Patching A Database Back Together
How is Microsoft recovering all the user data without having a backup to turn to? Inside sources tell Daniel Eran Dilger that Sun (the storage vendor) and Oracle (makers of the database software) have sent in their best people to attempt to stitch the database back together. Why is it taking so long?
“The first thing to do is wheel in a big pile of new disk space, and copy the individual disks so there is a raw backup. This is like making a copy of a jigsaw puzzle one piece at a time. Then they would assemble the puzzle using the copied pieces, in case any pieces need to be re-made from the original.
“This is very hard, requires detailed inside knowledge of how SAN addresses and volume manager layouts fit together with Oracle tables. Finally, they need to start up the database on top of the assembled puzzle, and Oracle will do its own clean up to get into a consistent state.
“The next thing you do is a fresh backup (several days), before you allow any users access to it. So it’s not surprising that this would take over a week, even after it was possible to say that the data is recoverable.”
I’m assuming that Microsoft considers the data “recovered” if they’re letting users access it. But we’re hearing reports of people missing contacts, some phone numbers for individual contacts, and other weird behavior including not even being able to download their info from the Desktop Interface. How is the data recovery working out for you guys?
October 21st, 2009 at 5:52 pm [ Quote ]
I have names butt it doesnt include their phones numbers
:/
October 21st, 2009 at 5:55 pm [ Quote ]
I didn’t get about 20 other contacts back! and im sure i added them before oct 1st -.- Plus at least 5 contacts just got there names, and no numbers. and others are missing info’s like street address and such..
October 21st, 2009 at 5:57 pm [ Quote ]
My experience is that indeed the restored data on the server is from a month plus of old data. My desktop interface contacts number to 717 online, only 716 on the CVS/Download, however on my phone I have 801, i’m not syncing back to the cloud as of now. The categories and labels are still missing so I can’t tell if it’s a home, office, or cell number for some contacts. There’s no catalog items so not everything’s all the way back. It still appears they’re making headway. I will say I REALLY like the sidekick as a unit, but i’m not committing to any new sidekick devices until they have EVERYTHING straightened out. Until I can utilize my grandfathered $19.99 unlimited data plan phone unit from 2003 to another new phone with a browser and a tactile keyboard then i’ll commit!
October 21st, 2009 at 6:08 pm [ Quote ]
I’m still at 0 data. no numbers, names, photos, emails coming in, nothing. As a freelancer, this is income-death.
October 21st, 2009 at 6:12 pm [ Quote ]
zero contacts i get an error message
October 21st, 2009 at 7:25 pm [ Quote ]
I got pretty much all of my contacts back. Everything was preserved, the persons name, email addresses, phone numbers (even the ones i labeled home and mobile) and as well as their home addresses. I only lost like 1 or 2 but they were on my sim anyway. I did have to reassign their picture id’s but no big. I also only had like 105 contacts so that could be why too. Overall rather pleased to have a majority of my data back.
October 21st, 2009 at 7:32 pm [ Quote ]
…..missing newer contacts…..added say 4 days before the outage…..
October 21st, 2009 at 9:18 pm [ Quote ]
I got 500+ contacts back which is nice.
BUT I have had 4 sidekicks, and my days are over soon.
Either new blackberry or possibly Tmobile Cliq.
I am on an employee plan.
So basically I pay nothing for everything.
I DONT CARE.
I’d rather pay big money to make sure my **** works..
ps: up your app game.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:51 am [ Quote ]
Weak, there are numbers missing, however I could careless about my contacts.
I just want my calendar back. I honestly put my whole life into my calendar. It’s like my freak life timeline in depth.
It’s horrible, I’m lost with out my apptmts. and homework due dates missing. They suck and I’m very angry.
October 22nd, 2009 at 3:08 am [ Quote ]
It is working terrible. It looks like I have the right *number* of contacts (not that there is any sure way of knowing) but the data in them is a bit, well …
* some contacts with only a name and nothing else (now why would anyone do that?) and I have heard lots of reports of the same thing
* none of my contacts that I have looked at so far had more than name, email, phone (and I am not sure it has all emails/phone #s after what happened) … goodbye physical address, nicknames, urls, IM names … I suppose MS does not figure we need you
MS has said there are still more things to recover, but they did not list things like settings. So basically all my email accounts are dead except for my tmail one.
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:59 am [ Quote ]
Just like everyone i got contacts some with numbers without name and names without numbers. does this mean im eligible
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:20 am [ Quote ]
I have that question too, does anyone have a clear answer from t-mobile? What they said was:
“In the event certain customers have experienced a significant and permanent loss of personal content, T-Mobile will be sending these customers a $100 customer appreciation card.”
The question is, what do they see as significant? Any information? 10% of your information? All of it?
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:16 am [ Quote ]
General comment on this AppleInsider article: it’s 10% propaganda (e.g. naming Ho as the manager responsible for canceling the “backup”, which I doubt (sounds like someone below her), it wasn’t exactly a backup (not if it deletes your only backup) and if true shows that something was terribly wrong with the setup before the “oops”) and 90% speculation.
Now, that speculation is pretty solid, at least based on my totally vague knowledge of SANs and much less vague knowledge of databases (wrote the high availability and recovery parts for a custom one and have been a DBA for a very serious production DB2 database and some less intense Oracle ones).
But if it’s happening as the article speculates, once they stitch everything back together as best they can and then ask Oracle RAC to make it all consistent … well, who knows what’s going to be the result.
Based on what you all are reporting, you’ve got to hope that the current contact recovery “solution” is a quick hack designed to show some progress in what they judge is the most important of your data. Hopefully a real recovery is running in parallel to that, and you’ll suddenly see everything (that could be recovered) come back all at once (although that would result in an annoying issue pf reconciling your current contacts with the real recovered set).
A less optimistic scenario is that after they made the copy of the logically trashed SAN disks they reinitialized an empty database and are adding data to it bit by bit as they painstakingly reconstruct whatever they can.
In which case Microsoft’s going to be paying some truly big bucks for the sort of people who can grovel over 800TB of raw disks and make some sense of what’s on them. Unfortunately, based on T-Mobile’s initial “all is lost” announcement there’s a fair chance this is what’s happening, e.g. Microsoft decided it was too expensive and iffy, T-Mobile lit a fire under them and elevated the issue to the level of Ballmer and the MS board with their announcement, and now Microsoft is scrambling to recover whatever they can of their reputation (with your data being a very distant second priority).
Which of the two is happening you’ll find out eventually based on the patterns you see in your recovered data.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:25 am [ Quote ]
I used T-Mobile’s live chat …. upshot of the conco was the CS knew no more than t-mobile.com/sidekick (and sometimes got it wrong) and did not know who would be getting the $100 (or what conditions). Just that we should put our trust in MS to tell us if we get it. She put in a ticket with MS for me saying my contacts were still not fully restored.
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:53 am [ Quote ]
Half of my contacts were missing info. Got issued a ticket that was supposed to be resolved in 24 hours. It’s past 24 hours and now I’m told due to the number of issues they’re having, there’s no estimated time period to fix this.
Roz Ho is one stupid *****. I just have to say.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:57 pm [ Quote ]
Roz Ho should be FIRED!!
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:55 pm [ Quote ]
**** Microsoft,**** Roz HOE! Tmobile get your **** together….
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:41 am [ Quote ]
okay i just lost patience…i am not a big phone person..but they had to crash when i decide to move across the country and depend on my phone the most. and i thought it was so COOL to get a phone with all the perks..and now i dont have anything. it’s not a big deal if i just lost the information cause i can get it back. but how am i paying for something that i can’t use? im spending 50+ a month for something i dont get anymore? they shouldnt even charge for this month, and they didnt take 20 dollars off last time they charged me. this is bologna. seriously, i will pay 50 a month NOT to have sidekick anymore :/ and i used to like tmobile for that.
can anyone tell me how much is it to cancel a 2 yr contract with only 8 months left? reply to cappiforlife@gmail.com thahnkyouu
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:16 pm [ Quote ]
t-mobile texted TWICE…
it still says my contacts are “unavailable”
4 years of being loyal to sidekicks.. this is not cool
I’m seriously considering a blackberry now.
October 24th, 2009 at 10:02 am [ Quote ]
everything was fine until the other day…i never let my phone die or shut it off…then came the crash i lost it all…downloaded the recovery from T-mobile wesite and got all my contacts back…then i got the big red X yesterday and everything was lost agian…i did get my favs back but lost all my fav bookmarks,pics and e-mail for all my friends…NOT A HAPPY CAMPER!!
October 24th, 2009 at 11:53 am [ Quote ]
tmobile is great. its the stupid people over at microsoft that make things bad. i dont like microsoft and i kno wthat sidekick is using bsd/linux in their operating system. i jumped ship and im so glad i did!! i jumped right before the big crash. all my boys with sidekicks are all jealous of all the things i can do with my phone and they are all looking for their contacts. muhahahahaaaaa!! (evil laughter) all you sidekick suckers dont know when to leave when the party is over. microsoft only wants one thing from danger!! they only want that back end for their own cloud computing. microsoft is a company that will buy out a smaller company and take their technology and incorporate it in their own products/software.
dont bash me. i love my kick. i still love my kick. me and my kick have been together for years. my first one was the kick2 then when it died i went and got the 3, then it broke and i got another one, then the lx came and i just really had to have one so i sold the last sk3 i had to get the money for a lx and when the 09 came out i had issues with it and it was not powerful enough and i was all excited about it and all that but then i realized that its actually a kida phone and i cant keep getting these things.
i have a laptop and i tether my 3g internet service to my computer with my android phone. come on man. the damn kick is worthless now. they dont develop new programs for it anymore and microsoft neglects the sidekick platform all together. they dont encourage development of programs/apps/games for the kick or even develop any for the kick themselvs!! why do people still use the sidekick?? the sidekick is dead and we all need to grow up and get big boy phones now because the kick is no good to anybody! im sorry to say it. like i said, i love my kick and i still play with it but i will never get another one and i will not invest any real time in the one i have. i dont even really use it. i just play with it from time to time.
the google phone does everything.(i use the mytouch) i have found so many forums and there is such a large community for the andriod platform. the kick is not even being offered anymore by tmobile. go look for it. the 09 is the last one of its kind and i bet that we will see some of its qualities incorporated in when microsoft launches the “azure” cloud, or when we finally find out what the hell they are doing with their top secret “project pink”
what do yall think?? should we encourage hiptop3 to create a sister site for smart phones that are actually smart?? i dont own an iphone or blackberry but im sure that if hiptop3 created a sister site for one of the other spartphones it would be welcomed just as well as this site is.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:38 pm [ Quote ]
Oh and one more thing .. the numbers that I have arent even the right ones.
The last digit of every number I have is off by one -,- WEAAAAK.
October 24th, 2009 at 4:51 pm [ Quote ]
Only 200 of them wack azs names an nums I was better off with out then cus they were all aszs holesz wtf
.. I am unhappy an I no them tech’s is getin like 50$ an hr 2 get use hr shtii back now with that said there goin 2go az slow az they can but I got a good feelin that they’ll get it cus remeber they said they lost all of it from the jump now all of a suddin you got some of my contacts you guys are scumbags… an the ppl that *** here braging bout the nu fones they got = go play wit your self you make me sick reading that oooh I got me an nu this an my ***** fone is the shtti an my azzberry keeps me buzy… aww go f uck you self!!!!!!!
……………………..p.s. The only way microhard can make a *** back is if they fine all of hr stuff contacts an all give us 100$ on hr acount give us 1 or 2 months free an open the catalog 4 free 4 a week an text every one on the net work sateing that this is 2 make up 4 the f uck. Up they did sorry…. but I don’t think them ****.s will an there’s a reason y I type like this … lol now wit that said yu have a good nite an hope all yu guy keep up the good work an haters go suck az zz….
October 24th, 2009 at 4:55 pm [ Quote ]
Who yu tell as a dj that s hit killed me an kick my body 2 the side smh
October 24th, 2009 at 5:03 pm [ Quote ]
That’s y I call them micro hard cus they f uckin every body ..
October 24th, 2009 at 5:19 pm [ Quote ]
Ha haaaa
October 24th, 2009 at 5:26 pm [ Quote ]
If I translated that right you think the techs are making 50$/hr? I have been on projects like what MS is doing now, for this you call in specialized IT consultants immediately. Those consultants are making quite a bit more than 50/hr!
There are undoubtedly some employees there too, but even the most jr technical person on this is crowding the 100K in total yearly compensation that would equate to.
Of course, when you do this for years on end you tend to burn out quickly. Which is why most of the systems I am involved with now are not mission-critical.
I posted some of my technical observations of what we got back and what that tells me at skfail.com … I will crosspost them here in my next comment.
October 24th, 2009 at 5:27 pm [ Quote ]
The symptoms people are seeing are extremely familiar as I have been on several data recovery efforts of contact systems that were, shall we say, pretty public issues at the time (all 3 branches of the US government at a high level and publicity in the press). Your primary system goes and you have no live parallel system, so what do you do when you need to restore data that was created and deleted at various times? Well, you go to your historical backups, recreate the entire system (or just the needed bits) at each moment in time, mine tertiary places where information could be hiding (nightly SQL dumps for example), load that into your restoration database, then load the previous day’s backup.
Many of the records are fully restored, but many are not, The ones in the latter part involve a bit more work. Sometimes they can be fully recovered, but, well, see if any of these cases sound at all familiar:
- records missing information (anything from who the message was to to what was said, or several problems)
- information missing a pointer to who owns it
- records that can not be found at all (although another file MIGHT say they did …. or it might not know)
- records that get mismatched as to what piece goes with what record
The code to do the initial processing sweep takes some pretty arcane knowledge. How do do the secondary sweep is even more obscure. Either way, it is not off-the-shelf code. On a project such as this forget what I assume they would have in place for process management and call in the big guns. Feed them caffeine. Pour obscene amounts of money into their pockets. Anything to get it done as the company that lost the data is probably under time, money, PR and legal pressures all at once.
To give you an idea, on one recovery effort the contracting company used by the organization was changing (mine at the time lost out on the new contract year’s bid). Obviously the client wanted to keep the key technical staff from the project (including me) and did not really care who we worked for. All of us got called in to meetings with the client rep and a rep of the incoming company and were asked only one thing: “what do you want to switch companies?”
The corrupt records we are seeing look like they have been through the original processing sweep and at least some of the secondary processing sweep. Short of more code being written and running a secondary sweep again, any data that has not been found yet is, for all intents and purposes, gone. Management of this project is counting hours, not weeks …. a tech is much too critical right now for them to spend time on trying to prevent individual $100 problems when missing whatever deadline they have soon with T-Mobile will cost them millions.
October 24th, 2009 at 6:37 pm [ Quote ]
Kara Harkins = one 2 think on
An lost data humm I think not I think its there.. An its bout time 4 nu fones 2 roll out from all the phone comp so let see what they do an say an if you say geting that much an hr y in the f uckin world are they draging there feet huh what THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE SIDEKICK INCOME? Or is this a sign 2 leve cus they don’t want the life of sidekick 2 go any longer
An if so hey the nu one might run on windows mobile… an if that happens ill be piss..
What’s the best way 2 run off custumers give them bull **** service like we are getin….
Man the thing I don’t get it man its like I can just have text an say 2 hell wit it… cus rite now ask yur self what is yur side kick good 4? Ill be back 2 vent s.a.p..
October 24th, 2009 at 7:02 pm [ Quote ]
for this you call in specialized IT consultants immediately. Those consultants are making quite a bit more than 50/hr!
So y nothing is working rite do the math…. man
They are getin paid 2 f uck up cus if yu say look yu have 24hr 2 make this work or yur fired I bet yu all them bums will work none stop just so when we all wake up pow we will see all hr shti back were it be long but its much bigger then this….. so all that yu said is worthless….. think bout it …. tell ron 2 let some ppl go 2 shake s hitt up an then see how the other work not 2 lose there job this is a 1 2 thing an they want 2 make it a 30day thing…
((((((THE DAY THE SIDEKICK STOOD STILL))))))
WE ARE LIVE IT….
October 24th, 2009 at 7:35 pm [ Quote ]
Depending on the exact situation, if they have the data anywhere they do not have pointers to the individual records. So, yes, if that is the case the data is there, but their current procedure would not retrieve any more of it. If they had only done preliminary processing we would not have any partial records, since we do it looks like their secondary process has scavenged any data that it could. To get more data back would require writing new retrieval protocols and rerunning them on the data set (potentially all of it, which is not an insignificant amount of time).
As far as IT contracting pay scales … well, you might want to know more about the industry. A low grade technician working at a contractor can make 100$/hr pre-tax easily. For a huge time pressure situation that involves some pretty obscure technical miutae (including writing code to do that in an accelerated development environment) … well, I am not sure what they are paying, but 300-500 minimum.
Workers like that you do not threaten with losing their jobs if they do not perform. MS needs them MUCH more than they need MS. It is not like they are WalMart employees where you can just fire them and put in someone else. Even if you had a replacement waiting in the wings, there would still be significant downtime to bring any new people up to speed on the project.
October 25th, 2009 at 4:03 am [ Quote ]
To get more data back would require writing new retrieval protocols and rerunning them on the data set (potentially all of it, which is not an insignificant amount of time).= time is all yu guys have here are some ppl out there that have nothing on there fone all becuse of the time guys hav 2 get nothing done an I am not thankfull 4 the bull s hit numbers that the my-tmobile give me back there were all trash so yu guys did nothing if that was the case the6y should have just told ppl in a text that hey we are tryin 2 get all of yur things back not a lil but all …..
I am not sure what they are paying, but 300-500 minimum.= an hr an they still draging there feet … that like this hr sks is like hi price cars an yur tell me yu don’t no when my car wil be cumin out the shop am I rite …. cus if look like sum one is being f uckin in this.. Line of work…
It is not like they are WalMart employees where you can just fire them and put in someone else=yes you can I don’t see why no… my hold this is im sayin what ppl don’t want 2 say qwhat is the f uckin hold up!!!!!! All ready huh
there would still be significant downtime to bring any new people up to speed on the project.= them bi tch’s got all the time they need an I don’t see now change s hit they can turn it off 4 all I care im just mad this did not make 20/20…. an all the data is there an there takeing there time .. Wich is hr time look I been down wit the hole sidekick world since day one an I neva seen a fuc k up this big that toke this long 2 fix no matter what yu type bout how long its goin 2 take I don’t buy it yu no y cus 8its all bull s hit.. Let this would have BEEN (((RIM))) yu would see this make the news asap cus gov use’s bb but he that’s another story its cool were the under dogs an sidekicks are 4 kids…. yeah rite.
October 25th, 2009 at 5:37 am [ Quote ]
I am not sure how the word ‘you’ applies? I am not a contractor on this project, but have been on similar ones and saw the signs in the records they gave us that they had been through secondary processing already. You simply can not retrieve a single person’s records, you need to apply any new process to all raw data to maintain the integrity of your data set. Since you have economies of scale, a redesign/rewrite of their existing secondary processing code and a rerun on the data would take 3-4 weeks at a minimum (although 6-8 is more likely).
The secondary processing piece needs to be done correctly the first time. On one of my contracts someone else wrote it and we discovered it had some pretty huge errors. Diagnosing and fixing the problem plus rerunning it on the data processed so far put us back a month. Yes, that was on a time-critical project so a month felt like a year to management but there was nothing anyone could do about it other than fix the problem.
If you think it is such an easy job then here is your chance to get some good money. Just send your resume or curriculum vitae to Danger. The data is so extremely trivial to recover and anyone can do it, right?
Yes, we all are mad, I have lost count how many times I have communicated with customer service, account specialists, and the loyalty department (which I could do by having two sidekick2s since 2004). This thread is to discuss the practical issues involved in rebuilding a database though. Not for ranting about the problem.
October 25th, 2009 at 6:08 am [ Quote ]
To get more data back would require writing new retrieval protocols and rerunning them on the data set (potentially all of it, which is not an insignificant amount of time).= time is all yu guys have here are some ppl out there that have nothing on there fone all becuse of the time guys hav 2 get nothing done an I am not thankfull 4 the bull s hit numbers that the my-tmobile give me back there were all trash so yu guys did nothing if that was the case the6y should have just told ppl in a text that hey we are tryin 2 get all of yur things back not a lil but all …..
I am not sure what they are paying, but 300-500 minimum.= an hr an they still draging there feet … that like this hr sks is like hi price cars an yur tell me yu don’t no when my car wil be cumin out the shop am I rite …. cus if look like sum one is being f uckin in this.. Line of work…
It is not like they are WalMart employees where you can just fire them and put in someone else=yes you can I don’t see why no… my hold this is im sayin what ppl don’t want 2 say qwhat is the f uckin hold up!!!!!! All ready huh
there would still be significant downtime to bring any new people up to speed on the project.= them bi tch’s got all the time they need an I don’t see now change s hit they can turn it off 4 all I care im just mad this did not make 20/20…. an all the data is there an there takeing there time .. Wich is hr time look I been down wit the hole sidekick world since day one an I neva seen a fuc k up this big that toke this long 2 fix no matter what yu type bout how long its goin 2 take I don’t buy it yu no y cus 8its all bull s hit.. Let this would have BEEN (((RIM))) yu would see this make the news asap cus gov use’s bb but he that’s another story its cool were the under dogs an sidekicks are 4 kids…. yeah rite…
October 25th, 2009 at 9:16 am [ Quote ]
I talked to T Mobile yesterday when I ordered my Moto Cliq, and what I got from them was that if the rest of the data (calendar, notes, pics, to-dos, etc.) then you should be eligible for the $100, and that MS will let them know Oct 27 which users data is lost and can’t be recovered. From what I have been reading, basically everybody got their contacts back. They are responsible for everything, so if the other data isn’t recovered then those people should be eligible for the credit. But people aren’t even talking about recovering the overpriced purchases of the Download Catalog (games, apps, and ringtones), that we can uninstall and reinstall. I know thats $100 lost for me, right there
October 25th, 2009 at 9:25 am [ Quote ]
when will we be getting new sidekicks!!!
October 25th, 2009 at 9:26 am [ Quote ]
yeah agreed sidekick 3G is cool but its not what it could be!!! totally off topic but whatever lmao
October 25th, 2009 at 9:44 am [ Quote ]
You got damn rite wyle every one eals is havein fun wit there fone were stuck wit the same old bull s hit when will they step there f ucking game up huh?
They got time an money 2 put behind
Window7
What bout us huh what’s the got damn hold up
October 26th, 2009 at 12:22 pm [ Quote ]
Ya’ll saying Microsoft needs to step up on phone design, it doesn’t apply here, the Danger people are the ones that didn’t step up and advance the platform for a long time. Microsoft hasn’t had any direct input in designing a Sidekick yet, the LX 09 was already made when Microsoft purchased Danger, and they just released it. They haven’t released a phone of their making under Danger yet, so you may want to hold off on that criticism. OSes are there bread and butter so of course Windows 7 had a lot behind it. MS isn’t really hardward manufactures, not until fairly recently with the XBox and Zune, but I’m not sure it they even manufacture those either, probably hired someone else, like Danger did hiring Sharp to make the sidekicks for years
October 26th, 2009 at 12:25 pm [ Quote ]
And if this recent disaster kills the brand, and their aren’t many sidekick users left, I doubt their will be any other sidekicks released. If there are,they might be completely different phones, different design, different platform because T Mobile owns the name and can call anything a sidekick
October 26th, 2009 at 2:34 pm [ Quote ]
i have a sidekick lx midnight blue and my download catalog is not working.. Anyone else experiencing this?
October 26th, 2009 at 2:37 pm [ Quote ]
Lol. Where have you beeen? It hasn’t been working since the begining of the month for everyone hijo
October 26th, 2009 at 4:56 pm [ Quote ]
IGHT SO WHEN THE F UCK IS THIS DATABASE GONNA BE “PATCHED” TOGETHER AGAIN? IM F UCKIN PISSED THAT MICROSOFT ISN’T KEEPING US POSTED ON ANY PROGRESS MADE OR ANYTHIN ELSE THATS GOIN ON, ****** ********.
October 26th, 2009 at 7:54 pm [ Quote ]
I just want my $100 nd leave the sidekick for now til they get thier stuff together… If the sidekick is still around, that is….
October 26th, 2009 at 9:15 pm [ Quote ]
agreed.
I’m changing to the cliq soon because i got a hookup.
and i’m waiting for a 3G blackberry to get released for t-mobile, because i’m locked in for ~1 & 1/2 more years..
sucks how t-mobile is the only company that gets signal at my house and have the best reception on my campus.
t-mobile has 3 days to recover my important contacts before i get my 100$ that i’ll probably use on another phone. i’m tired of t-mobile texting me telling me to go recover my contacts when they’re NOT THERE.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:17 pm [ Quote ]
& forgot to add this part..
I love sidekicks. loyal for 4 years.
but they really need to get their **** together and step it up before i reconsider getting another sidekick.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:28 pm [ Quote ]
isnt it strange that now hiptop3 has been using photoshop images with caption for their new topics?
October 27th, 2009 at 3:37 am [ Quote ]
Dear T-Mobile/Danger:
My sentiments as a long-time subscriber:
T-Mobile:
I’ve had your services since your spokesperson was a parrot and your name was Omnipoint. I even sold them as an Authorized Dealer when the pager business died. It was 1998, and you only offered a handful of brick-sized phones (remember the Ericsson 388?), and your flagship handset had a 3-color screen and was made by Siemens. I remember using prepaid coupons to pay my postpaid bill – Genius! Your network was small, your plans were so-so, but digital was superior, and you were my first choice.
You became Voicestream, and had a fancy, stylized logo and Jamie-Lee Curtis was your spokesperson. She gave James Earl Jones a run for his money and you began to look like a major player. There were plenty of companies to choose from, but I stayed faithful. I used all the newest handsets and loved the ease of switching my SIM, allowing me to try all the newest phones. My Nokia 3300 fell 100 times but never failed me. I would just put the shell back together, and I had all the colors. I composed my own ringers painstakingly from the composer before it became a billion-dollar business. AT&T was still TDMA back then, and you were the only GSM player for a while (It still amazes me how you let Cingular/Big Blue leapfrog you with your own technology, but I digress).
You gobbled up smaller carriers left and right, and soon you got your new name. T-Mobile. Your coverage maps still looked like daddy-long-legs, but with each revision, the pink spiders gained weight. You were determined to provide call quality over tower quantity, knowing the latter would come soon enough. I always had enjoyable experiences as a customer and got my whole family under your wing.
Flash forward to 2002. I had a two-way pager from Skytel, and life was good. I could actually check email without a COMPUTER! My last regular handset was a Motorola V70, a slick-looking phone that rotated instead of flipping open. But I lusted for something that could do it all. I bought an unlocked Motorola Accompli 009 online to combine my 2-way pager with a phone, and also had a color screen. Mandatory headset required though, and Bluetooth didn’t exist yet. That didn’t last long. I looked at my sheet of upcoming phones and saw some chunky, grey, calculator-looking thing with a full keyboard. And the screen did some funky, flip move that snapped open like I always wished the V70 had done. Was this the device I had been looking for?
Danger:
Ahhh, what say I say to my dear old friend. I picked up your ugly duckling of a device and never looked back. I had never been brand-loyal with handset manufacturers, but boy, did that change. In my entire history as a wireless customer, no device has matched the ingenuity of something so useful as the Jump button. I’ve multi-tasked with ease, and frequented the hiptop.com (later, poweredbydanger.com) forums daily anticipating each OTA update. I remember when AIM smileys and copy/paste were added. I posted so often under the name JustifydHomicide that I was a “Power User”. Appletech, The Gryphon, mwsmith, JHC – These people were the gurus of my Sidekick experience. I got a developer’s key and loved testing applications, learning the Menu+Shift shortcuts like the back of my hand.
You were always so ahead of the curve, single-handedly creating the catalog model for which Apple smugly gets credit, and for which all the other OS companies are still clamoring. I felt that I was using the latest and greatest technology, for a while that is. I anticipated each new hardware launch and recall ordering the Sidekick 2 at midnight of the launch. I’ve done the same for each new device, and even sprung for the Mr. Cartoon and LRG LE’s. I remained positive after your acquisition by Microsoft, even after they unceremoniously fired half of your staff, anxiously hoping that someday I’d see the convergence of the Sidekick with another favorite, the Zune.
When the G1 came out, I resisted temptation and waited to upgrade to the LX09 even though 3G hadn’t launched in my area yet. I was grandfathered into your $20 data, and was willing to forgo the latest handset and stay loyal to you. For the first time, however, I was thoroughly unimpressed by your new outfit. Sure, your new dress was **** and sleek, but the new integration of social networking apps lacked functionality and slowed my typically reliable OS to a crawl. I became plagued with frequent resets and freezing and now stay logged out of apps unless I need them, opting to use the browser for Twitter rather than the especially-limited catalog version. It soon became clear why this app and others were provided to the end user for free.
I began to fall out of love with you after gazing at superior products. I even flirted with a few, impressed by better features and ease of use. I developed an infatuation for Android like a middle middle-aged man staring at a young home-wrecker. The company whose ingenuity I had loved and been loyal to had changed like an estranged wife of 6 years. It felt like you lost your touch, and looking at your renders of the Project Pink phones had me drawing up my divorce papers.
Then, there was the straw that broke the camel’s back,
October 2nd, 2009:
You know the particulars, so I won’t cover old news. You know what you did. You cheated on me. I had a trust in you that I was sure you wouldn’t break. My secrets were safe with you throughout our relationship, and then you walked out on me in the form of a data outage. It had happened before, but never like this. I couldn’t reach you for over a week, and when I heard from you, I realized that it was worse than I thought. You didn’t just fail me, but you also destroyed everything we built together. Taking over 1000 contacts with you when you left was like emptying the joint account and taking the kids. You didn’t even leave the pictures as a memento. How cruel could you be?
Apparently you had a change of heart, restoring some of my contacts, although you haven’t yet made me whole. I’m still waiting for you to drop off the rest of my stuff – Do you think you can get the calendar, bookmarks, and photos back to me soon? I’m starting to think it’ll all work out in the end; I’m getting comfortable with the idea that we won’t be together much longer. I noticed you took yourself off the market on t-mobile.com, too. Decided not to play the field?
Android looks better every day, but I like my ladies with keyboards, and G1’s getting wrinkles every day. I check in on my new love interests N900 and Bold 2 daily, and can’t wait to choose my new wife. T-Mobile at least had enough Loyalty (Plan) to allow me to forgive them, but you I cannot. The credits and new handset they offered me make me feel a little better.
T-Mobile:
With your bold launch of Project Dark, this could not have come at a more inopportune time. I applaud your willingness to adopt a new model and buck the tradition that has plagued the wireless climate in the U.S. I will not be converting to one of these new plans, as my current plan suits me better. I do wonder two things about your no-contract Even More Plus plans:
Will handsets purchased at full retail come unlocked?
Will customer be allowed to provide their own unlocked handset and sign up for Even More Plus?
In closing, thank you T-Mobile for always having a “Think Customer First” attitude, a credo of another large and successful company. Your customer service is unparalleled, and your philosophy as a company influenced me to work for your corporation during my 9-year wireless career, before moving on to a different industry. In this situation, you didn’t hesitate to concede your faults for Microsoft/Danger’s shortcomings. Although you were only indirectly responsible, you realized that ultimately YOU collect my bill, and I respect that. I won’t disclose what concessions you’ve offered me to retain my business, but I do beleive that I will continue to a be satisfied customer some time in November. I hope Microsoft makes you whole for your loss of revenue due to this debacle.
Cellphone Chris
cellphonechris@gmail.com
October 27th, 2009 at 10:45 am [ Quote ]
I got almost all of my contacts. But I’m still missing a lot of them. Plus my phone want let me fix the ones I got back. So I can’t put people into categories or even edit them to say if its an house phone number, cell phone number, and so forth. I also got some of my contacts back and it didn’t have there real name it had there nickname instead. There was no addresses, I lost everybody’s birthday information and so forth. I also lost all of my notes. I lost a lot of information that I just jotted down on the go. I can’t download any extra ringtones. I don’t have a fav five icon anymore. My phone doesn’t ring when I receive a text message or an aim message. When I text it doesn’t show tha name of who I’m texting just tha number until I got to reply. When I receive a message it says I got it 1-5mins earlier. So it will be 3:00pm and the message will say I received it at 3:01pm, 3:02pm and so on. I Love my Sidekick. I have all of them from the original Id all the way to the 2008. I was going to buy the 2009 Lx which I really want. But I’m not going to buy it until everything is fixed. Only because I don’t want to lose anymore contacts or anything else important to me. Please help me if you know how to fix any of these problems. Thank You and have a wonderful day.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:33 am [ Quote ]
I got names but no numbers. I am in prepaid by choice. I have a verizon postpaid account and got the sidekick before there were many data plans. Prepaid is to get a $10 credit for this outage. I filed a complaint with bbb.org and I got a $50 credit. I am still being charged $1 a day for half a$$ service. Still not happy. If the rest of the data is as screwed up as the contacts, they should compensate everyone for lost data. Bbb.org got tmobile’s attention fast.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:39 pm [ Quote ]
I know this is a little off topic but if it makes all of us Sidekick users feel any better AT&T is having a similar problem. I’m in florida and a majority of the people I know can’t make or recieve calls or messages of any kind. Glad I didn’t switch LOL
October 29th, 2009 at 8:06 pm [ Quote ]
After this long with it still giving me the blank and wrong entries back I did the chat support.
I’m supposedly in a unique group of users, they took some info from mme and said they’d contact me “shortly”
That was a few hours ago
October 30th, 2009 at 3:51 am [ Quote ]
A unique group? Hardly … corrupt data on a restore seems to be the usual results from people who have gone through the process.
I would not sit up waiting for them to call back. I submitted a ticket for my data more than a week ago.
October 30th, 2009 at 5:42 am [ Quote ]
Oh I know. I just don’t think MS should get away with calling this **** a restore.
November 1st, 2009 at 9:53 pm [ Quote ]
I think we need a few CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS to get the catalog & apps back up too just like they were suddenly able to restore contacts after a few lawsuits popped up, seriously!!