Silflay Hraka

Atlanta Named Most Wired City.

This, quite frankly, is crap.

Whoever compiled the report is probably sitting in some comfy cafe surfing the internet on some free wi-fi signal. They have not, obviously, ever tried to find a similar cafe in Atlanta and had they put in the effort, they would’ve driven in futility through the poorly maintained streets of downtown and mid-town Atlanta looking for any sign of internet life.

They have probably also never had to get high-speed internet access in an older apartment building in midtown Atlanta, only to discover that there are only two vendors that provide access to that address and neither one can apparently figure out how to make it work.

Even though Atlanta is home to Cox, Cox doesn’t service the area. Neither does Verizon, even though Verizon has a presence in Atlanta. AT&T does provide service but probably only because they bought out BellSouth. Hell, I live within spitting distance of the Earthlink building and even they can’t provide service to my address. And there’s no wi-max either. Don’t think I didn’t try to find it. I did.

This only serves to underline what a bunch of horses-asses your average main-stream journalist is these days. They compile a bunch of useless statistics from a comfy desk in some cubicle somewhere in New York and think their writing even sniffs of accuracy.

I’m not alone in my assessment. The article even quotes an analyst who happens to live in Atlanta.

“It’s a dynamic area with a lot of young people, but exactly why it’s No. 1 is a mystery to me,” notes telecom analyst Jeff Kagan, who coincidentally is a long-time resident of Atlanta.

Anyone who lives in Atlanta would probably be mystified.

Plus, no one ever seems to have a power outlet around when you need one. How ‘s that for wired.  Freaking computer is screaming at me to save my work and shut down. I guess this is why Charlotte didn’t make the list.

1.) Pick up the phone.

2.) Discover the phone has no signal because you’re in the middle of nowhere.

3.) Leave the phone to automatically search for a network.

4.) Come back hours later to find that the phone has been searching for a network the entire time, draining the battery to lifelessness.

5.) Search through your luggage to find your phone charger. Realize your phone charger is on the counter by the door, seven hours away, where you set it in order that you wouldn’t forget it. Again.

6.) Grab the phone and your keys and head to the car because at least you have your travel charger and can drive around town to charge your phone.

7.) Start the car, plug in the phone and drive anywhere. You’re only out to charge the phone anyway. Why don’t you take in some Christmas lights?

8a.) Drive into an area with network coverage. Slow down (don’t stop) to read and reply to all the text messages that flood in to your previously dead phone.

8b.) Remember that you coasted into town on fumes the day before because you were too stubborn to stop and fill up.

9.) Drive around until you can find a gas station that’s open on Christmas day, praying you don’t run out of gas.

10.) You’re in luck. There’s a gas station open. Stop and fill up. Listen to the four voice mails that came in while your phone was dead.

11.) Retrieve the international phone number you wish to dial from the back of the Cracker Barrel receipt upon which you wrote it down.

12.) Dial.

13.) Wait.

14.) Hmm. This doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe you’re supposed to dial something else? There just don’t seem to be enough numbers here.

15.) Hang up and decide to return home to look up instructions for making an international call on the internet.

16. ) Drive around a little more just to make sure the battery is charged.

17.) Arrive home, pick up laptop and begin to search.

18.) Deal with emails, check the blog and read the news article that catches your eye.

19.) Have the battery on the laptop die before you can accomplish your mission. What’s up with all the damned dying batteries? When is someone going to fix the whole battery problem already?

20.) Retrieve the other laptop from the car. Discover it’s battery is also dying.

21.) Go back to the car for the power cables for both laptops. Wonder why you decided to bring two laptops with you in the first place.

22.) Choose between the lamp and the Christmas tree.

23.) Unplug the lamp because, well, it’s Christmas.

24.) Plug in the laptop. Resume progress.

25.) Lose wireless internet connection intermittently. This happened last night too. Hmmm.

26.) Move to another location, one closer to the wireless router. Continue to lose internet connection with regularity.

27.) Grumble about the damned wireless router. Stupid piece of crap. Why don’t these things work the way they are supposed to do?

28.) Turn on the desktop and check the router settings. Realize you could just look up the information you need while seated at the desktop but now it’s a matter of principle, dammit.

29.) Visit the router manufacturer’s website. Download the latest firmware.

30.) Upgrade the router’s firmware.

31.) Return to laptop #2 and type “how to make an international call” into your search engine of choice.

32.) Pick up the phone. Read and respond to the four text messages your find waiting. At least there appears to be some kind of network coverage.

33.) Dial 011 followed by the international number from the back of the Cracker Barrel receipt.

34.) Curse loudly and vociferously as the screen goes dark. The battery is dead. Again.

35.) Return to step 6 and repeat.

Deja vu: Sony uses rootkits, charges F-Secure

I’m at home on my four-hour delivery window for my new Rooms To Go furniture and things are going haywire so I thought I’d blog it. Blogging things that go haywire always seems to be a good thing.

Problem number one: I’m waiting on Rooms To Go to deliver my furniture and they don’t have a phone number at which they can currently reach me. Absentmindedly, I gave them my home phone number and my work number rather than my cell. I always do this to potential marketers. I don’t want them calling my cell, so I give them my home phone instead. Using Vonage, I just have my home phone number forwarded to my cell anyway. It allows me just a little more screening than I would have if someone just called my cell.

My plan on moving to Atlanta was to get the $99 dollar, all-inclusive Comcast cable, internet and voip services and to cancel my Vonage account. I got a new number through Comcast and have been meaning to forward that to my cell number. Knowing that Rooms To Go doesn’t have my cell, it’s imperative that I do so. Otherwise they’ll come and go and I’ll have no way of knowing unless run down six flights of stairs every ten minutes. Problem number two is that the elevators in my building aren’t working but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Anyway, I go online to the Comcast Digital Voice Center in order to set up my call forwarding. The dashboard doesn’t seem to have any way for me to do this. After looking through the help menu, I find that I can do this through my handset. I don’t have a handset which is why I need to forward the number in the first place. I call Comcast in order to have them forward the number and they can’t do it either. I have to use my handset.

I tell them to cancel my Digital Voice service right then and there. I’ll be transferring my new number to Vonage. For one, Vonage is cheaper and gives me exactly the features and functionality that I need. Screw the $99 dollar a month “introductory rate” package. It’s not worth it. On top of that, the Comcast technician that came to set up my service didn’t even know how to set it up so I could use my own cable gateway in place of the Comcast modem. I had no desire to use their modem and no desire to have it junking up my home but the guy had no clue if I could even use my own modem. My experience with Comcast thus far is that they are a very expensive joke. If you have Vonage, stick with it. If you don’t, switch to it. They may be losing money like crazy but I’ve never had a single, solitary issue with their product or their service. If other cable providers are like Comcast, there is no comparison between the services.

Problem number 2: the elevators in my building are not currently working. I live on the sixth floor. If and when Rooms To Go shows up, I have no way of knowing and they have no way of getting my new entertainment center, night stands and lamps to my apartment short of carrying them up six flights of stairs. I am guessing they don’t want to do that.

I’m also stressed because I feel I should be at work right now rather than sitting at home waiting on deliveries. I already had to take four hours a few weeks ago to deal with the miserable Comcast guy. I’ve also had two experiences with the Best Buy delivery people, but they gave me a two hour window and called ahead of time and they deliver on Sunday so no problems there. Good on Best Buy.

Now, on top of it all, I have a headache. I need lunch and a few aspirin and I have to hope that Comcast’s Digital Voicemail notification email will be enough to let me know the RTG people are here. Elevators should be fixed by now.

***

I know you all missed me.

Those of that have been reading this blog the last few months know what a fan I have been of Emusic.com. Emusic.com is a subscription based music download service that offers DRM free downloads from small music labels. I’ve used this space on several occasions to sing the services praises.

I take it all back. While I have enjoyed the service for the most part, I find the customer service to be non-existent. Almost two months ago, I upgraded from a basic, month-to-month subscription to the annual “premium” level subscription that was supposed to come with a free 1 GB MP3 player. At the time of my upgrade, I was informed that the MP3 player would be shipped within 30 days.

That was back on September 17th.

Nearly two months later, I have yet to see an MP3 player and, more importantly, I have yet to hear from anyone regarding the three separate inquiries I’ve made through the company’s “customer service” pages. If someone had taken 60 seconds to respond to even one of my emails letting me know when I could expect my MP3 player, I’d have been content to wait. Since the company has seen fit to ignore all three of my increasingly pleading emails, I have asked Emusic to cancel my subscription and refund my subscription fee minus two months of worth of downloads.

My theory is that Emusic is struggling with cash flows. The music download business has notoriously thin profit margins and even Apple, which charges $.99 cents per track, struggles to make it pay. Mostly Apple uses iTunes as a way to sell more iPods. Because Emusic is a subscription service, they make about $.25 cents per track at the lowest subscription level and about $.22 cents per track at the highest. I’m guessing a good part of that goes to the music labels and artists as well.

Emusic is addressing that by reducing the number of tracks you can download with each subscription plan. The premium package used to get you 90 downloads per month. As of this month, that has been reduced to 75 tracks per month. Lower level packages have had their number of downloads reduced in similar fashion. The mid-level package used to get you 65 downloads. Now it will get you 50. The lowest-level package has dropped from 40 to 30 downloads. That will boost the price per track to something between $.27 and $.33 cents.

I’m guessing they simply can’t afford to fulfill their promise of delivering a $79 dollar MP3 player to every person that signs up for the annual service. They certainly don’t seem to be able to afford to pay anyone to man the customer service desk.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Emusic either fold or be bought out in the coming months. Even though Emusic is the second largest music download service behind Apple’s iTunes, it’s profits have to be either razor thin or non-existent. If you’re thinking about subscribing to Emusic, my advice is to either wait or join on a month-to-month basis. That will keep you from losing any money if Emusic does indeed go belly up.

In the meantime, I’m going to cancel my subscription and try to get my money back. I can only hope that someone is paying attention to that request. I’ll also be looking for a new place to get my music. Pandora will have to tide me over until I can find a good used CD shop in Atlanta.

Update: Well, that didn’t take long. I just received the email below from the Emusic.com customer service desk.

I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced. The players are usually shipped after 30 days, so you would receive it within 6-8 weeks of you ordering the annual subscription. I’ve been trying to determine the status of your order; unfortunately, we seem to be having trouble with the vendor shipping the players out. I want to assist you with this and provide what we have promised you, so tomorrow I will be shipping your player priority mail, so you should receive it by Monday. As an additional courtesy to you, due to the frustration you may have experienced due to this issue, I have credited your account with 25 courtesy downloads. They will remain on your account for one year from today’s date provided you maintain an active account with us.

One single communication was all I asked. Now that I’ve gotten it, even though I had to be ugly, I’ll give Emusic another chance.

Update 2: Because I’m devious and generally indignant at what I perceive to be poor service, I also guessed at Emusic.com CEO David Pakman’s email address and sent him an email regarding my poor experience. I included the link to this post. To his and Emusic’s credit, he responded quickly. His response is below.

Thank you for contacting me. I have the customer service team looking
into your issue now and we will respond to you within the next 24 hours.
I apologize on behalf eMusic for anything below your expectations and
will work to resolve your issues quickly.

I’m satisfied. Plus now I feel a little guilty about the blog post.

For some while now, Bigwig has been encouraging me to join the “World of Warcraft” (WOW) massive multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG). I have been resisting because I just don’t have the time to commit to the game. For roughly the last two-and-a-half years I’ve been pursuing my MBA. Playing WOW wouldn’t have been condusive to me concluding my studies. I also have a life that I’d like to retain. I have work, a social life and interests that don’t involve sitting in front of a computer for eight hours at a time. Playing video games all day certainly isn’t in my fitness regimen.

And, no, playing the game for an hour or so each day isn’t an option. That would be a compromise. In my family, there is no half-way compromise. There is full-in or not in at all. We’re a bunch of addictive personalities and whatever we happen to do, we do to the exclusion of all else. This is why my brother gave up family, blogging, eating and sleeping for 14 months in order to play WOW. This is why my father plays Freecell for hours at a time. He’s trying to beat all 64,000 permutations. It’s just the way we are.

Knowing the dangers that lay in store for me, I have avoided buying the game. But I had a whole day free yesterday and last week’s South Park about WOW was hysterical. The weather was cold and damp, I’m done with school and I thought sitting on the sofa under a blanket all day sounded just fine. Playing a video game sounded like just the thing. So, at about 7:00 p.m. last night, I decided to check out WOW. I went to the World of Warcraft Community Site and noticed they had a free 10-day trial. Perfect. I could play the game for a bit and then resume my normal life. That would scratch the gaming itch that all men must feel every now and again.

I thought it would take me about half an hour to get set up and start playing.

Um…no.

The downloadable version of the game happened to be a 2.84 GB zipped file. Before I could download it, I had to create an account and agree to a license and terms of use for FilePlanet, the service hosting the file. I did this. I am given two choices for downloading. I can download it from the free Blizzard site or I can pay several dollars for monthly access to FilePlanet. Since I don’t happen to be a drooling moron, I choose the free Blizzard site. Imagine my surprise when I get an error message stating that the free server is “full” and I should try the other link.

Now, I don’t like to feed any conspiracy theories but it did cross my mind that the whole “free” server was a scam and they used the error message to drive people to the paid service. But there was no way in hell I was going to pay anyone to download the game. So I tried the free server again. And again. And again. Finally I managed to convice it that I wasn’t going away and that I wasn’t going to give them any money no matter how many times they asked. The free server finally gives me a link to download what I think is the proper file.

Wrong. It turns out that I have to first download and install a download manager and then I get to download the game. I decide this isn’t too much of a hassle so I do exactly what is asked of me. I install the download manager and then click the link to download the game. I figure that, in this day and age of broadband internet access, it shouldn’t take me too long. Wrong again. The download manager tells me it’ll be an interminable 1 hour, 15 minutes before the file is downloaded completely.

This is a bit off-putting. The last time I waited that long to play a game, it was 1983 and I was waiting for “Crush, Crumble and Chomp” to load from a cassette tape onto my Atari 800. I can still remember the screeching noise the game played as it loaded into the systems memory. We would put it in the tape deck, start the load and run outside to play for half-an-hour or so. The game was a blast, however, so I have good memories of it. It’s a good thing that it was so much fun because otherwise I would’ve decided to stop right there.

As it is, I settled in to watch “60 minutes” and leave the PC alone to download the file. (More on this later but did anyone see see Leslie Stahl launch “you poor thing” softball questions at Carly Fiorina and Patricia Dunn from HP? They were the most biased interview and weakest journalism I’ve seen in a long time.)

Roughly an hour later, I’m ready to install the game. Before I do that, however, I have to unzip the file. A simple matter, right? Wrong again, Clyde. It takes twenty-five to thirty more minutes to unzip the file. By now, we’re finished with “60 minutes” and it’s pushing 8:45 or so. I’m not going to get more than two hours of gaming in at this rate. Maybe not even that much as I have to be up early for a dentist appointment first thing Monday morning. Dammit.

Eventually the game unzips. I am not looking forward to playing too much any more but I start the install with some hope left of actually playing the game for a while before going to bed.

..

Forty-five minutes later, the game is installed. I am tired, cranky and I’m ready to tell the game to go f*ck itself. This is all Bigwig’s fault, that bastard. I didn’t want to play the stupid game anyway. It’s all a bunch of g@dd@mn geeks with no lives playing anyway. But I’ll create a character and then log off for the evening. I’ll at least get that far.

I fire up the game and it asks me for my account name and login. I thought I’d already created this online so I enter the information I used to download the file. Nope, that doesn’t work. That was my FilePlanet account, not my WOW account. Grrr.

After agreeing to another license and another set of terms, I have my account. I go back to WOW and enter the new information. Immediately the software begins downloading an “update”. (Read: “patch”) When the”update” is downloaded, I get a message saying I have to shut down WOW and start it again. I really am done with the damn game at this point but I do it anyway. It’s after 9:30 but I can get in a hour or so of game time after the patch is installed. I actually kind of expected a patch anyway.

The download for the patch is agonizingly slow, however. It’s only 450 MB or so but I’m told it will be two more hours before the thing is downloaded. Two hours is an hour and fifty-five minutes longer than I want to wait for the damn thing. I visit the WOW website to troubleshoot the download speed issue. I’m told that I can either open up three or four ports in my firewall and in my router or I can try closing some background applications. I am not monkeying with my firewall for any damned game so I decide to shut down as many background processes as possible to see if it helped. I don’t know why developers insist on using some g@dd@mn non-standard ports for every piss-ant application but it’s a g@dd@mn pain in the @$$ and I wish they would just stick to the standard f*cking ports so my f*cking firewall doesn’t look like a f*cking sieve to any g@dda@mn hacker that might come along. G@dd@mmit.

Eventually the patch downloads and after another eventually it finishs installing. It’s after 10:00 and I just want to get this all done so I can create my character and go the hell to bed. I fire up WOW, agree to another g@dd@mn license and another f*cking set of terms and enter my account information.

I’m stunned when the f*cking program downloads another f*cking “update”. (Let’s get this straight: it’s not an update. It’s a bug patch. I know it’s a bug patch and you know it’s a bug patch and the company knows it’s a g@dd@mn patch for the initial piece of buggy sh!t they released in the first f*cking place. Just call it a patch. Don’t try to sell me any of that “update” sh!t.)

At this point, the game can suck it and the entire company can rot in hell for all I care. I don’t want to play the stupid game anyway. I have better things to do with my time and spending four hours setting up a f*cking game is not one of those things. But I will create a character before I go to bed if I get nothing else done at all. Now it’s a matter of principle. No freaking game is going to get the better of me.

Fire up the software. Agree to the g@dd@mn license and another set of f*cking terms. Does anybody really read that crap? Freaking lawyers. I hereby maintain that, even though I agreed to the terms, I did not read them. So there. Enter my account information and hold my breath.

…

No updates. I’m in. Finally. In fact, the company even congratulates me on successfully installing the software and welcomes me to the “World of Warcraft”. They must know what a pain in the ass it is to get even this far. Helpfully, they recommend a game realm to me, “Underside”. Thinking that certainly they know best, I decide to just go with their recommendation. I’m almost done. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

When they told me “Underside” was full and I was number 320 in the queue to enter, I lost it. I officially blew a gasket. After the whole pain-in-the-ass process the game is going to recommend tp me a realm that is full and is going to take me approximately forty-five minutes to enter? I don’t think so. People actually go through this willingly? People actually wait 15 to 45 minutes to get into a realm so they can play a game when you can fire up any other game and be playing inside of two minutes on most consoles? I’m stunned. This game must be some kind of electronic crack to get people to jump through this kinds of hoops.

That may be so but I am not waiting two more minutes to play this f*cking game. I try another realm. “You are 298th in the queue. It will take approximately 14 minutes to begin”. Bugger that for a dollar. Not waiting two more minutes. Another realm. 302 and 12 minutes. Hell.f*cking.no. One more try, way down the list…

Finally. Success. Four hours and ten minutes after I started, I’m finally at the point where I can create a character. And I have no desire to ever play the game again. I certainly have no desire to pay $14.99 a month for the privilege. Blizzard can bite my hairy-@$$ if they think they are ever going to see another penny from me after putting me through all that. Bastiges. Farkin’ Iceholes. Sominabotches.

BTW, my character is Paulinus, a human paladin. Look for me and maybe we can go on a quest or something.

Dammit.

Fedex Kinko’s (FK or Kinko’s) is a company that is in desperate need of competition. I know there are plenty of one-off mom-and-pop copy shops out there, but I’m unaware of any national competition for FK. If I were aware of a major competitor, I would beat a path to their door. It’s official: Kinko’s sucks.

I have not had many occasions to visit Kinko’s since my undergraduate days, but I have recently found myself in need of a copy/print shop. Kinko’s is the first place to come to mind when I find myself in need. I recall it had a pretty good reputation in my undergrad days and it was open and busy at all hours. There is also a Kinko’s within two miles of my home, so it’s convenient.

Or at least that was my assumption.

read more »

On Cillit Bang and a new low for marketers… (plasticbag.org).

This post deserves a read. A viral marketing campaign for some cleaner has crossed the bounds of all decency and the word should be spread. That’s one cleaner I’ll never be purchasing.

A weblog by Tom Coates who works at BBC Radio and Music Interactive
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