Not-so-targeted Marketing

I've been a Comcast customer for almost five years now, and mostly have no complaints. Sure, there was the ordeal at the end of 2007 when they took away the Hallmark Channel, but I moved past that and have been pretty happy with my digital cable service (you can quote me if you'd like Frank :).

But sometimes, they do the stupidest things. No, I don't mean their commercials - who can fault them for hiring an inept advertising agency. I'm referring to the most recent promotion I received in the mail. It was a special offer for one free On Demand movie. All I needed to do was to fill out the back of the enclosed coupon and send it in with next month's payment.

Sounds easy enough, but there are two problems with it:

1. We don't send in our payments. We pay electronically - we save Comcast money by doing this (they don't need to print our bill, nor pay for the postage), and at the same time, we're saving the environment (and making the lives of our local postal workers a bit easier). No payment to send in, no way to return the coupon.
   
   
2. We don't have a cable box, which is required for watching On Demand movies. We have digital cable, of course, but we went with a cable card in our TivoHD (Tivo rocks, more so with its 1TB drive!) rather than a cable box/DVR combination from Comcast.
   

Sadly, Comcast knew both of these things - they know we pay our bill electronically and they know we have CableCards (we get billed for these each month). Perhaps future promotions could be just a teeny weeny bit more targeted? You know, check to see if something actually applies to me before sending it to me maybe?

Network Storage

I've been looking for some sort of network storage device for a while now - something for backing up my computer to, storing music, etc. I came across the Linksys MediaHub this afternoon. I've still not forgiven Linksys for the CIT400 support debacle, but the device looked interesting.

I started reading the documentation - something's not right. Take this blurb that follows the "switching to RAID 1" instructions:

WARNING: Existing data on the Media Hub will
be lost; Linksys strongly recommends that you
back up its data to your computer or an external
hard disk before you continue.

• When you set the Media Hub to the Increase Protection: RAID 1 mode, the Media Hub will be unavailable for approximately 15 minutes and then automatically reboot.
  
  
• After reboot, the Media Hub will synchronize the data on the two disks.
  
  
• Depending on disk size, disk synchronization may take from several minutes to several hours. Synchronization progress can be viewed from the Disk screen. Rebooting or removing power from the Media Hub during this time is not recommended

So, let me see, if I turn on RAID 1, all of my data gets lost, ok, I'm good with that. But then the device will be rebooted, ok. And then the data will be synchronized across the disks. That would be the data that was wiped out? And then, depending on how big the disks are, synchronizing the non-existent data may take several hours? Interesting, very interesting.

The steps involved in recovering from a disk failure (two disks, in RAID 0) are equally not well thought out:

1. To shut down the Media Hub, press and hold the power button until the power LED starts flashing. If this step does not shut down the Media Hub, then
2. proceed to step 2.
3. Disconnect the power adapter from the Power port.
4. To release the drive bay cover, push the button on the top panel.
5. To remove the defective disk, push together the clips of its drive bay, and then pull out the drive bay.
6. Remove the defective disk from its drive bay.
   NOTE: Do not install a replacement hard disk at this time. The Media Hub must revert to single disk mode before you can install a second hard disk.
7. Push down on the hard disk to make sure the connectors are securely seated.

Step 6 says to remove the defective disk, and then warns me not to put another disk in yet. But then step 7 tells me to push down on the hard disk to make sure the connectors are securely seated. Would that be the hard disk I just took out, or the one I didn't replace it with? Maybe you mean the remaining disk - do they come loose on their own often?

I think I'll continue my search elsewhere, unless someone at Cisco wants to send me an evaluation unit?

My Neighbor Sucks.com

Ethel and I moved in to our place almost five years ago now. When we first moved in, our immediate neighbors were a quiet, bordering on anti-social couple. Our only real interaction with them was jumping out of the way as they came screaming into our common driveway. But at least they were quiet.

They moved out and another couple moved in - like the first couple, they were quiet, but they were also sociable, even attending a couple of the community social events. Sure, they were a bit odd, he claimed to "work from home" selling things on eBay, while she traveled regularly (for the longest time, I was convinced he had killed her, just wasn't sure what he did with the body), they were quiet.

And then they moved out, and in moved Esteban and Sean (not their real names, of course). They seemed reasonable at first. Sure, we thought it was odd that two 40 year old non-gay men would move in together, but who are we to judge. Then came the smoking. Rather than smoke in their house, Sean chose to smoke on his front porch. Thoughtful, were it not for their porch being roughly 10 feet from our windows. Yup, you got it, his smoke went right into our house.. Thanks asshole.

But wait, there's more. It seems that both Esteban and Sean have drinking problems. Not the traditional sort, unfortunately. Both of them lose their hearing when they get drunk. And being so close to downtown Campbell and its wealth of bars, they got drunk often - pretty much every freaking weekend. They developed quite a routine - quiet all week, and then Friday and Saturday nights drinking til the bars closed and then stumbling home drunk and then cranking the television or stereo.

I went over one morning - about 3ish and repeatedly banged on the door to get them to quiet down. Esteban answered the banging eventually and was apologetic. The next weekend was roughly the same, except that when I banged on the door and Esteban answered, he was angry that I had woken him up. Yes, that's right, the music was blaring so loudly that we could hear it through our walls and I woke him up. Jerk.

The next time, of course, I didn't bother walking over, I just called the police. Magically, it was quiet again. That lasted for a few months actually, but a few weeks ago, the parties started again. And Spring is just around the corner, that means opening windows again and then the smoking..

But last weekend, a miracle happened. A U-Haul truck showed up and Esteban and Sean loaded their crap up and moved out! Can you believe it? They're gone! Excellent!!

But who knows who will move in next. Will it be someone better? Hopefully Can it be someone worse? Inevitably..

But I got to thinking - Esteban and Sean probably moved someplace else, and their new landlord probably asked for the name of their previous landlord. And the new landlord maybe called the old one who said "sure, they paid their rent on time, they were fine tenants" But the reality is they sucked as our neighbors and will likely suck as the next person's neighbors. And there's not a damned thing that can be done about it.

But what if there was a website - maybe http://www.myneighborsucks.com - where people could go and basically complain about their neighbors such that future potential neighbors and landlords could go to to see what others thought of a potential new neighbor. Sort of an informal background check. Wouldn't that be great?