Category Archives: personal

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Wide Open West does it again …

Years ago Wide Open West started offering cable and internet service in Grosse Ile, where I was living with my parents at the time at home. Back then we had 2Mbps service if I recall correctly, and they had just recently been rolling out 5Mbps service in our area. Out of nowhere, WoW sent us a letter informing us that we would be upgraded to the new 5Mbps service for … nothing. That’s right, they upgraded our service for free.

This was my first great experience with Wide Open West. As a relatively new company, they were competing with Comcast at the time, I just shrugged it off as a ploy to win customers. Comcast, like a bad girlfriend, had constantly reminded us as customers how misleading a relationship can be.

My distaste for Comcast grew when I lived in an apartment in Royal Oak. I signed up for what was a great deal at the time: $60 or so for their “Double Play” package consisting of cable and internet. Although I had been hurt by Comcast in the past, unfortunately I had no other provider available at our apartment complex. I had to swallow my pride and just hope they wouldn’t screw me over again. When our six month honeymoon ended, Comcast reminded me of why I wanted so badly to ditch them as a company forever; the bill shot up to $110/month, with no additional anything.

Fast forward about four years, and I finally bought a house. Because of my previous good experience with WoW, I sprung for the fast internet (15Mbps) and cable package, and have been happy with them for quite a while.

If you know me, you know I’m a big Detroit Red Wings fan. Just recently, there have quite a few Wings games on the new NBC Sports channel (previously Versus), but unfortunately I did not have this channel as part of my package when I signed up a year and a half ago. It was $25 extra per month or so, and I just didn’t want to pay that much extra.

Today, I was curious how much more the extra programming was going to be, so I pulled up Wide Open West’s website and checked their subscription packages. To my surprise I found that their new cable/internet package had all the channels I previously avoided along with 15Mbps internet for $85, or $92 for HD. From my previous experience with calling customer service and requesting upgrades, I knew I would have to arm myself with the facts and began furiously opening browser tabs with informational weapons for my upcoming battle.

I dialed the toll free number for WoW customer service, and was fully prepared to threaten cancelling my service, ask for supervisors, and in general ruin someone’s day. This is all of course because of my previous experience with cable companies.

After a minute or so on hold, I got to speak to someone and explained the situation. I expected trouble because the account is still in my girlfriend’s name, but all they asked was for the last four digits of her social security number and carried on. The customer service rep. (CSR) asked me to hold, which lead me to thinking “here we go, I’ll be on hold for 10 minutes for them to tell me they can’t do anything or it will be an extra $50 per month”. After about 45 seconds, the CSR came back, and asked if $100 and some change per month would be okay.

I noticed that the new package only had 1Mbps upload, while I currently had 2Mbps upload speed. I asked if that would change, and the CSR told me that instead of repackaging our plan she would simply apply a discount and my bill would for the most part remain the same.

Amazed at how smoothly this had all went, I was expecting to hear some bad news about how long I would have access to the new channels. There is a game on tonight, and I was hoping to see it. Fully expected to hear “24 hours” as the response to asking how long, I was instead told “Okay, you have the new service available immediately”.

WTF? No additional fees? No waiting for someone to come out and dink with wires or 24 hours for them to “activate” the service? Why aren’t all cable companies like this?

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Travel disaster

I had this post all written up and lost it all by absent mindedly upgrading WordPress at the same time. Which, on a side note, I’m very happy with. The automatic update seems to work pretty well now, along with updating the plugins I have installed. The process was flawless.

So anyway, this is supposed to be about travelling. Yesterday around 16:30 I barely made it to DTW for my flight. I left with plenty of time to spare, but managed to get caught in a torrential downpour; the kind that so heavily hits your windshield you can’t see more than ten feet of traffic in front of you. I guess that was going to be the least of my worries.

I managed to get on the flight, even though to automatic check in was complaining about me not being there 30 minutes prior. “You may be in luck”, said the US Air check-in employee, “they haven’t closed the flight yet”. Luck isn’t really what I would call it, in retrospect.

After a 40 minute delay in the flight time, we sat on the flight line for an hour without A/C while they refuelled the plan and got the A/C working. Forty-five minutes into our patient wait they started pulling off passengers that were headed to the west coast, because they wouldn’t make their flights. US Air claimed this was because there were no other flights for those people to their final destinations, but that worried me, too.

Long story short, I missed the connecting flight and ended up stuck in Charlotte by myself for much longer than I expected. It seems everyone else will get to San Diego before I will…

They rebooked me on a flight that left at 07:20; that is just disgustingly early after having ingested as much scotch as I did at McKoy’s the night before. McKoy’s is a pretty cool little bar within walking distance from the Sheraton hotel US Air was nice enough to let me sleep in. There is definitely some interesting local “color” there, and plenty to drink scotch-wise. Johnny Walker Black, Green, and Gold were available, and after some joking I convinced Angelo, our New Jersey-born bartender to pour my drinks extra heavy. There was definitely no shortage of alcohol in my drinks from then on.

Oddly enough, I ended up talking geek stuff in the form of Qt and Linux programming with another guy that was also stranded in the area. It was definitely an amusing experience; I even bought a McKoy’s t-shirt. lol

That shirt is now inside out as I sit with a four piece chicken snack from “BoJangles”. Yes, I’m eating chicken from a place that shares a name with an SNL skit featuring Will Ferrell and a dog. It’s not too bad, considering I only paid forty cents for it after my five dollar meal voucher from US Air.

Anyway, this post has gotten way too long; if you have my Facebook check the videos on there later; should be amusing. :P

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Fedora 9 Install by YUM

Thanks to this post for the instructions.

# yum update
# yum clean all
# I like to repeated update and clean all a second time to make sure everything got updated
# Run the following command to update the yum repo on your box:
rpm -Uhv http://mirror.liberty.edu/pub/fedora/linux/releases/9/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-9-2.noarch.rpm http://mirror.liberty.edu/pub/fedora/linux/releases/9/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-notes-9.0.0-1.noarch.rpm
# Next I had to do a “yum clean all” again before it picked up the change
# Next do a yum -y update

No major problems here … I had lighttpd installed, which was causing the update to fail 4 dependencies.

# rpm -e lighttpd

Fixed that … now to download the 1,200 some packages …

Another update tomorrow.

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I quit.

Smoking. Nasty habit. If you’ve smoked, you’ve probably coughed or accidentally exhaled before completely finishing inhaling the smoke from your cigarette. Tasty, isn’t it? Nope, actually it’s incredibly disgusting. The closest thing I can equate it to is the taste is the same as rust looks.

So that’s what I was forcing into my lungs for about a year and a half on a regular basis. Now that I’m trying to get into more sports, smoking is holding me back more than I can stand. Plus, I’d really like to get rid of this chronic bronchitis I have to deal with in the morning.

As of January 17th, 2008, I am no longer an every day smoker. Maybe one or two when I drink, but that’s about it …

Wish me luck. :D

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2 years ago and about a week …

i wrote this poem. it’s kind of nice, i’m surprised it came out of me. :lol:

painful in it’s depth of feeling
hearts embrace in devil’s dealing

hurting healing, flinching turning
waiting longer, burning stronger

start my calling days of new
hidden deep in skylit blue

whisper names in hopes of knowing
until appears an angel glowing

a smile will capture heart and mind
and fortify the ties that bind

farther flung in all it’s glory
love begins another story

sleepy time so i can go vote for Ron Paul later this morning. hope i’m not too exhausted to go. :P

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being ‘that guy’ … or, how i became a drunken idiot

being ’that guy’ … or, how i became a drunken idiot
Current mood: melancholy
Category: Life

Friday night was probably one of the worst nights I’ve had in recent memory. I’ve had some bad times before, but they are generally tame and not really a big deal … mostly involving being annoyed by the overabundance of male stupidity or female pretentiousness (or a mix thereof) in the place I’m at.

Friday night was an exception. I was ‘that guy’. And it kills me to think I got so drunk I lost control of the situation and myself after a certain point. I could barely stand, for god’s sake … and I’m usually the one that is the first to laugh when I see someone like that.

I’m mostly over feeling terrible about it, but I can’t help but think I’ve messed up something that had a lot of potential. I feel like such an idiot, because how I acted that night totally isn’t me … getting incredibly wasted and making a fool of myself (in a non-humorous, somewhat socially acceptable way) isn’t what I’m about. Must be my evil twin trying to make me look bad. :P

Anyway, in an attempt to be an optimist, I guess I can chalk it up to a learning experience. Lessons learned? If your body is telling you you’re exhausted after drinking with co-workers after work, don’t show up to a bar half-drunk and continue drinking like a madman. Not even if it’s someone’s birthday and against your best judgment you come anyway because someone else is there you really want to see …

Ugh. So at least it was a really nice day today and football practice was fun for a bit. Also, had a great time at Meester’s place watching Man Stroke Woman, definitely my newest favorite comedy. It’s British, and honestly it’s one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a long time. Short sketch comedy at it’s finest.

That feeling still lingers, though … :-/

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Arby’s can eat my ass. while i eat their shitty food.

looks tasty, right?

today in the office someone offered to pick up lunch from Arby’s. i generally don’t like that place because of their low quality food, but checking their website the grilled chicken bacon and swiss looked good (see picture above).

well, what i saw wasn’t exactly what i got.

on the site the chicken looks good. like it’s actually been cooked. with actual grill marks on it (fake or whatever, it still looks decent). there is plenty meat, extending out past the sesame seed bun. the bacon looks fresh, with that contrast of red and brown you see when you cook bacon correctly.

what i got. now that’s a different story.

the amount of chicken was sparse, with the bun completely covering the meat, AND the bacon. seriously, i felt like i was eating a hotpocket. the little bits of bacon that fell out onto the wrapper (very few, most were hidden under the bun) looked dark brown throughout, not the natural colors seen in the picture above. the bun was flat and the chicken squishy, like it wasn’t cooked throughout well enough, and steam cooked instead of actually grilled. looking at the actual meat, instead of the golden brown with hash marks you see above, i got something that looked cold and clammy, like someone that’s been sick with the flu for a week.

i couldn’t return the piece of crap i got, so i just ate it instead. yes, i felt like i ate crap. it tasted decent, but most definitely wasn’t what i was expecting.

i was allowed to bring cameras to work, i’d have taken a picture.

needless to say, i definitely won’t be eating Arby’s crap again. maybe if it’s free and i’m starving, but otherwise i’d avoid it at all costs.

the cheesecake poppers looked good though. about as good as 100% fat deep-fried in fat and covered in sugary batter with raspberry sauce can taste, i guess. i’m sure it would have been really tasty, but i can feel my arteries hardening just at the thought of it. may as well just hook up an IV of grease to my arm.