Category Archives: Technology

chromebook 4g – part 1 – verizon’s 4g plan

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Two years ago, I bought a Chromebook for my mother. She has been very happy with it. The 3g plan met all her needs other than getting updates for the Chromebook itself. I had predicted in 2011 that a Chromebook is good for senior citizens because:

Senior citizens who use a computer to check e-mail, view pictures of the grandkids, research vacations, maybe watch some videos on youtube and some other random surfing. People in this group do not want anything to do with taking care of their computer; they just want it to work.

This turned out to be accurate. My mother didn’t need an ISP (everything over 3g) and it was great for her not to have deal with virus scan/a firewall. Since nothing can be installed, it isn’t possible to get a virus.

The only problem was that we didn’t realize that the Chromebook pushes wouldn’t occur over 3g. My mother went to a wifi connection to patch, but it quite far behind at this point. She requested starting over with a new machine. I was thinking I would just patch when I visit, but then I saw there are now models out with built in 4g. I’ll take her old Chromebook in case I want to see what something looks like for support and she can have a 4g one.

Researching how much the 4G plan costs

I wasn’t able to determine how much the 4G plan cost before buying the Chromebook. I currently pay for the 3G plan for the old Chromebook. I was expecting the 4G plan to cost more. (It didn’t. I was pleasantly surprised.) However, this information is apparently secret. I couldn’t find it on Verizon’s website. I did find the Jetpack hotspot price, but that is expensive ($60/month for 3GB.) I also found the prepaid tablet price list which turned out to be what I wanted. I wasn’t clear if the Chromebook was considered a tablet. I even called Verizon and they couldn’t tell me the price for 4G on a Chromebook.

I did find a PCWorld article from a year ago quoting $50/month for 5GB. That’s a lot given my mother uses less than 1GB/month.  I decided to buy the 4G model and hope for the best. If the only plan was the $50 one, I’d get a separate hotspot from T-Mobile or AT&T whose prices were easier to discern.

How much the Verizon 4G plan costs

I pay $20/month (no line charge) for 1GB on 3G. I was pleasantly surprised to see that 4G will cost me the same.

The pre-paid rates for 4G are:

300MB for one day $5
1 GB/month $20
2 GB/month $30
4 GB/month $40
6 GB/month $50
10 GB/month $80

The contract “more everything” plans are:

4 GB/month $30
6 GB/month $40
8 GB/month $50
10 GB/month $60
12 GB/month $70

For “more everything”, this price includes a $10/month line charge. There’s also a $35 initial set up fee and $15/GB for overages.

It isn’t clear from the website if the $35 setup and $10 line charge apply to pre-paid. They don’t.

The rates are competitive with AT&T and T-Mobile. Who both post their rates online more clearly.

Usability issue  #1 – Getting to the activation page

After buying the Chromebook, I went to settings and clicked “Verizon Wireless”. The name of my access point is listed as “4G LTE Contract (vzwinternet). When clicking “View account”, it said “Please Come Back Later” and “The Verizon Wireless Portal will be available after you restart your device”. I got this after restarting too though.

This article says there is no 3G support, only 4G. I was worried I was mysteriously not getting 4G, which wasn’t the problem. Per the support article, I did ctrl-alt-t and “modem status”. My signal strength which was -43dbm and better than their example. I would expect my home wifi to be strong so this isn’t a surprise.

After updating to the latest Chrome OS and restarting, “mobile data” was disabled in settings instead of thinking I am on a Verizon contract. Rebooted a third time and now I see “not connected” and “Verizon wireless” as a choice instead of “disabled”. Finally, I can start signing up.

Settings > Mobile data > Verizon wireless > Activate

This time it loaded. I choose “create new account” since I want the prepaid route. And finally. I clicked “show pre-paid plans” since that is hidden by default to see these choices.

Usability issue  #2 – Timeouts

I was doing this while doing the laundry so had the page with the rates on it open a while before paying. After letting me enter all my information, I got a session expired message. It’d have been nice to get that message before entering anything. After all, that’s when my session expired.

Usability issue  #3 – Validations

Verizon didn’t like my address. I thought it was the “#” sign (for apartment number.) Nope. Must be the dash. Each attempt at this requires me to re-enter virtually all the info. It would be nice to remember some of this information and just make me re-enter the parts that actually failed validation.

Usability issue  #4 – How much does it cost.

Prior to paying, I couldn’t figure out if I was going to get charged $20 or $30 per month. The payment page says on top that there is a $10 line fee. But at the bottom, it says I’ll be billed $20 per month. I found out it was $20/month when I got the email confirmation.

What went well

Finally, it tells me that I’ll be activated in 15 minutes and to call 800-786-8419 if can’t connect. I was able to connect significantly faster than 15 minutes.

Another improvement from 2 years ago is that  I can now go on My Verizon online and see how much data is used in the plan. It used to be that you had to do this from the device itself or call.

See part 2 for which model I picked.

browser plugins

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A friend asked me what browser plugins I use. Rather than write an email back, I thought “well that makes a good blog post.” Aside from the plugins practically everyone has (like Java, Acrobat, etc), this page lists what I use.

Safari plugins

My main browser is Safari. I have:

Plugin What is is for
Live CSS Editor  Testing CSS changes without loading the page
Firebug Lite for Safari JavaScript debugging
Unicorn CSS validator equivalent to this page
W3C Validator XHTML, CSS and RSS validator equivalent to this page (not sure where I downloaded it from)
No Follow Shows which links have no follow
Ghostery This is the most recent plugin that I’ve added. It shows you which third party sites have content on the page and makes it easy to customize what you allow.

I used to use plugins for Delicious and Feedly, but replaced them with the bookmarkets

Safari plugins

I also have some Firefox plugins:

Plugin What is is for
Alexa Toolbar  The Alexa toolbar shows you the “popularity” of a site. This plugin “phones home” with your business so I don’t want it in my main browser. It is useful when looking at SEO though. For example, my friend owns NYC Doula Service and asked me a question about her ranking. It was convenient to have tools installed.
PageRank  Shows Google page rank value. I don’t know if this one phones home, but I keep it in Firefox because Alexa is there.
Heartbleed  Earlier this year when the Heartbleed vulnerability was new, someone wrote a plugin to check sites. This plugin was only available in Firefox. That’s why this one is in Firefox, it isn’t a plugin that I think is spying on me.

own your expertise – a conference for women developers

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Yesterday, <Write/Speak/Code> had a one day workshop for women developers called “Own your Expertise.” The idea is for more women to start “Building the foundation for  Thought Leadership, Conference Speaking & Open Source Contributing.” I had mixed feelings about going to a female only event. I asked a teammate to join me though and off we went. In this blog post, I’ll share some of the “gender” topics that came up and my reaction to them. [The rest of the workshop was more content driven like brainstorming topics].

Networking

There was lots of time for networking. Some of it was just general time. Some was structured networking.

My reaction: The environment was set up well for people to talk to each other and share experiences. Unlike at a core-tech conference, there were more icebreakers and “natural” opportunities to talk to people. I also felt like there were less people on laptops all day (presumably because it was Saturday) or with a group of colleagues that all came together. This made it easier to approach people. Also, there was a good mix of employed people, students and those looking for jobs. There were also a lot more career changers than at the typical tech event I go to.

Impostor Syndrome

  • Women have more trouble internalizing accomplishments
  • Proof of success is dismissed as luck/timing
  • This is common even in high achieving women
  • Even as kids, guys tend to attribute failure to luck or bad judging
  • Women tend to underestimate abilities.

My reactions: 

  1. I was surprised at the number of hands that went up when asked if the audience was not sure if they were as good a developer because they didn’t start coding when they were 12 or code for fun. (I do code for fun and started when I was a kid.) It’s ok not to code for fun. That said, practice makes perfect. And I believe those who code for fun are likely to become better developers and faster.
  2. A lot of this resonated from the book “The Confidence Code“. Which helped me realize that guys are more likely to sound confident even when wrong. Which is a problem because it encourages management to see that “the guys know what they are doing.” Making this a self fulling prophecy.
  3. Personally, I saw this last week when I gave a presentation. I’m not normally nervous when giving a presentation. For this one I was because my exposure to the topic was one day of a vendor showing us the product. I was fine. I knew almost everything I was asked. At least I didn’t APPEAR nervous.
  4. I also see see this when guys sound more confident even when wrong. I feel a resistance to challenging someone who sounds 100% confidence because it makes me doubt whether I’m right. I’ll check after the meeting, but sometimes the moment is gone then.

Stereotype Threat

People tend to perform worse when worried about refuting a stereotype

My reaction: I agree with this. It becomes a distraction. Or you feel like you have to do more because of it. Luckily, I’m good at not noticing. Every once in a while, someone will point it out and then I’ll notice. For example, there was one point where I was the only female under my officer’s part of the company. (I work for a bank; our senior managers are called officers.) This meant I went to a meeting every few months with all guys. I hadn’t noticed until someone started talking about the topic. Then I had an “oh, yeah” moment. Luckily, I do believe that the guys didn’t care either and moved on quickly. But it was certainly a distraction for the day or so that it was on my mind.

Negative feedback loop

The work too hard loop:

worry –> work hard –> good job –> approval/relief –> worry

My reaction: While I didn’t experience this one personally, I have seen it in a few others. Of both genders though. It does highlight an important lesson about not worrying (excessively) about things you can’t control.

Objective feedback/support system

  • Have people you can talk to who you trust to be objective
  • What’s the problem? What’s the worst that can happen? Is what you’re feeling objectively true or just your perspective?

My reaction: This is definitely important. Since we were in a workshop that frequently brought up gender, I ran through a tally of the genders of the people I talk to when having difficulties in a tech environment.

  • At CodeRanch, it is 3 men and 1 woman. (Most of the senior moderators are guys so I suspect this is talking to who is available.) At CodeRanch, most of the “problems” are someone saying something in the forums that is mean/hurtful. But sometimes, I’ll ask these people for advice on how to deal with an anonymized work problem if the people I’d ask at work are too close to it.
  • At work, it is 4 women and 1 man. Interesting how this is the reverse. Granted, I talk to other people about problems (like my manager at the current time.). I’m only counting the people that I feel like I can say anything to. While I’ve come close to that point with managers, I don’t think I could get 100% there.

Qualifying accomplishments

  • Women tend to use words that downplay what they do. Words like “just”, “only”, “good timing”, “luck”, etc make the person sound less skilled.
  • The idea is not to brag, but then it gets over done.

My reaction: They did an exercise where you were given an accomplishment and just said “thank you.” That was really easy. While I do use unnecessary qualifiers, I don’t do it a lot. And I don’t tend to do so in response to a compliment. I think when I use the qualifiers, I’m thinking about precision or not taking credit for something others do. That said, this is something I definitely see when talking to people. “I just figured out …”

Look at the data

Record positive feedback, measurable progress, accomplishments.

My reaction: Right on! At my first job, I was given the advice to record what I accomplish throughout the year so I remember it when it is appraisal time. This is excellent advice. I have a document at work with just that. I also have a list of public (non-work) accomplishments on my CodeRanch bio. It contains certifications, public conference talks, book contributions/tech editing, robotics and CodeRanch. I started posting this list to establish tech credibility. Then I continued because it is cool! I like that it is on CodeRanch rather than Linked In. This makes it about sharing rather than looking for a job.

“You guys”

The presenter said “you guys” once and  corrected it to “you ladies”

My reactions:

  1. I use the phrase “use guys” all the time. I consider it a gender neutral phrase. The problem is that “girls” maps to “boys” and “ladies” maps to “gentleman.” Girls is no good because it implies children. And ladies seems oddly formal.
  2. I don’t mind if someone uses an actual male phrase (online or at work) as long as it doesn’t keep happening. At CodeRanch, it is because Jeanne isn’t recognized as a female name internationally. I’ve corrected “sir” a number of times online.

Your body language shapes who you are

We saw a snippet of this Ted talk. The major themes in the snippet we watched were:

  1. you should just do something and eventually you’ll become it
  2. power poses increase confidence (and guys take up more space)

My reaction: The Power Pose thing felt stupid. Not passing judgement on it though. New things sometimes to feel stupid/silly. Google has millions of hits on it including yoga, so there is presumably something to it.

Credibility

  • Knowledge
  • Expertise – There was an exercise where everyone said “I’m an expert at ______ because ________”.
  • Shiny bauble – you have a small amount of time to convince others they should listen to you. Grab attention

My reaction: This was easy for me because I’ve done a lot :). It was interesting to see what others said. I was also in the same group as my teammate for the expertise exercise. It was nice to hear her say her expertise confidently.

Help others

  • Teach things that you already know
  • Ask the first question so someone else doesn’t have to
  • Connect with others
  • Reframe bragging into sharing and helping others

My reaction: Funny, I do ask the first question a lot. I agree with the helping others. That’s a part of robotics mentoring and CodeRanch and Toastmasters. All hobbies of mine. While I don’t like “be a good female role model”, I don’t think about that much. Most of the time, I’m me and I happen to be female. Now let’s go talk about tech!