I am pretty convinced there's something wrong with the way the antenna is configured - putting the iPhone in the dock takes it from No Service to three bars straight off - obviously the dock is amping the signal / giving the phone more juice.

So I just phoned Vodafone and tried AB's 'social engineering' hack. I said I had broken my SIM card and needed to get my phone up and running, and that I had a spare SIM card here from another network that they could activate. After some uhmming and ahhing the guy agreed to do it, but then the system wouldn't let him enter the SIM number - the system was hardlocked to have the first 4 numbers be 8944 (England) and there was simply no way to enter 8901 (US, the AT&T card from my iPhone).

However, it does seem like this will work if you can find a Vodafone person with a terminal that doesn't hard lock the first four numbers, or even any other cell provider here in the UK that has a different computer system.

I just went to three different Vodafone stores and an O2 store. All of them said this is not possible.

It IS possible to move a SIM-locked phone to Vodafone without changing the SIM card - but only a UK one. UK phone providers are all obligated to provide PAC codes to customers who ask for them - the codes which unlock the SIM's data for the SIM to be repurposed.

However, all the stores said that obtaining a PAC code for a US phone was not possible and that, without this code, the SIM would be stuck on AT&T and hence useless. Simply typing the USIM code into their system wouldn't achieve anything, they said.

Now it's quite possible that these guys are all goons and that simply entering the USIM number into the system is a leet hack that they have no idea about. But I haven't managed to persuade anyone to actually try it yet, even when I reveal that I'm trying to get an iPhone working.

So I'm not ready to call shens on this, because it could just be a fluke - but I'm not holding out much hope for reproduction.

Rocking. God to see the love is coming back around - you inspire me, I inspire you, we all feel the love and hit our targets. Keep pushing it man, you are oding awesome.

Hey Jason, I can certainly help out :) You got my deets...

Eat no more than 1500 calories a day, period. Run for an hour a day, out on a road, not a treadmill - roads are harder. Do that for 5 days in a row and see what happens. :)

Most of all, go back and watch Casino Royale. Get re-motivated :)

Managed to hit 218 today, a drop of about 30lbs from when I started Fatblogging back in February. That's pretty massive, I think. When I started, I couldn't run for 10 minutes without needing a break. Over the weekend, I went out for a 45 minute jog along the river. I'm in the best shape of my life, now I just have to keep going!

Conference calls mean Skype for the win.

http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/the-bury-brigade-exists-and-heres-my-proof.html

^^^

Jason, I know you're a fan of Edge, but if you hadn't read this already:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html

It's fantastically relevant.