From the very beginning we had issues - like with the installer who activated one box but not the other, and left the location set for Washington DC which meant that none of our local channels worked.  Then there was the overall confusion regarding local channels in HD - something we could get in Washington with an antenna - an antenna that DirecTV was willing to provide, but not install because we were in a “dead zone.”

Oh and then there was the Tivo debacle.  DirecTV used to have a partnership with Tivo and offered recievers with Tivo - the trouble is that the features that Tivo was putting in their stand alone units wasn’t getting put into the DirecTV Tivos.  Eventually DirecTV dropped the Tivos and came out with their own DVR, which is barely acceptible.  It’s a feature poor device with an interface that isn’t very intuitive.

However, what really pushed us over the edge is nature.  Our overgrown backyard has finally grown to the point where tree branches are interfering with the DirecTV signal.  Sadly it’s not just a matter of trimming it back.  Both The Wife and I have climbed up the 40+ degree incline to hack down trees in an attempt to make things better.  Unfortunately it now appears that the offending trees are too high up for us to get to in order to take down.  Which leaves us with either praying for calm days with no wind or dumping DirecTV.

Despite all the horror stories, we’ve decided to call in Comcast.  We’re minimizing our exposure to them and only getting TV, no phone or internet though.  Their internet service is faster, but I’m concerned about a few things - first is that we have a static IP for the business and “business class” DSL from AT&T.  Comcast wants a two year contract for their business class connections and we can’t give them that.  Since we share our internet connection with the business and the business has to have an internet connection I’m hesitant to play around with it and Comcast.  Combine that with Comcast’s latest bandwidth games plus our VOIP usage, bittorret usage (for legal stuff of course) and I’m not willing to run my data through Comcast.

On the plus side - we can get a Tivo again!  Even more on the plus side, a refurb HD Tivo is $179!  In the years that we’ve been Tivoless Tivo has rolled out some pretty cool services too…  so I’m pretty excited about that. 

Saturday’s the big day…  In theory we should have interference free TV and a Tivo by 2 pm on Saturday - either that or a new disrespect for Comcast…

At least I now know why my comments are disappearing, now if I could only figure out how to get off of Akismet’s black lists…

As if that wasn’t enough, I’ve noticed a tremendous increase in trackback spam lately on the Cruise Planners site.  It’s been on a slow rise for the last few weeks, from maybe 1 or two every few weeks to 40 or 50 in the last week alone.  I know the numbers aren’t high compared to sites with real heavy traffic, but still it’s a noticeable upswing in the amount of spam coming in.

I used to use Bad Behavior and Akismet to keep the spam under control, but thinks to problems with Bad Behavior’s blacklist I had to turn it off.  So now I’m looking for other options to cut down on the amount of crap the bots are trying to get on to the site….

For starters, I’m now the owner of a Black iPhone 3G.  I’d love to say it was an uneventful purchase - sadly it was a disaster. It’s a long story that maybe I’ll go in to another time.  However the root cause of the issue was AT&T.

However eventually the transaction went through and the phone was activated.  We knew the phone was fully activated because as soon as activation was completed I got a text from db telling me not to get the phone for at least another week because of all the problems!

By the way the lines that many Apple Stores were sporting even today - mainly because of the stupid activation process that Apple forces you to do in-store.  AT&T gave up on the in-store activation but Apple won’t let you leave unless the phone is activated.

As for the Ap Store.  There’s some pretty good stuff in there - unfortunately there’s even more crap there.  It’s also annoying that you can find multiple applications that do the same thing - some for free and others you need to pay for.  There’s also a surprising number of completely pointless and useless applications there.  Considering the number of reports I saw that indicated that Apple was very selective in who initially participated in the developer program I would have expected Apple to be selective in the applications that they allowed in the store.

Back when the iPhone was announced Apple talked about how they didn’t like how applications on Windows Mobile don’t ever actually close and consume resources and that they didn’t want the iPhone to do the same.  In thinking about it, it’s surprising that they would raise a stink about this since OS X does the exact same thing.  Just like in Windows Mobile if you click on the little X in the corner of OS X your application doesn’t really close…  it just hangs out and consumes resources.

3G is great, but I think that surfing the web on Edge on the iPhone is actually slower than on the Treo 750.  However, I think that it’s because the 750 pulls down fewer graphics and data than the iPhone.  However I think that the overall browsing experience on the iPhone is MUCH better.

John Schoen over at MSNBC however explains several of the reasons why the Strategic Oil Reserves won’t help us.

The price of oil is going up not because it’s currently in short supply - but out of fear that it might be in short supply soon.  Since there’s plenty of oil currently being shipped to refiners adding more to the pool won’t change anything.

Supply is so good that the US has stopped adding 70,000 barrels of oil a day to the Strategic Oil Reserve - but oil hasn’t gotten cheaper.

There are 700 million barrels of oil in storage.  Global consumption is 86 million barrels a day.  Now you’re thinking so that’s global demand, I’m in the US and extra oil from the oil reserve will help the US supply and ease prices.  The problem is that the price of oil is set on the international market not a domestic market. 

Then there’s the true purpose of the Oil Reserve - to make sure we have fuel if the supply lines are cut.  If things get nasty with Iran there’s a distinct possibility they will cut off the Persian Gulf and block oil shipments from the region.  If we tap the oil reserve to ease prices now, will there be enough oil to help us should things get ugly in the Middle East?

However it worked well as a companion to the Roomba, that is until it began to develp an annoying ability to redistribute dirt instead of picking up dirt.  Oh and then there was the weird odor - the vacuum started to give off a weird moldy odor when used.  I cleaned it with no change, but the kicker was when I came home one day and knew by the burning rubber smell that The Wife had vacuumed.  What I later discovered was that the main drive shaft had warped and eaten the drive belt.  The belt would have cost all of $5 for me to replace but the drive shaft was a different story.  I would have had to disassemble the entire motor to replace the drive shaft and that would have been a major undertaking.

So off it was to replace the vacuum and of course the first thought was “time to get the Dyson,” and then reality struck i.e the price tag.  So we did a lot of research and ended up with the Bissell Healthy Home upright.  While not cheap - it’s still half the price of the Dyson and while it doesn’t make the same “doesn’t loose suction” claims that Dyson does the design appears to be similar.

So far it sucks pretty well, and doesn’t appear to loose suction until the bin is full, and that’s led me to my completely unscientific theory about how the Dyson manages it’s claim to fame.  See the Dyson, much like the Bissell has a really small has a really small dirt cup - and that’s the secret.  By limiting how much you can actually suck up I think the cup is “filling” long before there would be enough in the cup to start affecting suction.  So if the vacuum actually was configured like a common vacuum with a larger dirt cup then I think it would also loose suction…  At least that’s my theory.

I was trying to track stats through Feedburner and had been uses the Feedburner Feed redirect plugin to do it.  For some reason it decided to stop updating the feed.  I tried using the Feedsmith plug-in to do the same since it is the officially blessed plug-in for Feedburner however it also didn’t update.  The feeds both checked out in the RSS validater but updates still weren’t being published.

So I’ve turned them both off.

The fact is there aren’t that many people who ever read this blog and it’s doubtful I will ever try to monetize it.  With that in mind, there’s really no need for me to worry about the stats that Feedburner provides.  Even more importantly, it appears that turning off the Feedburner redirects doesn’t affect folks who are already subscribed to the feed.  I was concerned that the change to the feed would break existing subscriptions but that doesn’t appear to be the case…

So welcome back…  All 4 of you

Apparently my reputation that I’m a very charitable person is growing and they have all decided to contact me to see if I could help with donating their money to a worthwhile charity.  Because donating money is hard.  And they all are generously offering me a cut of the money to be donated.  How sweet…

It seems I also am developing a reputation for moving large sums of money around.  Lately I’ve been getting contacted by bank managers in Hong Kong and various African and Middle Eastern nations requesting my assistance moving large sums of unclaimed money out of their country.  You know I’ve been working to become a master of international finance and it seems to be working.  Apparently all I need is a checking AND a savings account!

Oh, and I apparently just won a Puegeot 206 from Puegeot Automotive UK.  As soon as I respond to the yahoo.co.hk e-mail address Puegeot will be shipping me my new car!  No, I don’t think it’s weird at all that the UK division of an international auto company would need to use Yahoo Hong Kong to host their e-mail why do you ask?

Now if you’ll excuse me there’s some oceanfront property in Arizona I need to go and see…

BTW - if you ever post to a discussion board that you are having a problem and looking for help fixing it and then you managed to fix the problem on your own - be kind to the other users and post what you did to fix the problem…

Just making a post that says “Oh nevermind I fixed it” doesn’t help anyone!!!

This time it was off to a “workshop” in Orlando.  It was easy to tell which of my co-workers had never been to Orlando before as their response was universally “Oh cool you’re going to Orlando!”  They just don’t understand that Florida in the summer is hot, and humid with a side of severe thunderstorms.  Now I don’t mind the thunderstorms, but the heat and humidity are horrible.

I’ve been fortunate in the past, while I’ve been through San Francisco in the past when it’s been crowded - this time around was probably my worst experience.  While I don’t like the crowds and the lines I can usually tolerate them if things keep moving.  However when there’s as many as 5 open kiosks for people to use and the folks on the line are too clueless to step to them thereby holding the entire line, that’s when the frustration starts.

Even more frustrating about the clueless passengers at the self-check in kiosks are the clueless agents manning those kiosks.  After checking myself in I had to wait close to 10 minutes before one of the agents bothered to wander down and tag my luggage.  What ticked me off was the fact that the agents were dealing with folks who were closer to them and meant they didn’t have to walk as far from the counter that they had decided to plant themselves at.

I greatly dislike passing through security at San Francisco - not that security is ever much fun to pass through, but it’s glaringly obvious that San Francisco is unable to accomodate modern security checkpoints.  Security is almost always crowded and cramped.

It seemed like a good idea at the time - my flight to Orlando was a non-stop.  Where the plan fell apart - I got in at 10PM and didn’t have a car.  As a result by the time I got my bags, caught the shuttle to the airport and got checked in it was after 11PM.  I had eaten lunch at 11:30 AM Pacific, and here it was 11:15PM Eastern and the hotel had NO dining options after 11PM.

The hotel by the way - sucked.  The A/C was one of the loudest I’ve had to live with in quite a while, and pretty ineffective too.  The bathroom was pretty nasty, the wall paper was peeling and there was mold on the ceiling.

The highlight of the trip was our outing to Kennedy Space Center.  We were treated to a private tour given to us by NASA (as opposed to one of the tours offered by the visitor’s center), and thanks to the folks at NASA we got to walk around the press observation area.  This is where the popular shot is taken that includes the flagpole, giant countdown clock with the launch pads in the background.  Even cooler we were taken over to launchpad 39B which is the launchpad that the shuttles are launched from.  The visitor’s center tours get about 3 miles from the launchpad, but we were taken right up to the perimeter fence that surrounds the launchpad.  We were within 300 feet of the pad.  That was cool.

I was also amazed by how tight security has become at Kennedy.  It wasn’t that long ago where anybody could drive around the facility and pretty much go wherever you want on your own.  Now the entire place is locked down tight, you can’t get on to the facility without a NASA issued badge.

For the most part the flight back was uneventful - until we landed, and then we sat.  We spent over an hour hanging out on the taxiways waiting for an open gate so we could get off the plane.

And what’s the deal with the airline’s practice of sticking the baggage for 6 incoming flights on the same baggage carousel even though there are 6 other baggage carousels that aren’t being used?

I like the idea behind the kinds of games,  an online world with lots of other players and things to interact with, if nothing else it should give the average game more depth as the world itself is continually changing as players function in the online world and interact with it.  When you combine that with a developer staff that is continually working to keep the game fresh and interesting by adding new content and you should have a winner right?

If only it was that simple.  I first dabbled with an MMORPG several years ago with Star Wars Galaxies.  The promise sounded great, all the pieces of an MMORPG combined with creating a playable character in the Star Wars universe.  Within a few weeks I started loosing interest as i discovered the weekness of the MMORPG genre.

Every new player starts off pretty weak, they have very little supplies, little in game experience, and little in game finances.  Short of cheating there’s no way to get more skills, supplies or finances without participating in what is typically called “grinding.”  See to do all of those things you must either complete missions or harvest some sort of in game material which you can either sell or remanufacture into some sort of in game asset which you can sell.

It’s called grinding because your grinding away at these tasks.  Most missions in MMORPG typically boil down to “go here, kill this thing or things, come back and collect your reward,” or “take/bring this item to this location and collect your reward.”  While the actual location, item, or creature may change you’re still basically doing the same task over and over again.

Harvesting resources is just as bad - prospect for worthwhile resources, setup a harvestor, collect resources.  Repeat.  Then the junior player discovers the next problem - what to do with the resources.  You could sell them - except that more experienced players have advanced harvesters that are pulling in exponentially more resources than you and are probably selling significantly larger quantities of resources than you have or could even get in a month.  You could process your resources into an asset that you can sell - except that as a new player you either don’t have the skill to do so at all or don’t have the skill to create something that other people even want.  Getting that skill means grinding away for probably weeks or longer.

Some games have other issues on top of those.  Many MMORPGs have the “realm” running on multiple servers in order to load balance the game.  You only have contact with the folks who are on the same server as you.  In terms of overall game performance it’s great no single server gets slammed as users congregate in areas.  I was on Second Life for 15 minutes before I quit in frustration, the server just couldn’t handle that many people in the same part of the game.  Galaxies suffers from an opposite problem, since folks on different servers can’t mingle there are vast swaths of the game that are deserted.
I tried Eve Online in the hope that it would be different.  The storyline seemed compelling and from my reading it looked to be a different type of MMORPG.  Unfortunately once I got in and started playing I was quickly disappointed.  I was stunned by the amount of sameness throughout the entire game.  At least in the other MMORPGs different parts of the game looked different, if nothing else you could spend a significant amount of time just exploring the different regions of the game to offset the tedium of the grind.  Eve Online doesn’t even offer that, every single solar system is the same, there’s a handful of planets and asteroids plus a few space stations in every solor system - and that’s it.

$19.95 a month at least to me just isn’t worth the sameness that Eve Online offers.