Ever since i started using my unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile, there had been this nagging issue that refused to go away. Whenever i went in and out of Airplane mode or turn off and on the iPhone, no matter if i actually had a voicemail or not, the red voicemail indicator, as shown below, would show up. I went through multiple iPhone firmware upgrades but this problem existed.
After reading a possible solution using a newer SIM card at the Hackint0sh forum for iPhone, i decided to give it a shot. After i got off work, i went to a T-Mobile store in Wallingford. The sales guy working there was kind enough to give me a brand new T-Mobile card. The new SIM took only minutes to be activated. After going in and out of Airplane mode multiple times, i can safely say that the voicemail indicator issue is gone.
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(Associated Press)
Why can’t you believe that Hillary Clinton was not lying when she claimed she came “under sniper fire” when she visited the Bosnian town of Tuzla in 1996 as the first lady? The picture, taken at the airport right after she arrived, clearly indicated that Hillary was using the young Bosnian girl as a human shield, just like the IDF!
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Ever since i got my Mac Pro in February, i have been having random issue with Safari. Sometimes, it would take a very long time loading a page while on other occasions, some items on a page would not be loaded. The error that i would commonly see is “Safari can’t open the page”.
Initially, i thought this could be due to me running a VMware Fusion virtual machine that’s causing the problem. But i have no such problem in Firefox. Finally, i decided to google for “Safari can’t open the page”. This took me to the Apple Discussion forum with the solution. For some reason, Safari in Leopard (10.5.2) is very flaky about the DNS. Originally, the DNS Servers for my Ethernet card pointed to my router:
After adding the two OpenDNS IP addresses, i have not seen any “Safari can’t open the page” error.
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If there is one complain that i have on my recently purchased Mac Pro, it would be the Pioneer DVD burner. When it’s reading or burning DVD, it’s almost jet-engine loud. It’s a far cry from the whisper quiet dual quad-core Mac Pro. I read that it’s possible to quiet down the DVD burner a little by flashing another firmware on it. Also, by default, the DVD drive can only change its region code no more than 6 times. I want to free my DVD drive and be able to play DVDs from outside the US.
The best known site for hosting region-free DVD firmwares is The Dangerous Brothers. I managed to find a region-free firmware for the Pioneer DVR-112D. However, this firmware flasher only works in Windows. I have a VMware Fusion Windows XP virtual machine but it is a really bad idea to update the DVD firmware in a virtualized environment. I know it is possible to run Windows XP or Vista on Mac Pro using an Apple tool called Boot Camp. Installing Windows XP using Boot Camp requires a bootable installation CD with Windows XP SP2. Other than my work notebook, i have no other Windows machines at home, which explains why i did not have any installable Windows CD.
At the same time while i was figuring out how i could get my hands on a Windows XP CD, i also wanted to try out Boot Camp Assistant, a utility that is supposed to help install Windows XP or Vista on a Mac. I ran into a roadblock as soon as i click on the “Continue” button.
According to error message, Boot Camp cannot be used to partition an external disk drive. Thinking that the utility had somehow recognized my two external Firewire-attached disk drives, i ejected the drives and unplugged the firewire cable. Second attempt without any externally-attached disk drives, exactly the same result. A quick search on Apple’s Discussion forum revealed that Boot Camp Assistant does not work with any RAIDed disk drives. Specifically, it is not possible to install Windows XP on RAIDed disk drives. But i was not trying to install them onto my startup disks, which was built as a mirror set. I was trying to install on the third internal SATA disk drive. Boot Camp assistant picked up on the RAIDed startup disks and refused to budge.
In order to run Boot Camp Assistant, i would have to destroy the mirror set. It was not possible to destroy the mirror set using Disk Utility because it was my start-up disk. So i had to shutdown and boot my Mac Pro using the Leopard install disc. Booting into the Leopard install disc and running Disk Utility from the install disc allowed me to delete the mirror set. After booting up my Mac, i gave Boot Camp Assistant a trial run and this time round, i got past the bogus error message.
I waited several more days until finally acquiring an installation disc for Windows XP with SP2. I promptly proceeded to run Boot Camp Assistant and installed Windows XP on the third internal disk drive. One important note: during the XP installation, you must reformat the Boot Camp partition. As part of the installation process, Boot Camp Assistant created a FAT32 partition. However there is some problem with this FAT32 partition. If you proceed with the XP installation without reformatting the partition into NTFS, then you will see this error:
Disk error
Press any key to restart
I attempted to use the version 1.15 of the region-free firmware flasher from TDB but running it gave me an “Unable to set kernal mode” error message immediately. Trying an older version (1.09) threw the same error as well.
After googling for a while, i found a tool called dvrflash, which happens to be from TDB as well. I also found another tool called MCSE (MediaCodeSpeedEdit) that allows you to add capabilities to official DVD firmwares, including the ability to patch official firmwares so that they are region-free. I also downloaded the latest Pioneer DVD-112D firmware from the official Pioneer website.
After patching the version 1.24 firmware so that it’s region-free, i tried to flash the firmware to the DVD burner using dvrflash:
# dvrflash -f d: A0813001.124
Drive Information:
Description : PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-112D
Firmware Rev : BC14
Firmware Date : 07/09/27
Manufacturer : PIONEER
Drive is in normal mode.
Firmwares and Drive type mismatch
If you want to convert your drive, you need to supply both Kernel and General
I thought it may be the patched firmware that was causing dvrflash to fail. I tried the same command with the original firmware but it was the same disappointing result.
After doing a little more research on google, i found another dvrflash parameter that i could use. So i ran the following command:
# dvrflash -ff d: A0813001.124
dvrflash went a little further this time and it appeared that it was flashing the firmware until yet another error. At this point, it looked as though my DVD burner was in a half-baked state. The firmware revision was reported as 0000 instead of the expected 1.24. No matter what i did, i could not eject the DVD tray from Windows (Mac Pro’s DVD drive does not have any physical eject button). Running dvrflash with the -ff option put the DVD drive in kernel mode. Panic stricken, i booted back into Leopard, hoping that a reboot would fix it. Nope.
I can’t remember why but i booted back into Windows. Next, i decided to give the TDB firmware flasher another shot. Amazingly, the firmware was flashed to my DVD burner and at the same time, putting my DVD drive back in normal mode. Running dvrflash without any parameter indicated that the DVD burner had indeed been flashed to firmware revision 1.15. On the heel of this success, i decided to try my luck on upgrading to the patched version 1.24 firmware from Pioneer using dvrflash. It worked!
DVR-112D info in System Profiler before:
DVR-112D in in System Profiler after being updated to 1.24:
Running DVRFlash shows that the Pioneer DVR-112D is now region free:
Device : A:
Vendor : PIONEER
Model : DVD-RW DVR-112D
Revision : 1.24
Status : RPC-1 (region free)
Now that i got my DVD burner’s firmware updated, i wanted to recreate the mirror set for my start-up disk. Unfortunately, recreating the mirror set means erasing the data on the disks to be configured in the set. I had to clone my start-up disk to another partition on the third internal hard disk using Carbon Copy Cloner. Cloning about 100 GB of data took almost an hour. At the completion of cloning, i set cloned partition as my start-up disk and rebooted my Mac Pro. After recreating the mirror set with a pair of disk drives, i cloned my start-up disk, which is now on the third disk drive, back to the mirror set. That took yet another hour. When that finally completed, i configured the mirror set as my start-up disk and rebooted one more time.
All these activities took place over the course of several days and a marathon 5-hour session that involved installing Windows XP and flashing the firmware.
The morning after updating the firmware, i saw this on hardmac.com:
After a long period of silence, the software DVDflash has just released an update. The version 2.5 will allow the flashing under OSX of the following engravers:
DVR-111
DVR-112
DVR-115
DVR-212
DVR-215
God damn it! I could have flashed the firmware in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard without going through all the hell of installing Windows XP!!!
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Two weeks ago, a mistake either on my credit card issuer’s part or my part resulted in my checking account being in red for the first time in my life. I had set up the monthly auto-payment for my credit card on my old Netbank checking account. As some of you may know, Netbank was shutdown by FDIC late last year and its assets was acquired by ING Direct. ING Direct’s strength is its savings business. Its checking account business is just barely usable. So i decided to switch all my online bill payment, including the credit card autopayment to my local bank. In order to switch from one checking account to another for that particular credit card, i not only had to update the credit card website, i had to sign and return some document acknowledging the autopayment. In fact, for some reason, the credit card issuer never received the first document i mailed. So i ended up sending them a second one.
It was for this sole reason that i thought the autopayment would not take effect until March. In February, i bought a brand new Mac Pro using this credit card, incurring a hefty bill for that particular statement. Thinking that the autopayment would not be engaged until the next statement, i did an online bill payment from my checking account. Several days later when i checked my account balance, to my horror, it was in red! Apparently, that credit card’s autopayment took the same amount of money from my checking account, not realizing that i had already paid several days earlier. I was furious. My local bank charged me $32 for overdraft fee and because another online bill payment was made after my account went red, it charged me another $32 for return check fee. After contacting the credit card issuer, i was told the quickest way for the money to be redeposited back into my checking account was to contact my bank and have them cancel this payment as a “unauthorized” transaction.
My local bank told me that i would have to sign an affidavit in order for them to cancel the transaction and it normally would take between 5 to 7 business days. So i waited. 5 business days later, nothing. 7 business days later, nothing. It was not until i contacted the bank again that i found out it does not take 5 - 7 business days for this to clear up. The “5 - 7 business days” was the minimum days it would take them to mail me the affidavit. After i sign and return the affidavit, it would take them several more business days before they could cancel the transaction. I was infuriated. Why would it take 5 - 7 business days for my bank, which is head quartered locally in Seattle, to mail me the affidavit? At this moment, i was pretty worried that i won’t have enough money in my bank for my monthly mortgage payment.
It was of no use trying to convince my credit card issuer to electronically return the extra payment that they took from my bank account. Apparently, they can easily take money out of my account but the only way they could get the money back to me was via snail mail. Not willing to wait any longer for the affidavit from my bank, i asked for check to be mailed to me.
Last Friday was pay day. Also on the same day, i got my tax refund. On the same day, i received a bonus check from my previous employer in the mail. So in the matter of one day, my bank account balance went from close to zero to “fully loaded”. When it rains, it pours 
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The one that got away scot-free, with a slight slap on his wrist
menace |ˈmenəs|
noun
a person or thing that is likely to cause harm; a threat or danger
Local Seattle news widely reported on Friday that the West Seattle Rabbi, who ran over and killed an aide to then-City Councilman David Della, received no jail time at his sentencing in the Seattle Municipal Court. When Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz, director of the West Seattle Torah Learning Center, struck Tatsuo Nakata in the crosswalk at the intersection of SW Admiral Way and 47th Avenue SW, he was using his cellphone. According to the Senior Assistant City Attorney Kevin Kilpatrick, “there were no skid marks to show Schwartz tried to brake.” That is, Schwartz was paying absolutely no attention while he was driving and he hit Tatsuo at full force.
Guess what, that was not the first time that Schwartz had struck someone with his car. In May 2005, when he hit Ilsa Govan, who was riding her brand new bike along Interlaken Drive East, Schwartz’s car was on the wrong side of the street. The resulting impact catapulted Ilsa through the trees and she ended up breaking her helmet and sustaining “huge gashes” on her hand and ankle. The injuries she suffered because of the collision put Ilsa in physical therapy for a year. When she testified at Rabbi Schwartz sentencing, Ilsa said through her tears:
“I just wish there was something that could have been done after he hit me.”
So what punishment did Rabbi Schwartz receive after hitting Ilsa Govan: He was only cited for driving on the wrong side of the road and the charge was later removed from his record.
Two months after killing Tatsuo, Rabbi Schwartz was cited for running a red light. As reported in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, he “argued that the road was icy, and the ticket was reduced to $69.”
According to the Seattle Weekly,
In a search of publicly available court documents, Schwartz’s name and birth date first pop up for a 1999 Ohio speeding offense. In the Norfolk area of Virginia, where the Schwartz family lived more recently, he was cited for disobeying a highway sign in March of ‘02, and for disobeying a stop sign seven months later. The next year, Virginia cops ticketed Schwartz for allegedly failing to yield the right of way and displaying expired plates. Then he was cited for allegedly driving the wrong way down a one-way street. Virginia court records show that the latter three citations were eventually dismissed.
By 2004, Schwartz had established himself in Seattle, where he continued to drive in a less-than-exemplary fashion. Since December of ‘04, Schwartz has racked up five traffic violations, according to Seattle Municipal Court records—meaning, at various times, he has disobeyed “traffic-control devices,” failed to wear a seat belt, run a red light, driven on the wrong side of the road, and manifested “inattention to driving” (an allegation that was reduced from speeding). One of those citations (the red light) occurred two months after the Nakata incident. (Washington state drivers have to amass six moving violations over a 12-month period before their licenses get—temporarily—suspended.)
Here is the list of citations relating to Rabbi Schwartz i found from the Seattle Municipal Court:
12/2/2004: Citation 10649793 - DISOBEDIENCE OF TRAFFIC CONTROL DEVICES
1/14/2005: Citation 10637454 - SAFETY BELTS REQUIRED
5/27/2005: Citation 10621846 - DRIVE ON RIGHT (this is the incident where he drove on the wrong side of the street and struck Ilsa Govan)
6/12/2006: Citation 10755914 - INATTENTION TO DRIVING (LESSER THAN NEGLIGENT)
1/18/2007: Citation 0700006872 - RED LIGHT CAMERA VIOLATION
Given his reckless driving record and his complete disregard for the safety of others sharing the road with him, a saint person can come to no other conclusion than the fact that Rabbi Schwartz must be taken off the road and should never be allowed to drive again.
But incredibly, Municipal Court Judge George Holifield not only did not give any jail time to Rabbi Scwartz for snuffing out the life of the 29-year old Tatsuo, he only suspended Rabbi Schwartz’s license for two years, in addition to requiring him to pay any funeral or medical costs from the accident and to perform 500 hours of community service outside his Jewish community.
In explaining his decision not giving any jail time to Rabbi Schwartz, Judge Holifield said that “no amount of money or jail time will bring Mr. Nakata back” and that “Rabbi Schwartz is a lousy driver when you come right down to it.”
Judge Holifield is absolutely right that no amount of jail time is going to bring Nakata back. But suspending Rabbi Schwartz driving privilege for only two years ??? Assholes like that Rabbi should have their driving privileges removed for life.
The sense of outrage and injustice was common in almost all the comments left by readers of the article on the Seattle Post Intelligencer, including one by a friend of the victim:
Words cannot describe my disgust and disappointment in Scwartz’s lack of sentence. I sat through parts of Scwartz’s trial and had a hard time stomaching the graphic description of Tatsuo’s death. I was at the hospital visiting Tatsuo and witnessed the result of Schwarz’s “distracted” driving.
And while Schwartz may be a “nice guy”, he has a problem. He cannot drive safely. Tatsuo was not the first person he hit. The red light he ran two months after killing Tatsuo was not the first moving violation he had received. It was the 8th.
Scwartz claims he feels guilty and keeps Tatsuo’s obituary in his wallet and the DVD of Tatsuo’s memorial by his bedside. If he truly felt bad after hitting two people - killing one and hospitalizing the other - and eight moving violations, Scwartz should have voluntarily given up driving or at the very least drive carefully! Apparently Schwartz needs a legal system to impose a sentence on him. His community did not help either. They bought him a car after he totaled his hitting Tatsuo. A bus pass would have been more appropriate.
As a pedestrian, I feel safer knowing Schwartz does not have a driver’s license for two years. I would have felt even safer knowing he was in jail and unable to drive for a year.
I was hoping Schwartz would receive a stiff sentence not just because he deserves it but also because it would send a message to other drivers. Pay attention to pedestrians!
And am I still mad and upset Schwartz killed my friend? YES! I miss Tatsuo.
Did Judge Holifield cave in to the pressure by the hundreds of letters sent to him by Rabbi Schwartz’s Jewish community in giving him an extremely light sentence? Only Judge Holifield himself can answer that question.
Josh Larios wrote a very touching open letter to Rabbi Schwartz’s community, pleading with them not to allow the Rabbi to ever drive again.
Update: Richard Silverstein of Tikun Olam agrees with me that the Rabbi got off scot-free and that his Orthodox community’s behavior is reprehensible.
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