

This Blog is started this day of December 3rd 2008.