April 22, 2009

Comcast, why does your Internet suck that hard?

Filed under: General, Rant — spiro @ 5:33 pm

Yet another Comcast sucks post. Why? because they just suck!

To start off, I did feel as if I were a bit too blunt in my last post, but it was more for entertainment value than anything else, so just a few days after getting rid of their money-draining DVR, I come home one night to discover that the Internet isn’t working right. It’ll drop anywhere between 10-30% of packets on pings, accessing a site takes multiple attempts, and high data volume applications like Remote Desktop simply don’t work.

I’ve called their support line every single day except for yesterday, where it seemed to be working properly for once. Their techs are completely worthless. All they can do is determine after 15 minutes on hold that it’s a neighborhood problem and apologize. I’ve asked for the supervisor once. She was just as useless with the exception that 1/2 an hour later I see a swarn of Comcast trucks in the neighborhood, and recently, when I call support, they often have the automated outage message.

I spoke to my neighbors, and it is indeed a neighborhood issue. I can understand a few hours, or maybe a few days outage, but seriously, over a week of issues like this is getting beyond ridiculous. What the fuck is the problem? I don’t live in the boonies, there are businesses around that are also affected by this! I’d expect a cable operator given a monopoly over an area to have competent people and equipment available to deal with issues like this. Seriously, I am in need of more than apologies and outage credits. I want my internets!!!!!!!!!

Update

It seems that they’ve finally fixed it, it’s been working well since Wednesday night, although I see lots of Comcast trucks roaming around the neighborhood, so hopefully they’re not here to screw anything up again. Still, I am pretty pissed off that I had to live with that for over a week, in an area that boasts itself as the silicon valley of the north, in 2009. In a way I was lucky, going through the internet I noticed people with similar issues had to battle with Comcast for over a month. Absolutely ridiculous!

April 8, 2009

Bye Bye Comcast DVR

Filed under: Electronics, Rant, Technology — spiro @ 12:22 am

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Today I got rid of my Comcast DVR. For a couple of reasons:

- I got a bill for $105 for TV alone this month, as my “introductory promotions” ran out. And NO, I did NOT order any porn channels or anything like that, that’s what torrents are for :) Generally, I watch TV rather infrequently, just catching up on my DVR’d series, like House, Heroes, The Office, Better off Ted, The Big Bang Theory, and a few others, local news, and CBUT (Vancouver’s CBC station) which Comcast distributes at a very poor quality for some reason. Does that justify me paying over $50 + $15 a month for the DVR when the Comcast CEO just took home an obscene $24.7 million last year? I believe not!

- The DVR is really a stupid fucking piece of shit. Granted, at least it’s easy to use, but beyond that, there’s not much to it. Accessing menu functions is slow as hell, the thing crashes all the time, it’s ridiculous! To add insult to injury, they gave me an old box without HDMI output, so I had to resort to analog component or DVI-to-HDMI. But, my main gripe with it is the tiny hard disk in the days of 1.5 TB hard disks being cheap and widely available. And, there’s no practical way to export recorded shows. The only possible way to do it would be to stream it through Firewire, which means that you have to “play” the show as there is no way of copying the contents of the hard disk directly, and even then, only local broadcast channels are decrypted.

- There are plenty of free options today to watch TV shows and movies, both legally and illegally, like Bittorrent, Hulu, Netflix (nice use of Silverlight!), with minimal to no advertisements, making TV-watching more efficient, and you don’t have to sit and watch irritating, screaming idiots trying to make you waste money on stupid useless shit. The quality is very decent too in comparison to cable or broadcast. In spite of all the “full HD” claims cable operators like to make, the audio and video on their services is still very highly compressed with fully visible compression artifacts, as there is still no cost-effective way of transmitting uncompressed full high definition content further than the HDMI cable run between devices.

So, now that I got an HTPC all set up, time to enjoy it! I decided to keep the “basic limited” TV service, as it only amounts to $5 a month over what I currently pay for Internet, with the “multiple service discount”, otherwise, I’d just get one of those HDTV antennae, which should give me good results since there arent many reception obstacles in my area, and if I get the urge to watch CNN, MTV, or any of this crap, there’s always the clubroom and gym in my condo.

March 8, 2009

I’m really getting sick of traffic tickets

Filed under: Driving, Rant — spiro @ 6:50 pm

As I was heading to Seattle after work on friday to meet up with some friends, I got a good ticket! The charge is “second degree negligent driving” and the fine is $550.

So this is my 4th in just over a year I’ve been here, and I am really getting fed up. The first two were speeding, one was deferred, and one was thrown out. Then I got another one for failing to provide proof of insurance. “I fucking have insurance you dumbass stupid doughnut-eater, call the fucking insurance company and ask them.” Then this one.

Compare this to my 8-year long Quebec driving history. One ticket for speeding in a school zone and one for running a stop sign. Both which I can understand. None of this “speeding” on a freeway bullshit, or even higher in the bullshit scale, “negligence”.

Seriously, what the fuck happened to this supposed “free country”. I’d like to enjoy the right to move about without getting harrassed about my driving and getting “taxed” like this. I haven’t hit anyone, I don’t drink and drive, so leave me the hell alone and go fight real crime. If you hypocrites need money just increase your taxes. Put an end to this racket with insurance companies.

February 23, 2009

Surprise, surprise! Ethanol is CRAP!

Filed under: Driving, Rant — spiro @ 7:14 pm

Recently, around the Seattle area, there were a few reports of “watered-down gas”. Like, it seems that around here it’s not only liquor that the water down, but gasoline! Not only do you have to be careful not to spill gas on your car’s body as ethanol dissolves car paint (scroll down the page).

The story is, ethanol absorbs the bad stuff in gas storage tanks, and pumps it right in your car. Isn’t that just great for your engine? Unfortunately, there’s no escaping ethanol, it’s now law that every gas station has to carry it. Talk about a very powerful corn lobby! (Feeding you their crap isn’t enough I guess) And don’t tell me that 13% ethanol is going to save the planet, as you still get 87% pure (supposedly) octane in ordinary gas, as ethanol can’t replace that.

Well, there is something you can do: nice, expensive premium gas! It will get you more octane, and less “other stuff”. The wikipedia article on octane rating is quite an interesting read, if you’ve ever wondered the difference between gas grades.

Maybe when they get enough insurance complaints, the insurance lobby will kill ethanol, just like they did with speeding, even though it’s only the cause of 5% of crashes.