Blackberry Pearl 9100 Enterprise Activation Icon Missing

/0 Comments/in , , /by

OK, so I know these cell phone companies think they’re doing everyone a favor by setting up their own custom software loads and wallpaper and crap, but come on…

Basically, if you go to Telus and buy a Pearl 9100, they will helpfully install your SIM card in it and make sure you can make calls and surf the web and all that jazz, then they hand it to you and away you go. They will not ask you what you intend to do with it – like say, use it WITH A BLACKBERRY SERVER. So you take your new phone home, install the latest version of BlackBerry Professional on your Exchange server, create your account, set your activation password, pick up your Pearl and hunt (and hunt, and Google) for the Enterprise Activation icon.

Stop looking, it’s not there. But don’t worry.

Hopefully since you just brought the phone home, there’s not much on it. Go into “Options” -> “Security Options” and choose “Security Wipe”. Check off “Emails, Contacts, etc.” and “User Installed Applications”, enter the word “blackberry” in the field provided, and click on the “Wipe” button.

Let the phone reboot, and when it turns on and asks if you want to connect to the network, say “No”. Whip through the setup wizard and get to the home screen. You will find that the Telus wallpaper is there and the standard welcome message is in your Inbox, but you won’t find all of their custom crap. You will also find Enterprise Activation under “Options” -> “Advanced Options”. Enter your email address and activation password and tell the phone to activate. It will ask you to connect to the network. Say “Yes” now, and the activation should succeed if your server is working properly.

Oh, and before you tell me that you have to have an Enterprise (BES) plan from Telus in order for the icon to show up, or for BES to work, don’t bother. The new version of BES (5.0.1 at the moment) doesn’t require a BES data plan, and the removal of the Enterprise Activation program on the phone is just asinine.

At some point the Telus network may push their crapware down to my phone again, and hopefully it doesn’t break the already activated enterprise setup that I have going on. If it does, there will be another post. Trust me.

Telus SIM card default PIN2

/1 Comment/in /by

So after being on the phone for over an hour with Telus “tech support”, I finally discovered the default PIN2 for their SIM cards. Not that tech support was any help. The first guy I talked to only had one thing to say to me:

We don’t have it, so it doesn’t exist.

Despite my best efforts, I could not convince him to ask anyone else at Telus, or even admit to me that there was such a thing as a PIN2. After a while he asked me if I would like to try to explain the issue to someone else (which is phone-support-guy for “I’m tired of dealing with you, can I please hand you off to someone else?”) and I said sure, go ahead. Pretty much the same deal with the second guy, but at least he didn’t hang up on me. I almost got the second guy to say that there was a PIN2 but that they didn’t know what it was, but his mantra ended up being “It’s not in the system, so it doesn’t exist.” I asked him if he knew anything that wasn’t “in the system”, at which point he became very quiet. He refused to, or couldn’t, tell me what the weather was like today, so I guess there’s no weather widget in their system… He also had no idea what color his socks were.

Finally, I guess his shift was up, so he asked me if I would like to speak to a third tech support representative, and I said “sure, follow your phone-support-guy training manual and pawn me off on someone else”. I don’t think he said goodbye, but at least he didn’t hang up on me. The third guy I got started off down the same tracks, but I confused him by asking some unrelated hypothetical questions, then BAM! – before he knew it he had admitted that PIN2 codes had existed for years, and it was likely that all SIM cards had them, even though the carrier might not use them. He also confirmed that they were not anywhere “in the system”. I then asked him how things got into “the system” and he said that he couldn’t answer that. I think the people who put stuff “in the system” should stuff themselves “in the system” – if you know what I mean…
Read more →

How to build a Pirate Ship

/1 Comment/in /by
  1. Get meat;
    IMG00038-20081024-2113
  2. Cook bacon (of course);
    IMG00039-20081024-2113
  3. Grab pirate ship pan.  You do have one, don’t you?
    IMG00040-20081024-2113 
    Read more →