Month: January 2012

General

iPhone Heat and Battery Issues

By on Tuesday, January 31, 2012

I’ve been noticing that the iPhone strangely heat ups while just sitting on the table or in my pocket. That can’t be good for the battery and indeed it’s not. Even when fully-charged in the morning before going to work, it doesn’t last more than 3PM. Yesterday it even died right after lunch.

I’ve tried so many things: Turning off location-based services (negligible), turning off 3G (extra 2 hours), reset network settings (no effect), reset all settings (no effect), etc all to no avail. But I finally, I stumbled upon a solution that made a huge difference.

I read in a MacWorld article that it could be a sync issue. So I downloaded the recommended System Activity Monitor and tried troubleshooting as described in the article. Indeed even at standby, the processors were registering 10% or so usage. It led me to think that maybe my Google Exchange calendar, mail, and contacts are the culprit.  Is Google that evil? :P

So I deleted my Google Exchange account. I immediately noticed the processors registering less than 5%. I recreated the Google Exchange account and observed. Processor usage remained at less than 5% on standby. I continued observing the whole day today and, with defaults (3G and location services) on, it hit 10% battery at 14 hours standby and 6 hours usage. And it no longer heats up unless used heavily. Huge improvement!

UPDATE: Problem returned. I’ll try removing the Google Exchange account again.

UPDATE: Removing the Google Exchange account didn’t work either. So I setup as new phone and then recreated the account. Seems to be working fine now. But I noticed low 3G signal really drains the battery. I guess nothing more can be done short of changing providers.

0
General

Deployment Blues

By on Tuesday, January 31, 2012

This morning, I was awakened at 2AM by a call from Nino. He was on standby providing support to the deployment team and it seems there’s a problem. I quickly dialed-in to the conference call and got the log report. I saw, as Nino already did, that there’s a communication problem between two components, the CWS and the PIS.

However, due to the configuration of the production environment, it is hard to confirm. There is a staging environment but the configuration is different (bad) so it’s pretty much useless. Eventually, the deployment team did manage to isolate one production server and we tested on it.

Same conclusion: there is a communication problem between CWS and PIS. I asked if PIS is available on the port the CWS is trying to connect to. That probably switched the light bulbs in the deployment team’s collective heads because they instead of responding, they configured something, and voila, it worked!

UPDATE: I found out that the port our system has been configured to use is not compatible in production because they had decided to keep the old application server up (good) on that port and have the new application server on a different port (but they hadn’t informed us, bad).

0
General

Soldier of God

By on Saturday, January 28, 2012

Soldier of God takes place in the Holy Land during the time of the crusades. It takes off in the aftermath of the Battle of Hattin, probably the single, most disastrous defeat for the crusaders. René, a member of the Knights Templar was wounded during the battle, captured, and taken for ransom.

For those unfamiliar with history, the Knights Templar is a Christian military order that gained fame (and notoriety) during the Crusades. All members of the order take take vows of poverty, chastity, piety, and obedience. The knights of the order are practically warriors priests. In fact, they’re the elite troops among the crusaders.

Read More

0
General

Going Smart

By on Thursday, January 26, 2012

I’ve been a Globe postpaid line subscriber for over 10 years but I finally decided to disconnect. Here’s why:

  1. It’s so hard to talk to a person via 211.
  2. I used to get a sizable loyalty bill rebate. But when I inquired recently, the rebate I’ll be getting would less than half of what I used to get. So the longer I stay, the less my rebates get.
  3. The loyalty phone package is exactly the same as what a new customer will be getting.
  4. No stocks of the iPhone everywhere.
  5. They’re not willing (or didn’t offer to) notify me when stocks are available. Instead, they want me to call every now and then to check if stocks are already available.
  6. Finally, they have this automatic image compression when web browsing using a mobile data connection. It even affects my Tattoo MyFi. Image compression is not bad per se but the whatever they’re using absolutely fuglifies photos.

So goodbye Globe! And hello Smart!

0