UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

The fact that I have to write a Part 3 tells you all you need to know about how happy I’ve been with Charter HSI.

Part 1.  Part 2.

On the 13th, I got an automated call from Charter.  It was a reminder that I had a technician scheduled to install my Charter HSI the next day, between the hours of 8am and noon.

Wha???  If you’ll recall, I did a self-installation of my Charter HSI; why the heck would I need a technician out here for a SELF-installation?

The best part was that I got the message stuck on my answering machine, and I didn’t find out about the call until past midnight of the 14th.  I quickly called the number left on the message, got to an operator, and asked to have the appointment canceled.  He put me on hold, and the system disconnected me not much later.

(Argh.)

I called back, quickly got to another rep, who immediately advised me that the account holder (my sister, who was still at work) had to call in to cancel the appointment herself.  I left her a note on her desk to try to call Charter as soon as she got home, and then I went to bed.

I was told that the technician never showed up between the scheduled time, so I figured that either my sister got around to canceling the appointment, or the techs weren’t going to show up at all.  Fast forward to 4:00, and guess who shows up?

I immediately told the tech that I had done a self-installation for my HSI service, and therefore, I had no need for a technician.  The tech muttered something to his partner, and then walked away.

Fast forward to this morning, where I woke up to flu-like symptoms (I LOVE that term).  I fired up my laptop, and immediately noticed that I could not connect to the internet.   I quickly checked my modem lights, and saw that I wasn’t getting four solid greens.  I called up Charter HSI tech support, and while navigating through the IVR, I was told that there was a service outage in my area.  No problem, I thought.

Several hours later, the outage was still going on.  I called HSI support again, and again got the recorded message of the outage in my area.  I then ‘borrowed’ a neighbor’s wireless connection, and started researching this supposed outage.

It wasn’t until I stumbled upon speedtest.net (just out of curiosity) that I noticed that the problem might not have been an outage.  Speedtest.net reported that the ISP that my neighbor was on was, lo and behold, Charter HSI.  Either I was one unlucky SOB and the outage just barely spread to my house and not my neighbor’s, or something else was going on here.

I fired up Charter’s Live Chat support—hey, I had great luck with them last time, if you’ll recall—and immediately got connected to a rep.  Again, I asked if there was an ongoing service outage in my area, and she confirmed this.  Then, after a bit of questioning, she asked me what ISP I was using.  Not sure what she was specifically asking, I told her that I was on a neighbor’s connection, but then added that I was 100% sure I was a Charter HSI customer.

That’s when the rep hit me with this:  according to my sister’s account, we did not have Charter HSI among our services listed.  Huh?  Immediately, the rep advised me to call in to rectify the problem.

I called in, got a real friendly rep, and quickly explained my situation.  I also asked the rep to check to see if there were any ongoing outages in my area.  She responded by telling me that there was no longer an outage in my area.  Wait a sec; the Live Chat rep told me, five minutes earlier, that there was still an outage going on.  What gives?

I then told the rep what the Live Chat rep told me (that Charter HSI was not on my list of services), and while she did not confirm this, she did notice the outstanding installation appointment on the account.  You know, the installation appointment for my SELF-installation.  Yes, on my account, it was noted that a tech was to be sent out for a SELF-installation.

The rep put me on hold for a good fifteen minutes, and then came back on the line to announced that she had ‘closed’ the issue.  She removed the installation appointment off the account, re-established HSI on the account, and assured me that I would still be getting HSI at the promotional rate of $29.99 a month for six months.

What probably happened was, upon telling the tech that his services were never needed, that triggered Charter to assume that I never signed up with HSI, and so they removed HSI from my list of services.  Next month’s bill is gonna be a ton of fun to go over; I better not see any HSI dis/connect fees.  And does anyone know if Charter charges a customer for a ‘missed’ installation appointment?

- Time for a mini-review of the latest episode of The Office.

“The Lover” might have been the craziest episode to date.  Who didn’t see Jim and Pam’s marriage get off to a rocky start?  Lots of yelling in the episode; I hope the cast had lots of Ricola on hand.

I love Dwight’s new offensive against Jim.  Come on, who didn’t see anything suspicious about the pen Dwight put on Jim’s desk?  (By the way, can you legally record someone without his knowledge in Pennsylvania?)  I can’t believe that some Office reviewers out there actually felt that the writers couldn’t keep the Jim-Dwight rivalry fresh.  It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see Dwight costing Jim his promotion by the end of the season, only to have Dwight passed over as Jim’s replacement.

I loved the whole opera scene with Jim, Dwight, and Andy.  Too funny.  I absolutely loved how Toby now thinks he and Michael are friends, and I wonder if Toby’s willingness to help out Michael has anything to do with his feelings for Pam.  I could imagine Toby’s friendship with Michael not lasting past one more episode.

(Oh, I REALLY loved the scene where Toby walks in and both Jim and Michael yell at him.  Toby’s “What did I do?” was priceless.)

Surprisingly, I didn’t particularly care for the whole Michael dating Pam’s mom storyline, though.  The scene in the conference room?  Didn’t do much for me. I hope this is not something the writers plan on pushing all the way to the season finale.  The last thing I need is a “Is Jim’s marriage already over?” end-of-season cliffhanger because of Michael dating Pam’s mom.

(And for the record, I would definitely be bothered if my mom dated my boss, especially if my boss were Michael Scott.  Was Pam overreacting?  Probably.  Was it justifiable?  Probably.)

All that being said, however, I wouldn’t mind seeing one Michael/Pam’s mom-Jim/Pam double date.  Oh, the possibilities!  In a dream world, this happens in the next episode.  Michael acts the way Michael does in front of everybody, and then realizes at the end of the episode what dating Pam’s mom is doing to Jim and Pam.  He then does the right thing and breaks it off with Pam’s mom.

I can dream, right?

Tags: charter cable, mini-review, the lover, The Office by Peter
No Comments »

Time for part 2.

On Friday, I called Charter Cable, quickly got someone in the sales department (amazing considering I had to deal with Charter’s IVR), and started my Charter Cable inquiry with a patented “I’m a soon-to-be-former AT&T DSL customer.  Can you offer me a deal on Charter Cable?”  The rep responded with a seemingly sincere “I’m so glad to hear that!” before attempting to ask me questions geared towards figuring out which package was ‘best’ for me.

I already knew that Charter’s 5/1 plan was good enough for me, so I quickly interrupted her and told her which package I wanted.  The rep verified that the plan was $29.99/month with an additional $3/month fee for the cable modem rental.  I then asked if there was any way I could simply give a tech my modem MAC address—a SURFBoard 5101 which I knew would work with Charter—and get online immediately; I was able to do this back in my Adelphia days.  The rep explained that this was not possible; I had to allow a tech to come and hook up the cable modem.  Fine, I thought.  I told the rep I’d call back later to put in an order for the 5/1 plan.

A few minutes later, I called back, and Charter’s IVR wouldn’t cooperate.  I got transferred to some random drone who, despite my pleads, would not transfer me to someone in sales.  I again asked for a deal on Charter Cable; this time, I forgot to lead with the patented “I’m a soon-to-be-former AT&T DSL customer” line.  The rep explained that the only deals she could offer me were $44.99 a month for 5/1 and $54.99 a month for 10/1.  Huh?  What happened to the $29.99 offer for 5/1?  “Well, I can only go by what the computer gives me, and the computer won’t give me $29.99 for that plan.”

I asked her to transfer me to someone in the sales department, and the rep refused!  I quickly hung up on her, called back, and managed to successfully navigate the IVR again to a person in sales.  Again, I asked about the 5/1 plan, and the rep offered me the $29.99 price again, but only for six months.  Six months?  The first rep never mentioned anything about a six-month term (although, as Krunk pointed out, she also didn’t say that the $29.99 plan wasn’t a promotional rate).  I quickly navigated to charter.com, looked at the price of the 5/1 plan—$29.99 a month for up to 12 months—and realized immediately that “six months” = “up to 12 months.”  Fine.  Almost defeated, I accepted the terms, and that’s when the rep snuck in this haymaker:  “There will also be a $49.99 installation fee, which you won’t have to pay immediately, but it will appear on your next bill.”

Wait a freaking second.  “A $49.99 installation fee?”, I inquired, to which I got this utterly astounding reply:  “Yes sir.  You don’t expect us to send a tech out and not pay him, do you?”  Before I could pick my jaw off the floor and respond, the tech continued, “You know what?  I could reduce the cost of the installation fee, but only if you sign up for Charter Phone!”  I responded with a simple “No thank you,” and before the rep could ask me if I still wanted to go through with the Internet order, I hung up on her.

So you might have guessed by now that I was absolutely livid by what had happened to this point.  I then realized that my best option appeared to be sticking with AT&T DSL and my Christmas tree-like DSL modem.  That’s when I decided to go with the Hail Mary equivalent of customer service:  Live Chat.

(cue ultra-dramatic music)

Figuring that I had nothing else to lose, with the exception of a few minutes and the last bits of my sanity, I logged on to Charter’s Live Chat and began praying.  A rep named “Annyvette” logged on and, after verifying some information, asked me why I was only a customer of Charter Digital TV and not Phone and Internet too.

(After what I went through today, Charter should be lucky that we’re still a customer, period.)

I politely explained that I was only interested in adding Internet service and told the rep that I wanted 5/1 service.  After trying to rent me a modem, and then a wireless gateway, the rep then sent me this:

Did you prefer to send tech to your home to install the internet or would you prefer to do a self installation? The tech installation is $49.99, and will be billed to you on your upcoming bill. Which mistranslation [sic] option did you prefer to set up with?

Wha???  Self-installation???  That first rep lied to me about not having a self-installation option!!!

Five minutes later, the order was put through, and I was chatting with an Internet support rep, getting my modem provisioned.  I was up and running a bit later.

Happy ending, right?  Not so fast.  ONE STINKING DAY after I was up and running with Charter, I had to reboot my modem.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

Tags: at&t dsl, charter cable, high speed internet by Peter
5 Comments »

Sorry, I couldn’t come up with a snazzier title.

EDIT:  This is gonna have to be split up into two entries…I really need to learn how to better economize my words :P.

I moved back in with the parents in early July—long story, and I won’t get into it—and sadly had to kiss goodbye the joys of paying only $40 a month for 10/1 Road Runner Cable.  Excellent reliability (except for a disconnect at exactly 2:05 AM every day, and I never did discover why that happened) and 10/1 speeds for $40 a month?  Not a bad deal, eh?

So what did I come home to?  3/512 AT&T DSL.  Decent speeds, when I was the only one actually using the internet.  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen very often, and to compound the problem, my brother started messing around with a webcam.  At times in the evening, the connection would lag like mad.  I also noticed that my ping times were horrible, usually around 150ms, according to speedtest.net.  I figured, for $25 a month, the speeds we were getting weren’t that unbearable.

A week later, I upgraded to 6/512 for $10 more a month.  All of a sudden, my ping times dropped to the low 20s, and evening lags appeared to be a thing of the past.  Everything looked good.

A couple weeks later, the DSL connection because virtually unusable in the evenings.  After dealing with drops every few minutes for three days straight, I called AT&T DSL support to report a problem.  I told the tech that I was having internet issues, and the tech could only tell me that he detected a weak signal entering my DSL modem. He offered to send a tech out to check the wiring leading to the house.  Before I could agree, though, the tech mentioned that I could be charged if it was determined that the problem with my connection was on my end.

Thinking nothing of that remark at the time, I had the tech schedule an appointment.  For reasons that elude me at the time—perhaps the local call center was closed—he could not get me set up with an appointment right then and there.  No problem, I thought; I was given the phone number to the call center with a support ticket.

I went weeks without having a single serious line issue again, so naturally (stupidly?) I never gave the local call center a ring.  Everything looked good, until about a month ago, when the connectivity issues returned. I went two hours with a complete outage before I decided to call tech support again.

This time I was advised to remove the DSL filter from the wall and plug the phone cable directly into the modem.  That’s when I noticed something peculiar:  connected to one of those wall-mounted DSL filters was a second DSL filter!  All the connections were made properly—the second filter was connected to the correct jack on the wall-mounted filter, and the DSL modem was plugged into the “DSL” jack of the second filter—but I thought it was odd nonetheless.

I removed both filters, plugged the modem directly into the wall jack, and lo and behold, I was able to establish a connection immediately.  Coincidence?  Hmmmm.  Anyway, the tech ran his tests, and again advised me that he was detecting a very weak signal going to my DSL modem.  Like the first tech I dealt with, he advised me to allow a tech to come by and analyze the wiring leading to my house.  This time, though, in a seemingly threatening voice, the tech reminded me that I would be billed if the tech found the problem to be on my end.  Frustrated, I asked for a clarification.  The tech explained that, if the tech found no issues with the wiring, I would have been billed for the visit.

Not at all wanting to take that chance—knowing AT&T’s reputation, I certainly did not—I declined the offer.  The tech then reminded me that I could always try to fix any internet connection issues with a simple reboot of the modem…and that’s when I hung up on him.  I looked at the DSL modem, saw that the lines remained solid green, and prayed that I wouldn’t have to call back.

The serious connectivity issues came back last week, and yesterday, I had enough.  Between the hours of 6-10pm, I wasn’t able to stay online for more than ten minutes at a time.  It was time for me to give Charter Cable a try.

Part two to come tomorrow.

Tags: at&t dsl, charter cable, high speed internet, tech support by Peter
1 Comment »

My sister’s computer build has gone from a horrible time to a full-fledged disaster (and it’s still going on).  Brett Favre is really ticking me off.  The pet peeve I referenced last time still beckons to be talked about.  The Elton Brand-Los Angeles Clippers saga is getting interesting.

All that being said, I am a lazy bastard after all, so I will blog about one single topic:  this weekend’s July B-Days BBQ.

Quick-hitters:

- Oh dear.  It appears that that stupid KFC commercial where the blonde ditz declaring that “anything is possible” in this “whole new wing world” is airing again.

So apparently the brass at KFC not only thought the commercial was good enough to air it once…but they thought it was good enough to air it AGAIN???

Yikes.

- Speaking of stupid commercials, have you seen the T-Mobile one where Brett Favre makes a cameo?

Absolutely disgusting.  Seriously.

- Current rebate-o-meter:  $1,199.  I can’t wait for the 2009 software to come out!

- (The following story is about *a* computer build, but not *the* build referenced at the beginning of this blog entry.)

So six months ago, I got a CPU/mobo combo (some junky ECS board + a Pentium Dual Core 915 @ 2.8GHz) from Krunk in exchange for a super-duper pricey, 23K gold-painted 6′ HDMI cable (no, not really).  Three months later, with the parts still sitting in their original boxes, I acquired a 500GB SATA hard drive (for reasons which are not important *whistles*).

This past weekend, I finally got around to hooking up the parts, though I did have to buy a new motherboard; Krunk warned me that the mobo’s onboard LAN port was busted, and I feared that that was going to be the beginning of a disastrous build.

I bought a cheapy ECS board (GF7050VT-M) on eBay for ~ $35 shipped, thinking that I was going to get 25% back via M$’ Live Search cashback (and for the record, I have not yet been able to claim my cash back, but that’s a story for another day).  The seller shipped my purchase almost immediately, and because he was located in SoCal, I got my package in two days.

(insert rant)

The motherboard was shipped, IN ITS ORIGINAL BOX, with nothing more than a USPS Priority Mail Tyvek envelope wrapped around it!!!  Who the hell thinks that the original box that a mobo is shipped in is sufficient packaging for something as delicate as a motherboard???

(end rant)

Fortunately, the board is working fine, and my system build went without a hitch.  I know have 300GB of free space to use for, um, data backup.

If only my sister’s computer build went that well…

- On Saturday, my aunt decided that she wanted to BBQ to celebrate the birthday of her sister (my other aunt on my mom’s side) and another individual who shall remain nameless.

We decided to go to Almansor Park for the festivities, and even though it was really warm that afternoon, it got chilly quickly, so much so that it became a chore to keep the charcoal hot enough to thoroughly cook all the food.  We had to go through two bags of charcoal and tons of lighter fluid, but eventually everything got cooked.

Food, you say?  Kebabs (New York steak, mushrooms, and bell peppers), chicken wings, ribs, potato salad, salad, celery and carrot sticks, some other stuff that I don’t remember, and of course, a birthday cake.

(In fact, when the birthday cake was ready to go and Happy Birthday was sung, I found out that a third person had a mid-July birthday:  “cousin” Darren :P.  Three birthdays, one BBQ…talk about saving money!)

EDIT:  I forgot to mention…during the day, I was forced into several hours of touch football and my best James Loney impersonation as a first baseman.  Boy am I sore today!

Until next time!

Tags: 500gb, annoying, bad shipping, bbq, birthday, combo, commercial, cpu, Food, kfc, motherboard, sata, seagate, steak by Peter
No Comments »

I have so much to blog about!

(I hate the fact that I’m a lazy bastard :P)

I could blog about the horrible time I’m currently having with my latest computer build (and the worst part is, this build’s for my sister!).  I could go into a mega-rant about one of my biggest pet peeves in the world.  I could blog about my Dodgers being in first place in the National League Pee-Wee division (aka the West).

Basically, I could go in many directions with tonight’s blog entry.  Instead, I think I’ll continue with my Fourth of July weekend adventures.

And sorry, no quick-hitters:

- So on Saturday, we decided that we were going to go to the beach.

(Can you believe it?  Early July, and I haven’t yet stepped foot on a beach???)

As we were determining what beach we wanted to go to, I got an IM from cousin David.  You see, I had been helping him pick out a digital camera for weeks now, and he was trying to decide between one of the following (warning:  shameless link-spamming ahead):

• A Nikon D40 DSLR (my personal choice!)
• A Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5k
• A Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18k
• A Canon S5 IS (his eventual choice)

Apparently he wanted to go to Camarillo outlet to go clothes shopping, and he bribed us to go with the promise that we could play around with his new camera.  Moi, passing up the chance to play with a new toy?  Are you kidding me?  Not to mention, Camarillo was about 10-15 degrees cooler than it was here!

We didn’t get to the outlet until about 3PM, and because we hadn’t eaten yet, we stopped by the Food Court and grabbed some grilled steak sandwiches.  Pretty greasy, I might say, but what did I expect?  Very non-filling too, I might add, as I grabbed a Wetzel Pretzel about two hours later.  The pretzel was awful!  I ordered a Jalapeno Cheese pretzel, and for some reason, the Jalapenos were sweeter rather than hot.  And don’t even get me started on the substance on the pretzel that resembled cheese.

- Later on in the day, my sister wanted to go to the Coach Factory Store, and apparently they were having a huge sale…which I figured out when we were about ten stores away from Coach.  We went to the NIke store first while my sister went to Coach, and after a few minutes, we attempted to locate her in the Coach store.

That was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Eventually, she finished shopping, and got in the quite empty line.  Seemingly out of nowhere, a cute little saleswoman came up to my sister, grabbed her purchases (she accidentally grabbed my sister’s wallet, which was pretty funny), and scurried over to the register.

I believe this is a good summarization of what the cashier said to us:

“Hi!Isthatallyouwanttoday?CanIinterestyouinawalletforthirtyorfortydollars?Yourtotalcomesoutto[some-odd dollars]oh!Isthatagiftcard?Cool!I’msohappytoday!”

Seriously.  Someone might want to check the coffeemaker in the Coach Factory Store break room.

David had an excellent response to the girl:  he asked her if she wanted my sister’s phone number.

I nearly cried from laughter the second we stepped out of the store.  To this day, I’m still trying to figure out how the girl could have been so hyper.  It was nearing 7PM, and the only reasonable explanation I could come up with was that the girl works a four-hour shift, which started at 6PM.  David, being inappropriate as usual, mentioned that perhaps she was hiding something…

- After a bit of deliberation, we decided to have dinner at My Brother’s BBQ, on Ventura Blvd. between DeSoto and Canoga Blvd.  I had the Tri-Tip, sliced ham, and sliced pork dinner, and boy was the Tri-Tip excellent!  The ham was average, and the slice of pork I had was a bit too fatty.  The cole slaw and baked potato were about as good as you could expect it to be (namely, just OK), but the garlic bread was incredible!  Super garlic-y, and super buttery.  Yum!

My sister and cousin David split two dishes:  broasted and BBQ chicken, and chicken and ribs.  I tasted a bit of the ribs, which were really really dry.  The BBQ chicken was ok, and I forgot to ask how the broasted chicken was.

After dinner, we headed to Gelson’s to get some bakery grub.  We decided on a chocolate truffle (quite good), a canolli (very good!), and a Napoleon (awesome, especially because it wasn’t nearly as sweet as some places make it).  The day ended with us chowing down on dessert, followed by cousin David going crazy on SingStar 90s.  Too bad he deleted the video we made of him singing New Kids on the Block’s “Step By Step;” it was quite awesome.

(And by quite awesome…you know…)

Until next time!

Tags: broasted chicken, canon, coach factory store, garlic bread, gift card, hyper cashier, lumix dmc-fz18k, lumix dmc-tz5k, my brother's bbq, nikon d40, panasonic, ribs, S5 IS, singstar 90s, tri-tip by Peter
1 Comment »

Happy Fourth of July!  Hopefully, I’ll actually get to see some fireworks this year (and no, not of the figurative type!)

- Temperature-wise, it hasn’t been as hot lately as it was a few weeks back, when we were regularly getting temps in the mid-100s during the day, and mid-80s at night.  For some reason, though, I’ve been having a hell of a time getting any sleep!

It almost feels like my room is a good ten degrees warmer this week than it has been in weeks past.  Case in point:  I’ve had no choice but to leave my Honeywell tower fan on all night.  Even with the fan on all night, I usually wake up with my pillow covered in sweat.

(Apologies to anyone that got grossed out by that image.)

I can’t wait for October.

(As far as the title is concerned…hot heat?  As opposed to cold heat, right?  See what the heat does to me? :P)

- The more my wallet tightens up, the more frequently I find incredible TV deals, no thanks to SlickDeals.

Case in point:  a 46″ Samsung 1080P LCD HDTV for $1299?  An Element 42″ 720p LCD HDTV for $699?  An Envision/AOC 42″ 720p LCD HDTV for $849?  Not to mention, according to SlickDeals, J&R through Amazon had a 37″ Sharp for $699!

I’d love to upgrade from my 32″ Sceptre Komodo, but the little fact that I’m broke is keeping me from doing so :P.  I fear, though, that the closer we get to football season, the bigger the urge will be for me to upgrade.

I think I should put my wallet in a giant block of ice.

- I end today’s blog entry with quite possibly the most selfless act in sports history.  Wizards G Gilbert Arenas, figuring out that $127 million was a tad too much money for his services, happily took a pay cut…of $16 million, meaning he’ll get a paltry $111 million over six years.

Something tells me that Arenas was happy for the dollar figure because it’s palindromic, or something like that.  In that case, why didn’t he ask for $111,111,111.11?

I love this quote:

“What can I do for my family with $127 million that I can’t do with $111 million?” he told The Washington Post.

How noble.  Maybe those ridiculously highly-paid CEOs can take a cue from this guy.

Talking about why he offered a hometown discount, Arenas said:

“I’m basically giving back $16 million,” Arenas told the Washington Times. “This is in line with what I’ve been saying the whole time. You see players take max deals and they financially bind their teams. I don’t wanna be one of those players and three years down the road your team is strapped and can’t do anything about it.”

While it’s true that Arenas is giving the team a $16 million “discount,” he’s not exactly freeing the Wizards from the binds of the salary cap.  Here is the Wizards’ current cap situation; factor in Antawn Jamison’s $12.5 million per year contract (assuming he gets $12.5 million next year), and the Wizards are already at ~ $54 million in contracts.

Now, the 2008-09 salary cap figure hasn’t been released yet, but let’s assume it is ~ $57 million (it was ~ $55 million last year).  If Arenas’ new deal starts at $12 million per year, the combined contracts of Jamison and Arenas already put the Wiz way over the salary cap.  So how does this hometown discount help the Wiz in signing another free agent?

About the only thing I could think of is the fact that the discount might lower the Wizards’ luxury tax payments, if they happen to go over the tax threshold (if they use their mid-level exception this year, it appears that they will surely go over the tax threshold).  So in a nutshell, Arenas is, in the most basic sense, saving the team a bit of money.  His contract, though, certainly appears to keep them from improving the team much.

(Now, I don’t pretend to be a cap-ologist, and everything I said above could be completely wrong.  If I am so, I would appreciate any corrections!)

Tags: 1080p, 720p, aoc, element, envision, fireworks, fourth of july, gilbert arenas, hdtv, heat, hometown discount, lcd, new tv, night, samsung, sceptre komodo, sharp, washington wizards by Peter
No Comments »

Quick-hitters:

- 99 degrees (102 RealFeel) yesterday; 103 (108) today.

It’s only June! Help me!

It’s so freaking hot that I have to turn on the A/C…at 8pm!

(More on the heat later.)

EDIT: We just had our first lights-flickering moment of the season! Rolling blackouts, here we come!

- The Dodgers are on a three-game winning streak! W00t!

Oh wait…they swept Cincinnati. Never mind.

(Now I hear that Rafael Furcal won’t be back until the All-Star Break. Sigh.)

- So after a several-month long absence from eBay (8.25% final value fees + 3% PayPal fees!!!!!), I posted a few things for sale that I couldn’t move on Amazon.com.

Two days after listing the auctions, nine eBay-related messages showed up in my inbox. Of the nine, two were legitimate questions about my auctions, four asked for shipping costs to a foreign country (obviously, these bidders missed the boldfaced part of my auction description that says that I will not ship to international bidders), and three were emails that looked something like this:

Subject: [eBay user] thought you might like this item on eBay

Body: We’re a big shipping company in China [blah blah blah] We specialize in wholesale electronics [blah blah blah] cell phones, laptops, computers, LCD TVs, plasmas, etc.

[blah blah blah] [contact info] We hope to conduct business with you.

One week later, and I got a total of nine or ten of these stupid emails. Never mind the number of phishing emails from fake sites like signin-ebay.com, e.g.

(Tangent: Every time I log on to my eBay account, I see an ad for a discount offer on an eBay symposium. Yeah, like I am going to pay to hear eBay explain why they need to raise their fees even more.)

- So I think my family is officially addicted to Crystal Light. Armed with a $15/39 coupon (SUMBEV39), I ordered the following flavors of Crystal Light for my sisters:

• Crystal Light On the Go, Immunity Pomegranate Cherry, 10-Count Box (Pack of 6)
• Crystal Light On-the-Go Metabolism Plus Green Tea Peach Mango, 14-Count Packets (Pack of 6)

If the temperatures around here stay in the low-100s, these Crystal Light packets probably won’t last more than a month.

- At about 7PM last night, my sister asked me to assist her in installing her Sirius satellite radio antenna in her car. When we started the install process, we noticed something immediately: it was freaking hot!

(Her car thermostat reported 84 degrees, although I don’t think it was that warm. It was still really warm, especially for 7PM, though.)

So the installation of the antenna involved attaching above the rear windshield—the antenna itself is magnetic, and there’s a small piece that is adhesive-backed, which further helps to secure the antenna to the car, as well as protecting the antenna cable from kinks. The antenna wire is then to be fed under the rubber molding that surrounds the rear windshield, followed by threading through the trunk, into the back seat, along the floor, and eventually to the radio itself. Sounds easy, right?

We had three different plastic putty knives (the instructions suggested that we use a putty knife), and a small pocket blade (and by that, I’m talking about those “blades” on a Swiss Army knife), and had nothing but trouble threading the cable underneath the rubber molding. That’s when my sister got this great idea to use index cards to push up the rubber molding, allowing us to push the cable underneath the molding.

The idea was brilliant, although I think I punctured the antenna anywhere from one to a hundred times when I used the putty knife to force the antenna underneath the molding. Once that was complete, we fed the wire through the trunk, down the back seat, along the floor of the passenger side of the car, and that’s when we ran into another snag.

There was enough wire to connect the radio only if we kept the radio near the cup holder. There went any ideas of sticking the radio on the dash! However, my sister loved the idea of leaving the radio near the cup holder!

(Whatever floats her boat, I suppose.)

Overall, installation of the antenna was relatively painless. I just fear that someone is going to rip off the antenna. And if you think I’m crazy, recall that I live in a complex where our “Welcome” mat was stolen…right in front of our front door.

Next time, I’ll mention what else happened with my sister and Sirius customer “support.” Until next time!

Tags: antenna, blackouts, cincinnati reds, ebay, heat, installation, los angeles dodgers, rafael furcal, real feel, satellite radio, sirius, spam, stratus 4, sweep, temperature by Peter
No Comments »

Today’s blog topic will cover one REALLY long topic, so expect it to be split up into at least two parts.

Blog-related quick-hitters:

- As a fan of The Office, I am appalled at myself for the fact that I have yet to watch last Thursday’s episode!

I am ashamed of myself, and I don’t even have a good reason for not watching it yet! Well, unless you consider Spurs-Hornets, Korean BBQ, Olive Garden, Mother’s Day Weekend, etc., to be “good” reasons.

(Office fans may start booing me.)

- For a similar reason, I did not watch Game 3 of Lakers-Jazz. I was 99% sure that the Lakers were going to lose that game, not that that is a good reason to skip it, right?

(Laker fans may start booing me.)

Non-blog-related quick-hitters:

- File this under the fall-out-of-your-chair-laughing department:

So my sister (the one that doesn’t have karmic powers) visited us on Friday, and after settling in, she asked if she could grab some MP3s off my computer and upload them onto her iPod. I said sure, and went to go look for the USB cable.

After a few minutes, I couldn’t find it, but my sister spotted the wall charger…except that it didn’t register with her that she was using the wall charger. This conversation (slightly exaggerated) followed:

Me: You know you’re plugging your iPod into the wall charger, right?

Her: (blankly) OK. Is that not going to work?

Me: Not unless the data can transfer from the computer’s power supply, through the surge protector, and through the charger!

Eventually, she blamed lack of sleep and hyperglycemia—she bought an iced coffee from McDonald’s that was supposed to be sugar free vanilla, but was not—for the mistake. Uh-huh.

- Current rebate-o-meter: $1,350. I better start spending some money; I gotta do my part to stimulate the economy!

(Tangent: I won’t be getting a stimulus check until mid-June! Booooooooooo.)

Current toothpaste-o-meter: a whole hell of a lot. Same with deodorant. I’m going to start selling this stuff to my neighbors real soon.

I better move on before I get too inundated with material. On with the topic at hand!

- A few months back, Staples had a great deal on the Sony LocationFree Base Station LF-B10 (think “SlingBox Lite”). I bought one as soon as it was for sale, thinking that I was going to hook up the device to my own cable box and use it whenever I was out of town.

It took me a day or so to realize how dumb of an idea this was. The only times I’m out of town are when I go to Monterey Park, or the much less frequent trips up to Sacto. If I’m in Monterey Park, there are three TVs to choose from that all have cable boxes. If I’m in Sacto, I’ll need a high speed connection to use the LF-B10 anyway.

I then decided that I would hook up the LF-B10 to my sister’s cable box. That’s when I discovered that the LF-B10 had an Ethernet port, making use of the device pretty complicated; I’d have to run about 50′ of Ethernet cable from my home router to the LF-B10. Compounding the problem was the fact that her TV is used frequently.

(Background: The LF-B10 works by connecting directly to your cable box via a composite cable. From a remote computer, you can log in to the LF-B10 and view the device’s live video stream, and you can even change the channel on the cable box using the included IR adapter that affixes to the front of the cable box. Of course, if somebody should change the channel on the cable box while you’re accessing it remotely, you’re stuck watching what they switch to, unless you cruelly change the channel back :P).

So I determined that installing the LF-B10 on my sister’s cable box was a terrible idea, due to all the “traffic.” That’s when I decided to hook it up to my mom’s cable box, which is HARDLY used.

(She has a $1,000—at the time of purchase—Samsung LCD HDTV that she hardly uses, either, in the sense that 99% of her TV-watching is of SD broadcasts or DVDs. Sad, huh?)

Unfortunately, it would have taken a lot of Ethernet cabling to hook up the LF-B10 to the home router. That’s when I got the great idea to purchase an Ethernet to wireless adapter. The idea was quickly sunk, though, until I heard of the Fonera.

Now, I knew that DD-WRT capable routers could be used as wireless bridges (Ethernet to wireless adapters), but I wasn’t going to fork up ~ $50 for a Linksys WRT54G/GS/GL just for this ability. $15 and a bit (or so I thought) of elbow grease for the same functionality? Why not?

If only it were that simple…

(Part 2 to come later!)

Tags: ddwrt, fonera, fontenna, la fon, lf-b10, linksys, putty, redboot, sony locationfree, ssh, tftp, The Office, vxworks killer, wrt54gs by Peter
6 Comments »

No quick-hitters tonight.

- I got myself a new toy today: a Logitech VX Revolution notebook mouse. My old Microsoft Blue Optical Mouse was getting completely worn out; the sides of the mouse, the three feet that were still stuck on the bottom, and the textured scroll wheel had all seen better days.

I may post a full review of this item later down the line, but for now, here are my quick thoughts on the mouse:

1) The mouse has two scroll wheel (dubbed “MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel”) options: precision (click-to-click scrolling, which we’re all familiar with), and a free-spin mode, where the wheel will spin continuously for a few seconds with one quick flick of the wheel. The latter is great for scrolling through several pages of a document, but so far, I see no personal use for it.

2) I love the rubberized feel of Logitech mice, and this is no exception. The stow-away receiver is nice, too, though the button used to eject the receiver out of the bottom of the mouse has, at least one, launched the receiver like a cannonball being shot out of a cannon.

3) This is the first notebook mouse I’ve ever used that uses AA batteries (1xAA). It’s also the first notebook mouse I’ve used that has the back/forward buttons.

4) As with every other notebook mouse I’ve ever used…the mouse is just too small for my hands! After about an hour of use today, my right hand started cramping up. I should probably just start using a desktop mouse with my laptop.

- Naturally, one would except the episode immediately following a season premiere to be a let down from the prior week. Since I treated last week’s Office episode as a premiere, I didn’t expect much out of tonight’s episode.

The episode was fairly funny in bits and pieces, but overall, I was right not to expect much from tonight.

(I expect to read a bunch of dissenting opinions on other blogs tonight.)

Personally, I thought the writers should have given more time to the “date” between Michael and Pam’s landlady, as well as the parking lot situation with Kevin and Andy. Michael’s jerk-dom was also pretty over-the-top in the episode, especially with the way he acted in front of the landlady (though I did chuckle at his reaction to seeing her for the first time).

Breaking news! Michael’s single! Where’s Jan staying? Ooooh…I hope she hooks up with Hunter! That would make for an awesome storyline! Also, did anyone notice that the chair model looked a hell of lot like Jan, and Michael’s description of what the model might be like describes Jan to a T? Anyone wanna bet on the over/under on the number of weeks it will take for Michael to get back with Jan? I say three weeks, and I’ll take the under.

Poor Kevin! Oh well…in the immortal words of Michael Scott, “You don’t deserve her.” LOL. Also, I didn’t realize that there were so many ways to ask whether or not someone is fat. I’m surprised Michael didn’t ask if Phyllis’ friend looked more like Pam or Phyllis :P.

Great investigate work by Dwight, by the way. Why the two of them have to go and butcher “American Pie,” though, is anyone’s guess.

The whole scene with Jim joking about a marriage proposal, followed by the talking head where he shows the ring, I thought, was puzzling. Did Jim really want Pam to move in with him ASAP? I thought Jim was joking when he initially said that a proposal was “happening,” and, of course, we found out that this was not the case. He bought the ring a week after they started dating??? I guess that this was the writers’ way to play off Jim’s dorkiness, but I thought the whole scene was awkward. Joking about marriage after what Pam went through with Roy? The fake-proposal scene was fairly unfunny as well, though I love how my sister fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

(Upon further review, I think the first Jim/Pam scene would have been a heck of a lot better if we were able to see Jim and Pam’s faces during the entire conversation.)

Favorite moments:

• Kevin: “I will quit. As God is my witness, I will quit if this is not fixed.”
• Pam: “I definitely remember your dinner party.”
• Michael: “Hello, Oscar Meyer Wiener…lover,” followed by Michael’s request to look for “liberal girl-type friends who trust [him]” Real subtle there, Michael.
• Michael: “I want to play ball with my kids before I get too old, and before that happens, I need to get laid.” That entire diatribe might have been the highlight of the episode, up until the ultimatum at the end.
• Michael again: “Wish I could, but I can’t. Well, can, but won’t. Should, maybe, but shorn’t (sp?)” At least he’s being honest!
• Jim: “Michael, you didn’t even know her,” followed by Pam shaking her head at him.
• Michael, once again, looking at the date cards: “Wendy…a juicy red-head.” I totally missed that joke the first time around!
• Michael: “You wanna see what I walked out on? This is going to blow your mind…and you can’t see her whole body (pointing)…she had a boob job…” followed by Jan saying “Michael?” Haha!
• Michael: “What do you do?” Dwight: “Wait ’till next year’s chair catalog comes out and find someone that’s still alive.”

Until next time!

Tags: chairmodel, logitech, mouse, office, toy, vx revolution by Peter
No Comments »

So I just got around to updating WordPress to version 2.5. Let’s hope I didn’t foul things up.

(I agree with Krunk…there needs to be an easier way to update WP. It didn’t help that WSFTP kept throwing up left and right. I had to create folders remotely first, before I could upload the new WP files. And don’t tell me that there is a setting in WSFTP that allows a user to transfer non-empty folders; I am fully aware of that, and never had a problem with the transfer of non-empty folders until today.)

Anyway…

Quick-hitters:

- Oh no! Between my sister and me, we have over $30 in ECBs expiring on the 17th, and there is absolutely nothing worth buying t his week or next! What to do???

- Somebody help me. I have Hunter’s song (from The Office) stuck in my head!

You took me by the hand

Made me a man

That one night

You made everything alright!

Argh!

Again, a one topic blog!

- So I’ve been a Vonage customer for about eight months now, and how can I put this nicely? The service stinks!

Well, at least I figured the service was garbage. I was able to make outgoing calls at a 20% success rate—one in five!—and incoming calls were a crapshoot at best (so much so that I started forwarding calls from my Vonage line to my cell phone.) I figured the problem had to lie either with Vonage, or perhaps Time Warner was messing up my phone connection. All I knew was that I was paying $24.99, and then $14.99, a month for a virtually useless phone line.

(Remember: I had a one year commitment, which was necessary to claim the $300 Circuit City card, as well as the $175 rebate on the Linksys PAP2 Phone Adapter.)

Recently, the Vonage line got so bad that I would get nothing but a busy signal, no matter what number I called. I decided that enough was enough, and began troubleshooting. I logged in to my Vonage account, and under Features…Bandwidth Saver, I lowered the sound quality to the lowest setting. That didn’t seem to do a damn thing.

I decided to log in to the PAP2 to see if there was some setting that I could fiddle with to fix things. I had to log in to my WRT54G router to pull the PAP2’s IP, and that’s when I decided that I would assign a static IP to the PAP2.

(Tangent: For some reason, I’ve never had luck with port forwarding and DHCP. For example, my secondary computer would always pull an IP of 192.168.1.110, but uTorrent would often report that the ports I left open for that computer were not so. it was only when I manually assigned the IP of 192.168.1.110 did port forwarding work properly.)

I logged in to the router, and saw only a couple of pages, one of which was asking for WAN info. Thinking that it wanted my IP info, I didn’t bother with that page, and looked through the other pages for anything to tweak. I found nothing, and that’s when I decided to read the manual (!!!).

(Manuals? What do we do with manuals? We throw them out the window! After all, I have techno-joy! ;-).)

I found that the DHCP could be disabled via the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu, which could be accessed by dialing **** on a phone connected to the PAP2. I dialed ****, entered the command to disable DHCP, and heard a broken “Invalid Command.” I tried again, and got the same broken message.

I hung up the phone, and noticed the “Phone 1″ light on my PAP2 shut off. I turned the phone back on, and heard something along the lines of “This line is not set up for Vonage use.” ARGH!

I accessed the IVR again, checked the status of DHCP, and found that it was, indeed, disabled. OK…I then proceeded to manually enter the IP, subnet mask, and gateway. I hung up the phone, picked it back up, and heard another error message: something along the lines of “Your adapter cannot register with Vonage’s services”.

It turned out that the PAP2’s IVR was about as good as most companies’ IVRs; in other words, they all stink. Too bad I couldn’t scream “OH MY F***** G*D” at the PAP2 :P. It took me seven or eight tries to correctly input all my information.

While browsing through the manual, I figured out that I wasn’t forwarding my ports correctly. Apparently, there are four port ranges that need to be forwarded: More importantly, I was supposed to use UDP and not TCP:

Set up port forwarding on your router. You must specify that four port ranges be forwarded to the IP address of the Phone Adapter. These four port ranges are as follows: 5060-5061 (UDP), 53-53 (UDP), 69-69 (UDP), and 10000-20000 (UDP).

After forwarding all ranges to the new IP of the PAP2, and changing the protocol to UDP, I picked up my phone, and immediately heard a dial tone! I placed a call—FYI, I had been using WaMu’s customer service # as a test call throughout—and immediately heard the WaMu recording! Finally!

The moral of the story? Don’t throw your manuals out of the window…unless you can find PDF copies :P. Let’s just hope that the service continues to work well.

Until next time!

Tags: office, pap2, vonage, wordpress by Peter
4 Comments »