What is it about being a captive audience that makes people think you want to see more advertising? It used to be that the only things you would see before a movie were previews for other movies. This was considered acceptable because it was somewhat entertaining and informed the viewer of upcoming releases they may be interested in. Today, not only do you have 3-4 movie previews, but a run of product advertisements as well.

I’m currently on an airplane flying back from Florida. Just a short domestic hop. I was very surprised when I pull down the tray in front of me to see an ad for Splenda sweetner. It made me think of the TV ad where the airline passenger needs to insert a quarter to pull down the shade. How far away is this ad from becoming reality? But the outrage doesn’t stop there. The airlines know they have a captive audience and will try and exploit it to the maximum they can. The flight attendant (remember, they are there for your safety and are not your personal servants) read a Bank of America ad to us over the intercom. When did their role as being chief safety officer on board expand to include peddling credit cards?

In the day and age where Tivo’s and DVR’s are reaching the tipping point in popularity, mainly on their abilities to skip TV ads, advertisers just don’t get it. I don’t want to see advertisements. I listen to XM radio or my ipod so I don’t have to hear radio jingles. I install adblockers on my web-browsers for much the safe reason. 90% of the TV I watch is time-shifted to avoid seeing ads. I delete SPAM and Advertisements from my e-mail. Catalogues and junk mail go right into the garbage bin.

Advertisers take note: Flooding me with ads have an opposite effect. I become immune to them to the point where I don’t even see them. So if you want your advertising to be effective, don’t flood me with them. “Everything in moderation”.

Side Note: The back page of the New York times the guy in front of me is reading also talks about this. How ironic.

A further note. It’s now ben a full week since I wrote the above and have some more information o this topic, especially when related to travel. Apparently the TSA is going to allow advertising while you’re waiting in line get searched for exploding shoes and dangerous water. To take things a step further, they are going to allow companies to sponsor the trays you put your stuff in to go through thte X-ray machine. Now I can (in some sense) understand trading my eyes and getting something in return (like TV or Radio). But this is just pure greed to take advantage of captive people. It’s not like I can skip going through security. Same issue with paying $200 for an airline ticket and having to be subjected to ads. Greedy.

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Within a week of each other, both Amazon and Apple launch movie download services. And internet consumers yawned. Just what we need, a service where I can pay the same (or more!) to download a lower quality movie.

The Movie industry is just following (slowly) in the footsteps of the Recording industry, trying to not make the same mistakes. I think one of the mistakes that the MPAA is trying to avoid is the pricing issue that the RIAA is having with Apple. Steve Jobs suckered the RIAA when it launched ITMS at $0.99 a sound. The RIAA REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY wants to move to a tiered pricing model, with most tracks costing $1.29. But Apple has the leverage there and isn’t budging. The movie pricing from Apple is already tiered ($14.99 for new releases, $9.99 for older movies) and is already pretty pricey (when compared to purchasing the equivalent DVD).

I wish somebody in the MPAA would take a chance on trying something different, like getting rid of release windows. While you won’t find me paying for over-priced lower-quality movies from either Apple or Amazon, I would consider shelling out $15 to purchase a movie that is currently in the theater. I would probably even pay $10 just to rent the movie, since it is still cheaper (and quite often more enjoyable) than Margaret and I driving to movie theater. Do you hear me Apple and Amazon? Announce something like this and watch the buzz spread.

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Last week there was a story about a woman who caught a fellow subway rider pleasuring himself on the train. Disgusted, she took a photo of him with her camera phone and contacted the police. After filing the police report, she wasn’t hopeful about any resolution. So she posted the pictures on the Internet to humiliate the guy.

This story is very similar to one in Korea where a woman’s dog pooped on the train and her camera phone picture was posted on the Internet. On one hand, it is great that these people are taking such an active role in crime in our society. As more and more people are armed with camera phones, there should be a decline in these types of crimes. In the subway wanker’s case, the NYPD even praised the women’s quick thinking that should help catch this guy.

But there is another hand to consider. This guy was convicted in the court of public opinion without due process as guaranteed in the constitution. In this case it wasn’t a problem as he was caught red handed in the photo. But consider a similar case where the photographic evidence isn’t as clear, or even worse has been Photoshopped. In a court of law the accused is given a chance to defend himself. In the court of public opinion, this guys life is ruined in minutes as everyone assumes he is guilty.

In closing, I think the woman did the right thing. She took photos to document the crime. She reported it to the police and submitted her evidence. But she should have stopped there and let our legal system handle it. That is what it is there for. If you were the accused in this case, you would want your chance to defend yourself, which the court of public opinion won’t give you.

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With ubiquity of cell phones today, many people need to take a lesson in proper cell phone etiquette. This problem is keenly noticeable when you mix bathrooms with Cell Phones. So I’ve provided a handy little numbered list of Rules of Etiquette for Cell Phone Use in a Public Bathroom:

1. If you are on the phone, don’t enter the bathroom. Finish up your call and then head in. If it is urgent (the bathroom visit, not the call), then tell the person you will have to call them back and the proceed to take care of business. Nobody wants you hanging around in the bathroom talking on your phone. Creep.
2. Phones and urinals don’t mix. Period.
3. If you are riding the porcelain throne and the phone rings, don’t answer it! I promise you that the caller really doesn’t want to hear those noises while they are talking to you. And nobody in the bathroom with you wants to hear your call either. We came in there to take care of business and be left alone. If it is important, they will leave a message or call back later. And I promise you, if you are talking on the phone and I am in the other stall, the person you are talking to WILL hear my noises…
4. MAJOR PET PEEVE ALERT: Don’t just let your phone ring if you aren’t going to answer it. This goes for everywhere, not just in the bathroom. Every cell phone made has some way of turning off the ringer while receiving an incoming call. Figure out how yours works and USE IT. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to hear Spanish Flea over and over again when I know that you aren’t going to answer the call? Just silence it and save us all some trouble.
5. If you are going to surf the web or play games on your phone while on the john, please turn the noises off. We don’t want to hear you responding to e-mails on your blackberry while making a deposit…

Really people, this is all pretty much common sense!

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Margaret and I were working on cleaning up our 4th floor a bit this weekend, when we were struck by how poor the shelving design was above our washer and drier (which live in a closet up there). So we thought we would (as we have with just about every other closet in our house), put up elfa shelving. Should be an easy enough job, maybe 3 hours of work including taking down the existing shelves.

But as long as we had the old shelves down, it would be a great time to put up a fresh coat of paint in there. So Margaret picked out a color at the Home Depot and we were good to go.

But if we are going to paint, we should probably move the washer and the drier out of the way so we can paint behind them (it will make things so much easier).

Once we moved the washer and drier out of the way, we saw how nasty it was behind there (Drier lint everywhere!), so we had to spend some time cleaning up that area as well.

It is amazing how a simple project like putting up new shelves can snowball into something bigger…

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Why do people get so excited when The Wave starts at a ball game? If you are paying attention to The Wave it means you aren’t paying attention to the game.

Case in point. Margaret and I were in Pittsburgh this weekend to see the Cubs. It is Saturday night and they are playing to an almost sold out crowd. It is 2-2 in the top of the 6th, the Cubs have a runner on second and a chance to take the lead. And The Wave starts.

Now I know that baseball isn’t a very fast moving game. It has been compared to watching paint dry. But there are plenty of boring parts during the game in which you can do The Wave. But not during what may be the most exciting part of the game…. Sigh….

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Well, my internet connectivity is back, and the blog is back to being hosted from my house again. After quite a long time…

So after I made my last blog post, I sent it off (with some touchups) to the Montgomery County Cable Office. Unlike other utilities, Cable Franchises are given our on the municipality level, so we have a local Cable Office. Within 3 hours of contact their office electronically, I got a call back. They were kind enough to inform me that my complaint would be logged and forwarded on to Comcast. They also informed me of the rebate policy for days without service. At least here, it is not a true pro-rated refund, but better. They get 24 hours to fix it, and then it is 10% of your montly bill per day that you are without service. I wish I had known that when Comcast screwed my service before…

But all was not good. They were scheduled to come out and fix my cable on Tuesday night between 5 and 8. I told the Customer Service Person that I would most likely not be home at that time, and she indicated that is not a problem. The tech will check the outside stuff and I would only need to be there if there was a problem inside the house. Since I was positive that it was a problem in their plant, I was happy with the response.

Arrived at home on Tuesday evening to find out that the Tech hadn’t shown up because they called before coming and no one was home. Time to make yet another phone call to Comcast (I had the number memorized by this point…). After some screwing around with first level support, I got my call elevated to a Supervisor. This person (Cliff) was the first of the 3 people that I had talked to about my problem that actually listened to what I had to say, took action to make the customer (me) happy, and got things done. It was the happiest experience I’ve had dealing with Comcast. Cliff was able to set me up with an 8-11 appointment the next day, and also give me a $20 service credit for the tech not showing up. He explained to me that someone does have to be home, and the Rep I spoke to on Monday night was wrong.

Moving forward to Wednesday morning, the tech arrived a 8:08 AM, as Margaret and I were about to head out to work (running a little late that morning…). Since I saw his truck pull up, we decided to just wait until the work was done.

At about 8:38 AM, our cable service was restored. It was a problem with their plant. The tech didn’t even need to come into the house. Once everything came back on, we went to go out to work. At this point the tech was coming around to have us sign verifing that the problem was fixed, which we happily did.

In closing, we’re back. At least until someone else in my neighborhood gets cable installed…

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At work yesterday I found out that my website was down. It happens every once in a while, usually just need to re-boot the cable modem. When I get home I do that. It doesn’t come back. I turn on the TV. Nothing but static. I’m in the middle of a cable outage!

So I do what I normally do in this situation, call Comcast. The front-line support guy I spoke to was most unhelpful. He said the first appointment they have is on Wednesday (2 days!). I then complain that I have to wait 2 days to fix something they messed up, at which point he stressed to me that it has to be something wrong in the house. I told him that this level of service is unacceptable when I am having a cable outage. The work “outage” must have a special meaning in the cable industry, because he vehemently denied that I was having an “outage” and that it was just something wrong inside my house. At this point, I asked to speak to his manager. After a 10 minute wait, he said the manager would call me back.

2.5 hours later, no callback. So I call in again. But I had more ammo with me this time. I knew that somebody nearby was getting cable today, because Miss Utility came around and marked where all the underground pipes and stuff were. So when I took the dog out, I looked for the tell-tale thin ditch that they leave when they pull the line out to the house, and sure enough it was there.

I thought I had them this time, since I knew somebody had been out to my block today. I mentioned that to the second person I spoke with and the fact that it had worked before this person had been out in my neighborhood, but not after. No dice, still nothing until Wednesday. I was tired and quite a bit frustrated, so I just took the appointment and hung up in disgust.

In the mean time, I’ve moved my site to a new home until my cable is hooked up again (optimistically Wednesday, realistically next week…). With this current arraignment, there are a few things that are broken (like RSS syndication…), so please hand tight until this all gets straightened out. Now, back to my rant.

I don’t understand how a utility can treat people like this and not get into any trouble. One of two things happened yesterday in my neighborhood. 1. The new installer didn’t have any more taps available in the pedestal and randomly chose someone to disconnect. 2. They cut the line to my house while installing the new cable line.

No other utility has problems like this. In my 20-some years of using a telephone, I can’t think of a time that I picked up that receiver and didn’t hear a dial tone. Or when I turned on the gas range and didn’t get gas. And they have to do the same number of connects/disconnects that the cable company does. They must just hire better trained workers.

There are some things that cable companies don’t get. Since they have only had to deal with non-essential video service, they don’t rush out to fix problems. “So you can’t watch TV for a day or two, read a book instead, it is probably better for you”. And that may have worked in the past. But they are the number one provider of broadband internet access into the home. That service is much more like the other utility services that I described. I can go without TV, but I need internet. I sell things on ebay and need to be able to e-mail. Both my wife and I do work from home where we need internet access to do the work.

And to think that the cable operators want to sell you phone service! If I had Comcast phone service yesterday, due to their stupidity, I wouldn’t have even been able to call them to tell them about it! I think the FCC and local cable offices need to crack down on the cable operators. They need to stop treating Data service like video service, because it is not. And I certainly hope they don’t start treating Voice service like Video, or else I may be unable to make a call the next time my neighbor gets new service.

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I Am Not a Computer Programmer. I may introduce myself as one as a matter of convenience for all parties involved, but I abhor the term when applied to myself. In my view, a Computer Programmer is someone who has gone to a technical trade school (like ITT) and has taken courses in programming (typically a two year program).

One could use the term Software Engineer. That term is usually reserved for Software people who have a good understanding of Hardware (remember, hardware is the part of the computer you can kick!). The problem being that you usually (with the exception of software), need to pass some kind of exam to call yourself an engineer, which I haven’t. And I can’t, since there is no organization to setup the exam.

My personal preference is the term Software Developer. There is much more to my skill set than just cranking out programs. Something that you can’t get in a two year trade school program. I have the skills to design how the parts of a program go together to achieve the final goal of the program. I have the theoretical background to discuss algorithmic complexity and the speed vs. Memory tradeoffs of choosing one approach versus another. I have studied the inner workings of a computer down to the level of how the logic gates go together in the processor (though it does get a little fuzzy for me there…). All these skills (and many others that didn’t make this short list) add up to make me more than just a computer programmer.

I Am a Software Developer, hear me roar!

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