
FLIPPERSMACK 005

culturemag for a penguin generation
http://www.flippersmack.com

I saw the Escher show last night at the EpiCenter in San Diego. They were
pretty good; the only band I've known of with only two people. Matt sang
and played guitar while Dale sang and played drums. It worked out really
well; they have some very melodic songs with harsh punk vocals. We'll do a
full review of them soon in here.

I'm spending another weekend in LA and getting Flippersmack out. Going to
a renegade rave tonight called RollCall. Sleep this weekend is not on the
agenda really. Hope you enjoy this issue!

Back issues of Flippersmack can be found at http://www.nettwerked.net/ and
http://www.fris.net

Oh yeah. http://www.coolwhip.org 
Submit pictures. This is a cool site idea! I want to see your bodies
covered in cool whip!! YES!
-pinguino


tABLE oF cONTENTS

San Diego Storm Drains..........................Pinguino
Trip...............................................MagMa
The Tracfone Trap..............................The Clone
Poetry: A Lost People...........................Pinguino

                           -.x.x.x.-

San Diego Storm Drains
by pinguino [pinguino@comicartist.com]

Storm drains aren't sewer pipes. There is a terrible misconception that we
were running through the sewers. Although we did see a sewer rat, we were
not running through any sewers.

I got the lead for this particular tunnel off a random usenet posting from
years ago; worse yet was the fact the person was remembering something he
had done in his college years in the 70's. Needless to say, the opening to
the tunnel was difficult to find based on the description we had, so we
eventually ducked into the closest concrete-glazed drainage ditch and
followed it out to the storm drain tunnel opening.

Our group this time consisted of Secret Squirrel, White Rabbit, Tigger,
Das, Kilna, and myself. We all were seasoned infiltration travellers who
shared a spirit for adventure.

The storm drain for the most part was dry, with long puddles that held an
inch to three inches of water. Storm drain explorers should wear
waterproof boots, even if it hadn't rained in a few weeks. The tunnel was
about seven feet tall, concrete, and circular. There wasn't a lot of
tagging, but sometimes there were pictures drawn with spray paint. There
were lots of "The End Is Near" type tags. Also, you can see where the
concrete tubes were dated; some of the tube sections were dated back to
the 50's.

The tunnel started out near Balboa Park and ended near the Star of India.
The tunnel lasts for two miles beneath downtown San Diego. We made it out
to where the ceiling went to about 4ft high, but stopped when the water
went up to Squirrel's knees. The end was salty and smelly, with lots of
sand, so we knew that we were only about twenty feet from the actual end.
There were manhole access points all through the drain but we didn't go up
any of them.

Not exactly a place you'd want to hang out at, but the storm drains would
be a cool place to take a bored friend or to possibly skate in during the
summer. There was really no security. The entrance is near the Naval
Hospital, and the area has some amount of traffic at night. We might not
have catacombs or subway tunnels, but San Diego does have a cool drain to
explore.

                           -.x.x.x.-

    +-	K-1ine "A 'zine for the 780 undergr0und scene" 
	  K-1ine offers the newest H/P and random misc 
	  articles from people all across Canada and the USA. -+ 
	  w w w . n e t t w e r k e d . n e t  
 
                           -.x.x.x.-
Trip
by MagMa [magma@sunos.com]

The jiggling of our cat'’s collar once signified the arrival of new mail at
our door.  Now only the lonely footsteps that drop off my divorce papers
are all I hear at my door. Enough is enough. I pack my bags and part just
after the evening news begins.  

The M5 seems to have lost it's effect on me- I am no longer enthralled when
I look at the contemporary styled rims that I spent so much time picking
out. At least it's fast, too bad I have nowhere to go quickly. As I pass
Pearson airport at speeds I wouldn't travel at otherwise, I'm reminded of
the annoying radio ads that tell you to slow down. I juice it even more. I
don't know where I'm going, all I know is that I must leave this mundane
existence and actually change my life; not like those infomercial product
buying wannabes, but actually change it, for the better.

I zoom by a station wagon filled with a family of five with a canoe on
their car; I'm reminded of when my father and I would go out into
Algonquin Park for a week or two. Those were the days, nothing but
untouched wilderness, not the stuff you see in zoos but real, live
animals. Animals that fight to protect their--- great. Cops. I'm in sixth
but two seconds later I'm in first hitting my chrome plated brake pedals
harder then ever before. Speed trap? No. Car wreak and thankfully not a
bad one, the cops don't even notice me. Good.

As I sit I remember to change my cars clock from day light savings time
back into which ever it is for the winter months. Odd how it's been days
since the change and I haven't noticed. Animals that fight to protect
their young. Those were the greatest summers of my life, probably because
soon after that I lost my father. Why was he so stressed, I used to wonder.

Toll freeway, I bet it's almost always empty, lets see, I feel the turbo
kick, here we go like doh-diddly-o. So the story goes, she wants the
house, our child and even the cat, she doesn't even like cats. Apparently
she has no interest in my car, shame really. The quiet roar of the engine
makes me realize I don’t have any music playing. Odd. I shuffle through my
discs looking for something to fit the mood. Chicane is the first thing
that comes to mind, sweet ambient music. I depress the gas pedal a little
more. Back in sixth.  

Canoeing with my father was always fun and challenging at the same time.
He let me be in stern, so I had all control but also had to use my body to
the fullest. Power always comes with a price I guess. Isn’t it interesting
that when you drive fast you seem to float by everything? I think it is. A
calm comes over me, much like the calm that one finds when watching rain
drop on skylights. Every time we pulled upon a campsite the first thing we
did was find a place for our tent, it may seem obvious but it was a long
process. My father always preferred the high more rocky locations, while I
always wanted the tent near water so I could hear the calming sounds as I
lay there trying to sleep.

The gas icon is lit. Why can’t there be gas trucks that you summon, they
fill you up and you’re on your way without being bothered to stop.  We
should put gas trucks way before things like the censorship of the
Internet so it becomes mindless like television.

When we had the tent all set up and my favorite stuffed animal tucked in
my sleeping bag waiting for me we quickly made a fire. Gas stations
nowadays seem more like space stations in my mind, with the extremely
bright lights and bubbly form. As I step back in I hear “so your back this
way again?” part of a song by chicane, fitting. As it grew darker from day
into night my father would ask me to go look for firewood but never
letting me leave his sight, he had a thing about me being an easy kill or
something to that effect. I switch on the headlights, with that blue like
colour that seems to blind people more then anything else. Oh well. The
only thing I seemed to dislike about our northern getaways was how the
smoke always seemed to blow in my face even when I moved next to my
father. He always found it quite amusing.

Electronic music always seems to sound so much better then the real thing,
mind you jazz has its moments too. Just before bed we would brush our
teeth at the waters edge skipping rocks that seemed to bounce off the
glass leaving it’s mark for only a short time. Similar to how things fad
with time, ask someone if they would like to watch a movie made about a
dozen years ago, almost always that response will be “that movie is old”.

 Funny. I follow this road and these cars to where ever they take me. When
I was in my sleeping bag and ready to sleep my father would ask “would you
like a story” my instant reply was always “yes”. He woculd tell the
greatest of stories. I up shift trying to overtake an oversized Sport
Utility Vecile, with ease I fly by almost wanting wave. The lights that
illuminate the highway shrink into regular lampposts and the roads do the
same into regular roads.

Do the cars slow? Of course not, we, I, go faster. I would always drift
into a sleep always dreaming about the subject matter of that story, I
wonder if my father was ever offended when I did that. I think I have
figured out why people buy SUV’s, it’s just so they can run over the other
cars in the event of a crash. BANG. I jolt out of my sleeping bag with
what I believe is a gun shot, where is my dad? I slowly unzip the tent
door to find my father on the ground. A lone jet-black wolf stands upon a
nearby rock.  

Blood. So much of it. I wipe the sleep from beneath my eyes just as the
chime in my 15 hundred-dollar watch dings one am. The blue light from the
headlights reflects quite well off the eyes of the beast ahead of me, I
jerk the wheel to avoid —and like that it’s over. Strange. 

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 
||***************************|| 
||******The GrassHopper******|| 
||***********Unit************|| 
||***************************|| 
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 
                            
                           -.x.x.x.-
The Tracfone Trap
by: The Clone [theclone@hackcanada.com]

*% Introduction
*% Tracfone Trap
*% Technical Notes
*% TracFone TOS
*% Tracfone Complaints
*% TrapFone Dot Com
*% Conclusion

Introduction -

What is TracFone? TracFone is a wireless phone company in partnership with 
Telefonica de Mexico based out of Orlando Florida which offers 'Nation-wide
Pre-paid service' (a partnership with Verizon Wireless) which bills your analog
phone on a "pay as you go" basis, letting you control your own costs as you 
need them. With TracFone there are no credit checks, no contracts, no age 
limits, and no costly cellular phone bills.

What makes TracFone such a unique pre-paid wireless company is that on the
phones' themselves is a time-counter that keeps track of the minutes you
use, by sending a real-time roaming update to the closest b-side wireless
carrier and then eventually to Verizon wireless who perform the necessary
updates.

For example; if you are roaming on TracFone while in Edmonton Alberta
Canada, your ESN/NAM header information will be sent to Telus Mobility's
Home Location Register (HLR) system which recognizes the account,
processes it, and from there it immediately diverts it to Verizon.

TracFone Trap -

TracFone Incorporated currently offers two analog Nokia model phones to
its customers: the Nokia 252, and the Nokia 918. Both models are sleak and
fully loaded with features that make using these products enjoyable.

-NAM PROGRAMMING-

Unfortunately, TracFone has really limited its customers freedom by
putting a limit on what other numbers - but specifically what other
carriers can be programmed into the phones NAM memory bank by locking the
first A-side SID.

The truth is customers do not have the ability to program other numbers
into the phone AT ALL, meaning you're stuck having only one account on one
phone; that being the TracFone account on the TracFone phone!

The NAM memory bank looks something like this:

(1st) phone # - 666-313-3370
(1st) SID - 0 (A-side)

(2nd) phone # - [blank]
(2nd) SID - 1 (B-side)

On the attempt to program the second memory bank you'll get the following:

"Location NAM error"

Lets say you successfully hacked the NAM programming menu code for the phone...
couldn't be too tough if you consider all the available web-sites and mailing-
lists on the Internet that focus on just that...

ie. (list) gsm_underground@yahoogroups.com
    (site) http://www.hackcanada.com/ice3/cellular/index.html
    (site) http://www.nettwerked.net/TFA/cell.html

Now to take advantage of the hack you would be required to have firstly broken
the NAM programming menu code, followed by entering in the exact same account
information (phone # and SID) that appears in the first memory bank into the
second memory bank. By roaming on the B-side you are likely to get lots of 
extra time even AFTER the TracFone's unit-counter time runs out because it 
can take from several days to a few weeks for the header info (ESN/MIN/NAM)
to be sent from say Telus or Rogers/AT&T to Verizon and then finally to 
TracFone's HLR provisioning system for "current account updates".

After this time, the TracFone's unit-counter will realize the customers 
account is out of air-time and will finally boot them off the network 
until the phone is re-filled.


What else sucks about TracFone?


- There is no way to buy phone units online with a credit card;
  only through an authorized retailers.

- Finding authorized retailers in Canada is one thing, but finding a
  retailer at all that will accept Canadian dollars and Canadian
  addresses is another thing.

- The web-forms on tracfone.com do not accept Canadian addresses
  (ie. 12274-123st Edmonton Alberta Canada, T5X-2R9)

- If you wanted to change your account information, you would be required
  to mail your Nokia analog to TracFone (you pay the shipping fees) to be
  reset... for a fee of $75.00/USD. Call 509-710-4619 for more information.

- TracFone will not let you receive calls when on roaming due to the
  carrier and number assignment. The message the person who's calling
  your roaming TracFone will hear is Verizon's "unable to reach subscriber"
  message - this was verified by calling a roaming TracFone from a Telus
  landline.

Technical Notes -

(note: The Nokia 252 is virtually the same as the Nokia 918 in respects
       to programming, so don't fret my pets.)

Technical specifications on the Nokia 918 model phones offered by
TracFone Incorporated can be read at this site:

	     http://www.nettwerked.net/nokia_918.txt

 Terms and Conditions of Service:

   Upon activation of cellular radio service ("Service"), customer
   ("You") agrees to the following terms and conditions:

   To maintain TRACFONE cellular service and keep the local phone number,
   purchase and activate a 30, 100, or 260 unit prepaid cellular card
   every 60 days or a 10 unit card every 30 days. You may purchase as
   many TRACFONE Prepaid Cellular Phone Cards as you want. TRACFONE will
   display the due date reminder every time you turn your phone on. If
   you do not purchase, and redeem, at least one TRACFONE Prepaid
   Cellular Phone Card within 30 or 60 days of initial programming and
   set-up, the Service will be suspended.
   
   You can reactivate your Service by purchasing and redeeming a TRACFONE
   Prepaid Cellular Card; however, a different phone number will likely
   be assigned. You (the customer) have no property interest or other
   proprietary interest in any telephone access number assigned. Each
   card redeemed will extend service by 30 or 60 days from the date of
   redemption, depending on the card value.
   
   Any and all tampering or falsification or entering of codes not
   properly authorized by TRACFONE may result in immediate discontinuance
   of Service and prosecution to the full extend of the law. TRACFONE
   reserves the right to cancel any Service without notice.

TracFone complaints: 

The following are a few examples of horror stories that current and former
TracFone customers have written about over the last four months:

(taken from http://www.bitchaboutit.com/ReadPages/telephone_complaints.htm)


   Date: 04 Jan 2001
    
   Tracfone, the biggest joke I have ever heard of! I have been trying
   for four unsuccessful weeks to contact them to activate this phone
   that they screwed up. After being disconnected over 100 times I got
   mad enough to just let it alone. They told me the hold time was 94
   minutes! I work customer service too and that is unacceptable! This
   company is going to get a piece of my mind if I ever get a person on
   the phone. They sure do have excuses though! Heard em all so far!
    - Christina Hull, MD

  
   Date: 04 Jan 2001
  
   I purchased a Tracfone on December 12th, for my boyfriend for his
   birthday. I had it "activated" on December 21st. After 3 days the
   phone still did not work, so I called back. After 5 or 6 calls and 2
   hours on hold, I reached a "technician" who "reprogrammed" the phone.
   He then performed a "test call" and the phone didn't work. So he asked
   me a couple of questions and I am mid-sentence and next thing I know I
   am back at square one, waiting on hold again for "an estimated wait
   time of 45 minutes." 3 days later I waited another 45 minutes, this
   time late at night, and reached someone who again "reprogrammed" the
   phone and assured me that whomever I spoke with previously did not
   program it right. It has now been a week since that call and still the
   phone does not work. I've been trying to call for about 4 days now,
   and you can't even wait on hold anymore, they tell you to wait 60
   minutes and call back. Please do not purchase this phone, it is a real
   hassle. There are many other pre-paid cellulars out there - buy one
   from a company with a local office where you can go and get decent
   service. I will be returning my Tracfone this weekend - thank God I
   saved the receipt.
    - Jodi Rapes, MI

   Date: 02 Jan 2001

   Tracfone has the worst customer service I have ever experienced in my
   life. I will take every chance to steer possible customers away from
   buying into this piece of doodoo service. If you call the 1-800 # then
   you better bring the book War and Peace while you wait for service.
   You will make it cover to cover and then some.
    - Mark Vatcher, NH


   Date: 26 Dec 2000

   I bought a tracfone (prepaid cellular service) from Wal mart after I
   had visited Tracfone's web site. On the site They say: Instant
   activation or in 24 hours in some areas.
   It is now 4 days and in a few hours 5 days after over 100 phone call
   attempts, busy signals, excuses etc. claiming the christmas rush, then
   blaming southwest bell and one excuse after another  
   my #$%$*&@#% phone is still not activated!!! I see you have another
   complaint on this site for TracFone. Their # is 800-867-7183
   - Brent Gould, MO

TrapFone Dot Com -

Still undergoing major construction, TRAPFONE is a site for the wireless phreak
to spread knowledge about the technical infrastructure of TRACFONE's analog
cross-country cellular network, but mainly as a place for irrate (former)
customers to rant about why they think the service TRACFONE offers just plain
sucks.
 			
		    http://www.trapfone.com
Conclusion -

There you have it folks; TRACFONE Wireless Incorporated is a trap sucking
unsuspecting customers into its us-only plan through carefully crafted
advertising / hardware programming techniques, and have THE worst pre-paid
cellular customer service in the world.
 
I advise that you let all your friends and family know about this
deceitful company so they won't be lured into the tracfone trap either.
Too many people have been hurt already by this company... it's time we all
take a stand and run these guys out of business once and for all.

Credits -

I'd like to give credit to Alan (780) for his story and support
while working on the development of this article.

                           -.x.x.x.-
A Lost People
by pinguino [pinguino@comicartist.com]

Poetry.com keeps sending me stuff wanting to publish this on some spoken
word CD or something. Either it's good, or they try to make money off any
submission.

-|-

Once I stepped on the very steps
that Thomas Jefferson used every day
I felt history surge through my veins.

An aura resides at Monticello
of inspiration forgotten long ago
People need inspiration today. 

A week ago I stood on a stone
where thousands of soldiers were slain.
I felt nothing.

                           -.x.x.x.-



Flippersmack (c) 2001 Pinguino Kolb   All Rights Reserved.
