Delta Ugrade Priority

A while back I posted my suspicions that Delta's upgrade priority was based more on ticket price that elite mileage (the plasma screens do say "a combination of ......."). In a recent issue of Business Traveller, a magazine that can be found in the Delta Crown Club rooms, I found proof positive of this policy. A reader wrote in to complain that he, as a Platinum member, had not been upgraded, while a colleague with Gold status, but on a more expensive ticket, received the upgrade.



I have to say Delta that I think your policy is wrong! I undertsand that if two people with the same elite level are vying for an upgrade that you use the ticket price as a tie breaker. But it should not be the primary deciding factor. The ticket is a one time event, while someone who has colected MQMs to reach an elite level is a return customer and should be treated as such.

So Delta, please use medallion status (or even last year's or this year's MQM count) as primary criteria for upgrade priority, rather than ticket value and trip disruption.

Cell phone usage at home

My home is located at the edge of a mobile phone cell, which means that my reception in house is pretty unreliable. As my business contacts tend to call me on my cell, poor reception is very inconvenient, so I have been looking for a solution.
There used to be three possible solutions:

1. A cell repeater, expensive and complicated to install, especially if you need to use 3G connections.
2. A supplementary antenna, ties the phone pretty much to one location in the house.
3. Femtocell, which is another form of repeater, and needs to be provider supplied. My carrier (AT&T) has not started with them yet, although there are rumors. T-Mobile and Sprint do have solutions.

Recently I discovered a new solution, cordless phones that have a built-in Bluetooth link. This allows you to pair your phone with the base station, and then use the cell phone as one of the outgoing, or incoming, lines. GE has the Cell Fusion models, and Panasaonic has Link2Cell. I recently purchased the GE model, which is a DECT system (as is the Panasonic), so no interference with your in-house Wi-Fi either.

I now leave my cell phone in the front room, where I do get some reception. When the cell phone rings, a second later the GE handset starts ringing too, and shows that the incoming call is through my cell phone, and includes caller ID information. The base station is also connected to our (VOIP) landline, so the GE handset acts as a two (or three) line set. Yes, three lines, if I pair my wife's iPhone with the second BT channel. I also use the handset to initiate outgoing calls through the cell phone, for business calls where I do not want to expose my home number through caller ID.

Being a DECT system the phone works well throughout the house, so I do not need to worry about missing cell phone calls anymore. Right now I only have a single handset, but the base station can accommodate up to six handsets. As my current DECT cordless handsets break, they will be replaced by the GE handsets. I am still playing around with some of the features, like distinctive rings for specific callers, and I believe that I can also assign a different ring between landline and cell phone calls. Audio quality is as good as our other cordless handsets, and the ringer is much louder.

Free gift from Delta

Today I received an email from Delta, which seems to be aimed at SkyMiles members who have not flown for a while:

"You're a valued SkyMiles® member and we've missed having you onboard. We'd like to welcome you back with a special gift—1,000 bonus miles. Register today, then book your round-trip ticket and fly by November 15, 2008.
Plus, if you book at delta.com you'll earn an additional 500 bonus miles. You'll always find our best fares at delta.com—guaranteed ....."

As I travel twice a week (out and back), it looks like they started missing me after a few days already. Still I am not one to pass up a few bonus miles, so I registered, and will book the necessary flight shortly

Thanks for the extra miles Delta!

Treo 750 Disaster

This weekend disaster struck on Labor Day. My phone had been acting funny for 7-10 days, freezing more than I had been used to, primarily while on power and after going into sleep (blank screen) mode. During the preceding week things were getting worse, with freezes while live. I put this all down to software (MemAid? Opera Mini beta?) and resolved to do some research. Thursday, as I was returning, the phone froze in the plane when I turned it on to call up my daughter, who was picking me up at the airport. When I did a soft reset, the phone decided to do a hard reset, and all sorts of other problems occurred. Next day I was able to get the phone working again, after carrying out a couple of hard resets, soft resets had stopped working. Part of the problem is that when the soft resets stopped working I was essentially unable to to a restore (or backup), because Sprite Backup does a reset before and after any activity :-(.

The next, disastrous, step was that the phone refused to cycle through the hard resets. I was able to do a hard reset, but it just stuck somewhere in the initialization process. Tuesday morning I called AT&T immediately, who were not able to offer any help as they told me I was out of warranty. I contacted Palm, through their Live Chat support and has handed off to the phone support group. While they could not help me, they did indicate that their records showed that I was still in warranty, because of that fact, they could not arrange an exchange repair, I had to return to AT&T for that. When I called AT&T, I was told that I was indeed out of warranty, by one week! If I had called a week earlier, my phone would have been exchanged for free, now it would cost me $399 for a refurbished model, more for a new one! begging and pleading with AT&T had no effect, even when talking to their retention department, where I was transferred immediately when I asked how much my Early Termination Fee would be (as offset against the cost of a replacement phone with AT&T, compared to taking a new line at one of their competitors) :-( :-(

However, before taking that final step I decided, as my phone was pretty much worthless, I might as well try to re flash the ROM. This was because I had a gut feel that the reset freezes might be due to a corrupted ROM. I am not too sure how that can happen, but as the phone's ROM can be flashed I guess it can be corrupted too.

Unfortunately I had lost the flash software which I had used a number of months earlier to upgrade the phone from WM 5.0 to WM 6.0. However, even if I had it, it would not have helped as it was designed to be loaded via a sync connection. And as my phone would not reset, no sync. I knew that there was an alternative method to flash the ROM, using an SD card. So using good old Google I manged to find the necessary software. I used a spare mini-SD card, loaded the software and then used the particular key presses to start the ROM flash procedure. It took about 10 minutes, and much to my surprise and relief....it actually worked. I have a fully functional phone again!

On the same forum where I found the 6.0 ROM (xda-developers), I also saw postings about upgrading the Treo 750 to run WM6.1. As I now had a way back to WM6.0 I decided to try it out. It was not as easy as the instructions indicated, but I did finally manage to load something that looked like WM6.1 on my phone. Unfortunately I discovered that firstly my data connection stopped working, and then shortly afterwards the initially working phone connection also stopped . So I had to drop back to WM6.0, but it works and I just saved myself having to buy a $399 replacement phone. Now I can wait until AT&T add the Treo pro to their line-up, and my contract is up (April next year). or maybe by then I can go for a new HTC Touch HD.