(Now) Open Letter to Comcast (douche-bags)

See what you made me do Comcast? You made me start blagging again. Your fault.

Here's the "Customer Feedback" I spent about 40 minutes trying to submit and actually had to have a "Chat Representative" tell me how to find. (just so you know, it's here: http://www.comcast.com/customers/feedback/default.cspx ) You mofoes better go take some website structure design classes or something.

I am furious after trying to use your website and phone lines to lodge a complaint about your digital cable transition. I was angry when I turned on my tv and was informed that I would no longer receive 80% of the channels I'm paying (too much) for. But after viewing the offerings on your website I am irate. It is very clear that this is a deliberate effort to bilk your customers out more money per month. Where is the limited basic cable (analog) offering that I'm now receiving; no matter how many times more my bill is than its value? This service is worth no more than $15 a month, and less in many markets. How many customers do you suppose will keep paying you three or four times more than your services are worth to them?

I understand what DTV is and why some people may value it over analog sources. I don't want another comcast box, on demand programming or HD channels. I don't want your remote or your DVRs. I want the same lower quality, lower overhead format of the channels I've been paying you to convey for years. You are a conduit, not a hardware vendor. This ploy of forcing your customers to become more entwined and controlled by your vertical monopoly will result in demonstrable backlash. It will start here. I will degrade my service to limited cable or I will cancel it completely. I was paying you for analog signal. If I'd wanted digital TV you wouldn't have had a customer, that stuff is floating all around us. Free as air. Lyman out.

Comcast is very lucky to not be a tenant in my building. Cause I'm pretty sure I'd be throwing tennis balls at his windows and leaving bags of poop in front of the door.

Update:

So I forgot to include the full text of the message displayed on my tv screen for those of you who can't read small words, click on images, or are actually blind. (what? screen readers do text, not images. At least not images without alt tags, ie: all of mine.)

• We have removed features from your service.
• We think your shit is too old.
• Now you have to pay us $5 for every tv you have. Every month.
• We own your ass, bitch.

Musical Dealers.

So I took my car in to the dealer yesterday like a chump. But hey, this is the first dime I've actually given to them so all those free rental cars and carwashes finally paid off. I figure one good Acura check-up now that my car is out of warranty might be judicious. Then I won't feel quite so neglectful when I never take him back for actual service.

Anyway, I roll up at 7 and the Acura signs are all gone and there's a buncha Nissans in the lot. Doesn't seem promising and no one mentioned that they'd turned into a Nissan dealer when I'd made my appointment. Odd, but then I noticed a sheet of paper taped to the door that said Acura had moved down the street. Okayyy...

So I drop off my car at this obviously not new building that has Acura signs draped on it. Odd. But my curiosity is well satiated by street view which shows this location as a Chevy / Oldsmobile. Ohh... sssssoooory! That might be a bit of a sore spot, huh? Although I can't find anything about Chevy Chase Chevrolet actually closing, there's no web site about them and they're definitely not in this building any more.

Anyone know if this is standard operating procedure for dealers? Moving locations trivial distances with no warning? I guess the new building is bigger but it seems like a lot of overhead. Also the old place looked like somewhere you might go to buy a car. This storefront looks like an old department store that accidentally got a shipment of cars instead of mannequins.

Firmwarez

So the iPhone 3.0 OS rolled out yesterday and despite my many protestations I've come to accept that its a necessary upgrade. I'm not gonna get much from many of the features, like MMS, voice memos, internet tethering (although none of you will see that one either), stereo bluetooth, or "find my iphone". I mostly wanted the update so I can continue to pay Apple and developers for apps to run on my iPod touch. Never you mind that I already paid them $20 to update my fresh out-of-the-box device with a current OS; charging customers for the privilege of giving you money doesn't seem like a very good strategy. But I digress.

I really wanted to point out a feature that I wasn't very pumped up about till about 5 minutes ago. The Spotlight Search. I've been pretty annoyed with apple's system for organizing apps on the iphone, which basically consists of one list that stretches for as many pages as is necessary to show all the icons. You can drag them around, but its pretty much a pain and they don't stay sorted well as new apps are purchased. But now with search I can type in the first few letters of the app I want and up it pops. Pretty nice actually, considering its fixing such a stupid problem.

• Apple - iPhone - New features in the iPhone 3.0 Software Update.
• Apple - iPod touch - Software Update

UpdateHoly crap, it searches through your music too! No more scrolling through the alphabet like a sucker!

Just Another Day At Work.

You ever get the feeling that the White House is just one big-ass party that you'll never be invited to? Everyone knows the best house parties always wind up with wild exotic animals roaming the grounds and dudes with guns posing manlyly.

One Map To Rule Them All.

So this is pretty sweet. About a year ago I was in the Caribbean. It was nice. Then sometime after I got back Google launched something called "Map Maker". Its basically a copy of Google maps that people can edit in certain regions, wiki-style. One of those not mapped was Grand Cayman, which I had limited but first-hand knowledge of. So I went to town making little roads and buildings, trying to match up the satellite image with my memory and photos I'd taken. After a little searching I even found a scanned tourist map of the area that told me road names and points of interest. I digitized as much as made sense and promptly forgot about it. My knowledge was pretty much exhausted after 21.9 km of roads and 22 business listings, hey, I was only there for a few hours.

As of today, my account is 337 days old and Google is announcing that they're rolling Map Maker changes into real Google Maps for those newly updated areas.

• Google LatLong: Map Maker Graduation: Part II

A quick comparison shows that, yup, maps looks pretty much the same as the user generated map Maker version. But more importantly is how much detail is found on Grand Cayman now. There was literally nothing there when I started. (actually the island polygon was .5 km west of the satellite imagery) And random people with personal experience filled in the gaps. Other people helped with formatting and bam, all of a sudden there's a useful reference tool online.

• Map Maker

I guess I find this interesting because its what I though they were going for when they started the project and it actually worked. To try crowd sourcing obscure information. People don't really want compensation, they just want to collaborate, and maybe hope that people who know something they don't will share too.

Official Mix.

Well, I ordered a martini in a fancy-pants restaurant over the weekend.  And, very surprisingly, it tasted pretty much like what I've been making in my apartment.  I mean, no I don't suppose I have the attunement to taste subtle differences yet, but me throwing gin and vermouth on ice is apparently pretty darn close to the real recipe.  I'd also kinda thought that it might taste a bit better with higher quality materials; notsomuch.  Pretty much the only thing that makes martinis taste good is more martinis.

Also, I dislike having to specify what kind of martini I want.  If you walk into a hardware and ask for a claw hammer, they shouldn't ask if you want it made out of clay and flavored like strawberries.  I said martini, not vodka martini, not appletini, not chocofusion-tini.  That means gin and olives, since I didn't mention a twist.  I know it tastes terrible but I'm developing a skill over here.

What Are You Still Talking About, Willis?

I rarely agree with Farhad. In fact, I normally vehemently disagree with him. But I always say its better to be loved than hated, but better to be hated than ignored. He's got readers and is generating a response so I guess he's doing something right. Most recently he seems to suggest that my tech savvy should be keeping me up at night.

No, not spending the wee hours in pointless IRC debates. He thinks I'm breaking the unspoken social contract of the internets by not loading ads that content providers have so lovingly chosen for me. I'm sorry, I meant to say "spread in a haphazard manner like bear traps covered with feces". Yeah, I don't think much about most of these ads.

The argument goes that since some online publications rely on advertising revenue to cover their costs, people using ad-blocking plug-ins, himself included, are like airline passengers taking fuel out of the 747 they intend to fly on. That is, it is unethical to block ads on pages you visit. Bull.

Firstly the author's metaphor doesn't really fly. We're not passengers siphoning fuel out of the plane, Slate is asking all the passengers who board to give them some fuel. There's a difference between stealing and not donating. If fees were mandatory there would be a pay wall.

Second, by his logic, not only are we unethical if we don't load the ads, Slate doesn't get paid if we don't click on the ads too. So we must all read and click on ads even if we are not interested. And having advertisers pay for click-throughs if we don't intend to buy anything isn't ethical either, so we all have to buy anything that advertises on a web page we read. (I don't have any paid advertising, although there is a store link right over there! ---->)

Farhad seems to blame us for not wanting to be constantly assailed and only briefly mentions (too little too late in my view) the concept of making advertising better as opposed to more invasive. As consumers have more control over their media and more options for gathering information advertisers need to find a way to make their messages not just "not annoying" but desirable.

There is a difference between tolerating advertising and seeking it out. Targeting messages is a good first step, but as algorithms progress I may end up seeing a sea of advertisements that are equally applicable. Which, if we're not careful, could lead to another 'most annoying ad' contest. The trick is to make consumers want to see your advertisement. If an ad man can make me back my Tivo up to see his message he's done his job. The rest is just filler.

• An ethical proposal for Firefox's popular ad-removal tool. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine

Ball Status.

I just thought you'd want to know how my balls are doing today. The Reese's foil ball is coming along nicely, although I've finished the bag. Yes, that's nearly all the foil wrappers from a large bag of mini Reece's cups. Wider than a quarter, but somehow I think you'd be unimpressed if you saw how much candy I had to eat. Also a little depressing when compared to my Klondike bar foil ball which consists of the wrapper from a single Klondike bar. The grand experiment will continue when I get my hands on some more raw materials. Please send bags of mini Reese's cups to jeadly at DailyPlacebo.com. Donations are not tax deductible.

You're Training Who For What?

So I was never in the Boy Scouts. I never earned a merit badge, but I can tie some knots and I could start a fire if I needed to. So while I don't think enrollment is an essential, I certainly don't think its a harmful childhood activity.

But I just learned about the "Explorers" and I've got a pretty healthy case of the heeby jeebies. Essentially, its training 13.5 - 18 year olds, at least C students, to be border patrol agents. You know basic skills like infiltrating hazardous areas, chasing down illegal immigrants, or clearing an alley of gun-toting Arabs. “Before it was more about the basics,” said Johnny Longoria, a Border Patrol agent here. “But now our emphasis is on terrorism, illegal entry, drugs and human smuggling.” I don't know how I made it out of adolescence without these kinds of exercises.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001..., many posts have taken on an emphasis of fighting terrorism and other less conventional threats.

So because of something that happened when these kids were 6 years old they're being trained in anti-terrorism classes? I mean I guess its good these kids are finding a positive outlet for their semi-disturbing tendencies, but something deep inside me objects to a culture that lays such fear and responsibility on its youth. This isn't Sparta, we don't need to train warrior children. We revere our armed services because they make sacrifices to protect us; we don't all need to be trained in subduing combatants.

I've been a little bit shaky with the JROTC, but I'm all for it compared to this. Explorers Posts are basically individually managed cells of children being trained by local law enforcement, or whoever. They seem to make the point that this training could be useful if a school shooting were to occur but I'm inclined to believe that they probably wouldn't be armed on a typical school day. So unless the "Bruce Willis in Die Hard" course is part of the standard curriculum you're just teaching more kids how to operate weapons and clear a building. Don't officers usually have psych evaluations and stuff?

So basically we're projecting our fear and xenophobia, furthering the dissolution of American childhood and sanctioning escalation of violence and the use of maximal force.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

I think "being a true blooded American" means something different in the Southwest.

• Explorer-Scouts Train in Post-9/11 Law Enforcement Methods - NYTimes.com

Holy Moses.

Uh, yeah, that's just gin and olives. I think; I can't really taste the olives yet. I'm still not sure what the hell vermouth is, but I don't think its getting the job done. Maybe I should take the suggesion of pre-freezing your bar ware more seriously. But nonetheless, its 5 o'clock, Martini time!  

• Deano