Flippersmack Issue 05

eZine lover (@eZine)

Published in 

Flippersmack

 · 5 years ago

  

 
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.