The long awaited Simpsons movie finally came out in theaters in New York yesterday and so after work, my work buddies and I went to see it in Battery Park in Manhattan. To find this particular post interesting, you would have to understand what I do for the summer. I’m a canvasser for NYPIRG (New York Public Interest Research Group), a non-profit organization fighting to protect the environment and public health for New York State. Canvassing is the nature of my job, I talk to people everyday about environmental issues that affects New York and then ask for membership support. At times, the day turns out nice and only get one or two doors slammed on me but other days, you get many doors slammed in your face.

So in the first 5 minutes of The Simpsons Movie, Lisa Simpson canvasses Springfield homes to inform the public about environmental concerns in Springfield Lake and mercury. To our surprise, those were the exact issues we work on everyday! Springfield’s response to Lisa was #SLAM# at every door! I was like “no wayyyy” this is exactly what happens to me everyday! Finally something I see that relates to what I do because there isn’t much coverage anywhere about canvassers or canvassing in general.

So friends, I encourage you to watch the movie to get a feeling of what I have to go through each and everyday! The movie in general wasn’t all that great but that first 5 minutes made the movie good for me. A good spoiler can be found at Rotten Tomatoes. Also I just want to say to all people who have tried canvassing, it’s not ALL that bad. There are many many great nights! The Simpsons expanded on the negative angle of canvassing, thats all.

Yet another edition of one of my tutorials. This time, we will hack the Motorola phones from Verizon and get it working using the internet without Mobile Web (a $5 service from Verizon). There are two proxies you can use freely that are popular, the Google one and the Yahoo one. I’ve been using the Google one for almost a year now and it works well except I cannot access Gmail on it. So I’m gonna come up with instructions on how to do it using Yahoo’s proxy.

To get to the menu to hack the phone, press Menu > 073887* quickly and enter the default password which is “000000” then go to Web Sessions. This will only work on certain Motorola phones, I’m using the Motorola E815. So before I start, for those of you who wants to use Google, my current configuration is this:

Gateway IP 1: 64.233.167.99
Service Type 1: HTTP
Port 1: 80
E2E Port 1: 9201
LXL Port 1: 9201

Yahoo’s Proxy ::

Gateway IP 1: 66.94.234.13 (Still Searching For Yahoo’s IP)
Service Type 1: HTTP
Port 1: 80
E2E Port 1: 9201
LXL Port 1: 9201

Save the session, make it as default and use Google as your WAP. It’s free but airtime minutes still apply, so does with Mobile Web so use it after 9PM or when important!

What a surprise, well not really. SunRocket is shutting down it’s doors and announced Monday that it will begin the process of transporting the current 200,000 subscribers to other VoIP companies. How did this happen? I have no idea, 200,000 subscribers is defiantly sufficient enough to make a profit. Below is a message from SunRocket’s website.

After significant effort by the Company to avoid this result, SunRocket is in the process of discontinuing its operations as you know it. Therefore SunRocket will no longer be able to provide its customers with the phone service that its customers have been accustomed to.

However, two service providers are assisting and offering to provide SunRocket customers the opportunity to sign up for their services. Both providers have agreed to become preferred providers with special pricing for the SunRocket customers to enable them to migrate their telephone service. Of course, there are other providers and each individual customer can make their own decision as to which carrier they wish to transition to.

Emails to the SunRocket customers are currently being sent with more detailed information on how to sign up with the two service providers. The email address of the SunRocket customers that is on record is the address being used to send emails to the customers.

We realize this is a very difficult and uncertain period for the SunRocket customers. With these two preferred providers, the customers will have the opportunity to transfer telephone services.

An affiliate of Sherwood Partners, LLC is managing the process as the Assignee for the benefit of creditors.

Creditors to SunRocket will receive a notice within the next 30 days in regards to the general assignment and for the filing of claims in the liquidation process of SunRocket.

With SunRocket as a competitor out of the way, it means good news for the other VoIP companies. Currently, Vontage, Packet8 and ViaTalk have contract buyout specials targeting former SunRocket customers. They all look like pretty awesome deals but at this point it’s either impress or loose potential customers.

Problems and hassles include number porting if you want to keep the same phone number as you had with SunRocket, most likely you’d want to do that because customers had ported that number from their landlines and have had it for many years. The FCC regulations make porting a long process and said to take about 4 weeks for porting to complete. When I switched from Verizon to ViaTalk, porting took about a month. Until then, I had a temporary number which was inconvenient. I personally think that Google could have acquired it and prevented them from shutting down seeing as how they recently acquired GrandCentral, a startup telephony service.

So in a nutshell, SunRocket is gone, make way for new customers VoIP world!

The title is pretty straight forward… I have added the Environment category on my blog. It’s about time that I expand my vision of my blog, it’s been 7 months since I started blogging consistently. So why the environment? Well I’ve always been fascinated by the earth and how it works sustaining itself for all these years but more recently have I learned about how serious issues like global warming is and the effects it has on the earth. I guess my real interest in earth sciences started in high school with my earth science teacher, Paul Berger and carried on through with my AP Environmental teacher, Sai Yu, both great teachers at Murry Bergtraum High School I might add.

Now I work for an organization called NYPIRG which stands for New York Public Interest Research Group, which does amazing work for the environment as well as consumer rights. I advocate for the environment everyday and being surrounded by awesome co-workers who also care about the same things makes environmental awareness even more important to me. So Cate from NYPIRG, if you read this, [[your the greatest!]] cause I know you have the word “NYPIRG” subscribed to you.
Oh and a little addition to my main menu, I’ve added the New York City PlaNYC 2030 campaign. Click it for more information about creating a sustainable New York City today!

So fellow friends and subscribers, enjoy what looks to be another great addition to my blog and thank you all for reading. I wouldn’t be doing this if I knew no one reads it.

Wow, great, finally something awesome in the video gaming world besides the actual release of Rockstar’s GTA IV, which I think will be the hottest GTA ever! You know how they have the crazy radio stations on GTA the game? Well now you have a chance to be one of those crazy callers on Laslo’s talk show.

What you have to do is call this number: 212-360-2368 and wait for the beep and start to record your own little random things to say. Once that’s done, Rockstar will screen all the calls and pick out the ones they feel is the most funniest and random calls of all and put them in the actual video game coming out this November for Xbox 360 and soon after for the PC.

So yeah, go ahead and give them a call, tell them whats wrong with American society, bitch about the girl next door, yell the guy down the block out for kicking your dog!

Today is Saturday and I didn’t have to canvass Saturday for NYPIRG (My Job). So I have a lot of extra time and now is a good idea to blog up and catch up with everything. Since working for NYPIRG and helping prevent Global Warming, I’ve stumbled across this picture on the web and thought to myself that PIRACY isn’t all that bad. Not that I do it but it makes sense, the more you download, the less hard copies of everything that has to be produced.

I mean, when software is purchased, you buy the disc, the box, the manual, the jewel case and print. So don’t shut down PirateBay RIAA, you’re only hurting the environment.

So next story, in the OpenSource community, GAIM was recently (well two months ago) renamed and completely remastered to be Pidgin. I’d say, things look different but it’s about time they changed their whole marketing. The website looks a lot more web 2.0 friendly. GnomeAIM (GAIM) was getting too old and now it’s revamped with new icons and a new mascot.

Notice the transaction? Yep, it’s pretty neat. Sean the original developer is still in charge!

So, I’m in the market for a new laptop computer. Will it be a Windows PC, a Linux PC or a Apple? I’m leaning more towards to the Macbook’s because for one, I’ve never owned a recent Mac. I’ve owned one of those ClamShell iBooks but they’re pretty outdated. I’ve yet to own a nice polished White/Black Macbook. However, I’m awaiting for the new Apple OS to be released.

Ahh, nice fresh Apple Mac themes. Yes, I know I can change my current PC to look like that but those customization packs are never perfect. Genuine Mac. Gotta love it.

Next hot stuff, Need to make a quick call? Try ViaTalk for free and don’t pay a penny. Enter your area code and phone number in addition to the digits you’d like to dial. Get talking and enjoy up to 10 minutes of talk time. My ViaTalk VoIP subscription expired and I have to renew it again, unfortunately, I’m not qualified for the new user perks and the discounted price. Maybe, if I call them and threaten to quit! Muhahah.

So finally, one thing I can’t wait to do, go back to Stony Brook. I mean, summer’s great and love the job but it’s starting to get too repetitious and boring. I miss those long nights and partying and shitty food an the dining halls. Can’t believe I just said that but yeah. There’s a lot of random things in this post that I hope finds you interested. Till next time..

P.S: You might have noticed the little changes on my blog header, yeah well I decided to do it and freshen things up a little, and yeah, I’m officially a SBU blogger for admissions!

Amy Remix Jay-Z
[audio:http://tonycai.com/rehabremix.mp3]

I would have never thought that I would like another Pixar movie ever again after Toys Story. I mean I’m sure they’re good but none of them appealed to me. I guess I grew out of the stage of watching CG animated films or cartoons in general but I was wrong. A bunch of friends from work and I decided to go to the movies on Friday. Movie of choice was “Ratatouille“. I was like WTF is that? Since I started working, I haven’t had much time to watch TV, so therefore I didn’t see the commercial for it and had no idea what it was.

Ratatouille was awesome, Remy the mouse is so adorable. It takes place in France and the story plot goes like this. Remy becomes a chef at a famous restaurant in France.. well watch it for yourself. Trust me, it’s a movie to watch on big screen.

Camille – Le Festin
[audio:http://tonycai.com/LeFestin.mp3]

Just 3 days late to report the release of the iPhone. Going through Digg and other social networking sites, I’ve learned a lot about the news surrounding the release of the iPhone. Heard of some places being sold out but Apple did a good job with it’s stock supplies. Other AT&T retailers forcing buyers of the iPhone to also purchase at least two accessories or else no sale, what a gimmick! A report on Fox news about this lady who purchased her way to being first on line to buy the iPhone only to get there and learning that store policy is only one per customer. Her plan was to buy like a couple and make a profit on eBay. Stupid women!

Anyway, about the iPhone itself, I don’t think it’s that hot at all. I mean, it has many cool things such as the full HTML browsing, Google Maps, YouTube videos, and iPod features but it’s also lacking in other areas which a phone should have like full Bluetooth features and not just for the headset. I also saw the PCWorld Stress test for the iPhone and the unit is pretty sturdy, I was dropped a couple of times on the cement floor and it has a virtually scratch proof screen which is nice unlike the iPod predecessors.

This is iPhone version 1.0. Imagine the future iPhones. I mean look at the iPod 1st generation, and look at the 5th generation, this is history in the making right here!

Overall Average Good Rating From Apple.